Chapter 20: The Bite That Burned

I didn't think it would all come apart as quickly as it did.

I was discreet.

I kept the forbidden tome hidden under floorboards in my bedchamber, muttered the blood rite in snatched moments when the moon dropped a heavy beam of light over the palace. I said nothing and did nothing to raise an eyebrow.

And yet. Somehow, Kael sensed it despite it all.

He always did.

Outside, the storm at night that night was reflected in the storm that was wreaking havoc with me internally. Rain pounded on windows, thunder growled and low on the horizon. I shivered in front of the fire, crossing my arms across my chest tightly, attempting to stamp out the tremble in my muscles.

The bedroom door creaked.

Kael blocked the doorway -- huge, looming, menacing. Red eyes blazed hot with some personal flame larger even than lightning on the outside, glinting with horrifying accuracy on me.

I didn't budge.

He had that bestial side to him tonight. Wild. Orgiastic.

Not a word out of his mouth. Yet.

He approached me with slow, measured strides, his pounding boots booming down in the close-deaf air.

Where were you tonight?"

His voice was low, hardened by something that wasn't quite anger.

But not mercy.

"I—"

My mouth was dry.

"In the library."

His jaw snapped together. "Again."

It was not a question. It was an accusation.

I swallowed painfully, and I held his eye. "I'm not your prisoner," I whispered, the words stupid and brave even to me. "Or am I?"

Something flashed on his face — something dark and painful — but it vanished almost instantly behind a sterner, icier mask.

"You are mine," he declared flatly as if pronouncing something true for all mankind.

And then he was lying on top of me.

Before I was able to step, before I was able even to think, Kael closed the distance between us. His arms went around my wrists, holding my arms up against the cold stone wall. His chest was pressed against me.

I choked on the surprise heat, the suffocating smell of him — black spice, blood, and the stinging bite of winter air.

"You're running," he took a breath in my neck, his voice a harsh rasp. "I can feel it."

I rolled my head away, obstinate even as my body seemed to be betraying me, trembling at his touch.

"You made that rather clear," I snarled. "I'm just a blood supply to you."

A muscle jerked in his jaw.

His fingers closed tighter around my wrists, not tightly enough to hurt, but tightly enough to remind me just how easily he might.

"And yet," he growled, "the idea of you fleeing from me. maddens me."

I didn't even see the flash of his fangs before he bit me.

His bite wasn't soft this time.

There was no soft seduction, no stroking of my skin.

It was brutal.

Possessive.

Conclusion.

A gasp ripped from between my lips as his fangs bit deep into the tender flesh of my neck, burning and throbbing. The pain burned brightly at first, searing my vision, and then it fell apart into something else — something hotter, deeper, more frightening.

Pleasure.

It poured through me in crashing, drugging waves, seeping my knees, stealing my breath. My heart beat wildly, crashing against the walls of my ribcage, and I could feel the resonating growl shake from Kael's frame to mine.

He sucked at me — not just blood, but something more. Something vital. Something that was mine.

And I gave it to him.

I couldn't resist.

I arced back into him, helplessly aflame, as though his lips alone were holding me here.

Tears balanced on the edge of my eyes — not of pain, but of rawness, of rightness, of terrible wrongness.

When at last Kael drew back, he didn't let me go.

He remained there, forehead against mine, breathing rough and jagged.

I was too stunned, too broken, to move.

"You're branded now," he growled, his thumb drawing possessively along the new brand on my neck. "No one will ever doubt who you are."

I shivered.

The mark pulsed with warmth, its beat a near match to the thud of my heart. It was something more than a wound — older, deeper, more binding.

A claim.

An intangible chain as delicate as air but as rigid as steel linking me to him.

Unerasably, unbreakably.

Tears flowed over, hot and quiet down my cheeks.

"You can't just—" I swallowed. "You can't own me, Kael."

His hand dropped from my wrist to the rough, blank space of his palm on my face, hard and gentle both at the same time.

"But I do," he whispered, so quietly it broke me open wider than any scream ever had.

He kissed me then — a hard, angry kiss full of blood and rain and rage.

I didn't fight it.

I should have.

I knew I ought to.

But when his mouth moved against mine, when his body pressed in tighter, my barriers were reduced to dust.

Because despite all of it — despite his cruelty, despite his coldness — part of me still yearned for him.

Still loved him.

Still hoped.

And that hope was more lethal than any bond he could weave.

When he finally withdrew, his gaze sliced mine, something raw and unshuttered burning in those red eyes.

"I'll never let you go," he snarled. "Not even if you despise me for it."

I stared at him, my heart shattering all over again.

For in that instant, I understood the truth.

Kael didn't know how to love.

He only knew how to take.

And I was drawn between wanting his arms around me. And wanting to rip them off.

When at last he left, disappearing into the tempest like a phantom, I collapsed onto the floor.

My fingers shook as I felt the wound on my neck — the wound which could never heal.

The one that he had left.

The one that I would bear forever.

And deep, deep down inside, where the pain and the fear and the anger were. A tiny spark of something different was lit.

Not hope.

Not love.

Determination.

If Kael only knew one bite was all it would take to tie me to him for the rest of eternity.

He had a rude awakening coming.

To be continued…