Page 13 of Thirst
I lifted my gaze to his, my defenses shattered, my mind as naked as my body.
More, I wanted to plead.
Not just more sex, but more everything.
Ask me to run away with you—even if I have to tell you no.
Because my father would stake me before letting me go to a Maritime Syndicate lieutenant.
Holding my gaze, Cain licked the blood from his lips like a big, satisfied cat. “I like how you taste, firefly.”
Then his eyes hooded. I could almost hear the slam of his shutters closing. My stomach dropped.
“Now,” he said. “Talk.”
3
Cain
Nyx’s head had fallen back, her hair spilling over my arm in dark-red waves. Godsdamn her anyway for being so beautiful. An off-beat, one-of-a-kind beauty that kept dragging me back, again and again, risking my life just to be inside her.
I toyed with a silky curl, just taking her in. The wide, expressive mouth. The high cheekbones. The clear hazel eyes under arrow-straight eyebrows.
A tiny diamond glinted in her left nostril and she wore her bangs chopped high on her forehead.
I hadn’t wanted to stop feeding. Her flavor lingered on my tongue, a hot temptation. I’d wanted to drink my fill, then fuck her against the wall until she was chanting my name again.
When she’d strolled into that art gallery, all long legs and attitude, heads had turned like she was a living magnet. Not because of the black dress clinging to her like sin, but for the way she wore it—like the world existed to admire her. She was hot, and she knew it.
A redheaded, golden-skinned firefly. Unique, incandescent.
But beneath the bravado, the rich-girl attitude, was something vulnerable, something no one else seemed to notice. It was that hidden need, that softness, that had me twisting myself into a pretzel, chasing the daughter of a man I despised.
She drew a breath, her tits shifting beneath that cobweb of a dress, and my dick twitched in response.
Down, boy.
The clock was ticking. Any minute now, some asshole from her father’s syndicate would notice she was missing and come looking for her.
And I wanted answers.
She’d been on that damn island.
That forest painting was a signed confession, even if part of me still didn’t want to believe it.
If Nyx had known about Eden’s kidnapping—if she’d been on that island watching Lemaire’s secret lair burn, knowing Eden was trapped inside—then why in Hades hadn’t she done something? Gotten Eden out herself, or told us the moment we landed on the island.
Eden had come close to dying in that lair.
Talon had nearly incinerated himself to save her.
Anger and betrayal burrowed into me, an animal with teeth and claws, tearing at the reality of Nyx in my arms—the warm, relaxed woman who’d let me feed from her.
“Pathetic,” my uncle Baker sneered in my head. “Too soft. Just like your father.”
My jaw clenched, a dull ache rising in my teeth. What if Baker was right?
Crashing the art show had taken a fuck-ton of effort. I’d had to hack into the invite list, then send the collector whose invite I’d “borrowed” to the other side of Paris on a trumped-up errand.
