Page 113 of Red Masquerade

And then I saw him.

Across the room, almost too dark to find in the shadows, he stood, pushing off from a large black chair—a throne, of sorts—where he’d been watching, observing his court of the damned, in his own blood red robe. It was like that first night, when he found me amongst the crowd of humans downstairs, when I’d wandered into his web, and he had zeroed in on me amidst all the other souls. Like our souls called to each other.

And as he stood, the whole room seemed to realize it.

Their fervor lessened, and though they didn’t stop their feeding and fucking, they became attentive to his movements. Glazed eyes watching as he stepped toward me, one foot after the other, the crowd parting around him.

When he reached me, his eyes were pitch-dark. He gazed at me hungrily. The frenzy of those around us had left him wanting.

And here I was.

He towered over me, and I reached up for his chest, his broad shoulders. He remained still, waiting for my every move. We had a silent conversation, his feelings clear in his eyes, that he wantedmeto make the choice, to make the move. He wanted me to choose him, to choose this world.

I swallowed a lump in my throat as my hands met the planes of his bare chest under the velvet. His neck was bare, the white skin unblemished, unbroken, unscarred—as though no one had drank from him there. When everyone else in the room was scarred with bites, the evidence of feeding visible in the right light.

My hands moved up to his shoulders, and in doing so, his robe fell, cascading down his back, exposing him to the whole room. His arousal pressed against my stomach, and I had half a mind to kneel, to take him into my mouth and show him just how much I wanted to be part of him forever.

But he grabbed my elbows before I could touch him further, before I could move.

I nearly melted when he grabbed me, almost weeping with want.

“Take me,” I whispered, only loud enough for him to hear.

He darkened, and suddenly his hands were beneath my thighs, hoisting me up in the air, my legs around his waist. I gasped as his arousal found me beneath my robe, brushing against that sensitive part of me that made me shiver. I almost cried. But he didn’t enter me. He teased me, building my neediness, the tip of his cock nestling in between my legs, but never inside.

I threw my head back as he carried me, his strong hands supporting all my weight, his robe forgotten onthe ground. He brought me back to that dark chair in the shadows. And he sat, pulling me onto his lap, my knees on either side of his hips.

“This is my domain,” he breathed, his nose tracing along my jawline. He gripped my thighs roughly, pulling me down onto him, his cock stuck between our bodies, rubbing against the apex of my thighs, drawing that dampness out of me. Readying me.

“These are my people,” he continued. He watched me writhe, watched me succumb to my lust, just like everyone else in the room. But they were forgotten. He only had eyes for me, his pupils zeroing in on the pulse at my neck. His nostrils flared. “And now they are your people,” he said.

He lifted me just enough to adjust himself, to position himself at my entrance.

I wept.

“I Made them, they bow to me. And now, toyou.” He pushed on my hips until his cock speared me, one inch at a time, before I was fully seated on his lap, my muscles crying in protest at the intrusion.

It was all too much—the eyes of so many on me, watching me with him, while they all fed on each other.

I thought I understood it, then. The biting, the sucking, the drawing pleasure from each other, all at once—it was a cycle of life, of energy, of giving and taking. Giving your life-force in more ways than one.

My hips ached with the need to move, to show Vincehewas my life-force.

That only he could take me in a room of vampires.

I felt the hunger all around me, the need for blood, the monstrous eyes around me wanting my blood, but not able to have it.

Hecould have it. He gave me my pleasure, and in return I gave him his.

“Don’t you like it?” he hissed at me, barely able to restrain himself. I’d never seen him so taken by his blood lust. “Show them—you own me. Show them who’s in control.”

My breaths came shallow as I lifted myself, my muscles barely able to move, and came back down on him. “But—”

“Let them know it’syou.” He thrust upward into me harshly, his breath hot on my neck.

Our joining was hidden behind fabric, but anyone who looked would know.

They would all know what we were to each other.