Page 128 of Hunted

His voice is velvet and sex. So damned effective my pulse trips over itself. ‘I don’t know. I have nothing to compare it to.’

The words are out before I can stop them. Too close to confession. Too close to I have never let anyone get this close before.

Panic sparks.

I hurry on. ‘I mean, can you switch it off? So I have something to compare it to?’

He says nothing.

Just watches me while the heat beneath my palms ebbs, then drains, leaving coolness.

Then cold.

I gasp, not from pain or discomfort. Shockingly, the opposite. The slick cool press of his body against mine sends lurid, immediate thoughts tumbling through my head. What that cold would feel like lower. Deeper. Against the places already throbbing and oversensitive from earlier.

Like being fucked with a cold dildo.

Sweet Netheris.

His mouth curves with predatory delight.

‘Why, little hunter,’ he murmurs, leaning down to kiss my bare shoulder while his hand slides over my hip, ‘I believe you have several kinks that require exploring.’

I make a strangled sound halfway between a scoff and a squeak. ‘I do not⁠—’

‘Do not what?’ he asks, kissing his way to my jaw. ‘Blush? Clearly false. Fantasise? I can smell otherwise. Crave? A lie by omission, at minimum.’

‘Oh my Gods, you are offensive.’

‘And yet you remain here.’

His hand strokes slow and wicked over me, never quite where I want it, then exactly where I want it for one brutal second before leaving again. Touch. Tease. Retreat. The rhythm makes me want to bite him just to feel like I’m participating in my own ruin.

He kisses me deep and carnal, all heat and possession and slick, flickering tongues. When he lifts his head, his nose grazes my cheek, his inhale deliberate.

‘You smell more intoxicating each time,’ he says, voice roughening. ‘Do you know that?’

‘Do I know I have a pulse?’ I shoot back, breathless. ‘Yes. Congratulations on your advanced senses.’

His mouth flashes at the corner. ‘Not your pulse.’

The look he gives me strips the rest of the joke from my tongue.

Then his fangs descend.

Fast and slow at once. A subtle shift in his mouth, and suddenly there they are. Sharp and pale and impossibly elegant. Not grotesque like cheap horror, but primal in a way that makes my entire body lock in startled, electric awareness.

My heart slams as bracing realisation dawns.

As I register why I’m no longer trying to bolt. Not because I’m no longer afraid of him. I am. Gods, I am. But fear is no longer the only thing in the room. There is proof now, too.

Proof that he can stop. That he can honour a boundary. That the monster I built in my head from whispers and terror is still a monster, yes, but not the simple one I ran from.

And maybe the most dangerous part is that I want to know the difference.

And Gods help me, it’s hot.

Terrifying, yes. Deeply. The old mammal part of my brain starts screaming predator predator predator and preparing a formal complaint. But layered over that is the shameful, incandescent truth that seeing him like this, beautiful and monstrous and barely leashed, is insanely arousing.