Page 237 of Blood Curse

Stellan stopped drinking.

Cold air touched the wound. He sealed it with his tongue, then opened the inside of his wrist with one clean bite. Dark blood welled over his skin.

He brought it to my mouth.

The scent hit with impossible force. Rich, hot and unmistakably his. Hunger opened inside me before I had become anything that should feel it.

I closed my lips over his wrist.

His blood struck my tongue like heat from a fire. The first swallow burned all the way down. The second spread through my chest and collided with my failing heart.

Pain arched my body.

Stellan gathered me against him. His wrist stayed at my mouth while I drank because I reached for him and couldn’t bear to lose the taste. No command held him there.

The burning moved into every vein. My fingers shook. My breath caught halfway in and refused to finish.

He removed his wrist and pressed his palm to my cheek.

“I’ve got you.”

The words had never sounded less like ownership.

My heart beat once, and pain split my chest.

Again, weaker.

Stellan’s face stayed above mine. His silver hair fell forwards, brushing my forehead. Fear flooded the connection now, stripped of every defence, and under it was a love so steady that I could rest against it.

The space between beats widened.

I couldn’t feel my hands. I couldn’t draw air. Darkness closed over the fire, the room and his face.

Stellan held me tighter.

My human heart stopped.

In the silence after it, the connection between us stayed open.

46

BRYONY

The first thing I heard was Stellan’s heart.

The second was everything else.

Fire ate through a log with a wet hiss. Rain touched the windows in hundreds of separate taps. Water moved inside pipes behind the walls. Somewhere below us, a door opened and a woman said my name too quietly for any human to hear.

My eyes stayed closed.

The room was dark. I knew that from the cool absence against my lids, but a narrow line of light still found a way under them and pressed like a blade.

Hunger tore through my stomach.

It was bigger than pain. It reached into my throat, my teeth and every hollow place under my ribs. The scent nearest me was blood, living and warm, carried by the body holding mine.

Stellan.