Page 52 of Falling for a Villainous Vampire

He doesn’t want to be that to me.

He wants to be something better—as if he isn’t, already. As if it’s difficult to even tell him so, which it isn’t. “I could never be, now,” I say, then when he seems to doubt it, I say it again. I say it firmly. “You’ve done more than enough to make sure I’m not. That I don’t even know anymore how I could be.”

And the doubt holds on for a few more seconds.

He searches my face for signs of a lie.

But I see the very moment he finds none. Relief just seems to run right through him, all in one big wave. The stake drops out of his hands; for a second I think he might just come to me. But instead he looks around, feverishly, and finds a place where he can sit, and that’s second best.

Because he leaves a little space between his legs, just for me.

I crouch between them, and his breath catches in his throat. His hands clench at his sides, on the plush carpet. In fact after a second he plunges them into it, in a tense enough way that I know he’s clutching at the fibers. It makes it easy to do the next part—I take his hand, and go to use one of those wickedly sharp claws to cut somewhere I won’t find bothersome.

The side of my hand, I think.

But he stops me by squeezing his fingers around mine.

“The stake first. You promised you would hold the stake over my heart,” he says, head lowered underneath mine so he can look into my eyes. So he can make sure I’m seeing sense, I think. So he can stop me from being too single-minded about this. And he’s right to.

I am possessed.

I didn’t even feel Phone buzzing in my pocket—but I do as I reach for the stake. “See, it’s fine,” I say—more to her than to him. But both fall silent. They don’t say another word as I hold that point over his heart and run my hand over the tip of one claw.

Fast, so it won’t hurt as much.

Though it doesn’t seem to hurt at all, really. I get a little sting, and then so intense a warmth I have to wonder if it’s something to do with him. Like some claw venom that sinks into you the moment he strikes. Like the delirium that happens when vampires make you drink their blood.

Despite how completely unfamiliar that sounds. I know everything there is to know about vampires—a single scratch or even a bite can’t usually make you go round the bend. Which just leaves me and my own honest, round-the-bend reaction. Heat in my hand and my belly. Tingles flowing straight to the place between my legs.

Pain registering like pleasure.

And so much so that I don’t even flinch when he reacts. He sees blood well up in the barely visible cut—just a tiny bead of it, nothing more—and his entire body tenses. I turn just in time to see his eyes flash wide, light streaking over the pale shade they’ve become. And this time, he doesn’t just seem to make a sound when he bares his teeth.

He actually makes one.

It sounds like a gasp caught low in his throat.

Almost guttural, and certainly desperate. And I can see him quivering with the need to get at that bead of liquid. Hell, I can feel it myself. His thigh is touching my hip, just a little. But it’s enough that every tremble runs right through him, and into me. I get the initial rippling wave of it, and then fat bursts of that same shaking.

It almost make me think of other things.

Someone having an orgasm, the memory of Madison kindly supplies.

And then I just blunder my hand toward him. Like I can just get it over with, maybe, before things get any more weirdly sexual. But the problem is—he sees me moving toward him, and for some reason forces his head away. He presses his cheek against the wall, so hard I know it must be hell for him to do this. I can’t even imagine how violent the urge to bite must be.

But he gets the words out anyway.

“Not in my mouth,” he grinds out.

And I get it. I get it.

I just don’t understand how that’s even hotter than if he had simply gone right ahead. Than if he had kissed me there, all hot and wet. If he’d looked up at me as he did it, as he licked and sucked and stroked. Because of course I realize now that this was what I was expecting. Something more urgent, and full of bodily contact.

I should be disappointed, really.

But I can’t be, seeing him resist. Then he slowly, slowly turns his head when I let my hand hover over the place his mouth is about to be. He holds steady, lips parted, just underneath the first quivering droplet on the curve of my palm. His breath held, my breath held, both of us waiting for the tension to break and that bead of blood to fall.

Then it does—it slides over the soft curve of his Cupid’s bow. And oh, how he shivers to feel it. It hums through him and into me, again, even sweeter than the first time. I think of strange things because of it, like someone making a sound against my sex. I think of someone moaning into my mouth. Then just as I’m hovering on the edge of insanity, his tongue curls out to catch that little taste.