I forced the racing questions from my head.
Later. He’d explain everything when he got back.
Right?
My cheeks flushed as another question formed in my mind—what else would he do to me later?
I could still feel the delicious soreness between my thighs, and the pulsing ache there for more.
More of his touch, his kiss, him. The growing need for him was undiluted and strong, the sensation so much like what I’d felt these past nine days whenever I’d felt Alek’s accelerating hunger. Is this what it felt like to be starved for someone? Like my skin was too tight for my body, for all the feelings and desires stretching out across the vast distance that separated us?
Intense, consuming, and just this side of terrifying. I’d never felt a need like this, never been so lost in someone before.
Not until Alek.
Not until he’d crashed into my life and threw my world into a spiral I wasn’t ever sure I wanted to stop.
Excitement and anticipation made my head fuzzy, and I bit my lip to stop my smile as I waited for him. As I couldn’t wait for him to get back to our room and finish what we’d started.
An hour passed.
Then two.
So many ticking minutes that I trailed my fingers over my skin, pretending they were his. Traced the delicate lines of that tattoo. Closed my eyes and felt his teeth sinking into my neck, exhilarating and powerful and devouring. Touched and explored and fantasized until exhaustion and need claimed me.
“Can you explain something to me,” I said after finally working up the courage to tear my eyes from the tome in front of me and look up at Avianna.
She leisurely flipped through the text before her—a first edition from the twenties. “I’ve already told you, you can ask me anything,” she said, her voice soft, understanding.
I chewed on my lip and scanned the grand library in which we sat. Tomes and ancient scrolls were scattered across the wide wooden table between us. The stack before me was focused on an ancient society that had dubbed themselves the Sons of Honor, their political ties dating back to the revolution. The more research I did, the more their name, in one variation or another, popped up. I’d never seen as many ties and connections in all my studies before. They fancied themselves the savior of our great nation, but their history? It was drenched in blood and money and greed. The information would prove invaluable for my thesis paper, which I had tirelessly been working on these last few days. My attempt to distract myself from the fact that it had been days and Alek had not returned.
To me.
He’d returned to the estate—I’d felt that the second he’d come home. I could feel him even now, locked up in what Avianna called his war room.
“Are mates a common thing among vampires?” I finally forced out the question that had been haunting me since the night he’d left.
Avianna’s crushing blue eyes instantly fell to the tattoo on my wrist. “Common?”
I blew out a breath. “Yeah,” I said, exasperated. I hated feeling…needy. Like I was starved for attention from one individual, and only that would set my world right again. “Like so common that they can be brushed aside?”
Pity flashed in her eyes, and my frustration mounted.
“It’s been days.”
I didn’t whine. I didn’t.
Avianna shut the book. Her silk gloves were a beautiful dark purple today. The jewels she wore in her ears matched the color, and once again I was struck with how incredibly beautiful everyone was here. Even Olivia, who stood before the library door, was breathtaking. Long waves of chocolate brown hair billowed around her shoulders, hiding the delicate fabric of her white blouse. Truly, she looked more like a maiden than a warrior, but my instincts trembled whenever she was near. She was a trained warrior, all right, and a damn good one if they’d positioned her with the princess. Still, her gorgeous exterior was likely one more weapon.
A sinking weight hit my chest—of course, Alek wouldn’t come back. Why would he? I was human, plain, dull—
“Alek is…” she interrupted my thoughts, “infuriating at the best of times. I’ve told you before he’s like a vault.” She pursed her lips, and I nodded. “But no,” she continued. “Mates are not so common that they can be ignored.” There was a hint of anger in her tone, and my heart expanded in my chest for the female who had befriended me with no questions. No hesitation because I was a human. A human with some malfunctions apparently, since I couldn’t be glamoured and I could see things others could not. The same cold fear swirled in the depths of my soul, the one that I’d tried to bury since Alek had told me I was something...different. Something the demons felt they had claim to. But surely, they were mistaken. Right? I was normal. Ordinary, except for some enhanced perceptiveness.
“What does it mean?” I asked, shutting the tome before me too. Research was clearly done for the day, and if Alek didn’t let me out of this dark palace soon, all my work wouldn’t matter anyway. I’d missed so many appointments with my thesis advisor. I'm shocked she hadn’t sent out a search party. Valor too. But apparently my emails claiming to be sick had been enough to hold their worries, but I knew it wouldn’t last much longer. “To be someone’s mate,” I clarified.
“I’m sure you’ve noticed Alek’s possessiveness over you, your safety—”
“The fact that he won’t let me leave to finish my work?” I cut her off, a bit grumbly.
She laughed, and nodded. “It’s rare among our warriors,” she continued.
“The Assassins you told me about? Hawke and Lachlan and the others?”
“Yes,” she said, smoothing her gloved hands together. “They are bred to not admit or show any sort of weakness. Mating?” She hissed. “Mates take priority over everything—the mission. Family. They become the tether holding them to this world and the next.” A terrified yet dreamy sort of look washed over her delicate features. “They’d do anything for their mate. Warriors are supposed to behold only to their clans, their brethren. The mission.” She shrugged, the corners of her red lips turning up. “And I hear the sex is off the charts.” She arched a brow at me, curious, waiting.
“I wouldn’t know,” I said, slightly breathless. The memory of his hands sliding under my dress, teasing me over the lace until I shattered beneath his fingers flashed red hot in my mind.
“Well, when you do, do tell,” she said, then shook her head. “Just don’t say my brother’s name because ew.”
Olivia barely stifled a laugh from where she held vigil, and I chuckled too, the action loosening some of that tension curling my chest. That same tension begging, screaming at me to storm across the estate, grab Alek by his damned perfect hair and make him talk to me. I rubbed my palms over my face, groaning. “Shouldn’t he be explaining all of this to me?” I sighed. “If mates are so rare, so…precious, why hasn’t he come back to me? Is it because I’m human?”
Avianna slid out of her chair and rounded the table to take my hands. “It’s unheard of, mating with a human. But mating is older than time, higher than even Covenant law. I don’t know why my brother has his head up his ass, but he will come around.” She hooked my arm in hers and led me from the library, Olivia following on cat-silent feet. “Even if you weren’t his mate, you’re beyond awesome and already feel like family, Lyric.”
I squeezed her arm in mine, wishing her brother was as easy to talk to as she was.
“Now,” she continued as we walked the long corridors back to her room. “Let’s torture him a bit, shall we?” A wicked gleam twinkled in her eye as we made it into her room, and she threw open her closet doors, revealing rows and rows of exquisite gowns and outfits. “Dinner is in twenty.”
I couldn’t help but mirror her smirk as she plucked a red gown and held it toward me.
Thirty minutes later, we arrived perfectly, fashionably late. The nobles were already in the ballroom, bedecked in their finest, sipping from red-tinted goblets and chatting and dancing. This time, I didn’t
feel self-conscious as I walked in at Avianna’s side, not when she’d outfitted me.
The red silk gown hugged my every curve, the deep plunging neckline even more daring than the blue gown I’d worn before. Then, I’d been an offering. Tonight? I played the role of hunter disguised as bait.
My blood flared, my heart racing in my chest with each step we took inside the ballroom. Hawke had growled when he’d laid eyes on us, no doubt grumbling at the fuss Alek would make when he saw me.
If he saw me. If he cared to.
Doubt threatened to steal the fire in my blood, but I shoved it down, using the confidence Avianna had given me. A good friend, someone I’d come to depend on these days in the estate. Valor would love her, and once I got over my “sickness” and was allowed to see Val again I couldn’t wait to tell her about Avi. She’d become a confidant I hadn’t expected to find. With her help? How could I fail—
“What?” The word ripped from my lips on a whisper, and Avianna stilled at my side. I’d naturally been walking us toward where I felt Alek, almost unconsciously so.
“Cassandra,” she whispered as I gaped at the elegant female across the room.
The one with her fingers on Alek’s chest, smoothing them over his crisp midnight suit.
My feet carried me before I could think or blink or breathe.
“Please,” Cassandra’s voice sounded the nearer I got. “It would be my honor to feed you, King. I can scent your hunger,” she cooed, and I swear my vision turned as red as my gown.
Cassandra tilted her neck, just a subtle move of her perfect face, and bared herself before Alek, reaching up on her tiptoes to draw her neck closer. And there, on her delicate forearm she so boldly placed on his chest, rested a tattoo as familiar as my own face now.
Alek’s tattoo.
On her skin.
“Excuse you,” I snapped, darting my hand between the two. The shock of my touch must have confused her, because she stumbled back one step, her dark eyes wide, her lips parted as she gaped at me. “Don’t touch things that aren’t yours.” The words were like ice from my lips, and I bared my teeth at her, an instinct roiling up inside me like a pot about to boil over.
“Lyric,” Alek’s voice was a warning tone, but I ignored him, my eyes only for the tramp who’d had her hands all over my mate.
The thought brought me up short, cleared my mind. She had a tattoo too, maybe I wasn’t—
“Your Highness,” she said, her voice sickly sweet. “With all due respect, you should really learn to control your playthings.”
I hissed at her, but Alek was already tugging me the opposite direction. I jerked my arm out of his touch, not caring for a second that every set of eyes in the room were on us. Alek growled, low and brutal, and I felt it along every inch of my skin.
Traitorous body, reacting to him, wanting him, my heart already clenching at the idea that he’d wanted her, wanted Cassandra. Stupid. I’d been so stupid—
“Do you want to die?” he growled as he pushed us into a darkened room just off the ballroom. A wall of windows allowed silver moonlight inside, illuminating his blue-gray eyes like stars.
Bastard.
“Not particularly, no,” I snapped, folding my arms over my chest. His eyes tracked the movement, then slid over my body as he took in my dress. “Why? Are you offering?”
Another warning growl. He towered over me. “Cassandra is one of the oldest noble bloodlines—”
“I don’t give a shit who she is! She had her hands all over you. Baring her neck like—” I cut myself off, blinking out of my red anger haze. I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter, does it?” Tears welled in my eyes, and in that moment, I hated my emotions, the way they were so out of control around him. What happened to the girl who didn’t care about anything outside her thesis? Her research? Her book?
Alek happened.
I held up my wrist, and his eyes flared at the sight of the tattoo. As if it would burn him if I got too close.
So I did.
I took a step, and he retreated.
Something about that submission—to me—made me all sorts of hot and slick and downright crackly with need.
“Does every person who wants you get branded with your crest?” I hissed. “Does it mean nothing?”
“It means everything,” Alek said, his tone low and gravely. He stopped retreating, his hands on my shoulders, and I knew I should pull away, but I didn’t. Couldn’t. Not when he was looking at me like that—like I was the answer to every question he never knew he had. “Females get the tattoos of my crest and others in an attempt to win our affections,” he continued, his breathing rushed. “Cassandra doesn’t want me.” I rolled my eyes. “She wants my throne.”
I scrunched my nose. “Trash.”
The smallest of smiles cracked on his lips, something so rare and so beautiful I melted in his embrace. That easily, my anger turned to compassion, to the protective instincts roaring at me to put Cassandra in her place.
“Do you disagree?” he challenged. “A pairing with me comes with power, prestige, wealth—”
“I don’t care about any of those things,” I cut him off, and from the shock and amusement in his eyes, I doubted it was something that happened often. But I couldn’t control my mouth or my body around him, it seemed.
“What do you care about, Lyric?” His words were a whisper between us.
I held his gaze, searching for the right words. Words I’d come to terms with in the days he’d refused to return to me. “You,” I admitted on a breath. “I care about you. I can feel you every waking second, and even in my sleep, you’re there. I want to…protect you,” I said, biting my lower lip, so sure he’d laugh at the notion of a weak human protecting him.
But he didn’t. His eyes guttered as he hung on my every word.
“I wanted to kill her for touching you,” I said. “For offering to feed you.”
Another rare smile, one that made my heart skip. He smoothed a finger over my jaw and down the seam of my neck.
The breath in my lungs grew tight, my heart racing a wild rhythm that begged me to move, to crush my mouth against his—
“Lyric,” he sighed my name, spinning us as he backed me against the nearest wall.
I trembled, my body a livewire everywhere he touched. Still, he kept his mouth an inch from mine, so I planted him with a serious gaze. “Me,” I said, forcing power I didn’t feel into my voice. “You only feed from me,” I said as a command. The logical side of my mind knew it was likely an open invitation for death, demanding anything from the king. But I did it anyway.
His eyes flickered and churned, near glowing in the moonlight.
Then his fangs descended, and I whimpered at the sight of them.
7
Alek
“You only feed from me.”
At Lyric’s demand to feed, the roar of hunger in my veins was second only to the driving need to fuck her while I did it.
I cradled the back of her head and lowered my mouth to her neck, but instead of sinking deep into her vein, I skimmed my fangs over her delicate, pounding pulse, then kissed her soft skin. “I’d kill you.”
Her fingers speared into my hair. “You didn’t last time.”
The memory made my fangs throb.
“That’s not what I mean.” I kissed her jaw, then the area just beneath her ear. “It’s been a week.” The longest week of my life, actually.
“I know. I’ve been counting the days.” She sighed as my lips toyed with the shell of her ear.
“You’re not fully recovered—”
“I am,” she countered.
“—And I nearly killed you last time.” The thought locked my resolve in place. Her safety was my first concern. Always. I leaned my forehead against hers, breathing her in, then drew back slightly so I could see those incredible eyes.
“But you didn’t. Wait…” Hurt flashed over her face, and my stomach twisted. “Am I not…good? Has Cassandra fed you before? Can vampir
es do that? Is she…” Lyric shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut. “I cannot believe I’m asking if someone’s blood tastes better than mine. What the hell are you doing to me?”
“Lyric.” I braced my palm on the wall beside her head and gripped the sultry curve of her waist. This dress was going to be the death of me. “I have never fed from Cassandra.”
Her gaze flashed to mine.
“Yes, vampire blood is…” I searched for the words that wouldn’t piss her off. “…stronger than human blood, and while I can’t speak for other mates, my father always took enough from his own feedings to make sure he could sustain my mother.” The corner of my mouth lifted in a smirk. “Mated males can be a little…possessive.”
“Don’t underestimate the females.” She fisted the lapels of my jacket. “Your mother let him feed from other people?”
“It’s not always sexual,” I insisted, though my cock was in a thorough state of disagreement.
She scoffed.
I leaned into her so she could feel exactly how much I wanted her. “Do humans get a certain…pleasure out of it? Absolutely. How do you think we get them to agree? And I can block any sexual feelings the human might have so they only feel the high.”
“I felt you,” she whispered, her hands stroking down my chest. “You were hard for me.”
“I’m hard for you the second I catch your scent or hear your voice. Does feeding intensify it? Fuck, yes. And the way you taste?” I groaned, rocking my hips into hers. “There is nothing better in the world. I would be at your throat every minute of every day if it wouldn’t drain you dry.” I ran my tongue over my lower lip, forcing myself to remember how pale she’d been and how my reckless actions had put her in danger. “Do you know what this means?” I lifted her wrist and stroked my thumb over the mark that branded her mine.
She shivered, her lips parting. “It means I’m your mate. Not that you filled me in. Avianna did.” There was a sharp bite of accusation in her tone. I needed to do better about giving her information.
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