It was as simple as that.
She sat up and swung her legs off the bed, wondered what time it was as she padded across the room and opened the door. There wasn’t a clock in her room, and with all the shading to keep the sunlight out, not to mention the time difference, she was a bit turned around.
Silence greeted her as she headed down the hall and entered the living area. She couldn’t help but look around at all the beautiful, yet starkly cold furnishings. Even with the warm light of three or four table lamps, the emotionless space felt dead. The walls, though painted a rich cocoa, were bare, except for one near the kitchen. On it were six gigantic slabs of pointed metal. They look like fangs, she thought.
She moved toward it, feeling both intrigued and intimidated by its audacity. Why this piece? she wondered, following it past the kitchen and down another hallway. When all the other walls lay bare, why such a blatant scream of ferocity? Looking closely, she saw that the final shard of metal was the color of caramel and longer than the others. She reached out to touch it, then hissed as her skin met the surface.
“Not what you’d expect, is it?” Synjon said, coming up behind her.
Instantly, her body reacted to his nearness: fangs down, skin going tight, breath hitching in her lungs. Damn it. This was not a good start to her plan for keeping herself detached.
“It’s hot,” she said, touching the metal again.
“Yes.”
“I thought it’d be cold. Metal is supposed to be cold.”
He chuckled softly. “It’s a lesson in quick judgment. A cautionary moral.”
“Don’t judge a book by its cover?” she said.
“Exactly.”
She turned around to face him, bracing herself for the heat of his stare, the strength of his presence. But he was no longer behind her. For a second, she wondered if he’d been there at all. Then he called out to her from another room, “Hungry, love?”
She followed his voice, past the hot caramel metal and down a dark hallway. Warm yellow light grew brighter and wider, and she seemed to step inside it, or through it, into a shockingly spacious bedroom suite.
Oh, gods, this was bad.
Petra desperately wanted to take in every inch, every color, fabric, chair, lamp, fireplace, and headboard, but her gaze refused to part with the six-foot-three-inch hard-bodied male who stood in the very center of it all.
Clearly he’d just come from the shower. His black hair was wet and slicked back from his sharp-angled face, making his dark eyes and heavy mouth pop. A white towel was wrapped loosely around his hips, and a few remaining droplets of water glistened on his broad chest and ripped abdominals. It was probably the worst thing for a female trying to pretend she wasn’t hungry for more than blood to see.
She swallowed the saliva that was pooling in her mouth. Pressed back on the tips of her fangs with her tongue as they started to descend.
His eyes flashed with heat. “Do I have time to throw on some clothes?”
“No.” The word was out of her mouth before she could bite it back.
He grinned. Then brought his wrist to his mouth and bit down.
Just the action made her moan, made her knees soften, made her insides turn to liquid.
His eyes lifted to meet hers. “Apologies, love. Maybe you would’ve liked to bite.”
In that moment, it was as if Petra were two beings: the emotionally injured female who wanted so desperately to be cared for and loved but knew she’d never find it here, and the hunter, the vampire, the starved veana in swell who wanted to drink the blood of this male until he begged her to stop.
“Lie down,” she said, her tone almost foreign to her own ears.
Dark brows lifted over darker eyes.
“On the bed,” she continued. “Back to the sheets.”
Syn’s nostrils flared. “Is this feeding time or something else?”
“This is why I’m here,” she said, moving toward him, stalking him like prey. “The only reason I’m here.”
When she stood before him, she took his wrist, cradled it in her hands. She brought it to her mouth and lapped at the blood. One slow stroke with her tongue across his skin. She heard his sharp intake of breath. Oh, gods, the taste was heavenly.
“And I must lie down why?” he asked in a guttural voice.
She looked up and grinned. “I don’t want you to get dizzy.”
“Dizzy?” He chuckled, low and sensually. “Crikey, veana. You underestimate my stamina if you think one feed from my wrist will render me heady.”
Her grin widened. “I’m not just going to feed from your wrist.”
His smile evaporated.
She pushed him back on the bed, upsetting his towel. He didn’t seem to notice—his eyes were locked on her. But Petra noticed. Her gaze flickered to the heavy muscle between his legs. It was surrounded by dark hair, pulsing with thick veins and standing straight up like steel, only the head still covered by the white cotton. Her fangs dropped low and she crawled onto the bed after him. Blood dripped from his wrist and she wanted it.
Gods help her, she wanted everything he had on display.
In her mouth, inside her sex.
She shook her head, tried to think clearly through her fog of feral desire. But it was useless. Hunger ruled every part of her. Only feeding would satiate her now.
She knelt beside him, took his wrist once again and thrust her fangs deep into his vein. She heard him curse, then moan, then curse again. Blood rushed into her mouth, cascaded like the most delectable waterfall down her throat. She gripped him tightly, suckled his skin, pulled and gorged like he was her lifeline, and goddamn it, maybe he was. Maybe that was exactly what he was.
As the hot metallic liquid moved down her throat, catching every inch of her insides, heating them, cooling them, her outside tingled with arousal. She remembered when he’d drunk from her in the tree house. This was the same. The sensuality, the need to be close, the desire to feel him inside her as she thrust her fangs deep.
Was this how it was going to be every time she needed blood? Would she be able to curb this desire? Would she be able to remember who this male was? What he was? And gods, what he was not?
Feeling his vein close, Petra pulled her fangs out and lifted her head. She licked at his wound and watched it heal instantly. It never ceased to amaze her how the power of a Pureblood veana could heal a male.
She lifted her head, found him watching her. His eyes were nearly black, and his own fangs were resting sharply against his lower lip.
“Dizzy yet?” she asked him.
“Not from the blood loss, love,” he uttered darkly.
Her hunger barely satiated, Petra dropped his wrist and leaned in close. She wanted his neck. She loved that vein. The blood from that vein was always the sweetest.
Before she struck, she caught his gaze. It was threaded with desire. But unemotional desire. Detached lust.
She hated it.
And yet her fangs and her belly and the balas all pushed her onward. They didn’t need this male to have emotion or care. They just needed his blood.
“This won’t last, veana,” he whispered suddenly.
Her lips parted, fangs completely descended, she nodded. “I know. Until the balas is born—”
“No. That’s not what I mean. I mean I won’t last. Feeding you.” A soft growl rumbled in his throat. “I need to feed too, or I’ll be an empty husk of shite in a few days.”
Petra shivered at his words. Not with repulsion or irritation or dread, but with awareness. As if her body were separate from her mind. As if it knew on a very basic level what it was meant to do with a male vampire who requested blood.