His fangs had retracted, slowly, but they still ached. He hid his face in his hands and spoke between his fingers. “You can’t possibly want this. You can’t possibly want me. My own mother threw me out of the house. I bit Maureen—she was only a kid. I mean, look at me, look what I am, where I live, what I do. I’m nothing.”
Isabelle stroked his hair lightly. He looked at her between his fingers. Up close he could see that her eyes weren’t black but a very dark brown, flecked with gold. He was sure he could see pity in them. He didn’t know what he expected her to say. Isabelle used boys and threw them away. Isabelle was beautiful and tough and perfect and didn’t need anything. Least of all a vampire who wasn’t even very good at being a vampire.
He could feel her breathing. She smelled sweet—blood, mortality, gardenias. “You’re not nothing,” she said. “Simon. Please. Let me see your face.”
Reluctantly he lowered his hands. He could see her more clearly now. She looked soft and lovely in the moonlight, her skin pale and creamy, her hair like a black waterfall. She unlooped her hands from around his neck. “Look at these,” she said, touching the white scars of healed Marks that snowflaked her silvery skin—on her throat, on her arms, on the curves of her breasts. “Ugly, aren’t they?”
“Nothing about you is ugly, Izzy,” said Simon, honestly shocked.
“Girls aren’t supposed to be covered in scars,” Isabelle said matter-of-factly. “But they don’t bother you.”
“They’re part of you—No, of course they don’t bother me.”
She touched his lips with her fingers. “Being a vampire is part of you. I didn’t ask you to come here last night because I couldn’t think of anyone else to ask. I want to be with you, Simon. It scares the hell out of me, but I do.”
Her eyes shimmered, and before he could wonder for more than a moment whether it was with tears, he had leaned forward and kissed her. This time it wasn’t awkward. This time she leaned into him, and he was suddenly under her, rolling her on top of him. Her long black hair fell down around them both like a curtain. She whispered to him softly as he ran his hands up her back. He could feel her scars under his fingertips, and he wanted to tell her he thought of them as ornaments, testaments to her bravery that only made her more beautiful. But that would have meant stopping kissing her, and he didn’t want to do that. She was moaning and moving in his arms; her fingers were in his hair as the two of them rolled sideways, and now she was under him, and his arms were full of the softness and warmth of her, and his mouth with the taste of her, and the scent of her skin, salt and perfume and… blood.
He stiffened again, all over, and Isabelle felt it. She caught hold of his shoulders. She was luminous in the darkness. “Go ahead,” she whispered. He could feel her heart, slamming against his chest. “I want you to.”
He closed his eyes, pressed his forehead to hers, tried to calm himself. His fangs were back, pushing into his lower lip, hard and painful. “No.”
Her long, perfect legs wrapped around him, her ankles locking, holding him to her. “I want you to.” Her breasts flattened against his chest as she arched up against him, baring her throat. The scent of her blood was everywhere, all over him, filling the room.
“Aren’t you scared?” he whispered.
“Yes. But I still want you to.”
“Isabelle—I can’t—”
He bit her.
His teeth slid, razor-sharp, into the vein at her throat like a knife slicing into the skin of an apple. Blood exploded into his mouth. It was like nothing he had experienced before. With Jace he had been barely alive; with Maureen the guilt had crushed him even as he had drunk from her. He had certainly never had the sense that either of the people he had bitten had liked it.
But Isabelle gasped, her eyes flying open and her body arcing up against him. She purred like a cat, stroking his hair, his back, little urgent movement of her hands saying Don’t stop, Don’t stop. Heat poured out of her, into him, lighting his body; he had never felt, imagined, anything else like it. He could feel the strong, sure beat of her heat, pounding through her veins into his, and for that moment it was as if he lived again, and his heart contracted with pure elation—
He broke away. He wasn’t sure how, but he broke away and rolled onto his back, his fingers digging hard into the mattress at his sides. He was still shuddering as his fangs retracted. The room shimmered all around him, the way things did in the few moments after he drank human, living blood.
“Izzy… ,” he whispered. He was afraid to look at her, afraid that now that his teeth were no longer in her throat, she would stare at him with revulsion or horror.
“What?”
City of Lost Souls
Cassandra Clare's books
- City of Ruins
- Invincible (A Centennial City Novel)
- City of Fae
- City of Lost Souls
- City of Heavenly Fire
- CITY OF GLASS
- City of Fallen Angels
- CITY OF BONES
- CITY OF ASHES
- Velocity
- Ascendancy of the Last
- Blood of Aenarion
- Broods Of Fenrir
- Burden of the Soul
- Caradoc of the North Wind
- Cause of Death: Unnatural
- Dark of the Moon
- Demons of Bourbon Street
- Edge of Dawn
- Eye of the Oracle
- Freak of Nature
- Heart of the Demon
- Lady of Devices
- Lance of Earth and Sky
- Last of the Wilds
- Legacy of Blood
- Legend of Witchtrot Road
- Lord of the Wolfyn
- Of Gods and Elves
- Of Wings and Wolves
- Prince of Spies
- Professor Gargoyle
- Promise of Blood
- Secrets of the Fire Sea
- Shadows of the Redwood
- Sin of Fury
- Sins of the Father
- Smugglers of Gor
- Sword of Caledor
- Sword of Darkness
- Talisman of El
- Threads of Desire (Spellcraft)
- Tricks of the Trade
- Visions of Magic
- Visions of Skyfire
- Well of the Damned
- Wings of Tavea
- Wings of the Wicked
- A Bridge of Years
- Chronicles of Raan
- Dawn of Swords(The Breaking World)
- A Draw of Kings
- Hunt the Darkness (Guardians of Eternity)
- Lord of the Hunt
- Master of War
- Mistfall(Book One of the Mistfall Series)
- The Gates of Byzantium
- The House of Yeel
- The Oath of the Vayuputras: Shiva Trilogy 3
- The Republic of Thieves #1
- The Republic of Thieves #2
- Edge of Dawn
- A Quest of Heroes
- Mistress of the Empire
- Servant of the Empire
- Gates of Rapture
- Reaper (End of Days)
- This Side of the Grave
- Magician's Gambit (Book Three of The Belgariad)
- Skin Game: A Novel of the Dresden Files
- Murder of Crows
- The Queen of the Tearling
- A Tale of Two Castles
- Mark of the Demon
- Sins of the Demon
- Blood of the Demon
- The Other Side of Midnight
- Vengeance of the Demon: Demon Novels, Book Seven (Kara Gillian 7)
- Cold Burn of Magic
- Of Noble Family
- Wrath of a Mad God ( The Darkwar, Book 3)
- King of Foxes
- Daughter of the Empire
- Mistress of the Empire
- Krondor : Tear of the Gods (Riftwar Legacy Book 3)
- Shards of a Broken Crown (Serpentwar Book 4)
- Rise of a Merchant Prince
- End of Days (Penryn and the End of Day #3)
- Servant of the Empire
- Talon of the Silver Hawk
- Shadow of a Dark Queen
- The Cost of All Things
- The Wicked (A Novella of the Elder Races)
- Night's Honor (A Novel of the Elder Races Book 7)
- Born of Silence
- Born of Shadows
- Sins of the Night
- Kiss of the Night (Dark Hunter Series – Book 7)
- Born Of The Night (The League Series Book 1)