He didn’t want to drink. He didn’t want to need her in any way. Reluctantly, he forced his fangs to descend.
No matter how he tried, he could never let go of his anger at her. He could forget about it, sometimes for months at a time, but whenever he was confronted with the reality of her again, it all surged back in a hot, violent whirlpool that swept over his mind and clouded his thinking. Sometimes he wondered if he would ever be able to let it go. He was a mean, unforgiving bastard at the best of times.
But as angry as he was, he couldn’t strike at her. Instead, he put his mouth against the tender flesh of her inner wrist and eased into the bite as gently as he could. As his fangs pierced her delicate skin, her fingers curled tight and the tiny intake of breath was clearly audible in the tomb-like silence.
Instinctively he paused, giving her the chance to adjust to the bite. There was etiquette to this sort of thing. At first the pain would be sharp, like an IV needle, but the properties in his saliva would ease that away within moments. Civilized Vampyres only began to draw from a bite once their participant began to feel pleasure.
In pain and as depleted as he was, he adamantly refused to allow Justine’s abuses to drive him into behaving like the animals that had fed from him. So he waited until her fingers relaxed, unfurling like shy, slender flower petals. Only then did he begin to suck.
The rich, warm tang of her blood flowed into his mouth.
Good Christ. He had thought he’d braced himself for the impact of her taste, but he hadn’t. He couldn’t. There was no way to brace for this.
Like the differences between types of wine and different wineries, each person’s blood carried a taste that was unique to them.
Nothing else in the entire world tasted like Melisande. Nothing.
Before he had become a Vampyre, he had lived a rugged life in the Roman army. He had been almost constantly outdoors in all types of weather, yet that brief human experience had occurred two thousand years ago.
He had long since forgotten what warm sunlight felt like on his face, yet the warmth in Melly’s blood reminded him. Like her smile, it was infectious. It stole into him and pushed back the icy darkness that had begun to take him over.
Her blood was unbelievably rich with the magic that came with her heritage, along with an ability she had never bothered to cultivate. She had never cared about any inherent magical talent and preferred to explore her other talents and attributes, but he could taste all of it on his tongue.
She tasted like home and hot sex, like laughter and intimacy.
She tasted like realization.
Before her, he hadn’t known that he had been slowly expiring of thirst over the centuries. No matter how many people he tasted or how many lovers he had taken, he had been dying inside. Dying. Then she had lit everything up inside of him – only to snatch it all away again, leaving him bereft and alone as he approached the midnight of his life.
As he drew on her, he made a sound at the back of his throat, and she echoed it softly. Endorphins flooded her blood, and as he drank, her pleasure became his.
It was every bit as powerful as the first time the night of the Masque, when he had taken what a tipsy, mischievous goddess had offered him. The same kind of shock, the same intensity of connection.
Memory became entwined with the present.
Then, at the Masque, her breath had hissed in a sexy little catch, and she swayed as he sucked so gently at her delicate skin. Still feeding and hungry to feel her curvaceous body against his, he pulled her into his arms, and she came readily to nestle against him, the curve of her pelvis rubbing against his erection. Astonished intoxication bolted through him.
Her arousal fed his arousal, and his fed hers. The silken material of her white halter dress slipped under his calloused fingers, and when he forced himself to pull away from her wrist, he stared beyond the golden, elegant mask of a lioness into her wide, dilated green eyes and knew that his life would never be the same.
Now, the gift she gave him was necessary for life, and yet somehow crueler than any wound the ferals had inflicted on him. The Power in her blood slammed into him, and if he hadn’t been chained in place, he might have fallen.
His body and his soul were so parched. He never knew he could be so hungry for another person – physically, emotionally hungry – and it had nothing to do with him drinking her blood and everything to do with how he needed to climb on top of her, sink into her soft, welcoming body, and feel her legs clasp him around his hips in welcome just like she used to.