Page 11 of Blood Bought

Chapter Five:

Kellian took my handand teleported me upstairs, which was such a jarring feeling that it knocked me off balance. One minute I was still in the dungeon and the next I was standing inside a huge room that looked like an entire apartment — a bed with a burgundy canopy took up most of one wall, but the rest was packed full. Vintage leather chairs, a gorgeous wooden coffee table, long, flowy curtains, a grand piano... and one traitorous bitch named Sonny, who was also apparently Alaris. I’d have recognized him anywhere even though the only light we had was coming from a giant candelabra.

“You,” I said dumbly. “You lied.”

“Did I?” He tilted his head. “When, exactly?”

I opened my mouth to tell him, but remembered suddenly that he wasn’t the one who lied about his name. Ren was, and he just happened to be sitting to my left. Without his glasses, his dark red eyes gave him away as a Faux. “I take it back.Youlied.”

“Sorry,” he said simply. “Name’s Renzo but you’re welcome to continue calling me Ren. Your choice.”

Alaris stood up and walked toward the kitchen to make himself a drink. “I wanted to meet you before you knew it was me. Douchebag, though? Really?”

“It was the glasses,” I said, half-apologetically, realizing with a jolt that I hadn’t made a good impression at all. “Seemed douchey in a dark dungeon.”

Kellian disappeared and reappeared a moment later with clean clothes for me. “Is this douchey? You’re kind of gross, Addy.”

“Whose fault is that?” I blushed, taking the clothes and dropping my gaze as my heart started beating too fast again. “Wasn’t as though I went like a week without a shower on purpose.”

“Do you want a bath?” Alaris asked, handing me a glass with amber liquid inside. When our eyes met, I couldn’t say anything at all. It was one thing to hear about the jet-black irises with a red ring around the pupil that got brighter with hunger and deeper when that hunger was fed, but seeing them up close like this? The colors were unbelievable. “A bath? Right, no... no technology. A bath would be great, and maybe some food with actual utensils.”

“Long as you don’t use them as weapons, I’ll have some utensils brought up. Bath is behind that curtain; you’re welcome to close it. Hot water is on the way.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Wait, do you think I’m going to use a fork to cut your whole head off?”

“No. I think you might use the fork to irritate me, and then I’d have to tie you up.”

Oh, how I wished he would’ve said that with just a little less growl, a little less promise. “That was rude,” I whispered breathlessly, waiting for the rush of butterflies to dissipate and crawl back in their holes. “I’ve already been tied up once and I didn’t like it.”

Alaris smirked. “Sounds like they didn’t know what they were doing. I do.”

Fucking hell. Up close, that now-familiar scent was pulling me in, and that garish confidence was making my knees weak when it should’ve turned me off. How the hell was he doing that? “Then maybe you should retrain your warriors. Aerin and Malik did it,” I said cheekily.

“Hear that, guys?” He didn’t turn away, just kept me pinned there with that intense fucking stare. “We should train our warriors better in the arts of bondage. Should I go tie Aerin up myself?”

One of them mumbled something about how she’d never let him, but I didn’t catch what else was said. I was a little — a lot — preoccupied with the thought of this insanely gorgeous man tying anyone up, but the instant I remembered he could read my thoughts, I pictured the time I accidentally saw my grandfather naked just to test him.

“Gross,” he muttered, but even I could see he was biting back a smile. “That what gets you going, Sweets?”

“No, it was just my way of kicking you out of my head.” I handed the book back to him and set the blanket on his bed. “Don’t listen to Kellian, I didn’t read it. Didn’t take you for a romantic, Alaris.”

He finally broke his gaze on me and glanced down at the book, then held it up to his nose as he flipped the pages. “Then why do I smell you on every page?” He stopped flipping near the end and inhaled it with a satisfied grin. “Especially here. Did you enjoy the love scene, Miss Silk? How many times did you read it?”

“None of your business,” I rushed out, but Kellian betrayed me again.

“Thirteen.”

“Oh, fuck off,” I hissed, trying and failing to block the reason from my mind — but the harder I tried not to think about it, the more pronounced it became.Virgin. Curious.“I’ll just see myself out this very tall window if you don’t mind.”

I made a move toward it, but Alaris was standing in front of it before I could blink. There was something in his eyes I couldn’t place, but the sated darkness that was there when I arrived was gone, replaced with a thin ring of fire that told me he was suddenly parched. “No need to be ashamed. We were all virgins once. Go take a bath.”

The door to his room opened as if on cue, followed by five – no,six– humans carrying steaming buckets of water toward the curtain that would be blocking my naked body from a room full of vampires.

Hungry ones.

“Oh, great. You guys don’t have prince shit to do?” I asked, half-hoping they’d leave, half-hoping they’d stay so I could prove to myself that Kellian was right and they weren’t all monsters.

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