Page 31 of Curiosity

And hyper.

After being on my feet cooking for hours, plus a busy week, it was actually insane to be bustling with energy, to literallyfeelit coursing through me.

“What’s going to happen to me? Am I going to bite my friends?Turnthem? Drain them?”

“No,” he answered. “We’ve evolved beyond using our fangs for feeding. They’re used for welcoming newcomers into our fold, yes, but mostly they’re for use among our kindred. For fun.”

“Fun?”

“Fighting or fucking,” he replied with a grin, flashing his. “Don’t worry. I’ll show you.”

Those words made me squirm.

The elevator had stopped a while ago, but he hadn’t opened the door.

“If the fangs aren’t for feeding… how do you… I don’t understand.”

“You found a vial earlier,” he said, smirking at me when my eyes went wide. “Injections of purified blood.”

I closed my eyes as that information clicked into place, bringing another realization to mind. “That night at your house, when you stepped away – it was for an injection, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“And when you came back… you suddenly wanted me gone. Why?”

He pushed away from the side of the elevator to approach me. “Because the injection – which I’d been skipping as a matter of conditioning – gave me back a deeper connection to my senses. When I came back to you… I could tell your menstruation was imminent.”

“And it grossed you out.”

“Quite the opposite,” he chuckled. “We weren’t yet at a place for me to indulge what I would’velikedto do to you in that state.”

My eyes went even wider. “So when you put me out of the car after I made that mess—”

“It was so I wouldn’t traumatizeyouwith my… enthusiasm.”

“That’s disgusting.”

He wrapped an arm around my waist, pulling me against him as he tipped the other hand under my chin. “You’ll come to love it. Just give it time.”

I believed him.

Shit.

“Why me?”

“I believe I’ve answered that question already Celeste.”

“I believe your answer is bullshit,” I countered.

“You can believe what you want, but the truth is the truth.” He shrugged, letting me go to step past me to open the elevator door. “There is someone for everyone. A predestined partner.”

“So you just get to decide for me? What about my consent?”

He laughed. “You don’t have to fuck me if you don’t want to, doll. But following the call of my bloodline means more to me than your permission.”

My face twisted into a frown. “Are you saying you’dforceme to bear your heir?”

“Not at all,” he clarified. “I don’t give a fuck about kids. But I’ve seen what happens when I try to buck my fate,” he said, gesturing toward some poor mortal’s failed attempt to stake him through the heart. “I’m interested in a much simpler existence now. So I followed my ancestral path. I turned you. I showed you what the plan is. I’ve done my part by making sure you’re around to fulfill it. But no – I won’tforceyou.”

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