Page 25 of Ashvale: The Vampire's Thrall

Warm hands traced my curves, following the softness of my hips and around to squeeze my ass and the want that slid through me was frightening, or it would have been if I hadn't been so entangled with Hayes. All I could do was hold on, kiss him back just as hard, encourage his tongue to move against mine as the scent of the forest and Hayes overwhelmed me.

"This is mine to take," he said suddenly and I panted, desperate to reclaim his lips but he turned my chin with one finger. "Say it," he taunted and I swallowed, trying to think clearly around the bond and what it wanted me to do.

"It's yours." The words had barely left me when Hayes teeth were at my neck, his smaller fangs still able to pierce my skin easily and I clutched his shoulders as his thigh slid between mine once more. He dragged and my nerve endings came alive. I could see how someone could get addicted to this, the high, thepleasure.

His mouth worked at my throat and I moved against his thigh, needing friction, needing something. Anything.

He bit deeper and a small flare of pain shot through my shoulder, stiffening all of my muscles with remembered fear.

My hands hit his chest and the snarl that rumbled out of me sounded more like something from a lion than a girl. I widened my stance, ready for him to attack, but he just stood there, blood smeared on his mouth, watching me.

"Leonora, he said softly and something stirred in me at the name. His blonde hair stuck up at odd angles, the strands marred with blood, leaves, and dirt. "Talk to me," he said and when he took a step closer, I let him. My thoughts cleared abruptly, the fog of fear falling away as quickly as it had come. I swayed and nearly fell, but solid arms came around me and held me up until I looked up into eyes that had become unbearably familiar.

"What happened?" His voice was low, soft, but I could hear the dangerous undercurrent. For better or worse, he was my chosen and I was his. He wasn't going to let anyone hurt me, and the bond was likely giving him an insight into what I was feeling right then.

"When you bit me... At first it was good. Really good." There was a smug pleasure in the curve of his mouth at my words so I hurried on with a slight glare of warning. "But then it started to hurt and I remembered..."

I bit my lip and his nostrils flared, the urge to protect surging through him so strongly that even I could feel it.

"What did you remember, Leonora?"

"I think I remembered my death, the fear I felt," I whispered and he pulled back slightly, surprised. "I think a vampire killed me."

ChapterThirteen

"So what, suddenly you believe me?”

Hayes shot me a look I could only interpret asshut up, I havenoflaws. "I never said I didn't believe you before, I was just pointing out that it was a lot of conjecture and not a lot of evidence." I stared at him in silence for a second before letting my weight sag back into his bed.

"I feel like that's the longest sentence you've ever spoken to me."

He rolled his eyes and I had the strangest urge to smile. We were very carefully not talking about what had happened outside. That was then, this was now, and truthfully I didn't think either of us knew what to do with it—with each other—or our bond.

"What you felt when I bit you," he said, and there was a careful coolness in his tone that tip-toed around the elephant in the room, "you couldn't fake that. You were lost in your base self—-something triggered your fight or flight," he added, seeing the small frown I couldn't hide as he explained.

"So it was a vampire who murdered me," I said slowly, a little disbelievingly despite the fact that it had been my theory originally. It just sounded... different, more ridiculous, when spoken aloud.

"Probably." Hayes picked up his phone from the bedside table and gazed intently at the screen as his finger moved soundlessly. "At the very least, something about what happened outside triggered your subconscious.”

“Is that… common? Like, do vampires have rules about killing other vampires? Would my vampire have known what I was?”

Hayes shrugged. “An undead vampire might have recognised what you were, but a living vampire… probably not. Murder is frowned upon, but we don’t have laws in the same way the humans do—violence is often seen as a tool for solving problems.”

Understandable. I watched him scroll, growing increasingly irritated the longer he was absorbed in the screen as I started to fully understand the merits of murder. "What?" he muttered, clearly feeling it through the bond.

"Well I just found out that whoever killed me might be coming back for round two and the council wouldn’t give a crap about it and you're, what—playing Candy Crush?"

He closed his eyes and clenched his jaw and I could practically hear him attempting to count to ten in his mind. "Are you always so—" he struggled for words for a second before settling on, "annoying?"

"I’m annoying?" I snorted and swung my legs over the side of the bed. "It must be nice to lack so much self-awareness."

"Funny, I was just thinking the same thing about you."

I found myself at his door with barely a second passing, but it didn't disorient me as badly this time. My body was becoming my own again.

"Prick," I hissed and flipped him off as I threw open his door and felt a thrill of satisfaction when it hit the wall behind the hinges. I didn't bother to close it, just stalked off in search of somewhere quiet where I'd be less inclined to murder people.

It was strange, really. I didn't want to kill indiscriminately and what had happened to the girl in the lake when I'd first awoken… I shuddered. I'd tried to save her and had instead killed her. I still felt remorse about that, of course, but the longer I spent as an undead, the more I felt myself settling into this new skin. Death was a part of life, natural if sometimes cruel. It alarmed me a little that killing and violence didn't seem as wrong to me now as it had when I'd first arrived at Ashvale a little over a week ago. I may be dead, but I was still changing. I just wasn't sure if it was for the better.

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