Page 9 of First Blood
I stepped in, and he shut the door, which put him right between me and a wall. When he turned, I took a step forward. We weren’t quite touching. His heady scent rose up between us, tart and fresh.
“Do you want to feed on me tonight?” He tipped his head back a little to meet my eyes, and also tilted it slightly to the side. His pulse beat hard and fast.
I should’ve made sure he meant it. I should’ve eased him into it. He’d never been bitten before, and the reaction he’d had to my sucking a few drops out of his lip meant he could faint on the spot once my teeth pierced his skin. I should’ve, I should’ve…
But that delicate throat was all I could see. He was all I could smell and feel and want, and my fangs had already descended. The thump of his heart echoed in my ears, as if I were underwater.
I planted my hands on either side of his head and bent down, pressing my face into the curve of his neck and shoulder. Laurie’s sharp inhale tickled my ear as he gasped. He tipped his head a little more, exposing himself completely, as vulnerable as he could be to me. My lips brushed his skin, and I flicked out my tongue. Laurie’s hands flew up and grasped my shoulders, and the gasp turned into a breathy moan.
My teeth settled against him. And I bit down hard.
Hot sweetness flooded my mouth, salty ambrosia. I sucked more of his flesh into my mouth and pulled from the vein, knowing he’d feel the tug all the way through him. He sagged against me, and I pressed him up against the wall with the weight of my body. I drank, and felt him writhing against me, his moans growing in pitch and volume, then turning to whimpers as I wrapped a hand in his hair and held him steady.
“Please,” he whispered. “Oh. Please, please…” He’d begged me before. I could barely remember anything through the haze of pleasure. My whole body was floating, my cock so hard it was going to burst through my jeans, and the hand in his hair clenched and released, savoring the softness. He’d begged me before. He’d wanted me to stop.
He didn’t want me to stop now. This was a different kind of begging.
I sucked harder…just a few more mouthfuls. I hadn’t taken too much yet, but I would if I didn’t stop soon.
Laurie let out a high, frantic cry, his hips bucking, and he went limp like his strings had been cut. I barely got my hand around his waist in time to hold him up, and then he was a warm, pliant weight in my arms, slim and perfect against my body.
I shuddered, rolled my own hips against him, and then forced myself back. With one final swallow, I took my fangs out of him and licked over the wound, my saliva clotting the last droplets of blood.
When I lifted my head, his eyes were closed and his face slack. His rosy, parted lips nearly did me in. I licked my own, savoring the last taste of him. Everything felt…distant, my limbs heavy and slow. Sluggish. Blood-drunk.
That hadn’t happened to me in decades. His head lay in the palm of my hand, his neck still exposed. Only now the bruises weren’t the most noticeable feature. The puncture-marks I’d left on the side of his throat stood out,mymark, obliterating anything other men had done to him.
That brought me back to earth with a fucking thud, the floaty ecstasy of his blood that had been spreading through me and feeding my magic dissipating all at once. Another man had left marks, painful ones.
And so had I. I was paying, and Laurie had offered himself, but the difference wasn’t huge.
“Oh,” Laurie gasped, and his eyelids fluttered. He stirred in my arms, and I clutched him closer, curving my body around his. I’d put him on his bed in a moment. One moment to hold him first.
I leaned in again and buried my face in his hair, inhaling as much as I could of him.
There was something else, something that hadn’t been there before. Something familiar that made my stomach clench and my cock take notice.
I carefully moved him to his bed and laid him down, and then I saw. A dark, damp patch on the front of his too-tight jeans.
He’d come while I fed on him, come without a touch with his hands clutching me and my mouth on him and my fangs inside him.
My whole body vibrated like a giant guitar string. I had to get the fuck out of there.
A blanket thrown over him, and all the cash in my wallet flung onto the cardboard box — and fuck, hopefully it was enough, but I had toget outbefore I ripped off his clothes and buried myself inside his helpless body like a blood-drunk, feral monster — and I was fumbling the door open. His key. I looked down. It was in my hand. When had I picked it up? I locked the door and pushed the key under.
I wanted to make it home before I did what I knew I’d do the second I had the opportunity, but need thudded in my veins and blurred my vision.
I got as far as the alley on the far side of Laurie’s building before I leaned against the wall, ripped my fly open, and jerked myself hard and fast. My orgasm hit me like a tsunami, and I slumped back against the wall, my eyes closed, come dripping over my hand, breathing like I’d run fifty miles.
All I could see was Laurie, lying unconscious in his bed after coming in my arms, with my marks on his skin.
Chapter 4
Marked
“As far as we know, he was here alone,” Esther said, leaning back on the couch and folding her legs under her. “And we don’t have any evidence his employer sent him back. The magic on his car was standard spells you could buy from anyone, basic wards against tracking and to repel rust. They didn’t have a magical signature Doran recognized.”
I took a swig out of my coffee mug and brooded over that while Esther picked up her phone and sent a couple of texts. We were sitting in her living room, a small, cozy space in an equally small, cozy house. Lots of throw pillows. Landscapes with grazing cows on the walls. Matching light-wood furniture and several floor lamps. It was as different from Laurie’s miserable little room as it was from my own spacious, dim, barely-furnished house.
