Page 21 of Blood and Magic
“You’re such a bad girl. You need to be punished,” he said, leaning closer to run his nose over the column of my throat. “Didn’t you listen the last time? Running from me is the worst idea you’ve ever had.”
“I like when you chase me,” I whispered, barely able to get the words out over the drum of my beating heart. “I like it when you catch me.”
“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” he said, dragging his tongue up my neck to my jaw. His soft, warm tongue made me tremble as I imagined what it might feel like on other parts of my anatomy. “Don’t tease the wolf, baby. You won’t like what happens to you.”
“Are you going to bite me?” I raised a playful eyebrow.
“Maybe,” he said.
“Maybe I’d like it.” I rocked my pelvis into his, gasping when my cunt pressed up against the long length of his erection behind his jeans. He was so hard, and he jerked at the contact, trailing his mouth down the side of my face to the spot where my throat met my shoulder.
“And what would you do if I did, huh?” he growled. “Would you scream? Would you cry?”
Vermillion kissed the tender skin, and I shook in anticipation.
“What if I drank every last drop of your blood?” He hummed and licked the spot, rolling his pelvis against me, dragging the hardest part of him over the softest, wettest part of me. I moaned, bucking into the connection. I wanted more. So much more. “You have no idea what I could do to you, baby girl…what I want to do to you.”
“So do it.” The quiver in my voice betrayed the terror in my chest. I should have been afraid of him. I should know better than to taunt someone as strong and dominant as him. But deep down, I knew he’d never hurt me. He could never hurt me. We were tethered on a molecular level, bound by fate and blood and magic. When the universe formed itself, we were one atom of stardust that had split apart to create our separate souls. Now that we’d found each other again, we would never be apart.
“Such things you say.” He pulled his lips back over enormous fangs extending from his canines. His pupils had blown so wide, they eclipsed all of the red.
Then he struck.
On a gasp and a cry, my eyes snapped open to bright moonlight seeping in through the French doors. I wasn’t in the forest, being attacked by my childhood crush. I was in my room. In my bed. And it had only been a dream.
CHAPTER 7
Vermillion
In my dreams, I chased her through the woods. It was sport between us. She liked to run, and I liked to catch her. Her riotous laughter echoed through the nighttime air, and when I got close enough, I tackled her to the ground.
“You have no idea what I could do to you, baby girl…what I want to do to you,” I snarled.
She grinned like the devil and licked her lips, making me want to bite that smirk off her gorgeous face. “So do it.”
My fangs extended, and my heart pounded through my body, my cock surging with evidence of my desire. But the thing that scared me, the thing that made me pause, was the sickening thirst pulsing through my molecules. I wanted more than her body. I wanted…Fuck, I didn’t know. Everything about her. I wanted to devour her, and it made no Goddamned sense.
“Such things you say.” I’d been just about to bite her when a grating sound from reality interrupted my fucked-up wet dream.
“Mill,” Fenris shouted, pounding on the door to the boss’s house. I blinked awake, having passed out on the couch shortly after eating dinner. The guys had wanted to play a few rounds of poker, but I had other things on my mind, and I wasn’t much fun to be around these days.
The loud booming came again. “Vermillion! Wake up!”
I grabbed my gym shorts from the floor to slip them over my boxers before standing and going to the door. Fenris stared at me with wide blue eyes, his dark hair ruffled like he’d been running his fingers through it.
“What’s wrong?” I grumbled, my throat scratchy and parched with sleep.
“Vampires.” The word came out through a pant, like he’d spent the last hour running to get to me.
My heart dropped into my stomach, and I stepped back to shove my feet into my boots, tying them as quickly as my fingers could manage. We’d been here a week without a fucking problem. But of course, my luck wouldn’t last forever.
“Where?” I took off after him as we stalked across the ranch and into the woods at the edge of the property.
“I was doing my perimeter rounds before I called it a night, and I caught the scent half a mile to the west,” he explained. Fenris and I had grown up together, so I trusted him more than anyone else. If I was going to spend two months away from the homestead, I was happy he’d come with me. I didn’t know how to live without him, and we’d become so close over the years, we could practically read each other’s minds, even more than the pack bond already afforded.
“Shit, they’re close.” We walked for about three minutes before the rotten stench of vampires hit me in the face, reeking like a decayed corpse and coppery blood. It was fresh but fading, meaning someone had been here hours ago.
“It’s Marx,” Fenris said.
