Page 49 of Blood and Magic
Take her. Claim her. Bite her. Mine.
My animal side hadn’t stopped since I’d licked blood off her fingers, and now that I knew she’d likely go into her transition soon, I wanted to give in to those exciting demands.
We’d have so much fun with her, my wolf said. We’ll keep her forever.
“I need some air.” I turned away and stormed outside, bursting into the cool summer night. Fresh oxygen coated my tongue, slipping down my throat into my lungs, washing away her scent. I ran my hands back through my hair again, leaning against the side of the house as I struggled to maintain control of my inner beast.
Memories of taking her at the cliffside came back to my mind, how she’d gripped my hair, how delicious she’d tasted, how she responded to my touch. The sight of her climaxing on my tongue would stay with me for the rest of my life, and when she put me in her mouth and sucked me dry, I didn’t think there was a greater pleasure on earth.
And all of it was a mistake. She’d said so herself. Just a one-time fling, done in the heat of the moment.
I struggled to understand how I had let it get that far in the first place. The alpha had said not to touch her. Hell, even Guin had threatened to rip my heart out if anything happened to her. There was only one thing more powerful than the alpha’s word: when one’s mate was involved. It was the way the species protected itself. I couldn’t override the alpha’s command, but if my mate was compromised, if my mate demanded something of me, the alpha could go fuck himself. That I’d ignored it, that I’d put my paws where they didn’t belong last week and almost again last night?—
No.
There was no way Maeve was my mate. Fuck, the girl hadn’t even gone through her transition yet. She didn’t know who or what she was, and after that was over, she deserved the time to understand her new life. She didn’t need to be tied down to someone as despicable and rotten as me. I mean, hell. I’d wanted to drink her fucking blood. Like a Goddamned vampire. Like one of those fucking bloodsuckers we spent our lives tracking down. I’d died and come back to life as something unnatural and wretched.
I should go inside and beg Fenris to tear my head off, to drag me out into the woods and give me an Ole Yeller.
They should have let me die.
The door opened, and a mouthwatering scent of caramel and midnight dew preceded Maeve as she walked outside, laughing and yelling at someone behind her.
“Don’t be such a brute, Columba,” she said. Then she paused when she saw me and raised an eyebrow, slowly shutting the door behind her. “What are you doing out here all by your lonesy?”
She put her hands in the back pockets of those incredibly short cut-offs, her boots click-clacking across the wood of the tiny porch. Her skin seemed softer against her white tank top, her hair darker, her eyes brighter. The moonlight made them glow, and if I wasn’t sure that her transition would hit her soon, I could have sworn she was already a shifter.
“Listening to the night,” I said.
Cicadas and frogs sang loudly from the tree line, accenting the wind and squirrels and other members of the nocturnal orchestra. They grew louder with each step she took closer to me, as if they could sense the tension between us, and they, too, waited for it to boil over.
“Oh, yeah?” She bit her bottom lip between her teeth, and my focus dropped to that tiny cut, the one I’d made yesterday, the mark I’d left on her to let all those young shifters know she belonged to me.
Except she doesn’t, and she never will.
“What’s the night saying?” She tilted her head and moved closer, placing a hand on the porch railing so she could lean to the side.
“Nothing good,” I said, sipping my beer.
She grabbed it from my hand and tilted it over her lips for a drink before placing it on the railing.
“You’ve been avoiding me.” She moved to stand in front of me, clasping her hands behind her back so her chest arched out. “Was the kiss really that bad?”
“What?” I balked. “No.”
“Then, why did you run out of there so quickly?” She raised an eyebrow. “Sorry about the blood thing. I don’t know why I did that.”
I gulped, the memory of her delicious taste making me salivate. “It’s fine.”
Maeve looked up at me, a hint of hope and playfulness in her gaze. “Fine?”
“I mean...” I winced and shook my head. “Maeve, I’m not good for you. If you knew me…the real me…you’d run away screaming.”
“Do you want me to run from you?” Her teasing intonation and sparkling eyes set off the best kind of alarm bells in my mind. My wolf sat up at attention, howling and yipping.
Yes, he said. Yes, run. Chase. Yes!
“No.”
