Page 8 of House of Crimson Hearts
“Yes.” And fuck do I. In this moment, I think I’d be willing to give up being a hunter if it meant I got to press my lips to her cunt.
“Too bad. Now. Use my thigh and fuck yourself till you come for the crowd.”
She slaps my arse, shoving me forward again, the grinding motion against my clit sending pulses of pleasure through my legs, right down to my toes.
I rock then. I grip the stone rail and rock on her thigh, grinding against her leg, pushing my soaking cunt over and over her. She moves with me, her hips assisting and riding with me until we’re moving to the boat’s music. As the pressure builds in my clit, my head rolls back onto her shoulder. It makes my neck exposed, vulnerable.
I’m aware of her fangs dropping, her head leaning towards my neck, her tongue running the length of my carotid, but she doesn’t bite. She stays completely in control. Just moving with me, teasing herself as much as she teases me. I grind against her harder, faster. She drives her knee higher until I can’t take it anymore and the orgasm erupts and spills over into bliss.
I come just as the boat meets the bridge. The humans cheer as it slips under us, taking them away from sight.
She stares at me. There’s a moment where I am utterly blissed out, and I swear a ripple of pain crosses her expression. But it’s there and gone quicker than I can read it. Then my hands are released from the rope cuffs and I’m in her arms and she’s racing, vampire-fast, over the bridge and into a little market garden. She sits me on her lap, cradling me in her arms, the noise from the market muted by the hedges and shrubs. She holds me a moment, until the high dissipates and I crash back to reality, her blood draining out of my system. And I realise what happened. What she did. What I did.
Sweet fucking Mother of Blood.
I scramble out of her arms and step away until my back hits a tall bush.
“Feisty tonight, aren’t you,” she says and pushes one of her black locks behind her ear. “Why are you drinking blood? I thought your kind frowned upon that.”
By my kind, she means hunters—we are the law in this city. It’s our duty to extinguish any misbehaving vampire, or any misbehaving creature for that matter.
She’s also dead right. If the Academy knew I was dosing… it would be the end of my career, and the fact she knows is not a comfort. They’d probably give me more grace for having fucked one of the original three vampires than they would for dosing.
Did we fuck? What did just happen? Technically, neither of us touched each other. Thank the gods, that gives me plausible deniability.
“Tell anyone and I’ll execute you,” I say.
She snorts, laughing so hard her head kicks back. A smile curls over her lips.
“You want me. You hate me. You fuck me.” She tut, tut, tuts at me, shaking her head, her tongue click, click, clicking in time with her words. Then she’s on all fours, crawling towards me over the cobbles. “What are you going to do, Red? You couldn’t kill me after I took your sister. What makes you think you can now?”
My whole body tenses. Fire burns through my expression. This is why I hate her. She took the last person that meant anything to me. It’s why I hate them all. The bliss of the orgasm drains out of me, leaving behind rage and fury.
Father left us to work for a vampire noble.
Mother was a donor, drained in a supposed accident. When do vampires ever have accidents?
And then Amelia.
Stolen.
All because of a stupid mistake she made, gatecrashing a vampire noble’s party. The idiot. She was always so spontaneous. I remember the first birthday she had after Mum had passed. I’d gotten leave from the Hunter Academy, planned everything, but it chucked it down with rain. Amelia didn’t want to stop celebrating so she convinced me to dance in the rain for hours. It was fun at the time, but when we both got sick, and I had to train in order to earn enough for herbs and medications… She never thinks anything through.
She always had a ‘live for right now’ attitude. Well, I suppose she really will live now and forevermore. Octavia was at that party and took advantage. Drained her, stole her from me and turned her into the thing I hate more than anything.
She reaches my feet and stands up, leaning into my personal space. Vampires are cold, and yet heat pulses between us. The scent of her perfume, deep oud and something spicy wafts into my nose.
“I swear on the bones of the Church of Blood, I will ruin you, Octavia fucking Beaumont.”
Her eyes glimmer. Those crimson pupils boring into me. She sucks her bottom lip in, and something inside me twitches, as if the sight of her like this is pleasurable.
“Oh, I hope so, Red. I really hope so…” she lets that linger in the air until her meaning is abundantly clear.
“What is wrong with you? You killed my sister,” I snarl.
“Your sister is alive.”
“No. She’s a fucking drainer like you.”
