Page 22 of Bloody Bargain
“Jesus,fuck,”I snarled, wriggling my toes to feelanythingother than the disturbing, ropey sensation of my ligaments stitching themselves back together like string cheese in reverse. “Does it always hurt like this?”
“I did not have you before, so I cannot say,” D’abel said in a mesmerized tone.
“What?”
“Myn chalis.”
“Chalice?”
D’abel took my healing injury in his hands and began massaging around the edges. Against all logic, his touch relieved some of the agony. “You. B’adruokh can only ever take one. You are mine.”
The pain lessened and my flesh itched bone deep in the convening silence. Sweat beaded my brow and neck from the stress of healing, and the wind sent a shiver through my skin. D’abel was staring at my arm like it was the holy grail. Maybe it was, by the disturbing, reverent gleam burning deep in the black embers of his pupils. I pulled my arm against my chest, out of sight.
“I’m not just a cup you get to drink from and throw in the trash after,” I amended, forcing him to look into my hard stare. “Right? I’m not her.”
I nodded towards the pile of soil a few feet away.
D’abel’s mouth split open into a smile that exposed the membranes in the hinges of his mandibles. The split stretched almost to his ears as his silky white hair slithered over one shoulder. “You are not theauf,my lady.”
“I don’t appreciate the amusement in this life-altering conversation.”
He pressed his lips closed but couldn’t flatten the curl at the edges. “Of course.”
The itching subsided and all at once, my arm was–to use D’abel’s words–whole. I flexed my hand, and when I looked back at D’abel’s elegant features, he raised one brow, as if that was the answer to my question. I sighed, and stripped off my jacket.
“Take it,” I said, pushing my cold, sticky sweater sleeve up and thrusting my hand towards him. Blood was caked in my nails and cuticles, and I was suddenly glad that most of my healing had happened when it was too dark to see the insides of my own body.
The air thickened as D’abel swallowed, all those needles beneath his scales undulating like a wave. He wavered forward on his haunches and sucked my fingertip into his mouth.
The warm, wet suction pulled on my lower abdomen like a string, and he kept my eye as he took his time. The tail he leaned on stretched to life, coiling across the rocks and debris like it had a mind of its own, winding closer to us from the base to the tip in a slow, languid arch.
And as we stared at each other, some of the dark currant red of D’abel’s eyes returned. His side pupils brightened, and the whites of his eyes cleared. He blinked, letting my finger loose from his lips with a shudder and licking them, splitting his tongue between the top and bottom.
“Thank you,” he murmured, leaning away once more with tightened fists. He averted his eyes first this time, staring at the body behind me with a faraway gaze and a clenched jaw.
I blinked at him, looking at the one clean knuckle with a swoop in my stomach like surviving a roller coaster unscathed. Monster films and gothic vampire horrors had conditioned me to expect pain and punctures.
“That’s it?” I asked, waving my sticky fingers at him. “You don’t want all of this?”
His eyes jumped to mine. “Just enough, my lady said.”
I rolled my tongue over the roof of my mouth, savoring the phantom of his taste without thought. “I don’t want anymore, but if you’d like to clean me up, consider it yours.”
“Then yes,” he whispered, wide-eyed.
I extended my hand and he took my thumb into his mouth with vigor. He sucked each digit, swirling his forked tongue around the knuckles, pulsing it in the webbed space between fingers, swallowing and murmuring with relish. He didn’t use his hands, instead nudging my palm and wrist with his nose where he wanted it to go, smearing his cheeks and brow with red. He opened his mouth against my wrist and snaked that tongue down my forearm, longer than any human tongue I’d ever seen. The relaxed curve of his python fangs rubbed against my wrist and left a dangerous tingle in their wake. When his eyes slit open, glinting in the early morning from beneath thick, feathery white lashes, they were glassy and dark.
That’s when I realized… D’abel was beautiful.
He was beautiful in the way of handcrafted porcelain figurines and pearls. My core was so hot I could barely breathe. I wanted to thread my fingers through his hair and find out what sorts of sounds he’d make if I did.
D’abel left a hickey on my pulse and turned my forearm over, cleaning the top in long, slow laps. I stared at the top of his head in alarm as he bowed over the bloody arm I balanced on my knee for him. My brow creased, unease growing in my gut.
My body soaked up the syrupy heat of lust like a sponge, melting the marrow-deep chill and the slush running through my veins. I didn’t want him to stop.Ever.The way his muscular tongue danced with my fingers was a sin I wanted every waking moment. My breath grew shallow, my cheeks red from a flush instead of the bite of the wind.
D’abel was so achingly beautiful.
I knew fiends by feel. The warmth they inspired in me. The sense of family, hope, affection, lust… I’d learned my lesson long ago. If I wanted to hunt them, I couldn’t trust good feelings. I had to be stoic and numb, disconnected and unafraid.
