Page 169 of The Midnight Order
He sighs, looking at it sadly as his eyes look down at the paper. “You would’ve been around eighteen at the time she wrote this. You have no memories of her at all?”
“No. Nothing. Why wait? Why give me up at all at that point? Why not have me hide?”
“Vampirism is something you can’t fight if you’re aware of your genes. I’m certain if she let you in on the ruse, you would’ve complied the best you could, but the best way to keep you intact, gene dormant, was to?—”
“To keep the secret even from me,” I breathe.
He nods.
Surely, I should feel connected to the woman who poured over this page, who cried as she pleaded with her best friend to save her only child.
But I don’t.
Like that’s been taken from me, too.
“How am I still alive?” The question is asked more in astonishment than as a genuine question directed at Corvin.
“You’re suspended in waiting for transition. It’s not unheard of. Though I would’ve thought you would’ve petrified years ago.”
“Petrified?” I squeak.
“That’s a conversation for another day.”
I swallow audibly. “Good idea.”
“We need to show this to Lowell.”
Handing me the paper back, he stands and heads for the door. I take a moment to re-read each carefully thought-out word my mother wrote before eyeing the box once more.
Following Corvin, I stand and walk toward where he’s stopped, his hand hovering over the doorknob.
“Thank you for doing this with me.”
His red eyes seem darker away from the desk lamp. How he’s standing in the door’s shadow gives him an eerie aura, too.
He leans down. “Of course, Silver. After all, you’re my Predestinat. I’d go to the ends of the world for you.”
Licking my lips, I lift on tiptoe to kiss his lips. The kiss is slow at first, meant only to comfort us after the bombshell of information we’ve just received, but it quickly gets out of hand.
Corvin angles toward me, his hands sliding into my hair. My grip on the paper tightens, but my other hand cups his face. His tongue seeks solace against mine, and I groan into the kiss hungrily.
“We have to stop. I can’t take advantage of your emotions like this, Silver. If I were a less gentlemanly, however…”
“Tell me. Tell me what you’d do if you weren’t a gentleman?”
“I’d bend you over one of these glass cases and fuck you over my memories. Over our memories. Your breasts pressing into the glass. Your ass waving with each deep thrust. My fangs sinking into your throat from behind. When I was done with you, you’d be little more than another reverie in this fucking manor.”
My next exhale is shaky. “I know I shouldn’t, not right now, but I want that. I’m so hungry for that.”
His deep chuckle is unnerving. “There’s a fine line between lust and hunger, and I hope you never discover it.”
The reminder that my gene could be activated by the innate hunger in my belly being satiated hangs between us as someone knocks on the door behind me.
I startle, but Corvin smirks as if he knows who it is.
“When you two are done, Lowell wants to talk to you,” Asher says, his tone implying he’d been there for the last few minutes and heard what Corvin told me.
Half of me wonders if it wasn’t said for both our benefit.
