Page 53 of When Bones Whisper
“I only need a taste,” he said in a deadly purr and pushed back her hair so he could lean down and run his tongue over her racing pulse.
Her knees buckled and she landed on the bed, kicking back against the sheets when they tangled around her legs and he climbed on top of her. She couldn’t die. Not like this.
If she screamed, Alexander might hear her and maybe he would stop him. But she did not scream. All she could focus on was his body pressed against hers, his erection rubbing against her inner thigh with his every movement.
“I could smell your tempting blood from my bedroom,” he said, dragging his lips on her throat, over her clavicle, creating a path all the way to her earlobe.
Every muscle in her body tensed, her stomach clenching when he pressed his hardness against her undergarments, directly over her throbbing clitoris, the thin veil of fabric, a woefully flimsy barrier between them. Her hips bucked salaciously, curious fingers running over his muscles, taut with definition under his shirt.
She had to stop.
Now.
He hiked her nightgown to her hip, one hand palming the curve of her ass, the other dragging into the thickness of her hair. Fisting several curls, he angled her head until her neck was fully revealed.
As they embraced, her nipples, already peaked and aching, pressed urgently against him. She had never known such a primal need, a wetness that throbbed, a desperate yearning forsomething more. He groaned and wrapped an arm around her back, crushing her against him. With buttons scattering, she ripped off his shirt, displaying his sculpted physique.
A sigh loosed from her lips when he sank his fangs into her throat, arching her back into him as her blood leaked down her neck and onto her chest.
His cock throbbed desperately against her, dripping desire over her nightgown, soaking it through as he sucked at her pulse, devouring every drop with unbidden, savage desire. Was he aroused at the thought of killing her?
Suddenly, the room twirled into darkness and her eyes flung open.
With a jolt, she jumped up in her bed and pressed her palm to her throat, relieved to find smooth, unbitten skin and that the bite had been a fabrication of her unconscious mind. But if that was true, why did her fingertips tingle as if in anticipation mere seconds before she tested the unblemished spot?
At the thought of his fangs, a tightness wound its way through her, aching to be undone. She slipped a hand between her legs, letting out a soft moan when she glided over her swollen, throbbing clit toward her opening, drenched in arousal. What the Hell was she doing?
Nathaniel had embedded himself in her subconscious and she allowed it to happen. The air stalled in her lungs, momentarily incapable of normal functionality.
In the dream, she didn’t fight him. Instead, letting him bite her knowing it would lead to her death, all because she was turned on.Desperately turned on.
His blood was as addictive as it was dangerous and all she could think about was having more, the craving unrelentingly worrisome.
Begrudgingly, she removed her fingers despite wanting to continue, but remembering the fact of his inevitable plans for murdering her was too much for her brain to process.
She jerked backward, her body knocking into the headboard, pain radiating from the back of her skull to her shoulders. Wrestling with her contradictory thoughts, she allowed her eyes to run lazily over the length of the room, only stopping when something flashed in her peripheral vision.
With a whip of her head, she turned to look at the dark reflection in the window. There was nothing there. Yesterday’s events flooded her mind. She bent at her waist, fingers crowning her tender head, and squeezed her eyes shut. Slowly, she climbed from her warm nest of quilts and pillows, her stomach still in knots. Trying to ignore the heavy ache in her groin, she walked to the bathing room.
Duke was nowhere to be seen, which should have been her first clue that something was wrong.
The room dropped several degrees and the sense of eyes burning a hole in her back brushed goosebumps over her neck. She wasn’t alone.
In a slow turn, Charlotte braced herself as best she could for what was standing behind her.
The bloodshot, glassy eyes of the spirit they had siphoned met hers. Shadows encircled her drooping lids, her pale lips cracking when the ghost’s lips fell open, a shiny liquid oozing from the split.
“It’s you,” Charlotte said with a whimper.
The apparition pointed at her hip, index finger trembling so hard the ring crowning the digit wavered slightly as Charlotte stared, but she could still discern the details. The black ring was carved with the letter A.
The words slid from her lips before she knew she’d spoken. “How did you die?”
With a lift of her palm, the spirit placed her hand over the puncture wounds now visible on her throat.
“Nathaniel killed you,” Charlotte whispered, and the woman nodded, bloody tears leaking from her sockets.
Fading faster, flickers of her body moved beyond the veil so only pieces of her remained.
