Page 9 of Fated to the Vampire Prince
I hated myself for letting him make me feel this way, but I needed to seal our pact with a first bite, as much as the act revolted me. This was how I became a spy, proving to my family that I could be useful, even if I didn’t have magick. I had to want him to bite me.
Everyone was watching. Waiting. Wondering what was going on.“Okay. Fine,”I said begrudgingly.“Do whatever you think will help.”
His lips ghosted down my neck like a lover’s might, and I pretended he was someone else. Someone with a heartbeat. Someone warm and sweet. When his cold tongue licked a slow trail up my throat, from my collarbone to the choker, my body turned to dough. Despite the people all around, I’d never felt anything sosatisfying.
“Good, very good,”he purred. “Now tell me to bite you.”
“Do it. Bite me.”
His lips closed around my skin, sucking gently, before I felt the pressure of teeth. My handflew to the back of his neck, fisting sections of his hair as the bite deepened. I arched into him. His grip around my waist was like steel. Yes, there was pain, but there was also…pleasure.Waves of it rolled through me, starting low in my core and traveling up to my belly button in slow, warm strokes. However, the tug of desire couldn’t stop me from imagining what he was doing.
Swallowing my blood.
As soon as I remembered that red stain on his lips, the stage spun. I struggled against the lightheadedness. I wasn’t strong enough to fight back against my phobia. A cold sweat broke across my brow, and my grip on his hair loosened. Wishing I was stronger, I looked toward the crowd, searching for my sister, needing to see Seraphina’s face. She would tell Mama I’d done what I’d set out to do.
They couldn’t say I was good for nothing. Not anymore.
The last thing I remembered before blackness squeezed out my vision was a blur of lilac hair and the sound of my name.
When I awoke, I was being carried down a set of stairs. A hand was fitted under my knees, another held a silk cloth against my neck. My head resting against a chest. Tilting back, I realized Bastien was the one carrying me. Everything came back in a rush. The dais. The people. His body against mine. His breath.His tongue.Shame heated my cheeks. I’d let a vampire lick my neck.Diana, help me.
“Put me down,” I managed to say.
“Gladly,” he answered. “This is the second time you’ve bled on my shirt.”
As if the wealthy vampire was worried about one shirt. Irritation and shame made me bolder than usual when I snippedback, “Don’t say that word.” I didn’t want him to inadvertently make me pass out again. Now that I was in his service, I needed to be a sponge, soaking up every bit of information on the vampire.
“What word?”
I gritted my teeth. “Bled.”
The vampire reached the base of the stairs and turned a corner that led into a long hallway lit with wrought-iron candelabras. The flickering light sent shadows across the art on the walls.
“Why not?”
“Because it makes me sick.”
I tore the silk cloth from his grip and held it against my neck. Temper smarting. Shame twisting like a snake in my gut.
“What do you meanit makes you sick?”
His question was like hitting an old bruise. I’d explained this to many family members over the years, including the midwives who asked me to help in the birthing beds, the healers who asked me to remove arrows or set wounds, and the huntresses who demanded I skin hares. I couldn’t do any of it without passing out, humiliated time and time again for being useless in every way imaginable.
“I can’t explain it, but every time I hear that word, I get dizzy.”
Bastien stopped in front of a door and kicked it open. I let out a gasp as he strode inside and kicked it closed. The door hung loose on broken hinges.
Inside, the room was dark, save for the light coming in through the crack in the door. He lay me down on a velvet settee before striking a match, lighting a candle, and setting it on the small table beside me. Shadows flickered to life between us. I swallowed hard as he studied my neck. Then he wrestledthe silk cloth from my grip and held firm pressure against his bite mark.
“And what happens if you see it?” he asked. “Do you swoon?”
“Sometimes,” I answered. I noticed a smear of red still staining his chin, and fresh sweat broke out on my forehead.
“You understand this position entails talking about and seeing the very thing that makes you ill?”
I hugged my knees to my chest, putting more space between us. “Does it? I thought I was applying to be your royal dog walker.”
He let out a chuckle that held no humor as he stood and reached for a pitcher sitting on a sideboard. He poured a measure of water into a glass and then offered it to me. “I can’t wait to enjoy a year’s worth of your so-called humor in my castle.”
