Page 50 of Mortal Shift
“I said,” Thaden snapped his glare back to my captor, “Is that clear? Or do you wish to challenge me for her, Lazarus?”
Lazarus curled his lip in a sneer. “Keep her. She smells like a mongrel, anyway.”
He shoved me away and in the same breath, Thaden lunged forward and grabbed my attacker by his shirt. I staggered again, but this time there was no-one holding me up and my legs gave out underneath me, sending me plummeting to the ground. But before I could hit it, Thaden shoved the other vamp aside and swooped in, catching me and pulling me back upright.
Ugh. This was getting to be a bad habit.
Wait. Did Thaden just save me?
Before I could get too warm and fuzzy about that, he threw me over his shoulder like the asshole that he was, and carried me from the room. Nausea rose up—or down—my throat from my inverted position, and I clamped my mouth shut to keep from puking all over the floor in front of half the vamps in the academy—because today had been humiliating enough without adding that to it.
I swallowed hard as Thaden kicked the door shut behind him, and then chanced opening my mouth.
“Put me down,” I spat.
“You’re in no position to be making demands, little human. I think you’ll find I just saved your life.”
“Out of sheer altruism, I’m sure,” I said, throwing in an eyeroll that was completely wasted because my face was halfway down his back—and far too close to his ass for my liking. Rescue or not, if he thought I was going to kiss it he had another think coming. “And where the hell do you get off telling everyone that I’m your personal property?”
He said nothing, not even to bother denying it. He just kept on walking, the arrogant asshole. I balled my hands into fists and drummed them against his back.
“Knock it off,” he growled.
“Make me.” I kept right on pummeling my fists against his back.
“Careful,” he said, his voice a low rumble that sent a spike of adrenaline and excitement through me, “or I will.”
He swung me down and set me on my feet, backing me against a wall and planting his hands on either side of my face, caging me between his arms. His feral gaze roved over my body, sending shivers through me, and my mouth was abruptly dry. Which was purely my treacherous body anticipating his feeding endorphins, because I felt nothing but hatred for this arrogant prick.
And then he drew back, his expression abruptly shuttering.
“You should get back to your dorm,” he said.
“W…what?”
“Too much blood pounding in your ears? Get out of here. Now.”
“No.” I folded my arms over my chest and glared at him. “Not until you explain.”
“I don’t have to explain anything to you. You’re a walking blood bag to me, nothing more. Got it?”
“Exactly. And since when do you corner me and not feed?”
Something glittered in his eyes…something that promised darkness and delirium, decadence and depravity. I swallowed unsteadily.
“Are you asking me to feed from you, sweetness?”
“No. Never.”
“Never’s not on the table.”
I shook my head in frustration, dropping my arms and thrusting my hands in my pockets before I did something dumb like hit him again…or worse, do what the heat unfurling in my belly was urging me to do.
“Nothing about you makes sense.”
“You should remember that.”
“Hard to forget,” I grumbled. “You spend weeks treating me like shit, then swoop in and save me from…that, tell everyone I’m your personal property—which I’m not, by the way—and then don’t even try to feed from me.”
