Page 37 of Veradel
To my surprise, Lucan’s face doesn’t crumple. No flash of understanding crosses his expression. If anything, he only looks even more determined, his jaw clenching and his eyes narrowing. Maybe we reallyareenemies now, because all his sympathy for me seems to be gone.
“So, what then?” he asks, taking a step toward me. “You’re going to starve yourself?” His voice is like rough gravel rolling over my skin, taunting me. “Resist this?” A claw shoots out of his index finger, and he drags it over his palm, slicing open a thin, fine cut. A bead of blood appears, and its scentfills my nostrils. My mouth waters, desperate to taste it on my tongue one more time.
I take a step back, remembering myself.
“Yes,” I hiss. “I’ll resist.”
I already decided that I won’t drink from him again. If what the journal said was true, I’ll have until the next blood moon to live before starvation takes over me again and I die like my father did. Lucan and I won’t ever get to explore a new bond because that would require me continuing to take his blood.
“I won’t be a parasite,” I say out loud.
Lucan begins to circle me, head cocked. “Parasites take without giving back. You can take as much as you want from me, and you’ll give back tenfold. Therefore, you are not a parasite. What we have is symbiotic.”
I laugh humorlessly, twisting to keep him in view. “Symbiotic? Is that so? What exactly do you think I give you back?”
He doesn’t hesitate. “Life. Meaning. Everything.”
I snort, crossing my arms and glancing away, despite the way those words make my stomach flutter. “You’re just saying that to be nice.”
With a growl, Lucan leaps forward. Adrenaline fuels me, my earlier exhaustion melting away as anger lashes back. I jump, colliding with him and sending both of us through the trees—straight into another boulder.
It cracks from the force, the sound echoing around us like an explosion, but I barely feel a twinge of discomfort.
Lucan smirks inches from my mouth. “Do I look like I’m beingniceto you?”
“No. You look like you’re being infuriating,” I say, digging my nails into his pecs. Leaving marks I didn’t realize I could make. Possession ignites through my spine. Infuriating butmine.
Heat builds between my legs, where his erection presses against me, pulling tight behind my belly button. I arch my hips ever so slightly just to feel the feather-light friction.
Lucan wraps a hand around my throat, squeezing so tightly that if I wasn’t a vampire, I wouldn’t be able to breathe. But I don’t need to breathe nearly as much now, and he pulls my mouth to his.
His kiss is rough, sending a bolt of electricity straight through me, just like before. Becoming a vampire hasn’t made his touch any less igniting. Ifanything, my body burns for him even more, desperate to explode against him.
I can’t help the moan that escapes me. At the sound, he takes my bottom lip into his mouth and sinks his canines into it. Blood fills my mouth.Myblood. It doesn’t taste nearly as good as his, but the sting is a welcome shock to my nervous system.
“Did you like that?” Lucan asks before he soothes my lip with his tongue. When I nod desperately, he doesn’t bite me again but pulls his head back an inch, exposing his own throat. “Make me burn, too. Give it back to me, baby.”
I suck in a sharp breath, the need totakeandtakealmost blinding. His pulse hammers in excitement when I run a finger along the vein across his neck.
“No.”
I know what he’s trying to do: goad me into biting him again. Give me just enough pain and fill me with just enough rage that I’d be willing to hurt him once more and finish my fill of blood. All of this teasing and taunting is his careful way of trying to play a game against me to force me to survive. But I can’t fathom surviving like this.
Lucan doesn’t give me time to fathom anything, though. In a flash, he’s up and slamming me against a tree.
Then we’re a fury of undressing—if you can call it that—between kisses. My dress is hiked up around my waist, my underwear ripped and hanging by a thread around one of my hips. His pants are at his knees, his shirt on the forest floor, his bare chest heaving.
The bark digs into my spine as Lucan spreads my legs wide to the point of pain and fills me so quickly the stretch is almost too much.
I cry out, delirious from the pleasure, as my breath is pushed forcefully from my lungs with every punishing thrust. Watching his abs contract as he ruthlessly slides in and out of me brings me so close to the edge that stars shimmer across my vision.
“Lucan,” I moan over the obscene sound of how wet I am. This is primal, dirty.
“Remember, there are no rules here with me, Saskia.”
Lucan tears my dress off, exposing my breasts. Then, burying his head in my chest, he teases my nipples too softly with his tongue before pullingback. With each of his thumbs and forefingers, he pinches them just hard enough to make a moan rumble up my throat.
But not hard enough to make me come.
