Page 47 of Nyte

“I was a child back then. I didn’t know any better.”

“And now?”

“Now...I think I’ve spent too many years of my life in silence. It’s hard to go back to that once you’ve experienced what it’s like on the other side.”

“You share so openly with me. Why?”

Cypress stalled as if the question had stunned him. “I’m not sure.”

Haven closed the distance between them with several steps. He blinked up at Cypress, fanning his long velvet lashes. “I’m a vampyre. Yet you forget yourself around me. You want me to be something I’m not.”

“What are you talking about?” Cypress cocked a brow. “What do I want you to be?”

Haven sniffed, turning away. He wasn’t sure why the look Cypress aimed his way and the cold, harsh tone affected him so. It made his stomach clench as a rush of desire flooded his belly. He forced himself to regain his composure. “This conversation isn’t about me. It’s about you and why you’re so willing to open yourself up to a creature you obviously hate.”

Cypress straightened, allowing his gaze to rove over Haven’s body. Haven shuddered under that heated assessment. “You’re different than the others.”

Haven swallowed, averting his eyes. How was he so damn earnest? That kind of honest intensity had no place in their world. Didn’t he know that? “I’m not.”

“I don’t believe that,” Cypress said, his voice soft. “I don’t believe you starve yourself because of a superiority complex.”

He needed to staunch this, to nip it in the bud. Before Cypress said or did something foolish. Something they would both come to regret. “I do it because I find humans distasteful. And I’d rather starve than dine on their disgusting flesh.”

“You compared human blood to a fine wine. Something so absolutely irresistible, even the most controlled vampyres have difficulty refraining from partaking. Yet now you say it disgusts you.” Haven refused to look at him, but still, he felt his approach. Slowly, the human pulled back the collar of his shirt and exposed the slim lines of his muscular neck. “This has no effect on you then?”

Haven gritted his teeth, attempting to keep his eyes off the delicate vein thrumming just beneath Cypress’s skin. “Back away,” Haven hissed, but Cypress only stepped closer.

“Why should I if you’re so unaffected?”

Haven attempted to turn away, but Cypress grasped his hand and pulled. In a flash, Haven was flooded with rage. He whirled on Cypress, fangs exposed, eyes heated. “Don’t touch me!” But Cypress held firm, staring back at him, unafraid.

“You want my blood,” Cypress said. “But you won’t take it. How long has it been since you’ve fed?”

“Why do you care?” Haven spat.

“I care because I’m locked in a room with a vampyre that could lose all control at any moment.”

“I won’t lose control.”

“Perhaps not now. But for how long?” Cypress studied him, eyes wide. Still, he had not loosened his grip on Haven’s arm. Dazedly, Haven shrugged out of his reach.

“I know my own limits.”

“Do you want to die?” Cypress asked, and Haven’s stomach clenched.

“Why would you ask me that?”

“You’re making a great effort to starve yourself. Vampyres who go into bloodlust can’t be stopped until they’re killed. Is that your goal? To be killed by your own kind?”

Haven ached. He ached, talking to this human. This senseless, unthinking human who didn’t know what he was talking about, what harm he was causing with his careless questions. “You think you know everything, don’t you, slayer? You think you know misery. You don’t.”

“I know you’ve been hurt, Haven. I know you hurt still from what they did to you. But you keep punishing yourself and for what? You don’t deserve to live in his self-made melancholy!”

“You don’t know anything!”

“Tell me, then!” He scoffed. “You won’t. Because I’m so beneath you.”

“Because you could never hope to understand.”

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