But he just turns with me still in his arms and stalks down the hall to the stairs. Rylan and Wolf edge out of the way as he carries me down to the kitchen and sets me on the counter. I blink and weave a little. “I thought…”
“Food, Mina. Or you’re going to pass out before we get to the good stuff.”
What we just did was the good stuff. What we did this morning and last night was good stuff. I can’t quite comprehend how it can get better than that.
Rylan and Wolf walk through the door a bare second later. Wolf veers toward the fridge and Malachi, but Rylan walks to me. Without so much as a word, he flicks up my shirt and looks at my pussy. “He bit you. You need blood.”
“I’m fine.” I don’t know why I’m arguing. I also don’t know why I flash hot at the hungry way he looks at me before he lets the shirt drop. “And you bit me first.”
He doesn’t respond other than to lift his wrist to his mouth and bite down. It’s not a polite little bite. No, he rips his own flesh as if it’s nothing. As if he doesn’t feel the pain. Rylan grabs the back of my head and lifts his wrist to my mouth. “Quickly, before it heals.”
I want to argue. I do. But his blood makes my fangs ache so intensely, I could weep from the sensation. Even as I tell myself I’ll only have a taste, I cover his wound with my mouth. When I took Malachi’s blood, it felt like lightning shooting into my body.
If Malachi’s blood is lightning, Rylan’s is a hurricane.
The taste of it explodes on my tongue and I swear every hair on my body stands at end as if I’ve stuck my finger in a light socket—except a thousand times more powerful. I whimper but I don’t know if it’s in pain or pleasure. I can actually feel the blood moving through me, down my throat, into my stomach, the magic there shooting out to the tips of my fingers and toes.
And then it stops.
I drag my tongue over his newly healed skin, and I’ve almost lost myself enough to start gnawing on him like a goddamn animal.
“That’s enough.”
I blink my eyes open and stare at him. He was dangerously handsome before, but now he’s reached another level. The entire room has. It feels like I’m seeing a new level of detail my eyes couldn’t discern before. I look at Wolf and Malachi and they practically crackle with energy, though it looks different on them than it does on Rylan. In fact, it looks different for each of them. I lick my lips, tasting Rylan’s blood. “How old are you?”
“It’s considered rude to ask.”
I finally look back at him. After he bit me earlier, I was feeling woozy and exhausted. Now, I feel like I could run a record-breaking marathon. “Even Malachi’s blood didn’t make me feel like this.”
“Like I said, he’s a baby.” He releases me slowly and steps back. When he speaks, it’s aimed at Malachi. “We will go over what breaking the ward entails while she eats.”
I slide off the counter and bounce on my toes a little. Yeah, I feel better than great. I belatedly realize my knee doesn’t ache, it hasn’t today at all. It’s probably a good thing Rylan doesn’t like me that much because I could get addicted to drinking his blood. I give myself a little shake. My thoughts are buzzing at twice their speed and I’m having trouble focusing. “I’m not hungry anymore.”
“All the same, you need to eat.” Malachi sets a plate with a sandwich on the table and points at the chair for me to sit. Two glasses join it, one with water, one with orange juice.
I make a face, but I know he’s right so I sit down. My stomach chooses that moment to growl, so I pick up half of the sandwich and obediently start to eat. The vampires take up positions on the other three sides of the table. Rylan plants his elbows on the table. “The goal is to fill the blood ward with so much power that it bursts.”
I take another bite of sandwich to avoid pointing out I don’t actually have power. It’ll just start an argument, and I suspect the only way they’ll believe me is if we go through with this. And if it works…
No.
Easier to shut down that thought before something as unforgivable as hope can take root. I told Malachi I trusted him to not drop me like yesterday’s trash the second he gets free, but that’s as far as I can stretch this new trust. Letting in that old hope, the fragile belief that maybe I am special… It’s too dangerous. I don’t know if I’ll recover from it when this invariably fails after I let myself believe it’ll succeed.