And then he grins, showing me canines that match mine, and holds out his arm. I stare at the soft underside of his forearm, admiring the strength and purity of his skin for a moment before I notice the dark vein running down the middle of it, full of blood. I swear I even hear the blood whooshing, feel the tremors through the bed.
He reaches back and pulls out a pair of car keys, but they’re old keys, the type that belong to a vintage car, a Ford, and on the keychain is a black Swiss Army Knife. He opens it deftly, showcasing a blade that captures the candlelight.
With one swift movement he slices the blade along the vein, and I’m so horrified that a scream is strangled in my throat, because blood is spilling everywhere on the black sheets, and he just hit a major artery, is he trying to kill himself?
“Why did you do that?” I whisper, panicking. “Why did you do that?”
And why do I care if he dies?
I should want him to die.
What the fuck is that about?
“Trying to show you something,” he says, his voice light, not a care in the fucking world. “The first part is this.”
He brings his arm up to my mouth and I jerk my head back, trying to move away, but the blood is pouring out of his vein, onto my face, until I’m drenched in it, choking on it. I try to breathe, but it’s in my nose, in my mouth, hitting my tongue.
The effect is immediate, like I did a line of coke.
Goes straight to my brain.
Unhooks a few wires, screws them in other places.
A total rewiring of the mind.
All those heightened senses I was experiencing earlier come at me tenfold. I can hear more, feel more, smell more, taste more, see more. I’m overwhelmed in it, just as I’m drowning in his blood, and I might die this way, and for once I really don’t care what happens. Every pleasure part of my body is coming alive, like I’ve been dead all of my life, dead until right this moment when I’m finally awake.
He takes his arm away, pressing his other hand on my shoulder to hold me down, and then I realize what I was doing. The blood wasn’t just pouring onto my mouth; I was sucking at his skin, tasting him, drinking him, consuming him, reduced to nothing more than a fucking junkie.
I gasp for air, trying to come to terms with what I’ve become, while my body starts to move, restless, agitated, straining against the ropes.
I glance up at Absolon, and he’s watching me, pensive, wary, alert, like he doesn’t quite know what to expect either.
“And how do you feel?” he asks carefully.
I open my mouth, but my throat feels so parched. I need his blood again. I need that liquid to quench my thirst. I want to tell him even water will do, but I know that probably won’t be the case.
“How else do you feel?” he adds, reading my mind.
I close my eyes, his voice feeling like nails scraping along my scalp, making me sink into the bed. Heat rushes to my cheeks, throbbing builds between my spread legs, a feeling of emptiness, of needing something to fill me. My skin feels too hot and tight for my body and I want to claw it off but I can’t. I writhe on the sheets, trying to dissipate the urges.
“That’s what I thought,” he says thickly. Clears his throat. “You know, back in ye olden days, mothers used to do that to their kids when they were impatient and wanted the process over with. Then they’d lock their daughters in a dark room with the stable boy, and, well…sometimes he came out a happy man, and sometimes he came out dead.” He gives me a wry look. “I have no doubt you’d try and kill me if I let you loose. You’d fail, of course, but the drama would tire me.”
I glance down at his forearm. The blood has dried to a trickle now, and I can practically see the skin healing, sealing the cut. “You should be dead by now,” I say softly, my voice caught in the depths of my disbelief.
“I’ve heard that a few times, moonshine.”
“What’s happening to me?” I ask, just as my body starts to jerk. A frustrated moan escapes my lips, my head going from side to side.
I need to get off.
I need to fuck.
To come.
I need something, everything.
To be touched.