I continue to stare up at him in confusion.
“So don't bite me,” I suggest softly.
My face flushes harder when I realize that makes me sound desperate for his cock.
His eyes take on a heated look at the affirmation that I desire him, and I feel his cock growing even harder against where it's pressed up against my thigh. “I'm afraid it’s not that simple, love. Once I take your innocence, the transformation process will begin. It will only be completed if I bite you.”
Before I can even voice my thought, he finishes gravely, “But if I don’t bite you, you will die.”
I lick my lips and look down, letting that knowledge sink in. So, if I ever want to go all the way with him, I have to be willing to really go all the way. Become a vampiress and everything.
“It takes every ounce of control I possess to not take you every time I'm in your presence,” he growls out, “but I can't bear the thought of depriving you of your life.”
“Do you ever plan on letting me go?” I suddenly ask him.
“No,” he answers me in that frank way of his.
“What about if the threat of your brother eventually goes away?” His lips press into a thin line before he growls, “Even before you knew who I was, you were mine. There's no way I was going to let another man get near you.”
His jaw clenches as if angered just by the thought, and I must be completely fucked up because his possessiveness really turns me on.
“So I'm to die a virgin?” I ask him pointedly.
He looks down at me with a furrowed brow.
“I'm not saying sex is super important to me,” I tell him honestly. “I wouldn't know since I've never had it, but I had kind of hoped that I wouldn't die an eighty-year-old virgin.” I let out a hollow laugh.
His frown only deepens. “Do you want to be a vampire?” he asks me, his eyes burning down into mine.
My breath catches, and I swallow. Again, he’s offering me the opportunity of a lifetime. It’s something many people would kill for—the chance to be immortal and live forever, but I don't know if I really want to become something I'm not.
I bite my lip and can’t meet his gaze.
“I didn't think so,” he says darkly.
“I didn't say no.”
He pierces me with that golden gaze of his. “But you didn't say yes either. If you're uncertain at all...” He inhales a deep breath and shakes his head. “It's a decision that cannot be reversed and one that I would not enter into lightly. And even if you did want to be one, I don't know that I could condemn you to the same fate as me.”
His eyes take on a pained look again. “You might come to truly hate me.”
“How do you know I don't already hate you?” I ask him. “You did kidnap me, after all.”
His eyes blaze down at me with a golden fire before he murmurs softly right against my lips, “You don't hate me, my little angel, and the fact that you desire me even a little bit...” He gives my lips the tiniest nip. “Fuck, you have no idea what that does to me.”
His hands come up to cup my face gently, and I feel them trembling against my skin.
“It was a momentary lapse in judgment,” I try to lie to both of us, but my voice is shaky and unconvincing.
He shakes his head, his lips and nose skimming against mine as he does so. “No, my love. You're starting to realize that you might like it here. You’re starting to realize that you might likeme.” His lips skim over my jaw to the shell of my ear where he whispers hotly, “You’re starting to realize that you'remine.”
My heart is galloping away faster than a horse at the Kentucky Derby.
“You can't read my mind, remember? You can't know if that's true or not,” I whisper back.
“I can read this beautiful face,” he says to me as he strokes a finger along my cheek. “I can read the emotion swirling in these fathomless blue eyes of yours,” he breathes before he drops kisses on them.
“I can feel the way your body melts for me every time I touch you,” he says before his hand skates down over my thigh to find the wetness between my legs.