Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
“Stop,” Gemma whispered. She craned her neck away from his mouth. “Don’t bite me.”
Skarde clamped his lips together. His canines caught on his tongue. The coppery taste of his own blood didn’t tame the drive to take her.
“Skarde?” She put a hand on each cheek. “Snap out of it.”
“You smell as if you’d taste…” His teeth gently touched her skin again. He replaced them with his tongue. “Exquisite.”
She craned away and pinched his nose until he shook her hand off him.
“I’m…good.” He should leave her in her world and take the man. Safer for her. Or was it safer for him? A human had attacked her in her house.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
Her heartbeat’s steady drumming screamed at him.
Damn it, he couldn’t think clearly. His vision tunneled until he could see nothing but her neck. Need a taste. Just a small taste.
“Home,” he forced out through clenched teeth. There he could guarantee her safety from other humans. Perhaps not from himself, though.
Can’t breathe. Need blood.
He stepped away from her. With little effort he lifted the human by an arm and tossed him through the portal. On instinct, he grabbed her hand and jumped.
When she caught her balance against the wall after their arrival, her head swiveled to take in everything. “Why did you bring me with you?”
He stepped away from her to clasp his hands tight. If he didn’t, he’d grab her. He’d bite her. She’d taste like bliss. Calm your mind.
She cleared her throat when he didn’t answer. Why had he brought her here?
“Because,” he grumbled.
“I don’t belong here.” She pointed at her attacker. “Why did you bring him?”
“Breakfast.” He met Serish’s gaze where he stood at the doorway with his lips set in a hard line. The mage didn’t seem surprised by the fact that he’d stepped through a magical doorway and brought two humans back with him. Serish would know what to do with the prisoner.
Gemma smelled of fear. Her heartbeat picked up again.
Forming coherent words in his tangled head to comfort her didn’t come easily. “I don’t want to hurt you, Gemma. Don’t want to bite you.” He chinned toward the guy on the floor. “But he’s going to die.”
Her heart pounded so loud that he could follow the movement of blood through her body. Those must’ve been the wrong words to calm her.
His voice came out hoarse. “I need blood. It’s been too long. Your blood…your heart pounds too fast.” He thundered, “Calm. The fuck. Down!”
“Calm down? Calm down!” She whipped around as if disoriented. “How? You just said you’re going to kill…” She pointed at the human on the floor. “Is he breakfast and I’m lunch?”
Serish giggled.
The noise startled Skarde and Gemma both.
“Don’t mind me.” Serish held up his hands. “This is great.”
“Come.” He clamped down on her wrist and tugged her to his bedroom.
He slammed the door after she entered in a clear signal to Serish to stay out.
His bedroom was a mess of weaponry, armor, and discarded clothes since he’d ordered everyone in the household, including Serish, to keep out for the past few weeks. He didn’t make any attempt to straighten the bed.
He turned his back to her in order to block out the sound and smell of her heartbeat. Why the hell did I bring her into a closed room?
A small voice in his head advised he brought her here to taste her, fuck her, and then he’d kill her. I refuse to kill her. That means no biting.
But… He fought the blood hunger pushing to bite her. He would press her deep into the soft bed or lift her up and let her slide onto him, to be inside her…so deep.
That’s what fate or destiny or whatever magical forces conspired to bring them together wanted.
He refused to provide the expected ending to whatever storyline that destiny wanted him to enact.
No one, be it a god or witch or whatever other magical being worked behind the scenes, got to manipulate him.
His father’s voice flitted through his brain: “Whit’s fur ye’ll no go by ye.” What’s meant to happen will happen.
“Not helpful,” he muttered out loud. When alive, his father had been an asshole who gave shit advice.
“What’s not helpful?” she asked behind him.
He shook his head in dismissal.
“I don’t belong here,” she said quietly again.
He turned in time to see her pull down her soft cotton shirt with the wide neckline to expose the smooth expanse of her shoulder. He got a glimpse of her delicate collarbone before she showed off the large, red bruise over the back half of her shoulder where she must’ve fallen on the table.
The human who did this would suffer.
She held up her hands and backed up until her legs hit the side of the bed.
“I still don’t want to be lunch.” A giggle escaped her.
“This is a fictional story and you’re not real, even if you do have sheets softer than anything I’ve ever felt.
” She fell back onto the bed. “These pillows are perfect.” She relaxed and sighed out a blissful noise that made him harder than he thought possible. “I need these pillows in my life.”
She thought him fictional, as in a storybook character? She had said “show” earlier. Maybe she thought him part of some elaborate playacting affair. He wished this was fiction. Then there’d be a happy ending.
“Maybe you’re the fictional character and I’m real,” he snapped.
She pushed up on an elbow to face him. “As if a girl with a crappy nursing job who almost got murdered by a stalker guy she dated once and almost got bitten by the vampire who saved her life sounds like a fictional character.” She fell back against his pillows, laughing.
It was a stunning sound. “I do sound fictional.”
His lips twitched. Fuck, he almost smiled.
I do NOT smile.
“My story is straight out of a bad serial killer movie.” She shoved her wavy, dark hair out of her face. It fell well past her shoulders. Her tone turned serious, “Someone forced me into your world.”
Something had conspired to throw them together. He ground his molars together. No one got to control and exploit him.
Voice low, he muttered, “You might belong here, far more than you or I understand yet.” Louder, he asked, “Are you hurt?” He moved near her, but didn’t sit. He didn’t touch.
“My nose might be. Feels swollen. Does it look puffy?” She pressed around it. “I don’t think it’s broken.”
“It bled.” He hoped his eyes didn’t go red as he watched her do her own digital exam of the small, straight nose. It brought his focus back to her neck.
She elbowed upright to a sit. “Is this your bed? It’s huge.” Her hand landed against her chest. “Oh…my.”
“What?”
“You cranked up the…not sure what to call it. Smolder?” Her throat convulsed with a swallow.
“It makes me want to do crazy things with you.” She covered her eyes with a hand and fell back onto the bed.
“I’m losing my mind. Maybe it’s from the threat of dying every five minutes.
I’m not easy like some of the ladies who parade through your bed.
I’ve watched enough episodes of the show to know what happens when you give a woman that look. ”
“What look?” Again with this “show” business. What was an episode? He disliked being the unknowing victim of a voyeur.
“I swear it takes more than…oh dear, I’m tempted to say to hell with it and get naked.” She peeked between her fingers. “Please tell me those other women weren’t in this bed.”
“I’ve never brought anyone to this room before.”
“No one?” She fiddled with one of her dangly earrings. With a roll she supported her body up on one elbow. “Am I different, maybe even special?”
“No one before you jumped through a magical doorway, killed a mage with a crossbow, and then stripped off her pants to use them as a bandage.”
“What makes me special is you listened to me. You chose to live.” Her eyes shifted around to take in the whole bedroom.
She murmured, “Different is good on a show like this. It’s good for you and maybe means I’m not a fleeting character you sleep with one night and…
” Her face flushed scarlet. “I don’t want to be another one of those women who can’t stop wanting to touch you, then you use me and forget me tomorrow. ”
“I can’t forget you.”
She fell back on the bed in an overly dramatic gesture and threw her arms wide. “The guy who loves ’em and leaves ’em says he’ll remember me.”
She erupted into giggles.
Maybe she had whacked her head.
His lips crept upward into a smile as he watched her uninhibited happiness. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had fun with a woman without intending to fuck her.
She rolled to her side, staring at him. “Honest admission, your nipple ring works. Fucking sexy. Like, I so want to put my mouth on it.” She waved at his chest. “The tattoo work on your lower stomach is…” She slapped a hand over her eyes.
“So touchable I can’t look at it anymore or I will touch it.
And if I do that, I can’t be held accountable for what else I do. ”
He glanced down, realizing he only wore pants. “Touchable?”
“Please, put on a shirt and dial the sexy temptation down at least ten notches.” She nibbled her lower lip. “I don’t know if I’m in a coma having some sort of dream that the most beautiful man I’ve ever met is standing over me half naked with a hard-on or if this is real.”
“Vampire. Not a man.”
“Right. Vampire. Maybe if this is a coma dream, I should strip you down so I can see if what’s in your pants is as big as it looks and if you have any other piercings.” She eyed his crotch. “I said that out loud, didn’t I?”
A chuckle slipped out of him.
“I never talk like this. It’s your smolder or aura or whatever it is about you. Are you pierced in other areas?” She stared at his pants.
“Perhaps I’ll show you some day.”
“Oh, please. Maybe now?” She nibbled her lower lip again. “How do I know this is real and not a concussion-induced hallucination? I could be on the floor in my apartment. Or maybe I died. No, this is far too good for the afterlife.”