Chapter 2
Two
Mina
Nero strode through the darkness, heading deeper into the garden, then through a narrow opening in the hedgerow.
I squirmed, biting back another scream as he applied pressure against the backs of my thighs and slid me down the front of his body before placing me on my feet.
His violet eyes shone down at me as he backed me up against the hedge. “You know what happens now, don’t you, Mina?”
His wide chest was a wall, blocking everything out, everything but him. I swallowed, and the sound was loud in the cocoon he’d ensconced me in. “Yes.”
“I can hear the rush of your blood throbbing through your veins.”
I wasn’t surprised. My heart was pounding furiously in my chest—but I heard nothing from him. I could only assume his blood moved through the arrogant male’s veins from the sheer force of his will.
His hand moved fast, one moment down at his side, the next, holding my jaw in a firm grip. He tilted my head to the side, his gaze sliding to my throat.
I held my breath as he dipped lower, closing the small space between us, and pressed his nose to the spot between my shoulder and throat. The air slid shakily from between my lips as he breathed deep, dragging his nose along my skin and up to my jaw. “I’ve never wanted to taste anything as much as you,” he said, voice hoarse. “It’s as if the fates put the gods’ own ambrosia in your veins just for me.”
His touch was cold, but his breath was warm. The juxtaposition had goose bumps lifting all over my skin. There was no way to stop the way I trembled, even as a slow building warmth, a yearning—a familiar ache that I’d experienced before in his presence—steadily grew between my thighs.
He scraped a fang across my skin, and I jumped, a cry of alarm escaping before I could hold it back.
He made a low, animalistic sound, and pressed his cool cheek against mine, his lips brushing my ear. “Are you a witch, little Mina?”
“I—I’m no witch.”
“Then what is this spell you’ve cast over me?” There was another scrape of his fang, and I gasped. “Your warmth, your scent…” he purred. “It’s maddening, enthralling.”
Someone screamed in the distance, followed by a low moan somewhere else. Oh gods, what was happening to the others? What was happening to me? I was filled with terror, but that desperate ache pulsing through my body continued to intensify.
“I-is that why you kept coming back? Is that why you came to my room even when you knew it hurt me?” I had to know.
He breathed deeply, scenting me again. “When I stood in your pretty pink room while you huddled in your bed, shaking with fear and desperate need, I felt something —when I haven’t felt anything in a very long time.”
His voice was unmoved, as cold as always.
“What did you feel?” I questioned.
“Agony.”
A chill slid through me. “And you want that?”
“Yes.” His cool lips touched the hinge of my jaw as his hand slid up my back, then unlatched the choker that he’d left in my dressing room for me and slid it in his pocket. “I want a lot of things, Mina. I want to taste your pain, your need, your rage and fear, and I want to know what it is to be loved, adored by my innocent little mate.”
What he said, even the way he said it, was twisted, dark, and strangely naive. “You have to know that love isn’t just taking, it’s giving as well.” I knew, because I’d seen it with my parents. “You can’t command me to love you. How could I love a male who would revel in my agony and take pleasure from my pain?” I blinked up at him. Yes, I was afraid, terrified, but a being without emotions meant he couldn’t be angry with me, he couldn’t be disappointed, he wasn’t capable of it, so I told him the truth. “You will never know what it feels like to be loved by me, because I could never love a monster like you, Nero.”
He stared down at me, unblinking. “How disappointing,” he said, but there was no trace of disappointment on his face or in his voice whatsoever.
Before I could reply, he jerked my head to the side, and sunk his fangs deep into my throat. I screamed and tried to jerk back, but his arms banded around me, holding me fast. Warmth slid from the spot where his fangs impaled my flesh, then slid down my neck. His lips were cold, his tongue hot as he sucked heavily on my vein.
Oh gods. I’d stopped fighting. Instead, my hands fisted his shirt at his sides, hanging on, desperate for purchase as my knees threatened to give out. The warmth slid lower—over my chest, behind my ribs, a scorching swirl through my belly—before gripping me between the thighs.
I groaned as my inner muscles turned liquid, clutching and spasming as the ache reached new heights. My underwear was soaked through so thoroughly that my thighs were slippery. I knew the wetness; I’d experienced it during Nero’s visits, and the days after. It was shameful, and humiliating, especially with him so close, but I didn’t know how to make it stop.
There was no pulling away, though, no hiding from it, because that all-consuming need that he caused in me, grew deeper, more intense until it overrode all thoughts and feelings completely. Without my say-so, I pressed closer to him, and my hips… oh gods , my hips rocked, reaching for something, something I couldn’t name but had fully possessed me in the seeking of it.
I felt so incredibly empty all of a sudden. “I n-need…” I gasped. “I need…” I growled—confused, hungry, desperate for that unknown dark thing , so wrong and wild and animalistic. It was as if Nero had taken full possession of my body, and I had no control of it to speak of.
He snarled roughly as he sucked deeper, wringing a wanton moan from me when I felt it coiling hotly between my thighs. My muscles clenched, drawing up in a way that had me gasping, then holding my breath.
“Don’t fight it,” he grated against my jaw. “It’s mine, Mina, give it to me. Give me what’s mine,” he said against my skin.
I didn’t know what he wanted from me. He was the one with all the control.
My thighs were pressed tightly together, clenching as the muscles inside me clutched desperately at nothing. I was hot, sweating, my body so tense I felt ready to snap any moment as the wild sensation grew higher, so wonderful—yet terrifying. Nero sucked harder on my vein—
I shattered, and a keening wail burst from my lips as it washed over me, feeling like I had been tossed into the deepest ocean during a storm. I had no control over my body or the sounds that came from me, and, oh gods, it felt good, so good that I didn’t care.
I didn’t care that I gripped Nero’s shirt so tight that the fabric was tearing beneath my nails, or about the moans and cries that I couldn’t hold back. The only thing I cared about was the feeling rolling through me. That was all that mattered.
My pulse sped frantically as he dragged his tongue over my throat, sealing his bite. Everything clenched again, and the wetness between my legs slid down my inner thigh as the pleasure eased, and I was left limp against him. I tried to cringe and pull away, but he held me there, not giving me an inch.
My face was scalding with humiliation from the way I’d reacted, at the way my body had responded to his touch.
“You are the most delicious morsel I have ever tasted,” he said, his voice now hoarse. “Will my blood be as delicious to you, do you think?” He squeezed my hip and tilted his head back as he breathed in deep again, scenting me. “With how wet you are, I think you’ll come again from just a taste—” He stilled, and lifted his head, on full alert.
“What is it?”
“We need to go.”
A commotion came from somewhere deeper in the garden. I had no chance to ask anything else, because Nero suddenly lifted me into his arms, threw me over his shoulder, and ran. So fast, the world around me was a blur.
When he finally stopped, it was to put me in the back seat of a car.
A moment later we sped away.
I spun to him. “What just happened?”
“Shots were fired.” He stared over at me. “One of the females’ fathers had a change of heart.” His gaze darkened. “He has to know there is no taking her back. There is no taking any of you back.” He licked his lower lip. It was fuller, darker after feeding. “You belong to me now, Mina. Every part of you is mine.”
I stared at him—the arrogant and extremely old vampire I was tied to for eternity—and my stomach cramped from the finality of those words.
I was no match for a male like him, but I wouldn’t, couldn’t, roll over and not at least fight for myself. “If I belong to you…then you belong to me.”
His violet eyes seemed to brighten in the darkness of the cab. “You want to own me?” His gaze searched mine. “You wouldn’t know what to do with me, little doll,” he finally said, then looked ahead, going still once again, as if he were made of marble.
I sat there not sure what to say, what to do. So I did nothing, said nothing. I simply sat there in my embarrassingly wet underwear, my stomach making sounds that gave away how deep my hunger was as we drove through the city.
Finally, we drove down an alleyway and parked behind a huge concrete building. Nero climbed out, rounded the car, and opened my door, while his driver unloaded my bags from the trunk.
Nero’s cold hand curled around mine, and he led me to the back of the building, punched numbers into a keypad by the door, then led me through. We walked into a dark hallway with doors branching off it.
“What is this place?”
“Your new home,” he said without inflection as he led me briskly down the windowless hallway.
“Where are we going?”
He stopped in front of a door. “We need to complete the binding before the blood moon goes down.”
I swallowed thickly—I had to drink from him.
He pushed the door open. It was dark inside, but the glow of the moon leaked around the edges of the curtains and gave the walls around it a pinky tinge. He led me across the room without turning on the light. My heart sped frantically and my mouth went dry as that humiliating ache between my thighs started to build again.
He sat in a wide armchair, thighs spread, his fingers loosely curled around the arms, and I stood there in front of him not sure what to do.
“Have you ever fed this way before, Mina?”
I shook my head. “As per the rules of a claimed female, I was given blood from a glass, from different donors.” Drinking from one person regularly risked a bond forming. When a female turned sixteen, they developed their need to feed. Because I’d already been claimed by Nero, I wasn’t permitted to ever feed directly from a vein. When I did do it the first time, it would only be from my mate—from the cold male watching me now.
“Have you fantasized about it?” he asked. “About sinking those little fangs into someone?”
His violet eyes were locked on me, as if he could see into my soul. “Yes,” I whispered, unable to lie. I wanted to taste him, this terrifying, ice-cold male. Despite everything, I wanted to know how his blood would feel sliding over my tongue and down my throat.
“Come here, then,” he said.
I blinked down at him. “Where?” There was no room. He took up the entire chair.
His hand moved so fast, it was only a flash in the darkness. His cool fingers curled around my wrist, and he tugged me forward, knocking me off-balance, then snatched me off my feet and planted me on his lap.
My face instantly burned. “What are you doing?”
“You can’t feed all the way over there, now can you?”
I didn’t know where to put my hands, so curled them in my lap.
“Don’t act coy,” he said as he slid the choker from his pocket and secured it around my throat. The weight was heavy, again like he’d curled his fingers around my throat and kept them there. “The last time I saw you, you were anything but.”
I was trembling now, in frustration and anger that this male was my mate. That the fates chose this cruel male to be mine. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Yes, you do,” he said. “You’re a vampire, Mina. Take it. Take what’s yours or lose it. Time is running out.”
If I didn’t drink before the sun went down, if I didn’t do this now, I would go home in disgrace. I would shame my family. I’d be mateless for the rest of my long life. I turned to him in the darkness. There was no warmth radiating from him, not in any definition of the word. As a little girl, I dreamed of a male who would love me, care for me—not this cold, heartless monster.
Many old vampires lost the ability to feel emotion. Those who had never found their mates, who had never fallen in love were unable to retain or regain the ability to feel , stuck for eternity like the cold creature beneath me.
He hadn’t always been this way, though, I reminded myself. I had to have faith. I had to believe the fates knew what they were doing when they chose this male for me. Faith was all I had right then. Love had been powerful enough to bring back the emotions of vampires as old and cold as Nero. My mother had told me the stories, like fairy tales told to me when I was little, but still the truth. It had happened before. I had to believe it could happen for us.
Can you ever love him, though?
I honestly didn’t know, but despite what I said to him, I had to try. I had to try to make this work, for both our sakes.
“Mina,” he said, and there was actual urgency in his deep voice this time.
The moon was going down, I felt it as well, humming through my body as if it were calling out to me. Nero felt it just as strongly, and that urgency told me so. He wanted this. He wanted me. He may not admit how much, he may not even know or understand what he was feeling in this moment, but he did want this.
That knowledge empowered me in a way I’d never experienced before. He told me to take what was mine. Then that’s what I’d do. My fangs tingled and my stomach growled as a part of me I’d held back roared forward.
“Mina,” he snapped.
I grabbed his jaw, jerked his head to the side, and struck. Blood instantly flooded my mouth, rich and fragrant, the most delicious blood I’d ever tasted. He grabbed the back of my neck, his fingers curling in, gripping tight. He was going to pull me off him. I snarled before I knew I was doing it, digging my nails into his flesh to hold on, lost to his taste, his scent, becoming the base creature I truly was.
“I’m not going to stop you,” he said roughly. “Drink your fill, little doll.”
I needed more, wanted more. My body was hot and achy. I had to get closer. As if he could read my mind, he shifted me on his lap until I straddled him. It was indecent, but I didn’t care. There was something hard beneath me, and when it made contact with the slick, throbbing part of me, it felt wonderful, and I moaned against his throat.
His hand slid up and down my spine. “That’s it. Use me to slake your needs. Fill your belly and rub that little virgin cunt on me.”
I didn’t know that word, but I didn’t need to in order to understand what it meant. I ground against the hard thing digging into me, chasing the feeling that was building fast inside me, coiling between my thighs and in my lower belly, making my muscles quiver, while I sucked greedily on his vein. It was the same feeling I’d had in the garden when Nero had fed from me, but more intense because I could rub and grind and roll my hips, chasing the pressure I needed.
Then it hit me with force, not a wave this time but a brick wall of pleasure slamming into me. I tore my mouth away, a scream bursting forth as my inner muscles clamped down on nothing, squeezing and clutching desperately. I rode it out, until it finally eased.
Panting, I fell forward, my face against his shoulder.
“Seal your bite,” Nero said, his voice back to a cold void.
I could barely move, but I lifted my hand to the opposite side of his throat and pulled myself closer so I could lazily drag my tongue over the puncture marks I’d made in his skin. The marks vanished, healing almost instantly, not because my saliva was particularly powerful but because he was so old and strong.
He stood then, with me in his arms, and walked to the bed. “Are we going to mate now?” I asked drowsily.
“No.”
He placed me on a bed, the room so dark I couldn’t see much, but I felt him place a blanket over me. I was full and drowsy and content in a way I never had been in my life. Gods, it should be impossible, but I felt close to him. To the male who had tormented me on the eve of my birthday for years.
He headed for the door.
“Nero?”
“Yes?”
“Where are you going?”
“My room.”
Disappointment filled me. “You don’t want to…stay here with me?”
“This is where you belong, Lalka, my little doll. Only you.” Then he walked out, shutting the door behind him.