Chapter 16
EIRA
My swallow is disgraceful and gulpy when his head starts to descend.
‘Wait.’
The silver in his eyes whirls.
I’m beginning to read him, not because I’ve developed a sudden talent for the occult, but because he’s too old and controlled and used to being obeyed to bother hiding what he feels in the one place he can’t fully lock down.
His eyes are truly the window to his soul.
Do vampires have souls? His emotions, then.
Right now, that silver is expanding, his nostrils flaring a touch, his attention so intent it feels like a hand at the back of my neck, steadying my head so I can’t look away.
This is insane.
I’m insane.
I know attempting to dislodge him from my home and sanctuary would be as effective as trying to dislodge a mountain with a fork. But worse? My body has already made its decision and is busy explaining it to the rest of me in humiliating detail.
‘I believe I mentioned thinning patience, did I not?’ he drawls, the words smooth, the bite beneath them unmistakable.
‘Sure, sure. But you also accused me of being wilfully blind, so shouldn’t you be awarding me a gold star for taking a beat?’
Touché gleams in his eyes, though of course he’s too arrogant to concede out loud. He doesn’t move back either. Just remains a fraction of an inch away from contact, waiting to see if I’ll flinch first.
I glide my tongue over my bottom lip, then immediately regret it when his gaze drops with cruel precision.
‘Okay,’ I say, needing sound before the silence turns into a pressure I can’t push back against. ‘Before you do whatever dramatic thing you’re about to do, answer me something.’
‘You are stalling.’
‘Obviously.’
The corner of his mouth tightens, and I take petty satisfaction in that. If I can’t win in any meaningful way, I’ll take crumbs.
‘Fine,’ he says, clipped patience that isn’t patience at all. ‘Ask.’
I lift my chin another notch. If I’m going to bargain with a monster in my own bedroom, I’m not doing it while looking up at him like prey.
‘Truth or myth,’ I say. ‘Vampires can’t lie.’
The silver stills.
That alone is an answer, but I don’t want half-answers from him.
Half-answers are where men like him hide knives.
His gaze holds mine, cool and fixed, and for a moment I get the distinct, unsettling sense that he’s weighing something heavier than the question; like consequence, like whether letting me know the truth gives me leverage he doesn’t want me to have.
‘It is true,’ he says at last.
My stomach dips, mouth going dry, then weirdly wet again, like my body can’t decide whether to panic or lean in. ‘So you literally can’t lie. Not even if you wanted to.’
‘I am capable of many things,’ he replies, warning wrapped in elegance, ‘but falsehood is not one of them.’
‘Is it because your eyes and other body parts bleed if you do?’ I ask, because humour is my last shield and I’m not above using it, even when I’m terrified that the creature in front of me could tear my spine out in a millisecond and probably get bored halfway through.
His eyes narrow.
Before he can speak, I add, ‘I know, I know. Too much TV.’
His nostrils flare again.
Then he steps back.
For a fraction of a second, stupid panic hits me. I wanted him away from me, and yet the moment he moves, the air feels colder. Emptier.
Then I feel it.
The same invisible pressure from the Vaults. The same thick hush, as if sound is being swallowed before it can reach my ears. It crawls over my skin, pins me from the outside in, gravity suddenly picking sides.
My fingers go numb.
My lungs still work, technically, but each breath feels rationed. Like he’s gifting me just enough air not to suffocate.
No, no, no.
I try to jerk away and fail.
Panic flares, clean and brutal. I’ve been caged before. Hunted. Cornered. Held down by things with teeth and hands and ugly intentions. But this is worse because it’s invisible. Because it makes my own body betray me without leaving a mark.
His gaze tracks every shift in my face with that maddening, exact attention, and I hate him for how calm he looks, how composed, how effortless this is.
Valentin has decided I’m staying still. And the universe agrees.
My heart slams.
He can do anything he wants to me like this.
Including bite me. But he said he wouldn’t. And he can’t lie.
So this isn’t a trick. If he says he won’t feed, he won’t feed. Right?
Why the fuck am I clinging to that like comfort when I’m immobilised in my own home?
My eyes flick to his mouth, then away again, then back, because my brain is spiralling and my body is doing that traitorous thing where fear and heat share the same wiring.
He watches the cycle, the panic, the calculation, the ugly little hope that creeps in even when I try to stomp it out, and I get the sense he’s reading my question in my eyes the way he read me in that other room when the world went quiet and he leaned in like my mind was a book he was entitled to open.
His voice is softer when he speaks, which somehow makes it worse.
‘I told you last time that when we meet again,’ he says, each word lodged in bone, ‘I would enlighten you just how much I detest being interrupted mid-speech.’
A shiver goes through me that isn’t fear alone.
His eyes drop to my throat, then lift again. ‘I am not here to feed,’ he says, as if correcting the thought he sees on my face.
I try to swallow. The motion is clumsy because my muscles don’t fully belong to me. I manage a sound anyway, some strangled attempt at defiance.
‘Then what are you doing?’ I wheeze out.
His gaze lingers on my mouth with a frankness that should make me angry and instead makes me feel exposed. ‘I want to look at you.’
My breath catches.
‘Before I kiss you.’
My stomach flips hard enough to make my mind blank, then flood. A kiss is not nothing. Not with him. Not with whatever is threaded between us, tightening even when I run.
The air shifts. Then my arms lift.
They rise above my head as if invisible hands have seized my wrists and drawn them up, pinning them there.
Fuck.
My legs part next, slowly and inexorably.
Humiliation hits first. Then anger. Fear, sharp as broken glass, follows close behind.
He still hasn’t touched me.
That’s the worst part. My body is positioned like an offering while his hands remain at his sides, proving how little effort it takes to dominate me.
His gaze moves down the line of me, unhurried. I want to spit at him. Kick him. Do anything that reminds him I’m not his.
But my muscles stay locked in the posture he’s given me.
The belt of my robe loosens.
Then stops.
A punch of bewildering disappointment lances through me before I kill it dead.
‘You are beautiful,’ he says, the truth sounding as if it costs him. ‘Infuriatingly breathtaking.’
My throat tightens.
‘And you smell,’ he continues, each syllable clipped with precision, ‘like an invitation I did not request.’
Snark tries to claw up through the panic and fails.
He steps closer, and my skin prickles in anticipation even as my brain screams.
‘I can smell your essence,’ he says, eyes narrowing as if some part of me is offending his senses. ‘And yet you still smell… wrong.’
My pulse skitters.
‘What are you hiding, little hunter?’
The question is quiet. Intimate. Terrifying.
I yank at my arms, fury flaring. I try to force my legs closed and fail. I push every ounce of training and will through my body like electricity, battering the invisible restraints.
Nothing happens.
Then— One finger moves. It’s tiny. Almost nothing. But it shouts in my nerves.
Hope punches through the panic so hard it hurts.
I move another finger. Then my hand. A trembling, stubborn inch. My breath comes sharper because I’m doing it. I’m breaking through. I don’t know how or why, but I’m doing it.
His eyes widen a fraction, the only crack in his composure.
Good.
I force my wrist down. Force my other arm to follow, every muscle burning as if I’m pushing through deep water. My knees tremble, and I drag my legs back together by sheer spite.
The pressure resists. Then yields. Sound rushes back. Air thins. Gravity returns to impartial.
Valentin inhales sharply.
The surprise on his face is real enough to satisfy something petty in me even as I sway, limbs unsteady, body reacting to the release like it’s recovering from a fall.
‘Extraordinary,’ he mutters, his voice hoarse with reluctant admiration. ‘Brava, little hunter. Not even centuries-old creatures are capable of releasing themselves from a feeding thrall.’
‘Fuck. You.’ Another unladylike wheeze.
His mouth tics.
Then, without warning, the rest of his hold dissolves.
I stumble.
For one ugly second, I think he’ll let me hit the floor and watch me crawl through the glass.
He doesn’t.
He catches me with inhuman speed, one arm bracing my waist, the other hand coming up to my face. More rough than gentle. His fingers span my jaw as if he’s already memorised the shape.
He tilts my face up, forcing my eyes to his.
The silver is fully expanded now, bright and merciless, the truth of him spilling into the open.
‘I will take my kiss now, I think.’