Chapter Six
––––––––
Vex
A soft thrum pulses through the wall, Tessa’s heartbeat, unmistakable and maddening.
That’s the problem with vampire senses, they don’t come with an off switch. Every sound, every scent, every minute shift in the air registers with crystal clarity. And right now, standing outside Tessa’s door at four in the fucking morning, I’m drowning in her.
The soft rustle of sheets as she shifts in her sleep. The catch in her breath when she dreams. The racing thrum of her pulse when nightmares pull her under. Each sound drives into me like a spike, demanding I go to her, protect her, claim her.
I don’t.
Instead, I lean against the wall opposite her door, arms crossed, eyes tracking every shadow in the hallway.
This is where I’ve spent every night since she arrived at the clubhouse.
Close enough to reach her in seconds if something comes through.
Close enough to hear every damn thing that happens in her room.
Too close.
The mark on her shoulder calls to me in ways I don’t fully understand.
It’s not just the ice-devourer’s sigil, it’s something older, something that resonates with the vampire in me on a frequency that makes my teeth ache.
Prophet says it’s tied to ancient magic, to bloodlines and prophecies older than Christ. All I know is, being near Tessa sets every instinct I have on fire.
Rule number one: Never feed from Tessa.
I’ve repeated it to myself a thousand times.
Ten thousand. It doesn’t matter. My fangs still ache whenever she’s close, my mouth still floods with venom at the thought of tasting her.
Not only her blood, though fuck, I can smell how sweet it would be but her.
Her fear, her anger, her arousal. Every emotion has a flavor, and I want to drown in hers.
Rule number two: Never touch more than necessary.
I broke that one tonight. My hands on her waist, her body pressed against mine, her pulse thundering beneath skin so warm it burned. I can still feel the echo of it in my palms, the way she fit against me like she was made for it. Like she was mine.
Rule number three: Never fully claim her.
That’s the big one. The one I can’t break, no matter how much the monster inside me howls for it.
Because claiming Tessa would destroy her.
Edinburgh, 1347
I wasn’t always a monster.
Once, I was Ezekiel Black, youngest son of a merchant family, too poor to matter and too proud to admit it. I was twenty-three years old the night I died, walking home drunk from a tavern, singing off-key and thinking about the barmaid who’d smiled at me.
I didn’t see the woman in the alley.
Didn’t hear her move.
One second I was alone, the next her hand was around my throat, lifting me off my feet as though I weighed nothing. Her eyes glowed white in the darkness, the same white mine glow now when the hunger takes over, and when she smiled, her fangs caught the moonlight.
“You’ll do,” she said.
Then she tore my throat open.
The turning was agony. Three days of fever and hallucinations, my body dying and remaking itself cell by cell. When I woke, everything was different. Sharper. Colder. Hungrier.
She was there when I opened my eyes. Margaux. My sire. Beautiful, cruel and utterly inhuman.
“Welcome to eternity,” she purred, running one finger down my cheek. “Now, let me teach you what you are.”
What I was, I learned quickly, was a predator.
Vampires don’t just drink blood, we feed on emotion, on fear, on the rush of adrenaline in prey that knows it’s going to die.
The first time I killed, I was so far gone in bloodlust I didn’t realize what I’d done until I was standing over the body of a young woman who’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
She looked like my sister.
I ran.
Margaux found me three days later, half-mad with hunger and self-loathing, hiding in a cemetery like some Gothic fucking cliché.
“You’re soft,” she said, disgust dripping from every word. “You’ll never survive if you can’t control yourself.”
“Then teach me,” I snarled.
And she did.
For fifty years, Margaux trained me to be what she wanted: a weapon. She taught me to read auras, to taste emotion on the air, to hunt without mercy. Margaux taught me love was a weakness, that attachment was death, that vampires were meant to be alone.
She also taught me what happened when you broke the rules.
I watched her drain a young man she’d claimed as a lover, watched the light die in his eyes as she took everything from him, his blood, his will, his life.
When she finally let him fall, she turned to me with blood on her lips and said, “Never claim a human unless you’re willing to kill them. We always take too much.”
I believed her.
Until I didn’t.
Her name was Catherine.
1897, San Francisco. She was a schoolteacher with soft brown eyes and a laugh that made me feel almost human. I didn’t mean to fall for her. Didn’t mean to let her into the carefully constructed cage I’d built around what was left of my humanity.
But she saw me.
Not the monster. Not the predator. Me.
“I know what you are,” she whispered one night, her hand on my cheek. “And I don’t care.”
I should have run. Should have vanished into the night and never looked back.
Instead, I kissed her.
And then I claimed her.
It started slow, small tastes when we made love, just enough to dull the hunger without hurting her. She was willing, even eager, and I convinced myself I had it under control. That I could be with her without destroying her.
I was wrong.
The problem with blood bonds is they’re cumulative. Every time I fed from her, the connection deepened. I could feel her emotions bleeding into mine, could sense her heartbeat even when we were apart. And the more I took, the more I needed.
Six months after I claimed her, Catherine was dying.
She didn’t blame me. Even as her body wasted away, even as the life drained from her eyes, she smiled at me and said, “It was worth it.”
Then she died in my arms.
I buried her in a cemetery overlooking the bay and swore I would never claim another human as long as I lived. Never let myself get close enough to hurt someone I cared about. Never, ever, let the monster win.
A sound from Tessa’s room snaps me back to the present.
Not distress. Something else.
Her heartbeat spikes, fast and erratic. Her breathing quickens, shallow gasps that I feel in my own chest through some phantom connection that has no business existing. Then—
A soft moan.
Oh, fuck.
My eyes go white before I can stop them, predator instincts roaring to life.
Every muscle in my body locks tight as I fight the urge to break down that door and finish what we started downstairs.
Because I know what that sound means. Know what she’s doing in there, alone in the dark with her hand between her thighs.
She’s thinking about me.
The scent of her arousal seeps through the gap under the door, honey, heat and something uniquely Tessa, and it hits me like a physical blow. My fangs drop fully, venom flooding my mouth. My hands clench into fists hard enough that my nails draw blood from my palms.
Don’t. Don’t you fucking dare.
But the fantasy is already playing out in my mind, vivid and brutal and so real I can almost taste it.
Fantasy
I don’t knock.
The door shatters under my hand, wood splintering like paper, and then I’m across the room in a heartbeat. Tessa gasps, tries to pull her hands away, but I catch her wrists and pin them above her head.
“Don’t stop,” I growl, my voice rough and barely human. “You started this. Now finish it.”
Her eyes are wide, pupils blown with arousal and fear, and the combination makes me want to devour her whole. I can see her pulse jumping in her throat, can smell the slick heat between her thighs, can taste her desire on the air like wine.
“Vex—”
“Quiet.”
I slide my free hand beneath the waistband of her pants, replacing her fingers with mine. She’s so wet it’s obscene, and when I circle her clit, she arches off the bed with a broken moan that goes straight to my cock.
“This is mine,” I tell her, working her with ruthless precision. “Your pleasure, your fear, your fucking heartbeat all of it belongs to me. Say it.”
“Yours,” she gasps, and the word shatters something inside me.
I drop my head to her throat, fangs scraping her pulse, and she doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t scream. Just tilts her head to give me better access, offering herself like a sacrifice.
“Do it,” she whispers. “I want—”
I bite.
The first pull of her blood is ecstasy. She tastes like sunlight and cinnamon and every good thing I’ve ever denied myself, and I can feel her orgasm building through the connection, feel every spike of pleasure as though it’s my own.
My fingers work her faster, harder, driving her toward the edge while I drink her down in long, greedy pulls.
When she comes, it’s with my name on her lips and my venom in her veins, and the bond that snaps into place between us is so powerful it feels like being struck by lightning.
She’s mine.
Mine to protect. Mine to claim. Mine to devour.
And when I finally lift my head, blood dripping from my fangs, she doesn’t look afraid.
She looks hungry.
“More,” she breathes.
So, I give her more.
I strip her sleep pants off in one smooth motion, spread her thighs wide, and bury my face between them.
Her taste is even better here, salt, musk and that addictive sweetness of hers that makes my head spin.
I work her with my tongue, my fingers, my fangs scraping teasingly close to her femoral artery, and she writhes beneath me like she’s trying to crawl out of her own skin.
“Vex, please—”
“Please what?” I lift my head just enough to meet her eyes. “Tell me what you want.”
“You,” she gasps. “I want you inside me. I want—”