Chapter 9 #2
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” she snapped, pushing roughly at my chest, sending my back against the island counter. “You don’t want me here, fine. But don’t you fucking dare tell me what I can or can’t do.”
“Cast the whore away!” the voices hissed as my hand snapped around Lola’s wrist, her grip on the kitchen knife tightening. “Don’t! Don’t touch her! Poisonous, burning blood!” they repeated, mixing with Arc’s command, “Swear to me that you’ll ignore your damn feelings and look after her.”
“Don’t go,” I choked, eyes snapping shut and teeth grinding from all the yelling and hissing in my head. From her enticing scent invading my lungs. “I’m sorry. I-I didn’t mean to threaten you, I—”
“What the Hell is happening right now?” she asked, trying to pull her arm free, her lack of energy obvious from the weak attempts.
“You can’t get rid of us,” the cruel voices hissed, laughing. “Stay away from her!”
“I need blood,” I said at last. The voices were scared.
They knew her blood was silencing them. They always knew.
That had to be the reason they drove me insane from the moment she arrived.
It had to be because she was my mate. “I need—” I groaned, feeling like claws were scratching against the inside of my skull.
“Why did you come to the house?” she asked, her voice turning frantic. “The blood bank is just a couple of blocks—’
“I need your blood. The voices, they’re—they’re back and you…Your blood quiets them. It’s—”
“What are you talking about?”
When I opened my eyes, my free hand was in the back of her head, fingers sliding between the soft blonde strands. Her wide eyes looked at me, terrified, the expression making the purple-ish circle under them appear deeper and darker.
But those parted lips and shallow breath, half an inch away from mine?
They told a different story. The story that no matter how much she despised me, she was losing the same battle with her own pheromones.
Was there a voice whispering in her head too?
Something dark, something sinful, telling her that I could solve all her problems right about now?
Like the voices in mine were trying to push me away from her?
“Stab me if I go too far.”
My lips were on her with a deep satisfied rumble, muffling my last word, my hand guiding her head, her lips against my own.
Her knees buckled under her weight but I let go of her wrist to lift her up.
She was quick to circle my waist with her legs, holding my shoulder while her other arm dangled to the side, her grip on the knife barely able to keep it in her hand.
The voices screeched, clawing inside my head like they were trying to get out, to flee, away from her, from her careful touch, enticing smell, soft moans…
She used her legs to grind herself against me and climb higher on my body. I adjusted my hold, gripping her ass as she tilted her head to the side, offering me her neck.
“Fuck, I—” Panic seized me. Just like last time, my own mind was eager to have a taste, for me to sink my teeth into her flesh and pull, lick and savor the sweet dark liquid.
But the voices—the voices are lying, I reminded myself, inching closer, sliding my tongue against her skin, looking for where the pulse was the strongest. The voices are just trying to save themselves. To keep me from my mate.
“Carter,” she breathed out in my ear, sliding her own hand in my hair to pull me closer. “Do it.”
“Temptress! Don’t listen, don’t do it! Sinner!”
“Carter,” Lola repeated, a desperate edge to her voice as her fingers tightened in the back of my head. Was she as eager for me as I was for her? For her blood? Her body and her missing soul? “Please.”
A shiver climbed up my spine and my mind blanked as my teeth finally pierced the skin, dark liquid pouring out from the two puncture wounds straight into my mouth.
I made sure to not lose a single drop, unable to help the animalistic growl coming out of my throat as I pulled more of her delicious blood.
A warm, sweet, tangy citrus taste covered my tongue.
Her head fell backward as she grinded her core against my lower stomach, her moans turning to whimpers as she chased a feeling I still struggled to comprehend but craved just as much.
My mind went quiet, the voices gone without the same fight from last time. Or maybe they did, but I couldn’t hear them over the pleasant buzzing in my ears as I kept drinking, feeling my cock pressing even harder against the buttons of my jeans.
When I slid my tongue one last time against her skin with a satisfied moan, her tight muscles turned limp in my arms, her hand dropping the knife that landed on the floor with a loud clunk.
My head was back to being blissfully clear, the dreadful voices that had been plaguing me for over a century once again gone.
If I had any doubts before, it was obvious now; Lola’s blood tuned them out.
Because she was my mate, or for some other unknown reason, it acted as some kind of poison.
Delightful in taste for me, toxic for the parasites hissing at me in my mind.
Now I understood why the voices kept trying to steer me away from her. They were scared. They knew what she could do to them, how she could help me get rid of their influence.
“Thank you,” I whispered in her hair, dropping a small kiss on her temple. She shivered, but didn’t answer. Her pheromones made her smell like citrus and honey, and the scent got somehow more intense in the last minutes. “Are you okay?” I asked, worried I took too much, too fast.
She remained silent, letting out a barely audible whimper.
My heart leaped in my throat as I loosened my hold, letting her slide down until she softly reached the floor.
“Lola?” I kneeled next to her, grabbing at her shoulder to look at her face. She had gone even paler, her eyes and cheeks more sunken. “Fuck! Lola? Lola!”