Chapter Six
CRAVE
The Next Night
I should stay away from her.
Every instinct I’ve honed over millennia screams Sloane is dangerous—not to me, but to herself.
The way her hands glow crimson-gold in the dark, the way her blood hums beneath her skin when I’m near, the way she looks at me like I’m both answer and question wrapped in leather and lies.
I should send her home and never let her darken my doorstep again.
But when she walks through the entrance of Sins & Spirits tonight, wearing jeans and a simple black T-shirt that makes her look devastatingly normal, devastatingly human, I know I won’t.
I can’t.
The Bloodfire inside me recognizes her the moment she crosses the threshold. It surges, hot and demanding, whispering in a voice that sounds disturbingly like my own.
Mine.
Take her.
Taste her.
I force it down, crushing it beneath centuries of control. But it’s harder tonight than it was yesterday. And yesterday was harder than the day before.
She’s changing me.
Or maybe she’s reminding me of what I used to be.
Sloane spots me in my corner booth and smiles.
It’s tentative but real. Her smile does something to my chest I don’t have words for.
Something that has nothing to do with hunger and everything to do with the terrifying possibility that immortality might not be as empty as I’ve convinced myself it is.
“Hey,” she says, sliding into the seat across from me. “Thought you might be tired of seeing me by now.”
“Not possible,” I tell her, and I mean it more than she knows.
Her cheeks flush, another reminder of her mortality, her fragility. The blood rushing beneath her delicate skin, warm and alive, and calling to me with the pull of a siren song I’m not supposed to hear anymore.
Control.
“Want to get out of here?” The words leave my mouth before my brain catches up. “Take a ride. Clear your head.”
Her eyes widen. “On your motorcycle?”
“Unless you’d prefer to walk.”
She laughs, and the sound loosens something tight in my chest. “I’ve never been on a bike before… I’ve seen a lot of shit in the ER when it comes to two wheels.”
“But you’ve never been on a bike with me gripping the handlebars. Trust me… I won’t let anything hurt you.” I stand, offering my hand.
She hesitates for a moment but then takes it.
The moment our skin connects, heat floods through me. Not the warm hunger of my Bloodfire, but something more intense. Something that feels dangerously close to life. Her pupils dilate, her breath catches, and I see it again, that flash of crimson-gold deep in her hazel eyes.
What are you, Sloane?
But I don’t ask. Not yet.
Outside, the night air is crisp with the approach of winter. My Harley sits waiting, black chrome gleaming under streetlights. I grab the spare helmet from my saddlebag and hand it to her.
“Safety first,” I say with a smirk.
“Says the man who said nothing will hurt me, as if you’ve got superstrength and fortune-telling abilities to stop anything from happening to me,” she mutters, then freezes. “Sorry, I don’t know why I said that.”
Because she’s right.
Because somewhere deep down, some part of her knows there’s more to me than meets the eye.
“Hop on,” I tell her instead of acknowledging the accuracy of her statement. Well, except for the fortune-telling part, that’s more Eden, Oracle, and Reyna, each with their specialized foresight gifts.
She climbs on behind me, her arms wrapping around my waist, and I have to bite back the surge of Bloodfire that roars through me at her closeness.
She presses against my back, her heartbeat a steady drum I feel through my leather, her scent, clean skin, and something floral, filling my lungs with every unnecessary breath I take.
This is a mistake.
I already feel the tension building inside me, my blood beginning to bubble beneath the surface.
But I start the engine anyway.
We ride through the city, weaving through late-night traffic, the rumble of the bike drowning out thoughts I shouldn’t be thinking. Sloane’s grip tightens at first, nervous, but gradually she relaxes into the rhythm of the ride. She leans when I lean, and somehow she trusts me to keep her safe.
If only she knew how unsafe she really is.
I take us out of the downtown core, away from the noise and lights, toward hills that overlook the city.
There’s a spot I come to sometimes when the club gets too loud, when the weight of immortality presses too heavily.
A scenic overlook where you can see everything, the sprawl of humanity below, oblivious and fragile and somehow still beautiful.
I pull into the empty parking lot and kill the engine. Silence rushes in to fill the void, broken only by the distant hum of traffic and Sloane’s elevated breathing.
“Holy cow,” she murmurs while pulling off her helmet. Her hair is tousled, cheeks flushed from wind and adrenaline before she climbs off the bike. “This is…” She spins around, taking in the view. “This is incredible.”
I don’t look at the view, because I can’t stop looking at her.
I slide off my ride and follow, my body moving on autopilot while my mind screams warnings I’m determined to ignore. We walk to the railing at the edge of the overlook, and Sloane leans against it, staring out at the city lights spread below like fallen stars.
“Thank you,” she whispers softly, as if she doesn’t want to disturb the peace and quiet. “For this. For… everything. I know I’ve been coming around a lot, asking questions you can’t answer. You could have told me to leave. Most people would have.”
“You’re not most people, Sloane.”
She glances at me, and the moonlight catches in her eyes, turning them luminous. “Neither are you.” Sloane tilts her head slightly. “You promised me answers. Is that why we are here? Away from prying eyes and ears?”
“No. I come here sometimes to think.”
“But you are going to tell me what’s happening to me, aren’t you?”
She’s stubborn, I’ll give her that. And even though there is something about her I can’t quite put my finger on, I can’t have her digging into my world.
Into me, into the club. The thing about Original vampires is that we come with our own particular set of gifts, and one of mine is the gift of glamor, bending people’s minds, willing them to think and believe anything I will them to.
So I look deeply into her eyes, turning on the glamor to full force, my voice becoming hypnotic to her as I will my thoughts to be hers.
“The thing is, Sloane, I don’t know what you are, but I need to see if you do, so tell me…
do you know what you are?” I stare deeper into her eyes, willing her to tell me.
She jerks her head back like I just accused her of assassinating Kennedy. “I just fucking asked you that, are you telling me you don’t know?”
Widening my eyes, I try a different approach. I intensify the glamor and reshape my mind-bending. “You won’t remember this conversation… you will only remember us arriving. Do you understand?”
Sloane scowls at me like she is utterly confused. “No… are you having some kind of stroke?”
Interesting.
My glamor doesn’t work on her.
My glamor has never not worked before.
I don’t know what she is, but she is definitely something.
Frowning, I sigh. “Don’t mind me. I was just trying something.”
“Okay, weirdo.” She laughs, then glances back out to the view. “But can you please tell me what is happening to me?”
I roll my shoulders, now even more so unnerved by what she is. “There are rules.”
“But you promised.”
Begrudgingly, I nod. “I did. It’s complicated. Telling you what you want to know could put you in danger, and I don’t want that for you.”
At my admission, her face softens. The air between us thickens, charges with something electric. I should step back. I should put distance between us before I do something we’ll both regret. Instead, I move closer.
“Sloane…” My voice comes out rougher than intended, edged with the hunger I’m barely containing. “You should be careful around me.”
“Why?” She turns to face me fully, tilting her head back to meet my eyes. “Are you dangerous, some bad boy biker I need to be scared of? Or is it those who enforce these rules you keep mentioning?” She lets out an amused laugh.
Yes.
“More than you know.”
She exhales softly, stepping closer, dissolving the space between us, completely unaware she’s walking straight into the jaws of a beast. “Then why don’t I feel scared?
” She’s so close now I can count her heartbeats, each one a pulse of life slamming against my self-control, shaking loose instincts I’ve spent centuries burying.
“I should be, right? Standing in a dark parking lot with a man I barely know, hoping he can help me. But I’m not scared… I feel—”
“What?” I say, taking another step closer, my hand sliding out to rest on her hip.
“Alive.” The word is small, almost fragile. “For the first time in forever, I feel alive, Crave.”
Something inside me snaps, quiet and catastrophic.
I reach for Sloane, as if my hand moves before my mind does, cupping her face.
Her warmth burns against my cold skin, a contrast so violent it jolts through me like electricity.
She doesn’t flinch. She leans into it, her eyes fluttering shut, her pulse jumping beautifully at the base of her throat.
That throat. So sweet, exposed, and pulsing in invitation.
I lean in, meaning to kiss her, meaning to be human for once and pretend that desire alone is enough.
But my Bloodfire stirs.