Zia squeezed his arm and offered a small smile. “Then I don’t have anything to worry about. So far you’ve been nothing but kind to me, even when I was caught doing something stupid.”
She brought her free hand up to brush away a stray curl. Staring at the collar of his sweater, she added, with no small amount of self-deprecation, “Besides, you graciously put up with my rambling. If you were really so bad, you would have told me to shut up the moment I started talking about shot silk roses.”
At some point they had stopped walking, but she didn’t notice it until Mr. Bounds gently slid her hand out from the crook of his elbow. Startled, she looked up to find him standing in front of her. A clawed thumb reached out to touch the divot in the center of her chin.
“I love it when you speak, Miss North.” A smile curved his mouth and crinkled the corners of his eyes. It was tiny, not even a true grin, but it rocked her world all the same. “If I had my way, I’d listen to you talk about roses all night.”
Zia felt the brush of his thumb against her chin — barely a whisper, but unmistakably there — and found herself swaying toward him. Magic prickled under her skin as heat built. The thrill of standing so close to a predator, a man who just admitted he was a criminal, mixed with the burn of desire, creating a potent cocktail that she had never experienced before.
She’d had boyfriends before. She’d even had good sex before. Nothing compared to the attraction she felt for this vampire she barely knew. It was in every beat of her heart, every breath in her lungs. It terrified her as much as it tantalized her.
What would someone like him — wealthy, powerful,dangerous —want with her? Nothing good. Nothing like what she wanted, certainly.
And yet… and yet when he pressed his thumb against the curve of her cheek and stared at her like that, it looked like he felt the same way. When he took a step closer, nearly banishing the distance between their bodies completely, Mr. Bounds looked like he wanted to bend his neck and sip from her lips like a parched man drinks from a well.
Unable to stop herself, words tumbled out of her mouth. “I… I didn’t know you liked roses that much.”
Mr. Bounds bent his head. The tip of his nose skimmed over her cheek as his palm slid down to cup the side of her throat. The pad of his thumb pressed lightly against her racing pulse. “Roses aren’t the part that interest me.”
The faintest scrape of fangs against the shell of her ear made her gasp.
Gods.
Zia felt her stomach drop. In its place, a vicious sort of desire expanded in a great, rolling wave. It crashed against her common sense with all the power of a tsunami. A sharp ache accompanied the sudden warmth between her thighs.
One tiny scrape of his fangs and it was like she was tugged under water, pulled toward him by an invisible current. She couldn’t fight it any more than she could tell her body to stop reacting to this man she barely knew.
Her back bowed, swaying her closer, until their chests brushed. Without thinking, she reached up to clutch his biceps, her fingers digging into the fine wool of his coat. “Mr. Bounds?”
A hot breath exploded over her skin. His voice was rough, strained, when he muttered, “I’m supposed to be coaxing you, but I am not good at it.”
Zia blinked. Surely she heard him wrong. “Coaxing me to… what?”
Mr. Bounds pulled back enough for her to see his tight expression when he said, “Coaxing you to want me.”
Zia stared at him for what felt like a long time, her mind trying over and over again to process what he said. Even when it felt like she managed it, she was certain she had misheard him. Desperate for clarification, she asked, “Want you for… what, exactly?”
His jaw flexed just before he made that clicking sound again. Fangs flashed in the lamplight, sending another nearly debilitating rush of heat straight to her cunt.
“I’m used to taking things — or buying them. I don’t dogentlewell. I don’t do patience well, either.” A wry expression briefly stole the heat from his gaze. “Atticus warned me that I might scare you off if I came on too strong, but it’s difficult changing your tactics when you’re as old as I am.”
She swallowed hard. “You… Are you saying you want to date me?”
“No.”
Hurt and a healthy dash of humiliation cut straight through her arousal.Shit!
Zia took half a step back as the blood drained from her face. “Oh, of course. I’m sorry— I shouldn’t have—”
Large hands closed over her hips, drawing her back until she was squeezed against him from chest to thigh. Mr. Bounds’s expression was dangerously forbidding when he bit out, “No, I don’t want to date you. I’ve spent a year watching you, waiting for you to look my way, Miss North. I am so far past wanting you, it feels like I’m going insane. I want to fuckingownyou.”
Electricity crackled down her spine.
It should have upset her. She knew that. No modern witch would let a vampire handle her like this, nor let him declare that he wanted toownher.
But her body didn’t care. It had spent the better part of a year craving a nearly unseen vampire, and now that it was in his presence, in his hands,it demanded she melt under the force of his raw hunger, that blisteringwant.
It wanted to be owned by him just as much as he wanted to own her.
