“I’m sitting down like you wanted,” she told him, using a tone she never would have gotten away with in the crypt. Adrenalineraced through her veins as she turned on her side to face the wall.
She blinked. All at once, her ire deflated like a popped corpse.Why am I challenging him? I’ve got nothing to be mad about. Not really.
Carmine understood that she was stressed and physically uncomfortable, but that had never made her so reckless or irritable before. It’d simply never been safe enough for her to risk it.
Oh.That embarrassed, crawly feeling washed over her.
She wished she’d had the forethought to change into the shirt he let her borrow. The matron had included two plain night dresses in her box of clothing, but she’d conveniently left them in the trailer. Atticus’s shirt was more comfortable and it smelled better, like something spicy and rich that made her mouth water.
“Dollface, if you talk to me, I can make whatever it is you’re upset about better.” There was a pause, then, quieter, “I’dliketo make it better.”
Her stomach cramped with hunger, and she was forced to swallow a mouthful of saliva as a wave of need hit her. It wasn’t just the need to eat, but an impulse that made the muscles of her jaw flex. It was the instinct tobite.
The madness that had possessed her to throw a fit was gone and replaced by another sort: the urge to be near the person who made her feelsafe.
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him. Carmine desperately wanted to believe that everything he said was true, that she could trust him to help her, but what if she was wrong? The risks terrified her. If she told him that she needed him to take her virginity, he’d see all her cards. The only bit of power over her own life she had left would vanish in an instant.
So she didn’t tell him. Instead, she reached beneath her pillow and retrieved her treasures. After sliding the scrunchyonto her wrist, she occupied herself with reading the instructions on the back of the eyeshadow palette and the ingredient list on the lip gloss tube.
She read it and she thought,How hard can seduction be, anyway?
Chapter Ten
Neither of themhad eaten much. Atticus knew Carmine needed to eat more than him, so she had to be starving. That pissed him off, especially when it was because she just wanted to be stubborn.
But that wasn’t the only reason for his temper. She wasn’t the sole source of his problems.Hehadn’t eaten, either, and that was very, very bad.
Atticus was strung tight as a bow. Even the fine muscles in his fingers were tense as he lowered the shades on the windows. He was hyper-aware of Carmine. She hadn’t spoken a word since she stormed off halfway through the night, but that only made himmorefocused on her.
It didn’t matter that the engine rumbled or the heating unit buzzed on the roof. He could still hear every single one of her breaths, every slight shift on the bed. His mouth watered at the taste of cherry in the air. As he drove, every one of his instincts screamed at him to pull over and do what biology demanded: feed and breed.
The need was so strong, he hadn’t been able to choke synth down. It tasted like ash compared to the sweet earthiness he knew was only a few feet away, tucked beneath thin sheets.
It was deeply, profoundly wrong for him to want her as bad as he did. Biology was fucking with him and so were the gods, probably. It was a great cosmic joke to lock him in a vehicle with someone so unattainable.
He couldn’t lay a hand on her, let alone a fang. He was the lowest sort of scum to be thinking of how good Carmine would taste, or how fucking beautiful those eyes would look when he thrust his cock inside her.
Atticus wanted to think he had good willpower. He’d been raised by Harlan Bounds. The man was all steel, and he’d taught Atticus to be the same way. Of course, with family things were different, but toprotecttheir family, they needed to be harder than their enemies.
He didn’t give in to impulse. He wasn’t someone who wastempted.He didn’t fuck around, and he didn’t take risks.
But he couldn’t swallow another mouthful of synth, and he was beginning to worry that it wasn’t the flavor that was the issue. He’d bought his favorite brand. There was no reason for it to taste so bad, even allowing for slight differences in batches.
Atticus had heard stories of how vampires could instinctively reject any blood that didn’t come from the potential anchor they’d fixed on, but if he thought too hard about that, he thought he might hand Carmine his gun and tell her to aim for his head.
She seemed soft and sweet, but he was pretty sure she’d do it.
It was deeply worrying how even that thought made him hard.
Stop thinking with your cock and figure out what’s wrong.
Left to stew in silence for hours, he couldn’t shake the vague memory of something Harlan said after he and Zia got together.“Once I saw her, synth never tasted the same.”
They were no Harlan and Zia, who’d been obsessed with each other since the moment they crossed paths. Those two weresoulmates. He and Carmine were just… stuck together. That was all it was.
Atticus wanted to fix whatever had upset her, but the idea of getting near her scared the shit out of him. He adjusted the shade again, making sure it completely covered the window, and tried not to dwell on the fact that he was now both a creep and a coward.
Turning toward the bed, he was tempted to ask her if she wanted to go for a walk. They could both use the fresh air, and sunrise wasn’t for a while yet. But then he remembered how she’d bolted last time, and the way she’d nearly smashed her face in when she tried to escape from the window. They’d been getting along, building trust, but after their fight, he didn’t want to take any risks. Until he could trust she wouldn’t do something reckless, they were both stuck in the RV.
