“Yes,” she replied. But I didn’t know her enough to know if she was lying to me. I got the sense that she was the kind of person to please others over herself. “I…”
“You?” I prompted when she trailed off.
“I didn’t expect it to be like that,” she answered. Her eyes were wide. She swallowed hard at the confession, and I knew what she was referring too. The feeding had been sexual. I’d tasted her orgasm on my tongue, laced with her blood, little pinpricks of pleasure sliding down my throat.
My cock was still hard, but I was too distracted to pay much attention to it. There were no signs of it softening.
“Is it always like that?” she asked.
“Sometimes,” I answered, though it was a partial lie. Yes, a feedingwaslike that…if it was with a blood mate.
Every feeding inmylife, however? However many countlessfeedings I’d taken, whether they’d been from blood givers or lovers?
Never had it been likethat. That had been a completely new experience, one only she—this keeper, who’d barreled into my life—could give me.
And that thought dropped like a heavy stone in my belly. I wasn’t happy about it. Not at all. Because it made me need her. It made her irreplaceable. I didn’t know if I could go back to a normal feeding again after tasting her blood. Everyone else would taste like ash on my tongue, tasteless and repellant.
What have I done?I thought, that familiar resignation tunneling deeply, carving pathways into my bones, whittling them down.
“Oh, did I do that?” she asked next, her voice soft and weak as she reached forward. I nearly flinched away from her touch, but she traced the seam on my arm where my sleeve had ripped. My body was pressing against the material of my clothes, too tightly restricted. I felt like I was being suffocated.
That hellish restlessness I’d felt for the last two years had been assuaged. I felt relief like no other.
And yet it had been replaced by something even more devilish.
This unfathomable need was like a tether, shackling and chaining me to a female I barely knew. A keeper in my own household. A human female, who didn’t bear a drop of noble blood in her veins.
I would’ve never noticed her if her scent, her blood hadn’t called to me.
A knock at the door saved me from answering. My movements were jerky when I stood and went to answer it.
Maudoric’s eyes went wide when she saw me. She would be able to see every difference in me. She’d known me since I’d been a boy. Her eyes catalogued my enlarged state, the strain againstmy clothes. In her hands was a silver tray, laden with food and, most importantly, a cup of steamingbaanyetea, hot and thick.
“Kyzaire,” she greeted, inclining her head as I took the tray from her hands. Even her instincts were telling her to tread carefully. I was sated on mykyrana’s blood—for now—but we’d always been warned that the beginnings of a blood bond were often…unpredictable. “Anything else you require tonight?”
She couldn’t see Erina from this angle and especially not with my bulk blocking the majority of the room from view.
“That’ll be all,” I said, dismissing her for the night. If she thought my tone was gruff, she was wise enough not to comment on it, and I watched her disappear down the darkened hallway.
Closing the door, I returned to Erina, who watched me with her wide eyes. Now she looked worried.
“Areyouall right?” she asked.
She was handling this much, much better than I was, and I’d taken a lot of her blood.
“Fine,” I answered, setting down the tray on the small table next to her chair. “Eat. Drink thebaanye. You need your strength.”
It went quiet as Erina reached for her tea, sipping on it. I saw the look of distaste flash across her features when the thickness of thebaanyehit her. But her next sip was more like a gulp.
She drained it before she reached for the tray. I was tracking her movements, listening to her heartbeat. There was a need in me rising again, eager for more of her taste. Itdidfeel like a foreign beast had just come alive within me. I felt unfamiliar in my own skin, and that made my temper snap.
“I have to go,” I told her abruptly, already heading to the balcony.
“What?”
“Finish eating. And then rest. I won’t be back tonight.”
I needed to get out of here. My clothes felt too constricting. The warmth in the room was too hot. Her presence both brought me relief and made me feel on edge, like I was a moment awayfrom losing myself again. Losing myself in her taste and the way she felt against me as she came so sweetly.
