“Do you smell it?” I ask.
He shakes his head and blinks in confusion. “Smell what?”
I dare a glance at his finger, the slash of crimson there, the tiny puddle of blood cupped in his palm. “Your blood.”
“Of course. I can smell blood from here to the barracks on a clear day. This is right under my nose.”
“I can smell it, too,” I reply. “I’ve been able to smell it ever since the grove. It has something to do with the curse.”
His face goes so still it could be chiseled from stone. “How do you know this?”
I hand him the cloth and move to the chair. Making sure there’s no glass on the cushion, I take a seat, my head light from that relentless, heady scent.
“The stew I fed you today is Mari’s special recipe. She uses pork blood to enrich the gravy. After eating it, I felt so much better. I wasn’t completely well or recovered, as I still experienced some weakness, but I didn’t feel like I was nearing death either.”
A moment passes. “And you fed that stew to me to see if I had any response.”
He turns on his heel to face me, using his uninjured hand to grip the cloth. His finger is still exposed and bleeding, though, his blood’s aroma following me.
“And then there’s the kiss,” he goes on, piecing things together. “The roughness. You wanted my fang to cut you. So I’d taste your blood.”
I look up at him, feeling overwhelmed and a bit guilty when I stare into his eyes. “You’ve lost your ability to sift. I planned to test my theory by having you try to carry us to the thermal pool at the lighthouse tonight. To see if blood could restore your ability.” I lower my eyes to his finger. “But you’re not healing. Is that signal enough that blood doesn’t work for you like it has for me?”
Again, he blinks. Like he’s still absorbing everything I’ve just said. “I don’t know. What are you feeling right now?”
I swallow hard against a sudden dryness in my mouth. “I smell your blood, and I taste it. It’s actually making me miserable.”
“What is? The smell or—”
“The craving.” The words rush from me on a breath, and I crumple under the weight of the need inside me.“The craving.”
For too many seconds, it seems I’ve taken him completely off guard. But then he kneels before me. The God of the North, on his knees at my feet.
Wordless, he sets the bloody cloth on the floor and lifts his finger to my mouth.
“Suck,” he orders.
My heart beats a swift tattoo against my ribs as I search his eyes. I think to resist, that this is the vilest thing that can possibly be shared between two beings. But that thought flutters away the moment he pushes his finger between my lips, between my teeth, and all that lush, warm red floods my tongue, mingled with the salt of his skin.
I suck from that tiny wound as though I’ve been thirsting for a hundred years, and Neri is my oasis. My eyes even close of their own volition, and I become lost to this.To him.
There’s a taste I can’t place. Something sparkling and bright, better than the richest red wine. Better than anything I’ve ever tasted in all my life. It tastes like power and sex and magick and victory, all contained in one plump drop of Neri’s blood.
He rises from his haunches and uses his weight to push me back in the chair, his size to spread my knees. Watching me closely, he leans onto the wooden arm, his free hand gripping one of the spindles behind me as he begins pumping his finger in and out of my mouth.
“There you go,” he whispers as I suck with every retreat. Groan with each advance. “Good girl.”
It takes a moment for me to realize that he’s pressing his thumbnail into the crease of his finger to force more blood to the tip. Blood that coats my tongue and makes me dizzy with want.
He’s feeding me.
Some part of my brain revolts and desperately wants to pull away. But I can’t. A frenzy is building deep inside me. One that wants this. Needs this. Must have this.
I reach for the ruched fabric of my bodice just as I had earlier today and tug the fabric down, exposing my breast. Neri is on me in a split second, his hot mouth closing over my aching peak, torturing me with sinful swirls and sensual bites. All the while, he keeps fucking my mouth with his finger, the thin stream of blood enough to satiate one need though it creates another.
Ready to succumb to this temptation, I pull free and lift his face to mine, kissing him even more passionately than before in the reading room. He groans into my mouth, and I have to wonder if that sound is for me or because he tastes blood.
I’m given an answer fairly quickly. “I need to fuck you, Nephele. I need to claim. I need to see my cum dripping from you.”
