Idowant to understand.
Even if it destroys me.
Chapter Six
CRAVE
The Next Night
Ishouldstay 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.
Takeher.
Tasteher.
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.
