“Do you feel it?” His voice was muffled against her dress as he kissed where he had bitten her, lips wet with her blood. “How your sweetness calls for me?”
7
ELIAS
Fuck.
Her blood danced on his tongue as though he were tasting salvation. It coursed through him, hot and sweet, flooding every hollow place that centuries of hunger had carved into him. It beckoned, teased, and tormented. Her very essence became a cruel melody he could not silence.
He wanted to tear deeper, to taste more, to drink until the fragile, fluttering creature in his hands went still. To take her wholly, utterly, until she was nothing but a memory drowned in him. Until she was a part of his very being. Until she were crying beneath him, begging him to stop.
It took every shred of restraint, every ragged thread of willpower to let go. He managed to pull back—barely. His lips, wet with her, dragged from her skin in aching reluctance.
The scent of her lingered. Her pulse still thundered in his ears, mocking him, calling him back. His jaw locked tight. He could feel the tremor in his own hands as he released her thighs, as though she were fire and he had scorched himself in reaching for her.
“Lamb…” The word rasped out of him, raw and unsteady. Not a taunt this time, not a sneer. A warning.
He had meant to toy with her—yes. To frighten her into obedience. To show her the edge of his teeth and watch her tremble. But this—this taste—had unraveled him.
He swallowed hard, savoring the trace of her that still coated his tongue, knowing he would never be rid of it.
He was still the monster his maker created.
I could kill her.
Penelope’s hands found Elias’ shoulders and just as soon, he swatted her touch away leaping back as though her skin had burned him. His body struck the piano, the impact forcing a cacophony of sound from the strings—every key erupting at once, a discordant scream that seemed to echo his own fractured restraint.
“Elias?” Penelope asked, the scent of her blood—her fear—suffocating him.
Releasing a breath, he forced a calm into his voice as he nodded his head. “Are you alright?” he asked, his eyes trailing down past the pale skin of her hands which were now stained in red, to where her fingers covered where he had bitten her. “Does it hurt?”
Penelope’s doe eyes held his gaze for a moment longer before flicking down to her thigh. She shrugged with an innocent ease as she looked back up. “Surprisingly, no.”
“Good,” he repeated, but the word was brittle, hollow. His fingers curled against the lacquered edge of the piano until the wood groaned beneath his grip.
Elias forced his gaze from the blood at her thigh back to the gleaming black curve of the piano. The strings still hummed faintly from where his body had struck it, the dissonant echo a taunt in the silence.
He swallowed, jaw tight, then lifted his eyes to her. “You owe me a lesson.”
Penelope blinked, startled by the sudden shift. “A lesson?”
“The piano,” he said, voice steadier now, almost cold. “Do you think I have forgotten already? You promised you would teach me.” He pushed off the instrument’s edge and straightened, as though by sheer force of will he could smooth the hunger that still prowled within him.
Her lips parted, uncertainty flickering across her face as she touched her thigh again. “Now?”
“Yes,” Elias replied without hesitation. His eyes burned into hers. “If my hands must be kept busy tonight, let it be with your keys. Not…” His gaze flickered down to where the blood still welled, and his voice broke. “Not there.”
The air between them thickened. For a heartbeat, she only stared at him, her chest rising and falling as her heartbeat echoed in his ears. Then, slowly, she nodded.
“Alright,” Penelope whispered before crossing the room to the bench.
Elias lingered where he stood, as though the distance between them were a chasm he dared not cross. Then, with deliberate slowness, he moved back toward her. His hands flexed at his sides, restless.
She slid aside on the bench, making room for him. He hesitated, then lowered himself beside her. The proximity was unbearable—her warmth against his cold frame, the faint perfume of her blood still coiling in the air. It was stupid—he was stupid, for thinking himself capable of any ounce of control around her. He was his makers worst creation, after all. Control was not his to enact.
“Place your hands here,” she murmured, gesturing to the keys.
He obeyed, the ivory cool beneath his fingertips. His hands hovered like talons over something far too delicate for him to touch.
