Luka pushed off the bar and zoomed toward me in a blur, using his vampire speed. My breath hitched in my throat as he was suddenly before me, nostrils inhaling my scent. “Shall we go into the bedroom?” he asked in the most tempting voice I’d ever heard.
Bedroom. Vampire. No.
God help me. Seeing him joke around with his friends made him seem so … normal, and I had to remind myself that he was a vampire, a Drake, no matter how different he seemed.
He was the enemy. Right?Right?
“Okay,” I squeaked.
He stepped across the room and then opened the bedroom door, gesturing that I go first. I walked over to the bed and then thought better of it, pivoting to the window which had a small, padded bench in front of it. Sitting down, I smoothed my dress and stared up at him.
He looked different, pale, eyes darkened. He was hungry, I realized.
“I’m … sorry if the one feeding every two days is … uncomfortable for you.” I felt bad now knowing that he was suffering because I didn’t do daily feedings.
He slowly stalked over to me and sat next to me. “I’ve had worse.”
That surprised me. “A Drake has gone hungry? I doubt that.” I laughed. The Drakes were the richest vampire family alive. They could afford a billion feeders around the clock.
His eyes grew even darker and narrowed to slits. “You don’t know anything about me, so stop pretending that you do.”
I reeled back as if he’d slapped me; anger pushed up inside of me so fast I felt like it was going to boil over at any moment. How dare he?Iwas the one keeping him alive.
“I know enough to know that I should have killed you when I had the chance,” I said, thinking of the story Maz told me the night she’d given me the assignment to kill Luka. He killed a woman ten years ago.
Was that hurt crossing his face? It was there for a moment and then gone, replaced by bitter anger. He turned to face me, eyes blazing yellow. “You hate it when anything makes me less of a demon in your eyes, don’t you?” He leaned closer to me so that our faces were mere inches from each other. “Well, I’ve got news for you, AspenRose. If God made you, he made me too.”
My jaw hung open at the blasphemous sentence he’d just said.If God made you, he made me too.
How dare he compare himself to me, an innocent human. How dare he sit so freaking close that I could smell his musky cologne and yummy vanilla chapstick.
“Vanilla,” I panted, losing track of my thoughts.
He frowned. “What?”
I shook myself, leaning forward to smell his lips. When I got a few centimeters from his mouth, he froze.
“You’re wearing vanilla chapstick. Interesting choice for a guy,” I teased, trying to shake some of this stupid tension with a joke. Why were we always fighting? Always hot and cold. Hadn’t I just decided in the elevator that God sent me to him? Why did I still want to kill him every time I saw him?
He looked at me with hungry eyes, his fangs distending past his bottom lip. “It’s Sage’s. My lips get chapped when I’m not fed properly,” he snapped.
Not fed properly, as if that wasmyfault. Ungrateful bastard!
“Everything about you repels me!” I growled, suddenly annoyed we’d even talked at all.
“Well, everything aboutyoulures me in!” he shouted back, anger running across his face.
“Then take your meal and be done!” I hurled at him, the words barely leaving my lips when he reached up and grabbed the back of my neck, pulling me onto his lap. One second I was sitting on the bench and the next I was in his arms, legs dangling over the side of his as he tipped my jaw up and sank his teeth into my neck. There was no time for me to direct him to drink from my wrist, because this was already happening and holy hell it felt so good I didn’t want him to stop.
A moan slipped from my lips as I reached out and grasped his bicep, letting my nails dig into the hard meat of his arm. He yanked my hair a little as he fisted it at the nape of my neck, and heat blossomed between my legs.
This wasn’t a feeding to keep someone alive. This was … sexual and wrong, right? He was … bad. So why did it feel so good? Why did he have to say that God made him and why had Sage told me he’d helped save the wolves and kill the evil vampire queen? This was too much. I couldn’t handle feeling this way about Luka. I pulled back from him, jumping up to stand, panting as I stared at his wild eyes and bloodstained lips.
“I think you got enough,” I squeaked. “And from now on, we need to hide the bite marks.”
Luka hadn’t moved, he just sat there like a statue, staring at me with glowing eyes. His tongue slowly trailed along his lips. “Oh, I can think of a dozen other places to bite you.”
My stomach dropped and a pulse pounded between my legs.
