I expected him to growl again or perhaps to look at me with disgust. But he only nodded solemnly and lifted his thumb to his mouth, biting through the pad. It was with that same gentleness that he smoothed his blood across the bite wound and it closed a heartbeat later. I could only stare dumbfounded as he leaned down and pressed a kiss to the mark. He ran his tongue across the scar, leaving more blood in its wake and wiping away any remnant of Lord Durham’s bite.
“Lilith,” Lord Azad murmured, his eyes sliding up to meet mine. “Will you draw up the necessary documents for Mademoiselle Valois to become my exclusive blood giver?”
Chapter Twenty
The years I’d walked this earth were so plentiful I’d lost count along the way. But for the first time in my cursed existence, I was grateful for the unending millennia I’d been alive. Because the snarling, ripping part of the mating bond I’d pushed deep inside my chest was rattling at the bars, trying to find a way out.
Adrienne smelled like the nameless vampire who had drunk from her.
Never had I thought she would return to Risqeu, which was a shortcoming of my own. I’d assumed she would stay at Jules’ townhome with Lilith, that perhaps the den would close for a few nights. But I should have known better.
Lilith hesitated on the threshold of Adrienne’s parlor, waiting for her friend to give some sort of inclination of agreement. But my mate only stared at me, her narrow shoulders trembling and blue eyes crystalline with tears she had yet to shed. I ran the back of my hand across her cheek, wishing she would let me in.
“Give us a moment, Lilith,” I said.
Her retreating footsteps were swallowed by the curtain as it closed.
“Are you angry?” Adrienne’s breathing accelerated, her heartbeat picking up rapidly.
I rose, sat on the settee and gathered her into my lap. “I am not angry with you, little bird.”
The mating bond quieted at the touch of her skin on mine, even though my fangs ached to sink into her throat and wash away any other trace of the immortal who had drunk from her.
“I cannot quit my job,” she whispered. “My family…they rely on me.”
The urge to offer her any amount ofoyistafor her family was on the tip of my tongue. I would buy them an entire village if it meant she never returned to these rooms. But I knew what her response would be, how she’d shrink away from any offering of assistance. We might have been mates but that did not mean she trusted me. It was just as Jules had said.
“You will not quit your job then.” She drew back and I smoothed the space between her brows with my thumb. “But do me the honor of being my exclusive giver. Allow me to care for you and your family in that way.”
She traced the outline of one gold button on my waistcoat. “It does not feel right.”
My muscles locked into place and I reached toward her with my magic. Though I found only a thin barrier between her mind and mine, I did not break it. I took a deep breath, dipping my chin to read her expression. “What does not feel right?”
Her lips pressed into a firm line. “Being the only one you drink from. Surely you would want to have others.”
Part of me wanted to laugh even as blood tears stung my nose and tinted my vision red. I pressed a knuckle beneath her chin, drawing her face up to mine. Her exhaustion was written all over her face, carved into translucent skin beneath her eyes. It was not only because of what had just come to pass, I realized. She had said her family relied on her and I had a hunch that it went deeper even than that.
Who cares for you, my heart?I wanted to ask.
But to ask her would only push her farther from me, and to force her into the life I wanted would be a cruelty. So, I would endeavor to be honest with her, to care for her, to see to her every desire and whim, but I would not push her. In time she would see that she could trust me with her heart and with the bond.
I leaned down and brushed my mouth against hers. She chased my lips and it made mine curve into a smile. Soft, so soft, like the brush of a petal in the noonday sun.
“There is no other but you,” I breathed.
And how true those words were. Never would I drink from another, never would I desire another. Even before the bond was invoked it was her face I saw in the dawn and the dusk. When I sat at my pianoforte it was her heartbeat I used as a metronome. She was the question and the answer of my existence.
Everything. She waseverything.
Perhaps it was childish, but I kissed her again before she could respond, unable to bear it if she denied me. Her skin blazed beneath my palm as it slid across her throat, pulling the pin from her hair until it tumbled down her back. The soft press of her tongue against mine made a rumble begin in my chest and my cock gave one painful throb. I needed her, needed her so desperately I wondered if she could taste it.
It was a relief to know she needed me too. Adrienne pressed her thighs together, but it did nothing to stop the scent of her arousal from washing over us. I wrapped my hands around her waist, lifted and twisted her until her knees settled on either side of my hips. The fire of her center blazed against my cock and, without thought, I thrust up into that heat. We were separated by our clothes and yet the promise of the act was there. Her quiet little moan was music to my ears, followed by the tentative rocking of her hips.
And there, beneath it all, was the scent of the immortal who had drunk from her, as if they were an intruder in this room.
“Allow me to drink from you.”
Immediately she tilted her head to the side, that sweet offering of submission almost sending me tumbling over the edge. I gripped her hip in one hand, steadying her movements on my lap while I brushed back her hair with my other. Before, I’d drunk from her in the heat of the hunt, out of my mind with the instinct to claim, to fuck, to mate. Now I took a deep breath, brushing my lips across the pulse of her heart I knew better than my own.
