My perfect muse, following my lead, dancing just for me.
Mine.
Her lids flutter, and she opens her mouth, seeming to hesitate. “I have a confession, too.”
I tilt my head to the side, twirling a wet length of honey hair around my finger. “About?”
“Rhordyndiddrink me.”
A violent jolt of jealousy almost shreds me in two, and my hand fists her sodden locks, jerking back her head.
Heart thumping, my narrowed gaze scours her untarnished neck for any sign I may have missed that the broody heathen ripped intomypretty flower. Scored her delicate skin with his monstrous maw.
All I find is smooth, untarnished perfection begging to be marked.
Bled.
She can’t be meaning the scar on her wrist. It’s too small to be made by a man such ashim.I always pictured her making that mark herself.
“Are you lying to me, Orlaith?” I swallow thickly, tapping her carotid. “There’s nothing more primal than drinking from right here. Nothing moredominatingthan pulling from such a vulnerable source.”
“He never drank from my neck,” she rasps, and I frown, wrestling with her boggling allegations that just don’t stack.
Nothing brings me closer to feeling like a God than when I’m latched onto a warm neck, listening to the slowingwhumpof a dying heart. Deciding between my voracious greed and withering mercy. Rhordyn may be mused by saving small, pathetic lives, but the same voracious hunger that sits inside my chest bestrides himtwofold.
If he drank from her, there’s no way he didn’t bite what’s mine.Somewhere.
Unless she’s playing me a fool …
“Where?”I growl into her ear, feeling her shudder against me.
If it’s her inner thigh—
Her eyes glisten with unshed tears. Slowly, she lifts her hand, boasting the tips of her fingers.
Tiny, pale dots mar them, barely noticeable even to my eyes.
“Needle pricks,” she whispers, and my heart stills. Eyes widen. Hers harden with unfathomable hurt—a look that punches through my chest and rocks my rotten core. “Every night for nineteen years I dripped myself into a crystal goblet and set my offering in a small wicket door, even though I knew not what he was.Whyhe needed it. Every night for nineteen years he climbed that tower and took, and took, andtook.”
My heart stills.
“Everynight?” I confirm, frown deepening. “Didyouever drink fromhim?”
A laugh bubbles in the back of her throat that’s beautifully unhinged. “Rhordyn? Bleed for me? Of course not. Not until I stabbed him through the heart,” she bites out, and I swear some of the light slips from her eyes as a shiver rakes through her delicate body.
Fuck.
I push closer, mind whirling as she shudders against me. “Petal—”
“I loved it,” she admits, and my blood runs hot when I see no lie in her open, aching eyes.
Luscious, shocking creature likes to bleed …
“Lovedh-him.”
I want to strangle the fractured whisper from existence the moment it leaves her lips.
I shove my hips forward, crushing her against the bars.
