I clenched my jaw. “Believe what you want.”
“You act like this, you die, Samara.” His voice was low, predatory. “There’s no coming back a second time.”
I was never meant to be like this,I wanted to whine. “Are we done here?”
“Not even close, viper.”
I let out a beleaguered sigh. “There’s no point, Raphael.” Gods, I sounded pathetic even to my own ears. But I was so, so tired. Everything hurt.
So much for supernatural healing.
“Oh, but there is—the point is you’re choosing to be weak. This pathetic state you’re in? It’s no different from every other time you’ve denied yourself for no reason other than to prove to yourself you could.” He leaned closer. “Stop fighting what you are, Samara. Fight me, fight the world. But don’t torture yourself just because you can.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Blood, little viper. You’re starving. That’s why you’re weak today—exhausted.”
How could that be? Hadn’t I complied, albeit reluctantly? Every drop of blood was foul. I’d begun to assume it was my necromancer nature rejecting the vampirism.
Emotion rose in me, not anger, but something more like fear. But not of Raphael, not even cornered like this. “I’ve been drinking that wretched blood every day. I shouldn’t need any more.” But my fangs already ached and were getting worse every second that Raphael was near. Why was it always so much worse around him? I tried to pull away, nearly cutting myself on the blade at my chin.
In a flash, the blade was sheathed at his side, but Raphael didn’t let me go. His hands snapped to my wrists in a second, pinning them by my waist against the wall.
“But you do. It seems you need a more… potent source.”
I pulled helplessly against his grip. “I don’t want to take from an innocent.”
“That’s fine.”
My thrashing momentarily stopped. He’d given in far too easily.
“I’m the furthest thing you can get from an innocent.” He bent over my shoulder to rumble those words in my ear. The bastard knew exactly what he was doing, as the movement positioned his neck right in front of me and didn’t withdraw.
“I don’t want to drink from you,” I said, even as my fangs scraped my lip.
“Want is a funny thing. You don’t, but you do. You desperately do. But if you think you want this damned asceticism more, prove it. Push me off. Show me how your denial is your strength, not your downfall.”
It was hard to speak. The outlines of the veins in his neck were highlighted in the torchlight. They called to me, promising a sweetness nothing else could compare to. I tried to pull away once again, but I was weak.
I couldn’t overpower him. And gods forsake me, I didn’t want to.
“I don’t want to be a parasite, always taking from others,” I confessed.
“So don’t take from others. Take from me, little viper. Not an innocent, not a human. The worst of them all. The one who turned you. The one you curse in the night, who tore your humanity away and damned you with this existence.”
He made me like this.
The last of my control snapped.
I bit.
I buried my fangs in Raphael’s neck with ferocity that startled even me, but all that was chased away by bliss.
Like a perfectly cooled drink after days in the desert sun, his blood revived parts of me that I scarcely recognized. I swallowed, greedy for all I could drink. Raphael’s grip loosened on my arms, and I pulled them back, not to attack but to clutchhim closer. He raised a hand to my head, gently holding me in place while I sated the insatiable beast inside.
“So take it, Samara. It’s your due.”
I scarcely processed the words, drinking, drinking, drinking. Every swallow poured power in my veins. The fog that had surrounded me in the past weeks slowly ebbed away, but the heady feeling remained even as clarity returned.
