Page 67 of Nightshade

My brow must’ve puckered, because Leo reached up and smoothed his finger between my eyes, stretching up toward my forehead. With a sigh, I let my eyes flutter shut.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Leo went on quietly, “I didn’t like it.”

I tried not to flinch, to wonder what I’d looked like after draining that witch dry.

But then he laughed, and the sound was soft and sweet, and I couldn’t help looking down at him properly.

He sat up and wrapped his arm around my waist so that when I settled in his lap, we were chest to chest.

“If I had my way,” he rumbled, “you’d always feed from me.”

“What?” I clung to him, waves of misunderstanding threatening to unmoor me. There was no way that he really meant that, no way that he would actually enjoy tomorrow what he teased about today.

But he didn’t look the slightest bit unsteady. Rather, he smiled at me and pulled my bottom lip between his teeth.

“Yeah. It’s sexy. I like having you close like that. I get it’d probably be boring, like if I tried to eat nothing but burgers, but⁠—”

I shook my head fast. “Nothing like burgers,” I whispered, my throat thick. I wasn’t even entirely sure what burgers were, but I needed him to understand that he was nothing like any food. He was so much more than that.

“Hey, hey—” His palm closed over my cheek. That pressure allowed me to feel how my lips trembled, and I pressed them together hard to try and get them to stop. “We’re naked. I’m not supposed to make you sad when we’re naked.”

A weak laugh bubbled out of me. “Not sad,” I promised.

I didn’t know what I was, but I wasn’t sad. Maybe caught somewhere between disbelief and desire, and—and maybe staggered by the sheer overwhelm of thinking that after so long of going without, there was someone who wanted to give himself to me. So much of himself.

“You really want me to?” I croaked.

He nodded. “Really.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You haven’t yet.”

“And you’ll stop me if I do?”

I remembered the first time I’d felt the tear of Ivan’s fangs. I didn’t want to be anything like him. Leo deserved so much better than that. I never wanted to scare him or hurt him. Never.

“I swear,” Leo promised, “if you ever do anything that’s too much for me, I’ll say something.”

“And I’ll stop.”

Leo’s thumb pressed against the corner of my mouth and his smile was guileless. “I know.”

How could he trust me like that? There was something wrong with him.

Or maybe, more terrifyingly, there’d never been all that much wrong with me, and I just hadn’t seen that until Leo.

“You’re sure?”

He nodded, turning his head.

I kept my arms around him, holding him upright because I was afraid to make a mess of his sheets and leave ruby-red evidence of my monstrosity across the bed he’d been kind enough to share with me.

He didn’t even flinch when I leaned toward him, but that was just as well. At first, I only kissed his neck, waiting for the warmth to bloom under my lips. I traced my tongue across his skin and sucked until he moaned. He clutched me closer still, truly as unafraid as he claimed to be.

At the first scrape of my fang, I swear he whimpered.

I let it sink in, breaking the barrier. His blood filled my mouth, hot and pulsing with life. With a groan of my own, I lost myself in its song—the pulse against my lips, the crescendo when I sucked him deeper.