Page 29 of Red Masquerade

He sighed. “Really, Helena, there’s nothing to worry about.”

A laugh burst forth from my lips. “Nothing to worry about!”

Taking a step closer, he raised his hands. “Relax.”

He didn’t seem to care he was covered in blood, and cared equally how I felt about it. It was all over him, all over hismouth.

They drank blood. They killed and then drank the blood.

“You’re beginning to sound a lot like the guy you just scared away.” A hysterical giggle stalled in my throat. “You want me to come withyou? In there?”

“No, we’ll talk elsewhere.”

Of course. So he could have me to himself, no witnesses.

I hadn’t told Flora where I was.

I recoiled when he took another step closer. It wasn’t lost on me, how he gazed at me predatorily, how his dilated pupils found a spot on my neck. My tongue turned to sandpaper, my stomach rolling.

“I won’t say anything.” I swallowed. “Just let me leave.”

“Christ, Helena, you’re not being kidnapped.” He scoffed and lowered his hand. “Just let me explain.”

“Explain what?” I realized I had gripped my skirt with fists, the beading digging into my palms. “That you wanted me to walk into a den of monsters?”So you could kill me?

He rolled his eyes, his exasperation only increasing at the same level of my hysteria. “We are not monsters,” he said. The muscular planes of his chest, his pale skin, were exposed to the air, unmarred and lined in blood that was beginning to flake off.

“Then what are you?”

“I’ll explain everything. Just, please, Helena.” His hair was messy and tousled, like one of his lovers had run their fingers through it so many times.

Be smart.

If I indulged him, perhaps I’d leave safe and sound.

When I got out of here, if I made it out alive, with all the blood in my body untouched, I had to tell Flora. Had to warn her never to return to this mansion.

My tongue was dry against my teeth, but I nodded.

Sinclair’s shoulders relaxed immediately. “I promise. Just let me talk and you’ll be on your way.”

He turned to retreat down the hall. Expecting me to follow. And maybe he just knew I would, because even though my heart raced, I couldn’t understand what I’d seen—whathe’dbeen doing, why there was so much blood. I wanted to go home, to climb under my covers and shuck the evening off of me, to forget. To think it was all a bad dream, a nightmare.

Just like last time.

I’d wake up and everything I thought I’d seen would only be a dream.Likehisface.

But this was real. I wasn’t hallucinating, wasn’t already asleep.

One glass of champagne wasn’t enough to dream this up.

I waited until there was some distance between us before I followed him down the hall. He was truly naked under that robe, his bare feet silent against the polished, unblemished marble. Heat flushed up my neck, across my face, as the adrenaline coursing through me died down and those gyrating bodies flashed in my mind again.

It was devious, sinful, like nothing I would ever think up.

Sinclair led me to a door and held it open for me, motioning me inside. I met his eyes—those amber eyes, flashing with restraint—as I passed him. He had said I wasn’t being forced to stay, that I’d be let go. But his eyes followed me, a smirk splaying onhis lips, and I couldn’t calm my heart, because I knew what those teeth could do, how easily they could prick my flesh and drain me.

His stare felt perverse, wrong,inhuman.