Page 53 of Red Masquerade

We rounded a corner, and the only noise I could hear from the party came muffled through the windows, the echoes bouncing off the trees on his lawn. It sounded so far away, like we had the house to ourselves. He pulled me to a stop. “Look.”

At first, I saw only darkness, the window seemingly looking in on a lightless room. But as my eyes adjusted, I could see we looked in on a room—private quarters of sorts, because there were only two people I could see. A couple, strange to me, but not toeach other. They held each other in a lover’s embrace. My cheeks burned as I realized I was a voyeur to their pleasure.

“I need you to understand,” Adam was saying behind me. He caged me in to the window, his strong frame pressed against mine.

And as the woman bit the neck of her lover, I felt it. I felt the bite myself. The prick against my neck. I reached up as though to palm the wound, but there was nothing there.

Adam’s hand fell to my hip. The touch so familiar I nearly wept.

The woman, a beautiful blonde, cradled the man’s skull, and his arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her even closer. He angled his throat to give her greater access. Rivulets of red ran down the column of his neck, staining his collar, running in streams down her arm. He fell to his knees, and she followed. I gasped, believing him unconscious, but he gripped her harder, and she was suddenly in his lap.

I did not know where the blood or her red dress began; it blended all together. And when she finally pulled away, the man gazed at her in hunger. He leaned up and licked his own blood off her lips. I saw he had the knife-like teeth of his own as he grinned at her.

Adam’s lips came suddenly to my neck, and another gasp slipped from my lips. He kissed the spot beneath my ear so gently, savoring the taste of my skin. I reached up and wound my fingers through his hair and shut my eyes.

If I willed it hard enough, I could pretend we were six years younger, and Lucas had never found out and sent him away, and he’d never died. I could pretend we’d never parted.

His caress sent a heat straight through me, I knew he felt it too, his hand gripping my hips even harder, pulling me straight into him.

“I missed you,” he said against my neck, ravishing me with more kisses, and I never wanted to leave his grasp, never wanted to leave that moment where maybe everything could be okay. He’d returned, and he was okay, and I had yet some freedom.

I turned in his arms, wrapping my arms around his neck and bringing him down to me. His lips grazed mine so faintly, but I pulled away before he could kiss me like that. I pressed my forehead to his and just breathed in the scent of him. A smokiness, a familiar sweet smell of his cologne. The same from before. It wasn’t a scent he could afford, but I’d gifted it to him and he wore it until he left. A smile pulled at my lips.

He gazed down at me hungrily, but it was a different hunger from the couple on the other side of the window. They continued their bloodletting, but I could see now it was a feeding of passion, a frenzy of lust, and not the murder I thought it was. Muffled throes of pleasure sounded out from the glass.

And if this was Adam’s world, then so be it.

“I want to kiss you,” he said, echoing the first night we’d ever been alone.

My cheeks were wet, my vision blurred.

He didn’t have to say anything more, because I stood on my toes and pressed my lips to his, and it was like coming home, more addictive than any ambrosia, and I burned for him. Ached for the way he held me. Wanted him to make me forget everything I’d done these past few years, every other person I’d entertained, every night alone.

“I want you,” I breathed, and before the words were fully spoken, he lifted me up, a predatory glint in his eye, and whisked me away.

Seventeen

He only put me down when he found some satisfactory spot on the grounds, away from it all. I couldn’t hear the music from the party, couldn’t hear the shouting, the carousing, but I was distracted from it, anyway.

As he carried me, I couldn’t look away from him. He supported me effortlessly, like I weighed nothing, and when he glanced down at me, there was a fire in his eyes that only burned hotter when he saw how eagerly I gazed upon him.

I hadn’t realized how much I missed him. I grieved all these years, but with him before me once more, the ache of our separation before was unbearable. The want was physical, settling in my chest, my core, seeping into my bones. Mind-numbing.

His brow was strong, his hair only just now mussed, thanks to my wandering fingers. The auburn color hadn’t changed, a red so dark it was nearly the color of wine. Withoutthe gel, it was long enough to fall into his eyes. The time away had made him broader, brawn, no longer a young man at the peak of adulthood, but a man come home from war and whatever other horrible things he alluded to.

He set me down on my feet on plush grass, gingerly, like he thought I might break. He shrugged his jacket off and laid it out before kneeling and pulling me down to him.

I laughed at the ease of it all, at how quickly we fell into each other again.

“I should have found you sooner,” he muttered against my lips, his fingers coming up to cradle my jaw.

I held his face in my own hands, reveling in the feel of his strong cheekbones, his stubble, howrealhe felt. “Yes, you should have,” I said, making us meet again. He tasted like whiskey, like iron, like smoke. The press of his lips against mine was intoxicating, and our mouths moved against each other, like we’d never forgotten how.

I felt his arousal against my stomach. The heat running through me pooled at my core, my muscles tightening in anticipation.

It had been too long. Why had it taken so long for him to find me?

The taste of him ignited that fire in me I could not quell.