Page 128 of Bought for Blood

I have known for weeks that I wanted her. I told a room full of people that she was an investment. I sat in a corner waiting for the sun with her name in my mouth, and I called it regret.

It isn’t any of those things.

I love her.

It turns out it is not complicated at all. It is the plainest fact in this house.

And half a second behind it, arriving quietly, comes everything the fact is going to cost.

“Why did you stop?” She’s got both hands on my face. “Bastien. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“You’ve gone—”

“Everything is fine.” My voice comes out hoarse. “Hold on to me.”

She holds on.

I move again, and don’t hold anything back—not my weight, not my strength, not the thing I just found out and can’t say. I put it into her instead. She takes it. She takes every bit of it, gasping into my shoulder, her arms locked around my neck like she means to leave marks, and I feel her break again, the whole of her tightening down the length of my cock.

It takes me with her.

It starts at the base of my spine and goes up through the whole length of me and out. My hips drive in and stay there. My mouth is open against her throat with the fangs down, and I don’t sinkthem into her. The sound I make against her throat is low and tormented.

For a few seconds, my mind is blank.

Then there’s her, breathing hard underneath me, with her hand moving up and down my back. Her heart is loud, working its way back down. I stay where I am and listen to it longer than I should. Keeping it. I have more memories than I ever chose to keep.

I’m keeping this on purpose.

I come off her carefully and pull her onto my chest.

“You’re shaking,” she says.

“Yes.”

“You never shake.”

“I do lately.”

She laughs. It moves against my ribs. Then she settles her cheek down and puts her fingers over the place where a heart should beat.

“Marthe’s decided you’re an invalid,” she says.

“Marthe has been waiting forty years for me to be an invalid.”

“She made me eat two bowls of broth this morning. Two. She stood at the end of the bed until I finished the second one.”

“She can’t make me eat anything. You’re paying for that.”

She laughs again, and then she’s quiet for a while.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Yes.”

“In that room. With the sun. Before I got there.” Her voice goes quieter. “What were you thinking about?”