Page 43 of Bought for Blood

He lifts his head. Blood on his lower lip, his eyes finding me over her hair, taking his time.

“You’re early,” he says.

“Should that be a problem?” I say it through gritted teeth.

“Apparently, yes.” His tongue crosses the punctures at her throat, closing them. He lifts her to her feet with two hands at her waist and sets her steady. “Thank you. That will be all.”

She wobbles. She finds her balance on his shoulder, and on her way past me, her eyes come up, hazy. Pity, plain as anything,is right there in her face. She stands there swaying in her cheap perfume, sorry for me. I could kill her for it with both hands.

“Get out,” I snarl when she hesitates beside me.

Her eyes widen. The door closes sharply behind her. The perfume stays.

“You could knock,” he says, “if you’d rather not watch me feed.”

“Is that what the schedule’s for? Warming the chair between us?”

“She offered. And it suited me.” He rises and pours wine at the sideboard, the way he always does. “You’re upset.”

I look at the chair. I was a few minutes early.

Is this the way it always is?

“I’m not upset.”

“Your hands are in fists, and your wolf just introduced herself to your guard.”

“Why her?” It’s out before I can stop it, and it comes out wrong. It comes out as if it matters. I hear it, and so does he. He turns with the glass in his hand and his face sharpens, and I would give a year of my life to have those two words back.

“Why not her?” he says. “I feed where I please. I do as I please.”

“Then please yourself with someone else.”

“I intend to.” He sets the glass down, precise, then moves toward me. “As well as you.”

The slap lands before I know I’ve thrown it.

The crack fills the room. His head moves an inch with it. My palm burns—his jaw didn’t give at all—and we stand in the ringing quiet while my handprint fades off a face that doesn’t even show it stung. His eyes have gone dark all the way through, and it isn’t the cold dark.

“Fuck you.” I spin to the door.

I get one hand on the wood. Then he’s crossed the room faster than my eyes can track it, and my back meets the door, firm, his hand on the panel beside my head. His face is close. This near, I can smell her perfume on his collar, and under it is the scent I know is him. My wolf wants to rub up against him and cover all that sweetness with her own.

“What is it you want, Serenity?” he says.

“To leave.”

“You have the door.” His hand stays on the panel. “Use it.”

I clench my jaw and look down. It gets as far as the middle button of a shirt stretched across his chest. And I know what it looks like beneath the cotton.

“What do you want?” he repeats.

My breath is loud. My heart is louder.

What I want is her perfume off his collar and her sound out of this room and his mouth on my throat with no other throat in his history. And I will bite through my tongue before I admit it. He watches me, and I know he knows it. Everything I’ve been holding back is on my face, and this space is too small to hide it in.

“This?” He says it low as he strips the top of my dress down. One pull, sleeves off my shoulders, bodice to my waist. The cool air tightens my nipples into points. He looks down at them, and his eyes are darker when they come back to mine. I should slap him again. My hands grip his shirt instead and haul him in, and his mouth drops to my collarbone and drags along it, open, slow, down the slope of my breast.