Page 72 of Bought for Blood

I’m still drinking. Drunk on it.

Her hips are moving under me, chasing her own finish, and then they aren’t. I take the slowing for her crest arriving.

It isn’t.

Her hand slides off my neck, down my spine, onto the bed.

Her heart is a long way off, and it’s slow.

I come off her throat.

Too much. I’ve taken too much!

She’s under me with her head turned into the pillow, her mouth open, blood down her neck into her hair. Her eyes are half shut with nothing behind them.

“Serenity.”

Nothing.

I get her up against my chest, and her head goes back over my arm, and I catch it in my hand. She’s cooling. She has never been cool in her life. She has been the one warm thing in my world since the day the car brought her to my door, and I’m holding her while it goes out of her.

Her heart takes a beat. Waits. Takes another.

Merde. Non... Non... Non!

The beat stops completely.

“Serenity! God...please!” I’ve never heard my voice sound like this. I shake her, and her head lolls. Still no beat.

“No... no!” I growl it. And then I make a decision.

I put my own wrist between my teeth and tear it open.

It’s forbidden. Not without permission. Without being signed off by a dozen elders. I press my wrist to her mouth anyway.

“Drink.”

Nothing. I work my fingers into the back of her jaw, open her mouth, hold my wrist hard against her lips.

“Drink. Drink!” I press hard. “Mon Dieu... Ah, mon Dieu!”

Fool! You fucking fool!

Her throat moves. Once, then again. Her hand comes up off the bed and closes around my forearm to hold it where it is. I feel it going down her.

“That’s it.” My mouth is in her hair. “Stay. Look at me. Stay.”

Her eyes open. They don’t work at first. They go across the ceiling, across my face, past it. Then they come back and settle on me. Her hand is around my arm.

Her heart comes up under my palm. One beat, then two together, then a run of them.

“Bastien,” she says.

“Don’t talk.”

“Your arm—” Her voice is a scrape.

“Don’t talk.”