Page 215 of Starside

Fuck. His soap is like a drug. I want more. His heartbeat races beneath my tongue. In anger, I’m sure. I hear a sharp inhale, and ready myself for Raker to rip away, to take a step back. To not, in fact, pretend.

But then his hand touches my spine, ever so slightly, pulling me toward him like a beckoning and I shamelessly taste him, stroking his heated skin with my tongue, nipping and sucking, until my head is spinning. Heat floods through me. This is too far. I pull away, miming, but not touching, not anymore.

Until I feel his fingers curl tighter around the back of my knee. My leg is still up. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Maybe it’s the wine. Maybe it’s the glittering dizziness of this night. Maybe it’s the soap? But I arch my back against the wall, leaning into him just the slightest bit.

He leans in too, caging me in. Pressing himself against me, right between my legs. And that’s when I feel it.

He’s hard.

My eyes fly back up to his. He’s pinning me with his gaze, as if daring, just daring me to say anything. I don’t. All I do is slowly drag myself against his considerable length, blood roaring at the friction, at his size, as both of us take a shared breath—

Steps sound across the room, and the doors close again.

Raker moves so quickly away from me that I have to grasp the wall for purchase so as not to slip down it.

Halfway to an insult, I freeze, then gently peel my arms away from the sticky wall. They’re covered in crimson.

“Who would paint right before a ball?” I ask, frowning down at the dark red all over my dress and skin, the same red coating the rest of the walls and the hand Raker used to keep our lips apart.

“That’s not paint,” Raker says, staring at his palm.

Our eyes meet in an instant.

“Huh,” Raker says. He almost sounds impressed.

“What?”

“Vander Evren is a bloodbane.”

The click of a door has us both turning around.

Vander is standing there holding the head of one of his guards, the one that Raker so cavalierly slayed. “And what do you know about bloodbanes, human?”

37

I’m not breathing. Raker doesn’t look shaken in the slightest. He shrugs. “I know that you’re miserable creatures sustained by blood. You drink it. You paint your walls with it. You probably fuck in it. You have to be around it, all the time, or you’ll go mad with hunger.”

My eyes widen, looking at Raker as if he’s just lost his mind. We are humans. Standing in front of an immortal bloodbane. A word I’d only ever heard spoken in legends.

Vander’s grin is a mixture of amused and poisonous.

Raker keeps fucking going. “Mortal blood is preferable to immortals, isn’t it? Not tainted by magic?”

I swallow, and Vander’s eyes go straight to my throat. But he does not move a muscle. “As I said before,” he tells me, “if I wanted to kill you, you would already be dead.” The veins on his hands stick out more than usual. His face is severe; he looks almost pained. Like he’s using every shred of his immortal strength to stand still. The words grind out of him. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to feed. And … as much as I would like to keep you alive … whatever you two were doing in here has your blood pounding.” He’s looking at me. His eyes flash with nothing short of hunger as he stares at my neck. The skin there prickles. “Get out of this room, Aris,” he rasps.

I don’t need to be told again. Almost to the door, I hear him say, “Bathe. Change. Then we’ll speak to the heirs.”

It takes two baths and endless scrubbing to get the blood off my arms. Even then, I can still feel it on me.

I can’t believe we didn’t smell it before, in the room. I was too caught up with Raker’s gods-damned soap to notice. Not just his soap, really.

Vander was right that day when he said I should be running for the gates. But he was also right when he said he could kill me in an instant if he wanted to.

I’m not going anywhere. Not until I get the invitations I need.

Vander didn’t order Raker to be chained again, perhaps knowing it would be useless. He’s waiting in my room when I walk out in nothing but a towel. I go still—but he doesn’t turn to face me. He’s looking at the walls, unimpressed. His gaze narrows on everything, as if he is finding fault after fault. I roll my eyes at him.

On my bed sits another gown. I smooth my hand across the wall in a silent thank-you to the mysterious powers of the house before slipping back into the bathroom to put it on.