Page 126 of Hunted

‘It reveals. It does not calculate.’

I trail my fingers over the strong line of his spine, lower, then back up before I drift into another danger zone and need to be warned like a feral cat.

The silence thickens.

So does the heat.

I stop behind him once more, close enough to feel it radiating off his skin, and ask the thing that has been stalking the edges of my mind since he described immortality, blood and binding.

‘Describe the mating ritual to me.’

His head turns slightly, enough that I catch his profile in the Heartshard Glass. See his obscene, beautiful body in the magical mirror.

‘Again?’

‘In more detail. You gave me the Cliff Notes before.’

I feel, rather than see, the shift in him. Awareness. Calculation.

Maybe the same impossible pull that keeps grabbing me every time we circle this subject.

When he speaks, his voice is slow, deliberate, each word placed with care.

‘The time and place do not matter. But it begins and ends with consent,’ he says. ‘Without it, the bond will not take. It cannot be forced to completion by violence alone, regardless of what some would attempt.’

I release a breath I didn’t realise I was holding. ‘Verbal consent?’

A ripple in his jaw. ‘Yes. And physical.’

Consent.

The word should not steady me. Not when I’ve spent six years imagining Valentin Moretti as a locked door, a trap, a mouth at my throat and no way out. But this terrifying, impossible creature keeps giving me lines, rules, bargains.

No fangs. One question. One kiss.

Consent.

It doesn’t make him safe. Gods, it makes him something worse.

It makes him… possible.

Like a key turning in a lock, an idea sparks.

Hungry. Rabid. Impossibly insane. But also suddenly, dangerously clear.

He respected my no-fangs rule. Against every expectation and probably his own instincts, he held that line because I demanded it.

So can I go one better?

Can I sleep with this terrifying, charismatic, Netheris-hot vampire and still not reveal who I am? Can I keep the one thing that matters and give him enough of everything else to survive the closeness without confessing?

Can I⁠—

Valentin spins so fast I barely register the movement.

One second I’m behind him with thoughts spiralling into reckless territory, the next his hand is at my collared throat, firm enough to bring me to the very verge of choking, enough to pin me in place and snap every nerve in my body to attention.

My back hits the bedpost with a sharp thud, and a thoroughly feminist, idiotic part of my brain revels in the fact that he does not treat me like a fragile flower.