Page 69 of Fangs

A violent shudder rips through him. He tears his mouth from my neck with a choked, wet sound that has nothing to do with pleasure. Black veins spiderweb across his skin. He collapses sideways, convulsing, coughing up dark poison—my blood.

“Blake!”

He suffocates, his throat clicking as he claws violently at empty air, starved of oxygen. I wrench my limbs free from the evaporating, ink-black coils of shadow-binds and haul his twitching head into my lap.

We are slick with sweat and cooling heat, entirely bare against the crushed crimson silk of the mattress.

Heavy, iron-shod boots thunder up the winding stone stairs below, battering the foundations of the tower.

Cain.

The name vibrates through my marrow, an absolute certainty that knobs at my throat. The Crimson Order has breached the outer sanctum.

Blood runs in a bright river from the two fang wounds on my neck, painting long scarlet paths down my pale skin, over the curve of my breast and pooling slickly in the hollow of my navel.

Blake convulses in my arms. Guilt lances through me. I gave him Cain’s rot. My own blood was the cup, and he drank.

The massive oak chamber door shudders under the first brutal impact of a battering ram, wood groaning in protest.

Cain’s telepathic voice invades my skull, smooth and lethal.

“You accepted my blood, pet. You answer to me now. He is weak. The Order is at your door. And you are just one bite away from being mine.”