Page 52 of Claimed

He might like it too much. So might you.

More and more, I’m suspecting it was some bullshit reverse-psychology that I walked straight into. But now I’m trapped, sex-dazed, soft-limbed and reckless in the way you get when you’ve been starved of tenderness for too long and then someone feeds you like you’re worth time and attention. Like staying with you is not a burden.

I keep thinking, stupidly, what’s the worst that can happen?

As if I haven’t built a whole life around knowing that ‘worst’ is never theoretical.

Through it all, Valentin keeps touching me. Hand on my waist as I drift in and out of sleep. Fingers stroking my wrist while I eat. Mouth at my temple when I try to turn away from whatever emotion is swelling too close to the surface.

Even when he’s not taking me back under the sheets and fucking me into a new night or dawn or day, he’s still there. The weight and warmth of him. The relentless attention that makes me feel seen in a way I haven’t felt since…

Ever, if I’m being honest.

And then there is the blood.

At first it seems almost incidental.

Soft kisses at my throat. His mouth lingering, breath warming my skin. Then the faint sting and the rush that follows, pleasure unfurling so violently my toes curl before anything else even happens.

After the Vault, and the howling and look of horror on his face that second time, he never drinks deeply.

But he sips.

Little tastes.

Enough that I feel it in my bones, like my body is being tuned to his as the thread between us hums and his voice in my head becomes less shocking and more dangerous because I’m starting to crave it.

It would be easy to pretend it’s nothing. A small indulgence. A ritual between two people who refuse to name themselves lovers.

But it doesn’t feel like nothing. It feels like hunger learning my name.

The first time his fangs slide out again in this room, I try to be sensible.

I really do.

He’s above me, black hair falling around his face, eyes silver-rimmed and too bright, the mark at his throat pulsing beneath my palm. His mouth lowers to my neck, and I feel the graze of those fearsome, mesmerising fangs.

‘Valentin,’ I whisper. ‘Maybe don’t.’

His body stills and for a breath, the only sound is the fire and my pulse behaving like it wants to embarrass me professionally.

Then his voice slips into my mind. I have already tasted, little hunter.

My whole body tightens. ‘That is not the excellent argument you think it is.’

His mouth curves against my skin before he replies in my mind.

If I am doomed by you, then I am already doomed. Do not ask me to pretend restraint will make a saint of me now.

Arrogant. Savage. Entirely too vampire king for anyone’s good.

I should shove him off, remind him that my blood may be a cursed accelerant, a magical trap with cheekbones and trauma.

Instead, his lips brush the pulse in my throat, and my knees part around his hips as if they have resigned from the committee of self-preservation.

‘Small taste,’ I say, hating myself a little. ‘Tiny. Respectable. Practically decorative.’

What the actual unholy fucking fucks of Netheris, Eira?