Page 64 of Claimed

I kiss him while he sucks my blood from my thumb. Right there in the shadow of his Tower, with my lie barely cold between us and the courier already gone.

Valentin freezes for half a heartbeat. Then he answers with hungry, predictable force, releasing my thumb only to slide his hand around my waist and haul me in so hard I stumble against him. His mouth is furious and possessive and desperate, as if he is swallowing my excuse, my disobedience and the taste of my blood all at once.

Then he grips my hips. The world blurs and we’re back in the Vaults.

Again.

He takes my thumb again and brings it to his mouth. The moment his tongue touches the cut, he groans. Deep. Uncontrolled.

Eyes closed, his shoulders tense as if he’s fighting the urge to bite through bone. When he finally looks at me, his gaze is dark and wrecked.

I can’t stop, he says into my mind, and the desperation in it twists something under my ribs. But out loud, he asks, rough and jealous and obscene in its vulnerability, ‘Has anyone else ever tasted you?’

I blink. ‘No. You know that.’

His jaw clenches, eyes whirling with red. ‘Never?’

‘No,’ I say sharper. ‘Not even accidentally.’

That doesn’t appease him. He stares at my mouth, the pulse jumping in my throat like they are spells he cannot resist, then drags his gaze back to my face as if trying to understand me, himself, the room, the hunger.

‘What the fuck is happening to me?’ he mutters. ‘How can I be this crazed for you when I have survived centuries without ever losing my mind like this?’

I manage a shaky smirk. ‘Maybe you’re finally developing a personality.’

His eyes narrow. Then he kisses me again, and the kiss steals the joke from my mouth.

Everything escalates fast.

Frantic.

But through it all, I keep hearing Selphine’s warning; keep feeling the absence where my blood left me, already on its way to New Orleans. And I can’t shake the possibility that I may have done something reckless and possibly unforgivable.

Then Valentin’s voice fills my mind.

Strip, little hunter. I need you too much. And I will not be blamed for shredding another set of your clothes.

For once, I can’t locate my snark. So I undress, my thumb still bleeding.

He hasn’t healed it because he can’t bear to stop tasting the wound in the air. Or because he craves the scent too much. Or because the word I keep dodging is no longer content to stay dodged.

Addicted.

I dance away from it just before a naked Valentin, his mark livid against his skin, snatches me up.

Then I’m pinned to the cold wall deep beneath the city he owns, and he’s inside me with a violence that feels as much like fear as hunger. He fucks me and bites me and drinks from me in small, devastating pulls that make me scream myself hoarse and beg him never to stop.

All while the vial of my blood travels farther from the Tower.

Farther from him.

And closer to the witch who may have been waiting for exactly this mistake.

11

EIRA

Valentin’s hand slides up my spine.