Page 68 of Falling for a Villainous Vampire

It’s ferocious.

I actually glance at Phone, hoping she’ll object from her little docking station on the chest of drawers by the door. But she is unnervingly silent. Completely shut-off silent—as if she’s sulked so hard she’s gone to sleep. She doesn’t even say anything when I cross to the couch.

So it’s up to me to take care.

I tell myself then and there: No affection, no kissing, no cuddling. We’re just going to do each other, and that’s it. I even spell it out to him: “Just food and orgasms,” I say. But I guess I just don’t expect him to seem so overjoyed by that fact. He hears the words, and that watchful expression all over his face shifts to something bright and eager.

Then he just reaches up and gets hold of me around my waist.

He hauls me over the couch back, and into his lap.

And I don’t really know what happens after that. It’s not the clinical thing I was imagining, that’s for sure. Mainly because he immediately breathes the words “You are so beautiful” against the curve of my throat just before he kisses it. He tells me my scent is intoxicating, says it into the hair he gets a handful of.

“Only a few hours away from you and I thought I might go mad,” he says.

Which makes me realize, of course, that he didn’t leave me in bed because he wanted to. He did it because he felt that was the right thing to do. He sensed I needed it, or didn’t want to intrude.

And now I’ve sort of told him he’s not intruding at all. That I crave contact with him, too—no matter what I tell him, or myself. It’s the reason I lean into his kisses, even though they’re still over the scariest part of my body. I even feel a hint of his teeth over the fattest vein I have there, lingering just long enough to suggest he’s tempted.

Though honestly all it seems to do is send a thrill through my body.

I moan, brokenly, helplessly, not sure if he will do it but not sure if I will care, either. But in response he pulls away. He tells me, “Easy, easy, easy, you will get what you need.” Then he turns me, and urges my body over the arm of the couch, and oh god, his mouth. The places he puts it, the things he does with it.

His hunger, oh, I never thought I could love hunger like this.

I actually cry out his name the moment he spreads my legs, and smothers himself in me. He moans with this kind of guttural abandon, and I can’t help moaning back. In fact, I moan almost constantly from that point on. He licks me, and I do it, he drinks from me, and I do it, he gets one big hand on my shoulder and pulls me more tightly against him, and I do worse.

“Oh Jesus, you make me feel so good,” I blurt out.

It’s fine, though.

He doesn’t mind.

“That’s all I want in this life or any other,” he says. “To hear you cry out in pleasure, for every time I dealt you pain. To feel you tremble in my arms as I bring you to the edge of ecstasy, instead of whatever agony you felt before. I will repay you a thousand times, and a thousand times more, until the debt I owe is no more than a distant memory.”

And in response, I want to tell him that he already has.

That I can barely remember anything about who he was before.

Though it’s not because of this bliss, this bloom of pleasure that goes through me a moment later. It’s not even knowing how hard he works to bring me to it, or all those wonderful words and promises.

It’s that who he is is everything that Halsten never was.

Good, and kind, and loving, and unafraid to show it.

And as it turns out, those things burn brighter than horror ever did.

They are so bright, in fact, that this time I do fall asleep by his side.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I decide that it doesn’t really count as cuddling if we sleep while close together. And even if it does count, I haven’t technically broken any of the rules I’ve set up. It’s not as if I’m hugging him every second of every day. I’m just, you know—ignoring all my responsibilities, and what I’m going to do about him and Cassie and Nancy and Phone if this is really going to be a thing, so that I can enjoy myself.

Despite every memory of every life I’ve had telling me how terribly that turns out for me. Madison skipped class once and almost got eaten; Mathilde at one point was addicted to laudanum; Maisy frittered away all her money on unwise investments and fancy shoes, and wound up destitute.

I think Cary Grant once paid her rent.

It’s part of why I dedicate all my time to journalism. Why I didn’t like to party in college. Why I attended every single fucking lecture. I learned something from all my lives—it’s just unfortunate that there are no lessons on the more specific thing that’s happening now.