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accidentally didn't make it any more right. He was an adult person, and I'd just ordered him to bed like
he was a naughty child. He deserved better than that. Anyone did.
The anger pulled back, and even my skin felt cooler. The term hot with anger was very real. I was
ashamed of what I'd just done. I understood why, in part. I so did not need another man tied to me by
metaphysics that demanded a piece of my bed, or at least my body. I didn't need that. I especially didn't
need a man who might not even be capable of feeding the ardeur. Because even in the middle of the
worst of the ardeur, Damian's touch could cool that fire. With him holding my hand, the ardeur could not
rise, or at least it could be put away for hours. So why didn't I paste Damian to my body? Because of
how much more he wanted from me than I was comfortable with giving. I could not use him to help me
fight the ardeur if I wasn't willing to give in to that skin hunger we both felt for each other.
Nathaniel padded into the room, wearing nothing but a pair of silky jogging shorts. He'd taken his braid
out, so that his thick hair spilled around him like some kind of cape. "Are you alright?"
I started to say, I owe Damian an apology, but I didn't say it, because in that one breath, the ardeur
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rose. No, not rose, engulfed, drowned, suffocated. I suddenly couldn't breathe past the pulse in my
throat. My skin felt thick and heavy with it. I don't know what showed in my eyes, but whatever it was, it
stopped Nathaniel where he stood, froze him like a rabbit in the grass that knows the fox is near.
The ardeur spilled outward, like invisible water, hot, wet, and suffocating. I knew when the power hit
Nathaniel, because he shivered. Goose bumps broke on his body, as his very skin reacted to the power.
I'd shoved the ardeur down once tonight, and that had a price. I'd refused the touch of my servant, and
that had a price. I'd embraced my anger, and let it spill out onto someone I cared about. That had a
price, too. I didn't want Nathaniel to be the one who paid that price.
I didn't remember crossing the room, but I must have, because I was standing in front of him. His eyes
were wide, so wide, his lips half-parted. I was close enough to see the pulse in his throat beating against
the skin of his neck like a trapped thing. I leaned in towards him, leaned just my face until I could smell
the warm vanilla scent of his neck. Close enough to taste his pulse on my tongue like candy. And I knew
this candy would be red and soft and hot. I had to close my eyes so that I didn't lean my mouth down to
that point, didn't lick over his skin, didn't bite down and free that quivering piece of him. I had to close
my eyes so I wouldn't keep staring at that pulsing, jumping& My own pulse was too fast, as if I would
choke on it. I'd thought that feeding the ardeur on Nathaniel was the worst I could do, but the thoughts in
my head weren't about sex. They were about food. Thanks to my ties with Jean-Claude and Richard, my
werewolf ex-fiancé and the other third of our triumvirate, I had darker things inside me than the ardeur.
Dangerous things. Deadly things.
I stayed perfectly still, trying to master my own pulse, my own heartbeat. But even with my eyes closed,
I could still smell Nathaniel's skin. Sweet and warm and& close.
I felt his breath on my face, before I opened my eyes.
He had moved in so close that his face filled my vision. My voice came soft, half-strangled with the
needs I was fighting, "Nathaniel& "
"Please," he whispered it as he leaned in, whispered it again as his mouth hovered above mine, he
sighed, "Please," against my lips. His breath felt hot against my mouth, as if when we kissed it would
burn.
His lips this close to mine had done one thing. I wasn't thinking about ripping his throat out anymore. I
understood then we could feed on sex, or we could feed on meat and blood. I knew that one hunger
could be turned into another, but until that moment, where I could almost taste his lips on mine, I hadn't
realized that there would come a point wheresomething must be fed. I did not feed Jean-Claude's blood
lust, though there was a shadow of it in me. I did not feed Richard's beast, with its hunger for meat, but
that lived in me, too. I held so many hungers in me, and fed none of them, except the ardeur. That I could
feed. That I did feed. But it was in that heartbeat, as Nathaniel kissed me, that I understood why I hadn't [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]