“But not yours?”
Jaci closed her eyes, her teeth grinding together to keep the bile from rising again. Everything in her itched. Everything in her burned.
Somehow, she kept the tears at bay.
When the wave of revulsion passed, she opened her eyes.
Gabriel stood before her. Close. Too close. He watched her intently, and in that intense gaze she tried to count all the different shades of green, forest and spring grass and moss and olive, all of it flecked with gold that sparkled in the dim light.
“Let me see,” he said softly.
Jaci lowered her arm toward him.
With the gentlest touch, he ran his fingers along the inside, parallel to the wound from the glass, his touch so soft it nearly made her weep.
His nostrils flared, his eyes filling with more emotion than she’d ever seen there. Anger. Worry.
Desire.
Gabriel released her arm. “I’ve got a first aid kit somewhere. I’ll—”
“It’s fine. Just a scratch, really.”
Ignoring her protests, he found the kit in a cabinet behind them, then shrugged out of his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves.
“Does it hurt?” he asked.
Jaci glanced down at the wound. She’d barely felt it when it happened, but now it was starting to sting. “I’ll live.”
Gabriel snickered. “I should certainly hope so. Your shift isn’t over yet.”
She snapped her gaze to his, ready to unleash hell, but his sexy smirk stopped her.
“Come now, little moonflower,” he teased. “I’m notthatmuch of a bastard, am I?”
A matching smirk rose on her lips. “This is a trick question. It has to be.”
“One you’re required to answer.”
Her smirk stretched into a smile. “In that case, no. You’re notthatmuch of a bastard. Only like, twenty percent bastard. The rest is all dickhead.”
His velvet laugh, warm and genuine and unexpected, soothed the raw ache of Kostya’s attack.
When the laughter finally faded, Gabriel took her arm once more, but he didn’t move to clean it. Didn’t move to patch it up. Didn’t move at all, actually.
He stared at the wound, seemingly mesmerized by the slow trail of blood sliding along her pale skin. His breathing grew heavy, his fingers hot where they touched her.
“Gabriel?” she whispered.
He finally glanced up at her, the sight making her gasp.
Red flooded his irises, chasing away a thousand shades of green.
Jaci had seen vampires feed before. Renault had thought nothing of using her as his personal juice box whenever he got bored of his blood slaves. But something about the change on Gabriel’s face—in his eyes—it shook something loose inside her, a longing so deep and endless, she thought it might consume her.
Wordlessly, she lifted her arm to his mouth. Blood ran from wrist to elbow, as dark as her thoughts. As dark as her heart.
The vampire’s nostrils flared again as he took in the scent. A low, desperate moan rumbled inside his chest, primal and sexy. Possessive.
