The space between us hummed with chemistry.
I stretched my hand toward her. “Come. Sit. There’s food.”
She didn’t move toward the table. Instead, she held out her wrist, the faint tracing of veins visible beneath the skin.
“You first,” she said.
“Max—”
“I know you’re hungry.” Her midnight eyes held mine. “You can’t hide it from me.”
“We bargained,” I said, “but I’m voiding the terms. I won’t burden you with this. You’ve just come off a deployment that would have broken soldiers twice your rank.” I kept my voice even, the way I had kept it even through a decade of diplomacy and intelligence work, though my eyes couldn’t leave her wrist. “I’m not a young vampire. I can rein it in.”
“You’ve been drinking from bottles,” she said. Not a question. “Bare minimum.”
“Yes.”
“And turned down everyone else.”
“Also yes. Unfortunately.”
She lowered her arm, but the offer hadn’t left her eyes. “This isn’t just an arrangement for me anymore, Nikolai. It’s…” She stopped. Color flooded her cheeks, and she looked away, jaw tightening the way it did when she’d said something she hadn’t planned to. “I don’t want you taking it from anyone else.” The words came out rough. “I… Forget it.”
She was embarrassed.
I took her hand. Her fingers were warm, calloused at the tips from a decade of pickaxes and tunnel walls.
“Look at me,” I said.
My heart stuttered at the way she gazed at me.
“I haven’t touched another woman since the night you came to my tower,” I said. “Not their blood, not their bodies, not their company. You aren’t an arrangement, Eirath. I’m yours, as long as you’ll have me.”
She smiled at me shyly.
I lifted her hand and pressed my lips to her knuckles. Her breath hitched. The blush didn’t fade. Her eyes brightened. This girl would be the death of me.
I led her through the archway into the inner room. The drawing room faced south, its wide windows overlooking the dark plains beyond the wall and the mountains past them. No view of the compound grounds, no Stormglass floodlights. Justmoonlight on the distant ridges. I’d chosen this room for a reason. It was the quietest place in the tower.
A low sofa sat in the center, flanked by bookshelves and a side table with a decanter. The Stormglass sconces were dimmed to an ember.
“No sex, Nikolai,” Max said, her voice rough, as if she’d rehearsed it. “Not even your mouth. This is feeding and nothing else.”
“Don’t you worry.” I settled onto the sofa and drew her down beside me, guiding her legs across my lap. “I’ll take whatever you give me. Never more. Between us, you will always be the one who calls the shots.”
“Then drink.”
“Not your wrist.” I traced the inside of her forearm with one finger, watching goosebumps rise in its wake. “The first time, I fed from your thigh. Tonight, your throat.”
Her pulse jumped. “You said I call the shots.”
“You can say no.” I held her gaze. “But the throat is a gift, Max. It means trust. It means you’re letting me close to the place that could kill you, and you’re choosing not to be afraid.”
She was quiet for a moment.
The sky was dark outside the window. A night bird flew by.
“Fine,” she said. “Throat.”
