Page 127 of Hunted

He is definitely not a gentleman when he leans in, eyes black-shot silver, mouth a breath from mine.

‘There are consequences to touching me like this, little hunter,’ he says, voice velvet over steel, ‘and you’re about to find out what they are.’

26

EIRA

His mouth crashes down on mine before I can decide whether to fight, surrender, or weaponise a smart remark, and for one molten second all I can do is gasp into him and hold on.

The kiss turns feral fast.

One moment it’s heat and challenge, his body caging mine, the delicious threat in his voice still crackling under my skin. The next it’s Netheris-hot and ravenous, tongues tangling, his grip shifting from my throat to my jaw to the back of my neck, dragging me where he wants me and somehow making it feel like I hurled myself there.

He kisses like a man who has lived too long, denied himself too often, and abruptly decided that was a poor use of eternity.

I kiss him back like I have no sense and even less restraint.

He lifts me so fast I squeak, all air and indignation, and then I’m on my back in the vampire’s bed, the vast decadent monster of a thing swallowing me whole in dark linen and silk while he looms over me, upper half bare, hair falling over his face, larger than life and older than empires.

It should be absurd that I can still think while he looks like that.

I cannot, in fact, think.

I can only stare.

At the hard planes of his chest. The scars. The cursed, mesmerising mark over his heart. Shoulders broad enough to block half the chandelier light. His mouth swollen from kissing me, eyes dark and rimmed in silver like hunger wearing bling.

He looks less like something that belongs in a bed and more like a masterpiece painted onto cathedral ceilings to frighten sinners into behaving.

Instead, he’s above me, one hand planted beside my head, the other sliding down my side with devastating purpose, and my body is already halfway gone.

He kisses my jaw, my mouth again, and every touch feels amplified by what I now know. The mark. The bond. The countdown. The way death is stalking him in a language older than reason.

It should cool this.

Instead, it sharpens everything.

I should be afraid in the old way. The run-until-my-lungs-tear way. But the old fear belonged to the shadow in my bedroom, the rumour, the debt collector, the vampire my father sold me to. This man has teeth, yes. Power. Hunger. A mark that could drag us both into Hell.

He also stopped.

Again and again, when it mattered, he stopped.

It does not make him safe. It makes him something worse.

Possible.

And maybe that’s why I’m still here. Not because I’ve stopped being afraid, but because fear is no longer the only thing in the room.

My fingers drag over his shoulders, his chest and ridged stomach, tracing muscle and heat and old scars. When I make it back to his ribs and up over the mark, he shudders hard enough to make me feel powerful and reckless all at once.

I trail my hands up the corded column of his throat, and blurt, because my mouth is apparently no longer supervised, ‘You’re hot. How are you so hot?’

A wicked smile curves his lips at the double-entendre. ‘I can read minds, manipulate time to a small extent by moving at near-lightning speed, glamour weaker wills, still a room, hear a pulse shift across a crowded floor, scent fear before a blade is drawn, and kill a man before his body understands it has died. Regulating blood temperature is child’s play for a vampire of my age.’

His thumb drifts along my lower lip.

‘Those who remain cold-blooded are either posturing or unimaginative. Do you like that I’m hot, little hunter?’