Page 142 of Flames and Blood

“I’m here. Nothing’s happened to me. Put your hands on me.”

Something breaks in his chest, low. Then he has me by both arms and pulls me in against him with his face down in my hair. Days of frustration go out of him while I stand there. He holds on harder than he means to. I let him. I’ll have the marks tomorrow, and I want them.

“Say something,” I tell his collarbone.

“I can’t.”

“Then don’t.”

I get my hands into his hair and pull his head down and kiss him, and whatever he’s been gripping onto since the meeting, he drops.

He isn’t careful with me. I don’t want him careful. My shirt tears at the shoulder and neither of us notices until later. He gets my jaw, then the side of my neck, then the shirt is off me and on the floor. He lifts me clean off my feet and puts me down on the bed with his weight following me, and for the first time in months, all that’s in my head is this moment.

Then he stops, braced above me, his pupils blown so wide his eyes have gone black. There’s a flash of white at his lip before he retracts his fangs.

“You’re starving,” I breathe out, not knowing why that excites me so much.

“I haven’t fed in days,” he admits.

“I know. I could see it in the meeting.”

I turn my head on the blanket and give him the whole line of my throat.

“Take what you need.”

“Kalli…”

“Why must you always argue about this?” I pull his head down.

His teeth go in. There’s one sharp second, pressure and puncture, and then there’s no pain at all. Heat comes up out of my chest and floods everything—down my belly, between my legs, all the way to my fingertips. My back leaves the bed. My hips grind up against his thigh on their own, finding friction and taking it, and he presses back against me and lets me use him while he drinks. My hands are fisted in his hair, and I hear myself, and I don’t care who hears it.

And I feel him change while he’s drinking. I didn’t know it did that. The cold goes out of his skin. He gets warmer against me a little at a time, until he’s almost as warm as I am, and I have never felt him this alive under my hands.

He pulls off my throat before he’s ready to. I feel him make himself do it.

“That’s it,” he says, ragged.

“You could have more.”

“No.”

He lifts his head, and he’s whole again. The gray’s gone out from under his eyes. His mouth is red with me. He looks like the man who came to get me in that van a lifetime ago.

“Gideon Crowe,” I breathe out. I feel the burn on my throat. Two punctures, open and slow. They’ll be there for days. And I don’t mind, because I like that they stay.

He covers them with his palm. Then he lifts his eyes to mine, and there’s nothing careful left in his face.

He kisses me, and there is nothing hurried in him at all. That’s what feeding does to him, apparently. He has the whole night in front of him now, and he has decided to use it.

He takes my bottom lip between his teeth and holds it until I make a sound. Then he lets go and comes back and opens my mouth with his, slow, like there is nowhere either of us has to be. I can taste my blood on his tongue. It should bother me. It doesn’t bother me at all.

When he finally lifts his head, he stays close. Nose against my nose. My breath goes out against his lips, and he doesn’t move away from it. Eventually, when it’s almost too intense, he pulls back.

“Sit up,” he says.

I sit up on the side of the bed. He kneels in front of me and gets hold of my left boot.

“You don’t have to—”