Page 108 of Mortdale

I kept closing the distance between us. “How long has it been?”

“A few hours.”

He wasn’t healing. Oh, Goddess, he wasn’t healing. “It doesn’t mean anything,” I lied, shaking my head. “You’ve lost blood. You need to feed. You…you’ll get better once you feed. You just need to feed, Logan.”

He cradled the back of my head, pressing his lips to my brow for a long while. “Not yet. I’d be harder to kill if I’m at my best.”

I shook my head. “They can't let you suffer like this. I won’t let you.”

“I’m not suffering. Not anymore,” he said, bringing my hand against his cheek and then burying his face against it. “You can’t stay here, honey.”

My lower lip rolled from between my teeth. I loved when he called me that. “I’ll stay wherever I want to stay.”

“You will not. You’d not do that to me. You’d not turn me into a monster who hurts his own wife.”

“You’d never hurt me. Or anyone else,” I said, looking at the weapon clutched tightly in his hand—he’d hurt himself before anyone even had the chance to.

“Ever shot one before?”

I stared at the dreaded pistol he put in my hand, and shook my head.

He drew me closer, my back pressed against his chest while his hands slid down my arms until they were aligned with mine. “You pull the hammer back with your thumb,” he said against my ear. “Like that. Good girl.” His body slid even closer to mine as he adjusted the aim. “We find the mark.”

He moved my finger lower. “And then you press on the trigger.”

The bullet cut right through a vase, shattering it to pieces. His lips pressed against the column of my neck. “Excellent.” The tip of his nose skimmed the length of my pulse. “You smell good. And you smell like me.” Then I felt his lip pull into a smile against my skin as he slid his hand down my stomach and pulled me against him. “What are you wearing under my trousers?”

“Nothing.”

He groaned against my throat. “You should be scared.”

“I am,” I said, my body surrendering against him.

“You don’t smell scared,” he breathed, sliding his hand just a little lower. And then lower, cupping me between my legs.

A soft gasp of a whimper left my parted lips, and I leaned into his touch.

His body tensed against mine when I dropped the pistol on the ground and shoved it to the other corner of the room with my foot.

“Willow,” he breathed, pulling away from me. “If I hurt you—”

“You will not because you’re not sick,” I said, backing him against a library shelf and slipping my fingers through the cut in his shirt.

He trembled against me as I brushed my middle fingers over the wound and slipped them into the deep laceration an inch or so. The corner of my lip slid between my teeth as I pushed them deeper, feeling him shudder against me. Oh.

Leaning forward, I pressed a kiss on his chest, trying not to smile too hard. “This is as close to being inside your skin as I can get.”

“Fuck,” he muttered, chuckling as he watched me. “Do you even know what you’re doing to me?” His brow dropped to mine, his eyes drawing shut as he inhaled deeply. “You have no clue what you do to me.”

Slipping my fingers out of his warm wound, I brought them to my mouth, sucking the blood off. I could almost feel my pulse on my teeth when viscid metallic liquid coated my tongue. It travelled down my oesophagus, settling against my ribs when I swallowed.

“Saints,” he hissed, dropping his head back against the shelf.

I licked my lips, still tasting coppery sin on my tongue. “It doesn’t smell or taste sweet. It just smells and tastes like you,” I said, pressing a kiss to his chest. “You’re not infected. Case solved.”

He was breathing hard, his fists clenching and unclenching at his side. “We don’t know yet.”

“I do.”