Page 115 of Bleed

His dark eyes snap up to mine. “Apparently.”

“Wow,” I snort. “Sloppy work, Doctor.”

“You shouldn’t be barefoot in here,” he grumbles.

Despite the clipped response, his gloved hands are remarkably gentle when he cups my ankle. He angles my foot toward the light, examining the wound.

“It’s embedded fairly deep,” he observes.

“Great,” I grit out.

“I need to remove it.”

“No shit.”

His gaze lifts to mine. “Ready?”

I trap my lower lip between my teeth, nodding.

Cradling my ankle in one hand, Elliott carefully pinches the exposed edge of the glass between the gloved fingers of his other, tugging gently.

“Oh, fuck, wait,” I choke as he starts to remove the shard, jerking instinctively in response to the pain.

The movement dislodges the glass from my heel, but the edge of it slices through his latex glove in the process, a bead of dark blood appearing along his finger.

“Shit, did it cut you?” I ask, though the answer’s obvious.

The blood along his finger wells thicker, dripping down onto the shard and mingling with my own.

And then… it glows.

I stare.

Elliott stares.

The glass between his fingers isn’t reflecting the overhead lights– it’s actually fucking glowing, illuminating the mingled streaks of red coating the opaque surface.

My breath catches, because I’ve seen that reaction before. My brain scrambles backward through the last few days– a glass tube, two samples, James and Taylor…

Their blood is uniquely compatible. When combined, it reacts.

My heart stops.

No fucking way.

My gaze snaps to Elliott, whose face has gone completely blank.

“Eli…”

He moves faster than I can blink. One second, I’m standing there with my hand on his shoulder, and the next, he’s upright and his arm’s locked around my waist, crushing me against him. His fist tangles in my hair, yanking my head sideways, then pain flashes through my neck as his fangs sink in deep.

I gasp, and then the venom hits, pleasure detonating beneath my skin.

It rushes outward from the bite in a molten wave, flooding my veins so quickly my knees buckle. Every muscle in my body goes slack, the pain disappearing beneath a euphoric haze so intense I can barely remember how we even got here in the first place.

A moan tumbles from my throat, Elliott’s arm tightening around my waist to keep me upright. His mouth stays sealed to my neck as he drinks in greedy pulls, his chest rumbling against me in satisfaction. My fingers curl into his shirt, and for one glorious, dizzying second, this is exactly what I’ve wanted.

His bite.