Page 75 of Mate of a Monster

My breath turns rough. I hold it anyway.

What the fuck?

I stay still, locked over her, weight planted where it pins her. Her body is rigid beneath mine, every line tight, every muscle braced to either bite or break. She’s warm. Too warm. It sinks into my palms when I press her down into the wood. I feel her pulse banging against my thumbs like she’s trying to knock me off with nothing but blood and spite.

Her eyes don’t flinch. Her mouth doesn’t part. She gives me nothing. No fear. No plea. No shaky breath that I can use.

She’s making a point, trying to force me to cave and expecting that I will.

Why would she think I would?

She’s nothing.

It takes everything in me to keep my face blank. The want is there, thick and brutal, crawling under my skin. It fills my throat. It crowds my lungs. I want to tilt my head and drag my mouth over the cut. I want to taste the proof that she’s real and still mine enough to bleed under my hand.

I want to fucking give everything; and that’s exactly why I don’t.

Because the second I give her anything honest, she’ll take it. She’ll twist it. She’ll use it to hurt me the way she always has.

The blood keeps sliding. A thin line now, painting the blade’s edge, trembling with each breath she refuses to let turn into a sound. The room feels tighter. The air tastes like metal. My fingers flex against her wrists, and I feel the faint slickness where her skin sweats under my hold.

And then she does the one fucking thing she shouldn’t.

Her hand shifts. Quick. Controlled. Like she’s been waiting for the exact moment my attention narrows to the blood.

Her thumb finds my mouth.

It presses against my bottom lip, damp with her blood and her skin and – whatever the fuck she is hiding behind that stare. The contact jolts straight through me, and my eyes roll back.

My lips part on instinct. A breath catches in my chest like I just swallowed fire.

The taste hits, and my brain stutters.

My stomach drops and for a second the room tilts. Fury burns into excitement. Rage. A fucking drug.

My tongue twitches, wanting more. At this point, I’d fucking drink from her anywhere.

My gaze travels down her body and between her legs. Fuck…

My thoughts slam into each other about as hard as I’d fuck her.

Nah, not that hard.

Her blood. It doesn’t remind me of her exactly. It’s something else, deeper – darker. It’s like I can feel its path: the slow slide down my throat. It doesn’t pause; it multiplies and spreads, running through my organs until it’s pumping through the very veins threaded through my heart. It sings deep and dark in my damn soul.

Want.

Need.

Mine. Mine. Mine.

“What’s the matter?” she asks, voice low, calm enough to make me want to crush it out of her. “Little miss nothing got your tongue?”

Her thumb drags again, smearing blood across my lips. I feel the wetness there, feel the sting where my skin splits from how hard I’m holding my mouth shut.

“You know, as mad as I was that you forced me to go to school like some human, I did end up learning a thing or two.”

My nostrils flare. I breathe in her blood and feel my control strain, thin as wire.