Page 92 of Ryder’s Storm

“Now let him drink.”

She put her bleeding wrist to Ryder’s mouth and felt him latch onto it, sucking hard. A shaky breath rolled over her lips.

Benjamin let out a breath, and Scarlet raised her gaze to look at him.

“What a lucky bastard,” Benjamin said as he licked a last drop of Scarlet’s blood from his lower lip, his fangs still extended.

42

Ryder felt his senses sharpen, and became aware of his surroundings. He lay on a cold surface, his head cradled in a warm lap, drinking from a human’s wrist, the delicious liquid familiar.

Scarlet…

His eyes flew open, and he jerked up, the bleeding wrist dropping in his lap.

“Fuck, Scarlet! Did I attack you? I’m sorry—”

“No,” she said, “you collapsed from the blood loss.”

Only now he realized that they weren’t alone. Benjamin was pressing his hand into Ryder’s side, and Ryder realized that he was putting pressure on the wound he’d sustained when a metal rod had pierced him when the house had come crashing down.

“Scarlet offered to feed you her blood so you could heal,” Benjamin said and removed his hand from Ryder’s wound. “Looks like it’s healing already.”

“You should have stopped her!”

Scarlet gasped and pulled back. “You don’t want my blood?”

He took her arm and pulled her to him. “Of course I do, but I already took so much from you earlier…when we…”

“But you needed it…” Scarlet said.

He brought her wrist to his lips and licked over the incisions to close them. “Thank you, Scarlet.”

Benjamin helped him and Scarlet up.

“Thanks,” Ryder said, “and Benjamin?”

“Yeah?”

“If you ever bite Scarlet again, I will beat you senseless.”

Benjamin shrugged. “Sounds fair.” He pressed the button to open the elevator door. “Thomas wants to see you urgently.”

Ryder took Scarlet’s hand into his, and together they exited the elevator and walked to Thomas’s office.

“Why were you threatening Benjamin?” Scarlet asked. “He was only trying to help.”

Ryder cast her a sideways look. “He wouldn’t have needed to bite your wrist. He could have just used his claws to make a little cut. But he wanted to get a taste of your blood, and he knows full well that I wouldn’t approve.”

Scarlet shook her head. “Are all vampires so possessive?”

“I’ll show you possessive later,” he said, raking a hungry look over her. Having fed on Scarlet’s blood was not simply healing him, it was arousing him. “But right now we’ve got something important to do.”

Thomas and Eddie were both waiting for them, when Ryder and Scarlet entered the office.

“Have you found anything else about Derek and Claudia?” Ryder asked immediately.

Scarlet put her hand on his forearm, making him look at her. “So it was Derek? He did all this?”