Page 87 of Maksym

I believed that. I also suspected he might frighten himself.

I shifted, slowly, until I sat more fully across his lap. The sleep shirt rode up my thighs. His hands did not move there. He kept one on my back, the other braced loosely against the mattress as if giving himself something safe to hold.

The restraint was so obvious it became its own kind of touch.

Maksym extended his wrist to me.

The inside of it faced upward, pale and strong, blue veins faint beneath skin that had known centuries and still appeared unmarked there. I stared at it, and hunger woke instantly.

Not polite hunger. Not hesitant. My mouth watered.

“Visualize letting your fangs descend,” he said. “Do not force. Invite. Then the venom. Let it flow when you bite. It will ease the pain for me.”

Pain for him. The thought troubled me more than I expected.

“Will it hurt?”

“Remember how I taught you? It will hurt if you don’t help.”

I looked at his wrist again. His blood lived beneath that skin.

I could smell it now that I knew what to notice. Dark. Rich. Powerful enough that my gums ached before I tried to make anything happen.

My fangs dropped on their own.

The sensation startled me—a quick, sharp slide, as natural as flexing fingers I had forgotten I owned. Maksym saw it and stilled.

“Good,” he murmured.

The approval went through me low and hot. I leaned down.

“Grace,” he said.

I paused, fangs hovering above his wrist.

“Take what you need. Remember to will your venom to flow as well.”

I bit.

His skin gave beneath my fangs with a resistance that lasted less than a heartbeat. Then heat filled my mouth.

Maksym’s blood did not taste like the blood wine. That had been nourishment made civilized. This was power.

Hot, dark, alive in a way that made no biological sense. It rolled over my tongue with copper and smoke and something almost sweet beneath the iron, something that made my throat work before I chose to swallow. My hands caught his forearm. Not to hold him down. To hold myself in place.

A sound left me. Low. Embarrassing. Mine.

Maksym’s hand resumed its slow circles on my back.

I felt the muscle in his arm shift beneath my mouth as my tongue moved instinctively against the punctures. Press. Draw. Swallow. Again. My body knew the rhythm.

The room filled with quiet sounds. My breathing through my nose. The wet pull of my mouth at his wrist. Maksym’s low exhale when the venom must have entered him. A faint shift outside the closed door. My eyes opened. Taras.

I could hear him beyond the room. Not at the threshold, not crowding the space. Guarding. His weight shifted once, nearly silent, then stilled. The palace had arranged itself around my rest and Maksym’s protection so completely that even embarrassment had to wait its turn.

Maksym’s fingers spread over my back.

“Do not worry about him,” he said softly. “He hears enough to know you are safe. Nothing more matters.”