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No.
I lean forward, hand grazing her thigh as I reach for her wrist. Her pulse flutters beneath my touch. “Because a lousy fuck would satisfy you?”
“They could try,” she says breathlessly.
I shouldn’t entertain this, shouldn’t drag this out. I close my eyes against the aching in my gums, against the sweet scent of her blood, against that unfamiliar four-letter “M” word pounding a war drum deep in my chest.
“You are nothing like I expected,” I whisper as I drag her onto my lap and devour her.
Chapter 5
RORY
A vampire is kissing me.
It’s nothing like I’ve been kissed before. Not clumsy or rushed or weak.
Nor is it how I’d seen Viv kiss and be kissed by plenty of boys.
This kiss is hard and demanding, almost all-consuming as he deepens it. His tongue caresses mine, and shivers erupt all over my skin. He tastes like a sweet wine, and if we had more time, I might’ve gotten drunk off his taste alone.
The heaviness in my chest subsides as he pulls me flush against him, and I almost forget I’ll soon never kiss anyone ever again. My nails dig into his toned back through the fabric of his dark shirt, and he groans into my mouth. It’s a primal, intoxicating sound, creating a sudden throbbing between my legs.
Breaking the kiss, he leans away from me. The firelight casts an incandescent glow around him, making him heart-stoppingly beautiful. When Cress warned me he was a vampire, I had my reservations. But he’s had multiple opportunities to rip out my throat, and he hasn’t even tried. Maybe I’m naive or desperate, but something flares within me, telling me I can trust him, even if my friend and my mind say otherwise.
My gaze travels across his chest and even lower, and… Heaven and stars eternal. His tightly fitted slacks are sculpted to his muscular thighs, leaving very little to the imagination when it comes to the rather large bulge in his pants.
Will he even fit inside me?
“Having second thoughts?” he asks, voice husky. “We can stop at any time.”
I want this—want him—in a way I have never let myself want anything before.
“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my entire life,” I say, toying with the hem of his shirt once more. I relish in the way his eyes linger on my thighs, on the swath of pale skin and the powder-blue veins beneath.
His heady stare is starlit with lust as I pull his shirt up and over my head and toss it aside. I should feel self-conscious sitting half-naked in the lap of a total stranger, bare and his for the taking. But I don’t have it in me to think. Not as he drinks me in, seals the little space between us once more, and kisses me again and again and again until I’m panting and out of breath.
“Have you done this before?” he murmurs, peppering tender kisses along my jaw.
I tilt my head so he has better access to my neck. “Fucked a stranger?”
Why do I trust that he won’t bite me?
Why do I not care if he does?
His teeth drag against the sensitive skin there just before his mouth clamps down on it. I rock back and forth against his length, needing some sense of friction as he tongues my neck. He releases me, and my skin tingles where his mouth had just been.
Staring into my eyes, he asks, “Have you fucked anyone at all, Rory?”
I melt at the sound of my name spoken from such perfect lips.
Sacrifices are meant to be pure until death, but that never stopped any of the boys or men from coveting what they shouldn’t have wanted, and it certainly hasn’t stopped me from letting them have their way, with them knowing that if they breathed a word of what transpired between us, they’d be hanged in the city square for sullying the sacrifice and risking the sanctity of the rite.
No one besides Cress knows of my trysts at Lickerish or of all the forbidden touches in the dead of the night.
As he searches my face, I find myself unable to lie.
“If you were hoping I was a virgin,” I say, biting my lip, “you’ll be sorely disappointed.”
