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He stares down at his hands, palms slick and red. His throat tightens, his mouth parts, but he doesn’t lick the blood from his fingers. Instead, he leans closer, pressing them gently against my lips.

“I have learned the necessity of restraint,” he murmurs. “Though it has been a lesson centuries in the making. There is value in knowing how to hold back from that which you most desire.” He pauses, then slides a thumb over my lips, wetting them with my own blood. “And in knowing when to let go.”

My mouth tingles with the metallic tang of iron. It should disgust me, but instead all I can think about is the ache of emptiness inside me and how this creature might be the one person in this wretched world who understands it.

I don’t know who moves first. I wish I could be certain it wasn’t me, but I am reeling, unmoored, and Iestyn is the only thing I can latch on to.

So that is exactly what I do.

When our mouths meet, it is not in passion, but in hunger, in need. His tongue circles my lips, kissing clean the blood smeared across them. Then he pushes deeper, and I invite him into me, devouring everything he has to give. The taste of my blood mingles with the taste of him, rich and ancient and heady all in the same breath. He kisses me like I’m something to savour, each sweep of his tongue laden with purpose, with relish.

The wound on my chest flares as he shifts his weight over me, pushing me deeper into the sagging, moth-eaten sofa. The burst of pain brings a moan to my throat, swiftly stifled by his mouth against mine. He draws my lips back with the tip of his nose, finding new ways to consume me.

I shouldn’t want this. It’s everything I feared, everything I guarded myself against. But there is a hollow inside me that begs to be filled, a desperate heat between my thighs that I can’t ignore.

He is a monster. But perhaps I am too.

I feel a tug on my lips as Iestyn pulls away. The absence leaves me wanting, but then his mouth is on me again, working down my neck. His fangs are separated from my skin by mere millimetres. He must be able to sense the blood pulsing in my veins, the warmth of my throat beneath his lips as he trails lower. I can’t help but stiffen, bracing for the pain of him sinking his teeth into me.

Instead, his tongue flits across my collarbone, carefully avoiding the silver chain that hangs from my neck as he laps the blood around the wound in my shoulder. A deep, satisfied sigh rumbles from his throat, and he shifts lower, following the droplets down my sternum.

I can’t help the gasp that escapes my lips when his mouth drifts to the underside of my breasts. The sound feels like a betrayal, wrenched from my lungs without any kind of cognisance on my part. However empty my heart may be, my body is wracked with desperate want, shamefully responding to Iestyn’s touch.

He slides his fingers across my ribs, cupping one of my breasts as he sucks the blood from my skin. Each flick of his tongue is hungrier than the last. When he reaches my nipple, he pauses, then takes it between his lips until it’s slick with blood and saliva.

This time, it’s more than a gasp. An aching, piteous moan shudders from my throat, and though I do my best to swallow it, the echo lingers in the still air.

Iestyn pulls back, his lips smeared scarlet. “Such modesty, Alderose. How entirely unnecessary.”

He loosens his grip from around my breast, then slides his hand down my skin, brushing his fingers over my ribcage. When he reaches my hip, he squeezes, and the warmth between my legs coils with longing.

This isn’t right. But knowing that doesn’t make me want it any less.

Iestyn loosens the cords of my breeches, and I hold my breath as he slides the fabric down.

“Why should I be the only one to draw pleasure from this night?” he murmurs against my skin. “Why should you be denied the satisfaction you have given me?”

He slips his fingers between my legs, and the heat soars. The pressure of his touch, slow and firm, coaxes out of me a wave of something I have never felt before. It pulses like a heartbeat, almost unbearable, agony and ecstasy wound tight as he rubs in steady circles.

My lips part in desperation, and his mouth finds mine again. I can’t help but surrender to the taste of myself on his tongue, sweet and metallic and ripe. If he desires my blood, he can have it. Whatever he is doing, I want it. I need it. It won’t heal what is broken in me, but it might numb me to it, just for a moment. Perhaps that is all I can hope for.

His fingers glide over me, slick with blood and the warm, wanting wetness coating my thighs. Each stroke leaves behind a throb of pleasure so fervent it’s excruciating. His touch is terrifyingly purposeful, building something in me that I won’t be able to contain much longer.

He drags his lips down my throat again, kissing and sucking the remains of the blood on my skin. When he reaches my breasts, he pauses, fixing me with a fathomless stare. Then he lowers his mouth, never breaking his gaze from mine as he closes his lips around my rigid nipple.

I writhe, desire surging between my legs as he watches me. It’s too much. He’s taking me to a place I can’t come back from, a place I’ve never known before. The flicking of his tongue, the pressure of his fingers, builds into a pleasure so torturous it threatens to undo me.

“Alderose,” he whispers against me. “Dear, sweet Alderose.”

Something inside me shatters. The heat from the circles he’s rubbing swells into rapture, and I cry out as my body shudders violently against his fingers.

When it is over, Iestyn doesn’t say another word. He releases me to the sunken cushions, a curious smile stretching the corners of his bloodstained lips.

I want to ask him why. I need to understand what he has done to me. But every breath I draw into my lungs is shallow and ragged. The wound in my shoulder dulls to a far-off ache. My mind turns blissfully blank, and for the first time in years, I drift into a deep, dreamless sleep.

It’s only when I wake the next morning that I realise it was not Iestyn’s name but Henry’s that spilled from my parted lips.

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