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“That’s a risk?” I asked. “Riggs is so-”
“It’s a risk. You’re like a bottomless pit for blood, Sylvie. You could drink him to death in a minute or two if you wanted to.”
“I don’t,” I said, slightly offended.
“Then let’s go while you still have the willpower to make that choice. If you get much more blood hungry, you’ll be like your sister was. The lights will turn off up there,” she said, tapping my head. “You’ll have to be nursed back to health, and we don’t have time for that.”
I turned down the lights so Riggs wouldn’t see the full extent of how much I’d shriveled. I thought his night vision must’ve been better than I anticipated, because when Kyla and I came in to wake him, he sat up, eyes wide.
“Sylvie,” he breathed. “What’s wrong with her?”
Kyla hung her head. “I overestimated how long she could go without feeding. Ana Black turned her, and it seemed like that was jumpstarting her development enough that she could go a week or two without feeding already. I was wrong. She needs blood. Now,” Kyla added.
Riggs seemed to process everything quickly. “What do I need to do?”
“Sit still and let her feed on you,” Kyla said.
Riggs didn’t hesitate. He surely knew all the risks that would come with any of his pack finding out about this, but I could tell the only thing he cared about was helping me. He sat on the edge of the bed shirtless and rolled his head to the side, exposing his muscular neck for me.
I felt a sudden, nearly unstoppable urge to rush to him and sink my teeth in where I could see his vein pulsing softly against his skin. It was like spending all day at the beach and coming home to find a cold glass of ice water on the counter, tempting little bubbles of condensation dripping from the sides.
Kyla took me by the shoulders and led me slowly to him. “Your body is going to try to grab control once you start. It’ll be like the first time you fed, but much worse. You’re starving right now for blood and you’ll want to drink too much. So you’ve got to do everything you can to stay present. Listen to me when I tell you to stop, and don’t take even one more sip than I allow. Drink too much, and you can lose control completely. Okay?”
I looked at Riggs, who was watching me with a mask of concern. I wanted to blush for how hideous he probably thought I looked, but it felt like there wasn’t even enough spare blood in my body for embarrassment. “You’re sure this is okay?” I asked him. “Kyla said it’s really taboo.”
“I’d do anything for you,” he said simply.
His words swirled around in me like hot cocoa after a cold walk in the snow. I wanted to clutch onto them and never let go of that feeling of warmth they provided.
I opened my mouth, feeling my teeth elongate. When I bit into his skin, it was harder to puncture by several orders of magnitude than the human man’s had been. It was like Riggs’ skin was woven through with steel. But my vampire fangs were apparently strong enough and eventually punched through with an audible pop.
Hot blood rushed into my mouth. I swallowed, gasping against his skin with the impossible deliciousness of it. I felt myself clutching him hard with both hands and drinking greedily. Something like sexual pleasure started to pulse between my legs and I had to press my thighs together to stop from succumbing to it.
What the hell?
I could feel the blood spreading through me like air into a deflated balloon. I could feel my body returning to normal, my cheeks filling back out. I felt the intoxicating strength swell in me with each swallow, too. More strength than I’d felt before. More by far.
Strangest still, vivid images flashed in my mind as I drank. I saw myself, but through someone else’s eyes. I saw me sleeping on the bed at The Wet Flea beside Maisey and I felt a pounding, harsh kind of feeling. It was foreign, but I thought I understood it as resistance. Like I was drawn to myself but was fighting it with tooth and nail.
I saw me getting sicker and felt an urge to protect more powerful than anything I’d ever experienced. It was like I would’ve literally thrown myself in front of a train if it meant saving her. Saving me.
It was all a confused rush of images and emotions—too quick for me to process it all. My smile when the sunlight was hitting my eyes in the truck and how beautiful I looked to him. My body beneath him as he plunged into me, his mind split in two between himself and the wolf within. My face when I’d walked into the room and the devastation and disappointment he’d felt at letting me get so bad.
