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There was a flash of fang in his words, and a deep chill curdled my insides. He did not release me and instead used the advantage of his superior strength to draw me towards him. With his one hand still in my hair, he forced me to look him straight in the eyes.
I was immune to the vampire ability to enthrall their human victims, known as the thrall, but it felt like that was what he was trying to do. Of all vampires, Holden knew of my immunity the best, so I wasn’t sure what his intentions were. I swallowed hard, and he pulled me closer so our bodies pressed together. My skin felt hot where it touched his.
“I need you, Secret,” he whispered against my lips. I shivered again, but this time it wasn’t from fear.
“Where are you?”
“I’m safe, for now. ” He trailed his fingertips down my left cheek.
“I can’t come home. ”
“You have to. I need you. ”
“If I come home, Sig will make me kill you. ”
“Will he?” He had his mouth hovering over mine, his lips brushing the oversensitive surface of my own, bringing a new wave of heat over my body. I was having trouble breathing, and he was moving his hands towards my lower back.
“As far as Sig’s concerned…” I trembled, “…it’s you or me. ”
A smile curved his mouth as his tongue traced the outline of my lower lip. “It won’t be me,” he promised.
Then, with a movement so fast it lasted less time than my alarmed gasp, he dropped his head and sank his ready teeth into my exposed neck.
Chapter Three
“Secret Merriweather McQueen! You put that in a glass this instant. ” My grandmere snatched the old-style glass milk bottle from my hand.
“It’s blood!” I exclaimed, reaching out to reclaim my breakfast. “You want me to put blood in your nice glasses?” Of course, this question was ridiculous on many levels. After sixteen years under her roof, I knew that was exactly what she wanted.
“It wouldn’t be the first time, baby,” she said, practically reading my mind. She was holding the bottle aloft while she rummaged through the cupboards. It was quite the spectacle, seeing my petite grandmother with a bottle of blood grasped in her hand, and keeping me at arm’s reach while she searched. Considering I had the physical strength to take the bottle by force, the situation was all the more comical because I did nothing to fight her. It was like a rabbit telling a bear to hang on for a second while the rabbit got him a plate.
She found what she was looking for and, with a satisfied grin, plunked a glass down on the counter.
I gave her a horrified look.
“You’re kidding me. How is that…” I pointed to the offending object, “…more civilized than drinking it from the bottle?”
She had found an old Sesame Street cup, depicting The Count. His cartoonish fangs beamed at me, and I read the writing on the side which proclaimed, One… One Glass of Milk! I wanted to stab myself in the face with the broken shards of my dignity.
Grandmere filled the glass with the bottled blood—pig, based on the small mouthful I’d tasted—and handed it to me.
“I raised a lady. ”
I let that one go, because I didn’t want her to know how far off base she was. I cursed like a sailor, slept with boys I wasn’t married to, and was sort of soul-married to two werewolves in a bizarre, polyandrous, metaphysical mess. Plus, I drank my blood straight out of the fridge back home. Lady was hardly the first word that came to mind when I described myself. But there was no point in telling all this to my grandmere, who I loved more than any human alive.
“It’s blood,” I reminded her again, more insistently. “In a toddler’s drinking glass. This is insulting. ”
“Drink it from that or don’t drink it at all. ” She put her hands on her hips and gave me a stern stare down, which let me know she wasn’t fooling around.
I picked up the glass with a little harrumph and knew my pouting wasn’t going to faze her. It probably only reminded her of the teenager I’d been when I ran away six years earlier. A lot about me had changed since then. I’d grown up, gotten harder and meaner. In many ways I was the most world-weary twenty-two-year-old in history. But I still knew how to laugh.
She sat down at the kitchen table and picked up a small box that had been left there. Something hard rattled inside when she shook it back and forth.
“I have something for you. ”
I placed my empty glass in the sink, and before she had a chance to remind me, filled it with soap and hot water and washed it out. Blood was a bitch to clean once it dried. With the glass now in the drain rack, I sat in the chair across from her.
Grandmere put the box back on the table and slid it across the wood until it was in front of me. I took off the lid, and inside was a necklace made from a blood red, striped stone with a band of gold flecks running down the middle. It was set with simple gold wire and hung on a gold chain.
