Page 12 of Blood Moon Heat

“Centuries.” He licked his lips. “I got only a small taste of it, just once a year, when I allowed myself to visit you, but that was nothing compared to this.” He hissed low, and it morphed into a low groan. “Nothing like this.”

Oh gods, he liked it. He liked the pain. But maybe after centuries of nothing, of feeling absolutely nothing at all, even pain would be welcome?

For a moment, just a second, I actually felt sorry for him. I shoved the feeling down, because how I handled this situation would dictate how he treated me in the future. Or maybe it would have no effect on him at all. How could a man who hadn’t felt anything emotionally and, by the sounds of it, physically for centuries understand that what he was doing, how he was treating me, hurt? That it was causing the kind of damage between us that could never be repaired. That if he had a change of heart, that if he decided he wanted more from me, that I might never be able to forgive him?

It seemed impossible, but I had to try. I had to try to understand him, to make him understand me.

I looked up at him, still so close. “You don’t enjoy feeding? It doesn’t make you feel good.”

His gaze dipped to my throat. “It had ceased to…” The tip of his tongue peeked out, sliding along the seam of his lips. “Until I tasted you under the blood moon.”

I nodded slowly, trying to decide the best way to say what I wanted to say. It was hard to think with him so close, with his massive body looming over me like a starved predator. I struggled to get the words right. “Don’t you want to keep experiencing that? Don’t you want more? To feel more? If you let me out, if we spent time togeth—”

“No, little doll, this is enough.”

I glared back at him. “I don’t believe you.”

“Lying would require me to care about your thoughts and feelings on the matter. I’m incapable of that. Whatever romantic notions you’re carrying around in your head, you need to squash them. This is where you’ll stay because this is where I want you to be. This is all I will ever want from you.”

My fear twisted with anger as it reared up inside me. “Well, this is not enough for me, Nero. How could this ever be enough for anyone?”

“These are your new circumstances. You need to get used to them.” He brushed my hair back from my face. “And from now on when I come into your room at night, you will lie still and silent, do you understand?”

He couldn’t be serious. “No. I won’t—”

His fingers slipped around my throat, not tight but with enough pressure to shut me up. “I have been very accommodating, Mina. I’m not known for my kindness or my patience.”

True paralyzing fear gripped me as I looked into his icy gaze, followed by a wave of complete and utter hopelessness.

“If there is anything you need, ask Pretender and he will get it for you. When you need to feed, tell him, and I will come to you during the day…but at night, when I am in this room, you do not speak, and you do not move, do you understand?”

I was frozen in place.

“Nod, Mina. Nod that you understand what your bonded requires of you.”

It was hard, but somehow I managed it.

His eyes glittered, his fingers slipping away, finally releasing me, then he walked out, locking the door behind him.

Four

Nero

I looked down at the packed dance floor below, muted music reaching me through the large window in my office. The humans who frequented The Bank were oblivious to who and what they were dancing with, who they would take home and fuck later that night. I didn’t care what happened to them when they left my club, why would I? I didn’t care about anything, and I didn’t dwell on things, but for some reason I couldn’t stop thinking about her.

My little doll in her pretty room below ground.

I had grown so numb to my own instincts, so disconnected to all but the need to occasionally feed that this new sensation inside me, the one that drove me to seek her out, was all-consuming. It was primal, built into the fabric of our being, and part of what made us vampire, but it had been buried deep inside me under layers of ice. Until now. The force of it was a shock to the system, pumping life back to the withered and cold places that had been long forgotten, and I hadn’t decided if this partial reanimation was unwelcome or not.

I craved the pain that being near Mina gave me, but now, even when I wasn’t with her, it remained a constant ache inside me—and so was my thirst for her.

Drinking, fucking had both been biological needs that I fulfilled when necessary. I didn’t need to feed often, not anymore; it had become a tasteless, joyless endeavor. Fucking, much the same.

The last time I was inside a female was in The Vault, the feeding club I owned just below this one, and I’d felt nothing. The encounter happened a short time after I found Mina, after I stood at her window and felt the incredible pull that I recognized instantly.

I hadn’t sought out a bedmate since.

And now that I’d tasted my little Lalka in the garden, I’d been, hungry for her, off-balance, ever since.

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