Page 50 of Prince with a Chance of Darkness

He stayed perfectly still, watching me with an intensity that should have scared me. Like he was afraid any movement might spook me.

I reached out, my hand hovering over his chest. When my fingers brushed over the scar that matched my own, electricity shot through me, and I yanked back.

His hand caught my wrist before I could retreat. Slowly, deliberately, he brought my hand back to his chest, pressing my palm flat against his scar. His skin burned hot beneath my touch, and my pulse sped, my heart feeling as if it might burst free from my chest.

His other hand cupped my chin, tilting my face up to his. He lowered his head as I rose onto my tiptoes, drawn by something I couldn't name.

He feathered his lips over mine in a teasing manner.

I growled.

He grinned.

I threw caution to the wind and kissed him fully, giving in to whatever this was between us.

There was nothing hesitant about the kiss. No testing, no slow build. No timid, virgin-like fumbling around. My mouth crashed into his, and he met me with the kind of raw, focused intensity that could cause spontaneous combustion.

He made a sound low in his throat—half growl, half groan—as he held my hand to his chest, his scar under my fingertips.

The urge to scale him, to climb through him, to be one with him was so intense it bordered on frightening. The rational side of my brain said I should stop kissing and start slaying. The rest of me was totally onboard with being as irrational as possible. In fact, it wished I’d be even more irrational.

I’m not sure how it is he didn’t cut himself on my fangs, but his tongue eased around my mouth like a seasoned pro. Like he’d kissed a thousand vampires before getting to me. The thought of him with another woman, vampire or not, left me yanking my mouth from his, my gaze colliding with his.

He released my wrist, cupping my face instead.“Nu te teme de ceea ce este între noi. Soarta nu gre?e?te niciodata.”

I wasn’t sure what in the hell he’d said, and I didn’t really care. Between his accent and the way my body was hummingwith the promise of pleasure, I was basically putty in his hands. I wasn’t proud of how weak I was when it came to surrendering to the opposite sex, but the time for caring about such things had passed. Now, all I wanted was to feel his lips on mine.

Nodding without knowing what I was nodding about, I tilted my face up more, wanting him to take the lead. Needing him to be in charge—to dominate the situation. It was so unlike me that I should have run away, putting as much distance as possible between him and me.

As his lips crashed down onto mine, all thoughts of fleeing vanished from my mind. The next I knew, I was yanking his shirt off him and tossing it aside.

If he cared, he didn’t show it. Instead, his hands found my sides, and he broke the kiss momentarily. “Yes?”

Unconcerned with what I was agreeing too, I nodded frantically. “Yes! Hurry up.”

A bad boy grin slid over his entirely too perfect face.

“Dracula,” I said, going with his delusion because it seemed better to call him that than Guy-Who-Needs-To-Be-In-Me-Like-Yesterday. “Please.”

“Mmm, I like hearing you beg,lumini?a mea,” he said, the words tugging at the back of my mind. I knew that from somewhere, but I was too far down the rabbit hole of need to sort out where.

“Then stop talking and start doing me,” I said before remembering where we were—in a cemetery. “Uh, preferably somewhere less corpse-adjacent. Wait, does being near you count as corpse-adjacent?”

His grin darkened, and his fangs emerged, driving home what he was. He grabbed my hand and brought it to his groin, holding it there for me to know exactly how ready for more he was. “Do I feel like death to you,Lumini?a mea?”

I gulped at his size, my fingers moving slightly, caressing him through his dress slacks. “No.”

He kissed me again, so hard that his facial stubble rubbed against my chin and his fangs nicked my lower lip.

I gasped in his mouth and felt his tongue dart out and over the blood that pooled on my lip. My darkness blossomed, wanting more, wanting sex, wanting blood. I tried to pull it back—the bloodlust I worked so hard every hour of every day to control. It didn’t work.

My arms wrapped around his neck, and I was left standing on my tiptoes, desperate to be able to kiss him at a better angle. I was above average height for a woman, but he left me feeling small—dainty in comparison.

His grin darkened, fangs flashing. “As you wish.”

We didn’t walk so much as stumbled together in a frenzy of mouths and hands, tugging at each other’s clothing. He held tight to me as we cleared the cemetery boundary, moving just far enough into the trees to be off sacred ground.

The forest floor dipped suddenly beneath my feet, and I stumbled, taking him with me. We went down in a tangle of limbs and breathless laughter.

---