Page 53 of The Serpent's Bride
There was the Raziel she knew. She shot him a look. “You’re going to have to wait. Sorry for the inconvenience.”
Lifting his hand, his fingers were stained with her blood. Smirking, he licked them clean.
For a moment, her heart lurched in her chest as she watched.
One by one, like someone savoring the bits of a bowl after making brownie dough. Would he know? Could hetell?
Was this the moment it all fell apart?
In her mind’s eye, Nadi could picture him grimacing in disgust as he tasted her fae blood before ripping her throat open and murdering her right then and there.
But he merely groaned as his pupils went wide. His voice was suddenly breathy. “Oh, Monica…I’m not so sure how long I can be patient.”
A knot twisted in her stomach. Well. It…seemed her theory about her glamor lasting long enough to make it past his tastebuds was right. At least in small doses.
He leaned his head back against the rear window of the car. “If all girls out in the outer cities taste like you do, we city vampires have been missing out.”
“Must be all the fresh air.” She smiled nervously. At least he’d write it off as being because she was afraid of being bitten—which she was, but not for the reasons he’d expect. “And the grass.”
“You do taste a bit like how the Wild smells. That must be it.” He wiped his hand off on his pants—she’d already ruined his tuxedo, anyway—before smiling at her almost lazily. “Somehow, you keep finding more ways to tease me.”
She was struck by how handsome he was. The light from outside cut his sharp features in light and shadow. She couldn’t help herself. She just couldn’t. Leaning forward, she kissed him.
He tasted coppery and bitter—her own blood. It wasn’t the first time she’d tasted it.
Threading his hand into her hair, he held her closer, deepening the embrace. When he growled deep in his chest, her eyes slipped shut.
It was a long moment before he finally broke away. She was breathless—from the concussion, the champagne, and now the kiss.
“Careful, farm girl. You’re playing with fire.”
“You think I don’t know that?” He smelled like cologne and woodsmoke. She wanted to nuzzle closer to him. “That’s thepoint.”
He chuckled darkly before leaning his head back again. “I think you and I are going to get alongjustfine.”
Good. Even if he didn’t trust her yet, he was starting to like her.
And that was going to make it much easier to kill him.
FIFTEEN
Raziel stood at the far end of the room, his arms folded across his chest, as he watched his doctor work on Monica. His jaw twitched. It took every ounce of willpower he owned not to leap across the room and sink his fangs into her throat and drink her dry.
No, her death at his hands had to wait until their honeymoon. But by the moons, he needed to drink of her before then.
The smell of her blood was thick in the air. He had tasted just the barest drop of it in the car and it had been a terrible mistake on his part. Now that he knew what he was missing, it was doubly hard to resist.
It’d been unlike anything he’d ever had before in hislife.It had threatened every ounce of control he owned not to rip her apart.
But his wife of only a few hours was stretched thin enough as it was.
She was lying on her side on a metal table that the doctor used for surgeries. Because of her concussion, which was thankfully deemed mild, she wasn’t given any painkillers nor was the doctor able to put her under to remove the bullet. SoMonica lay there, staring at a point on the far wall, as the doctor cleaned the wound with rubbing alcohol.
Her hand twitched in pain, but she didn’t make a sound.
“This will hurt,” the doctor muttered to Monica. His name was Bartholomew Williams—a brilliant young man who had been cast out from the local hospitals due to an…eccentricfascination with attempting to resurrect the dead.
“It already hurts.” Monica shot the doctor a flat stare. “Just shut up and do yourfuckingjob, will you?”
