Page 82 of Claimed By Fangs and Darkness
I guided my perfect little doll to her knees.
“Mouth open. Eyes on me.”
27
EVIE
Iwanted to suck Kylo’s beautiful cock all over again when I tasted our first bites of food.
Whenever Jacob took me to a nice restaurant, the act was meaningless, devoid of warmth. His romantic efforts were mechanical, merely a necessary task to check off a list or a way to indicate his wealth and influence. If he’d had it his way, I’m not sure we would’ve done much of anything but lie around at home and talk about his business plans as I stroked his overinflated ego.
Where Kylo took me wasn’t showy. It was small, cozy and candlelit, a place I’d never heard of—as if it were a well-kept secret. The servers weren’t even nice to us, answering only in grunts and mumbles.
But thefood?
“Oh my gods,” I moaned for the twentieth time since we’d arrived.
Kylo laughed. “Try this,” he said. He made me a fork of octopus on a bed of the airiest mashed potatoes I’d ever seen.
I opened my mouth. As soon as the food melded with my tastebuds, I made a sound not unlike the ones I made when coming.
Kylo’s eyes darkened. “Fuck, Evie,” he hissed. “What did I say about behaving?”
I swallowed a sip of water and batted my eyelashes. “That we weren’t going to do that tonight?”
Kylo ate too, though not as much as I did. Vampires could still enjoy the act if they worked to preserve their taste for human food. But they didn’t need food to survive.
I didn’t mind the disparity. I would’ve gratefully eaten these culinary masterpieces from Kylo’s palms if I had to. I bet he’d like that.
“What do you think of that one?” Kylo asked, pointing to the painting next to us that I hadn’t noticed until now.
I’d been far too concerned with the insane array of food Kylo had been feeding me.
“Oh wow,” I murmured, taking in the brushstrokes of darkness and despair. I squinted. Flecks of paint with an almost opalescent quality were splattered across the canvas. My finger hovered above, careful not to touch. “Like tiny pops of light and meaning in a confusing, dark world.”
“Met the artist at a gallery once. He said it was a self-portrait,” Kylo said. “What do you see now?”
I applied this new information to the piece, brows furrowed.
“A vampire,” I said. “The outline in the top left almost looks like a swing on a tree, a representation of nostalgia, or a loss of innocence. And the solid blocks in the center could be walls—a barrier. I’m guessing self-imposed. Perhaps someone grappling with the grief of becoming turned?”
Kylo smiled. “He was born.”
My jaw dropped, head snapping to stare at him in disbelief. “Really?”
He nodded. “He was one of the last of his kind. A mystifying, bizarre artistic movement that came into fashion here in Etherdale about a century ago. It was tiny, and its adherentswere persecuted and hunted down until most had been killed off by their fellow born. Can you guess what they stood for and explored through their art?”
I turned back to the painting—the haunting darkness, the light forever out of reach. A surprising emotion arose, akin to sympathy.
“Humanity,” I said. “A rejection of their own nature.”
“Fucking sad, isn’t it?” Kylo said. “A barren night sky that covets the stars.”
I’m not sure what I felt as I pondered this. It was too complex to put into words.
“Do you think it was authentic?” I asked.
“Which part?”
