Page 26 of Hot for Slayer
His throat works. “It’s your decision to make, Aethelthryth.”
Oh my God. It is.
Itreallyis.
And somehow, despite how incredibly messed up all of this is, it’s the easiest decision I’ve ever had to make.
“I ... I think you have an advantage. And you know things about me. That I ... don’t. About you, that is. And it’s only fair that ...” I fist my hands at my sides, feeling dizzy. Slowly, surely, an idea coalesces in my head. “It’s only fair that I spend time with you. And that we get even.”
He freezes like what I just said detonated a million bombs in his brain. But then he nods gingerly as if not to spook me.
“Maybe we could ... Tomorrow night, for instance? Meet? And talk? But I’m going to need to leave now. I’ve bled a lot, which means that I’m going to need to feed soon, so I’ll have to find someone who—”
“I will help,” he blurts out.
I nod. Laugh a little. “You have a lead on someone very shitty?”
“No,” he says. But he turns around to open a drawer and pulls out a sharp, gleaming knife. Before I can grasp what he’s about to do, he closes his fist around it and lets the blade slice a deep cut across his palm. “But I’d be happy to provide you with what you need.”
My spine, together with the rest of my nerve endings, liquifies.
I feel my entire body tremble.
Try to make myself consider theimpossibilityof it: A slayer. Offering nourishment tome. A vampire.
Then the scent of his blood hits my nostrils, and all I can do is run to him.
Chapter 14
We bump into several sharp corners before finally finding a flat surface—which happens to be the tiled floor of his kitchen. I hold Lazlo’s palm against my mouth, latch tightly on to the wound he created for me,just for me, and take deep, thick gulps as I climb on top of him to straddle his lap.
It’s like he’s my own prey—one I’ve hunted down and subdued and captured. One I’ve decided to keep for myself.
From the way the amber of his irises disappears into dark pupils, he seems to have no objections to that, but to be certain that we’re on the same page, I roll my hips against him and watch him arch and groan like he’s in pain.
Yup. The very same.
Sex and blood have always lived in two separate buckets for me. Pleasure and nutrients. Luxury and necessity. Different, isolated, never to meet. But this ... It’s good. The taste of Lazlo’s blood filling my mouth is delicious, vital sustenance, an addling drug that I’m already addicted to. It’s never been this way for me, and the reason hits me as I take another shameless deep pull: This is the first time I’ve drank blood that was freely given to me.
It’s such a turn-on, I moan into Lazlo’s hand and listen to him do the same. My whole body vibrates with pleasure at thesimple thought of it—that this man wants me to be alive, to be healthy, wants to offer me something for the simple reason that he cares about my well-being.
He doesn’t mind that I’mtaking. In fact, he’s saying things in Hungarian that mostly boil down tofuckandyesandplease. More.
But he was injured, too, and I’m drinking a lot. I force myself to stop, pull back from his flesh, and say, “I don’t want to take too much—”
With a flex of his abs, he sits up from underneath me and presses his palm back to my mouth, a silentshut up with this nonsense and take all you want. So I do. Until my blood-drunk, glazed eyes fall on his lips, and I realize that there’s something I crave even more than his blood.
I pull back. He watches me lick what’s left of him off my lips, and his moan is pure agony. “Fuck,” he mutters, raspy, enraptured.
“Am I— Do you— Can I kiss you? I might taste like blood, so if you don’t want to—”
He closes the space between us, and his mouth strokes mine, slow, sensual, deep. I feel his groan of pleasure exhaled against my tongue. The cut on his palm has already repaired itself, and one hand travels to my ass, my breasts, my hips, while the other tightens at the back of my neck. We both gasp, bodies melded together as close as they’ll go.
This is messy and uncoordinated and unlike anything else. The feeling of touching and being touched by someone who knows me and whom I know. Someone who likes me and whom I like. Someone I could fall in love with and who would love me back.
The sweetness of it roars through me, and I savor it.
“You are so beautiful right now,” he says, his large body dragging against mine, and I feel a tingle in my spine, the desire to reach for more, to have his skin rub against mine.
