Page 30 of A Heart Of Bitter Poison
And there is one thing about a vampire that you should never forget.
We adapt to what you need us to be in that moment, so that we can getexactlywhat we want from you.
I halt my motion. My breath slows. I quiet everything, even my heart.
I lean closer, blowing a thin stream of breath across Ashen’s skin. My lips graze his ear and I rake my fangs across the lobe. He shivers, his hands pressing into my back and flowing down the ridges of my ribs. He twitches within me, growing ever closer to an orgasm.
I roll my hips once in a teasing motion and stop again. He growls with both pleasure and frustration.
“Tell me, Reaper,” I say in his ear, my voice low and husky. It doesn’t sound like mine. It brings me both delight and rage. “How does it feel to be denied that which you thought you had earned?”
Ashen gives a dark huff of a laugh at my goading words and grasps my hips. I roll them once more and he moans.
It happens so fast that his hands never even leave my sides.
Hot blood cascades from his neck, spraying across my chest. I lean back to stare down at his face with a faint, menacing smile. I hold my faithfulkaikenin my palm and smell the silver-infused steel, the leather of the handle warming beneath my touch.
Ashen’s erection is still hard within me as I slip away. He gurgles a shuddering breath and his lips move. He tries to say something. I think it’s my name, but no sound comes out.
I lean down and run my tongue along the slice in his throat, coating it in his effervescent taste. And then I press my lips to his, swirling his blood into his mouth before sitting back to survey my work.
“I always thought betrayal tasted like copper. Tell me if I’m right when you get back from the other side.”
His eyes flash with a mix of hurt and rage, and everything else he feels that I don’t want to know. With another quick slash across his throat, I end his life with my blade.
I climb off the bed and wipe mykaikenclean on his leg before it dissolves into cinders and ash. I watch until the last gray flake drifts into the still air, until all that’s left is the bloodstain on the sheets.
When he’s gone, I turn a circle in the silent room, looking for towels or robes or clothes. I see my bag on a chair along the opposite wall.
I take three steps into the room.
I stop.
Something’s not right.
As quick as a snap of fingers, I fall into shadow, losing my mind to a vision of the night.
CHAPTER13
Isee Ashen, lying naked on a black stone altar. His eyes are closed. His chest doesn’t rise or fall with any breath. I don’t hear a heartbeat. And then, everything roars to life. His heart starts from silence, and then pounds harder and harder as breath enters and leaves his lungs. I want to go. I want to leave before he opens his eyes. Somehow, I push this image away.
There’s a crackling sound, like electricity caught within my skull. It disappears as quickly as it comes and I blink, looking around a familiar room. Aglaope’s little stone cottage back on Anthemoessa. There are seashells tinkling like chimes in the window. The surf crashes against the rocks below the cliffs a short distance away.
“What do you want?” her voice says behind me. I whip around to face her, but she’s not looking at me. Her long, black hair falls between her shoulders and a blade is clutched behind her back. She edges behind a table, closer to the door that leads to the sea.
“I am here to reap your soul for the Crime of Sedition,” Ember says as she emerges from the shadows of a corridor. Her menacing smile is as sharp as her sword of silver and hellfire. “But you and I both know what you really did. Tell me where it is.”
“Never,” Aglaope says as she throws her blade. It lodges to the hilt into Ember’s shoulder and Aglaope runs past me, headed for the cliffs. I know I’m there. I know what happens next.
The crackling sound snaps through my head again and the vision turns into something more like dreams. They’re fragmented. It’s like I’m watching them at an outdoor theater while sitting in heavy fog.
But the fog gets thicker. The twilight grows darker.
And then I’m in the Shadow Realm.
I hear Ediye calling my name like she’s in the distance. Down the corridor. In the cell. Unreachable. I’m being dragged away across the stone floor toward the chamber at the end of the hall. Gallus waits for me there with his tray of tools, ready to begin.
I panic and thrash my arms and legs. I feel a strong grip on my hands and pry my eyes open to fight back. But it’s Ediye, crouched next to me with a look of concern.
