Page 12 of Bloodstained
My head was tipped back so I could look up at him. The firelight cast his sharp features into a mix of shadows touched with intense golden hues.
God, I hated that he was impossibly handsome. Maybe I could hate him more if he was an ugly beast who’d taken me?
Because, truthfully, there was a cruelty in his beauty, and I hated that my body betrayed me by heating in all my intimate places, and softening, yearning for his touch.
“So what is it you want?” I whispered, clutching the edge of the blanket closer to my chest and up to my chin.
He didn’t answer, and for a moment, I thought I saw something flicker in the dark depths of his eyes—something softer, gentler.
But it was gone so fast that I may have imagined it.
“What do I want from you?” He threw the question back at me. His smile was slow and deliberate and dark in all the ways that made my heart race and my body heat. Sweat dripped down my spine. “I want it all, Clara. I want everything.”
His words crashed down on me, and I realized that fighting, screaming, or even pleading with him wouldn’t help. There would be no compromising with him, no begging my way out of this.
I was his prisoner because he wanted every single part of me.
Tears I hadn’t known I’d been holding on to spilled down my cheeks, but I tipped my chin up in defiance. He tracked those tears and, like a cobra striking, cupped the side of my face. His touch was filled with a warmth I should have hated.
He leaned forward, and my lips parted. And when he dragged his tongue over my cheek, lapping up my tears of rage and sadness and something far darker, I closed my eyes and shivered.
When he pulled back, I forced myself to look at him. I was panting. I was…ready for him.
And as his gaze held mine, that primal part of me—the same part that had kept me rooted in place in the forest—whispered that this was exactly where I was meant to be.
I. Was. His.
CHAPTER SEVEN
IVAN
The following day
The fire burned low, embers breathing out a soft red glow that painted the stones. Yet, its warmth could not quiet the hunger coiling inside me, could not melt the icy chill that settled in my bones centuries ago.
A hunger… for her.
I claimed every spare moment in this room, unwilling to be away from her even when she turned her back to me. Since I brought her here, Clara had wrapped herself in silence, each unspoken word striking like a dagger against my chest. Yet I endured it because distance was worse. I would rather suffer her hatred than the emptiness of her absence.
She refused what I offered—food, drink, and comfort. Her defiance was a blade sharp enough to cut me. But her stubbornness was an old song I knew well, one I had once loved her for in another life. Centuries ago she had looked at me the same way, chin tilted in defiance, eyes daring me to bend before she would. And just as then, I knew she would give in eventually.She had to. Clara was not foolish; she would not destroy herself just to wound me.
So I stayed, letting the minutes stretch like lifetimes, watching the rise and fall of her chest, the fragile peace of her sleeping face. I told myself I would leave soon, bring her a meal, grant her the illusion of space. But the truth was simpler, darker. I could not go. She was here, and she was mine, and the thought of letting her out of my sight even for an hour felt like tearing my own heart from my body.
The more time she spent here with me would stoke her memory of a time long ago, memories that were cloudy from age and a life spent in this modern world.
A day’s time had passed since I brought her to my home.Our home. She’d been sleeping for hours, and I’d stood here and watched her, hidden in the shadows and relishing that sweet Clara was here once more. Hundreds of years had passed… and she was finally back with me.
She stirred beneath the blanket, fragile in the massive bed, her throat marked where I had claimed her. Even swathed in the shift I had chosen, she seemed bare to me, exposed in ways she did not understand.
Clara was mine. Because the instant my gaze fell upon her, time collapsed.
Her name hadn’t stayed the same. Her face was not identical. And time had altered destiny. The curve of her cheek was softer and the bow of her lips more pronounced. Her hair was paler in this life, longer, and had a wave to it.
But there were things that were still so familiar. Identical to my Mircalla. She smelled the same. And the way she smiled had my blood rushing because memories of her looking up at me with her lips tilted after I’d fucked her until she couldn’t walk was imprinted in my mind.
The recognition tore through me, unraveling the torment I had carried for lifetimes.
My heart had returned to me.
