Page 24 of Our Sins in Blood (Coven of Sin 1)

I thought back again on what went down in the bathroom with both of them.

I had asked Corry to bite me, and apparently, vampires biting other vampires was kind of like shifters marking a mate. And the youngblood had been happy to oblige the request until Feral had barged in with his big-dick energy, threatening to do the exact same thing if I dared to challenge him for the throne.

I squirmed in my seat, annoyed with the barrage of heated tickles that licked between my thighs, and my cheeks flared red when my gaze locked with Feral’s in the Rolls-Royce’s rearview mirror, his blood-red gaze banked with a heady mixture of violence, fury, and hunger.

I decided to momentarily shove aside my irritation with Corry and picked up my phone, tapping out a question.

Ruby: So why does Vincent still have red eyes? Yours went back to normal.

Corry: Means he’s either hungry or horny. Or both.

That’s when it dawned on me that Corry had been right.

On some predatory level, Vincent wanted me. And that fact probably pissed him off more than the potential of me making a grab for the throne.

I typed out my next question and read it at least five times. I contemplated deleting it and asking a more appropriate question but to hell with that. Nothing about this situation was appropriate, and I wasn’t going to get all shy now.

Ruby: So what’s with the whole claiming bite thing?

Corry: It’s a mark a vampire places on his mate to show other males she’s taken.

Ruby: Well, what if a male bites a female against her will?

The energy in the cab immediately shifted. I could practically feel the heat rolling off of Corry’s body in front of me, his neck muscles bunching up and the cords of his neck tightening.

Corry: Is that what he did in the bathroom? Did he bite you? After he told me off? That asshole.

Ruby: No, that’s not what happened.

Vincent Feral hadn’t bit me.

He’d kissed me. If that bullshit power move could even have been called a kiss.

My lips still throbbed, phantom sensations of his mouth on mine lighting up my nerves.

He’d kissed me like he was trying to crawl into my body, to tear me apart from the inside.

It wasn’t like any kiss I’d seen on TV or read about, either. It was better. And that’s how it had been with The Feral King tonight.

My mind recoiled from the monster with mean eyes and cruel words, but for some reason, it just sprang back, seeking more. It was a confusing coalescence of desire and disgust.

As we drove deeper into Cape Cod, my thoughts eventually drifted away from vampires, dark secrets, and red eyes when something glinted in the corner of my vision, pulling my gaze to the passing world beyond the window. My heart lurched when I realized what I was looking at was the moon’s reflection on the ocean’s surface.

The ocean.

I’d seen it on TV, read about it in books. Hell, I could even smell it from between the bars of my bedroom window. If the house had been facing the other way, I would have had an ocean view. Of course, as the universe seemed to have some kind of vendetta against me, my bedroom faced inland.

Everything inside me turned cold as my throat grew thick with emotion. Would it have been so hard for my mom to have unlocked the door so I could look at the ocean from the hallway window?

Anger blurred my view of the silvery ocean, my fists clenching on my thighs.

I wasn’t ready to confront her yet. But eventually, I’d make her pay for the life she’d stolen from me.

All dreams of revenge slipped to the back of my mind when the car rolled up to an iron gate that looked like a copy of the one fromThe Haunted Mansion. The driver’s side window rolled down, and Vincent leaned out to stab a code into the security pad attached to a post. A second later, the gate peeled open, allowing the car to pass through.

“Welcome to the Knight estate, Red.” Corry grinned back at me, his gaze glittering with amusement as he watched me take everything in with a gaping jaw.

The Knight Mansion was absolutely massive. It sat on a cliff overlooking the sea, the moon sitting just above its roof, bathing the structure in a kiss of silver light. I half expected a gothic mansion made of stone, with tall peaks and stone gargoyles. Instead, the mansion had been built in the boxy, colonial-style like many others its age in the area. It reminded me of the Corwin house in Salem that I’d seen in a history book on Massachusetts. Only this place had to be five times the size, with at least a dozen windows on the front, a gable roof and thin wooden slats for the siding where the salty wind had long since stripped the paint.

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