Page 49 of Our Sins in Blood (Coven of Sin 1)

“Liar!” he roared, his bloodied face contorting in anguish. “You’re a fucking liar, Ruby.”

The hurt in his tone pierced my heart like a knife. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. But you were my only way out of that place. Understand that what you call home was just another fucking prison for me. I’m done being locked up! I’m done being told what to do. My life needs to start, Corry.”

“Ithasstarted. We freed you. You can’t compare the coven to your mom’s house.”

“For the last two decades I thought my heart was a ticking time bomb. That any moment if I did anything too exciting, it could give out.” My voice jumped up an octave, growing shrill and desperate. “There is nothing wrong with my heart now. It’s beating, and I want to keep it that way. If I stay, my life is on a timer just like it was back in Quincy. I know you want me to participate in this insane courtship the Elders brewed up, but I’m still half-human, Corry. I don’t belong in your world while I still have a beating heart.”

Corry’s brow furrowed, steeping most of his physiognomy in shadow. He kept my hand fixed to the Ninja’s gas tank, the motorcycle the only thing standing between the vampire whose heart I had broken and me.

“You don’t belong in the human world either, Ruby-Red. Trust me, you don’t.”

I tried to swallow down my heart which felt as if it had lodged in my throat. “Shouldn’t that be my decision to make?”

“Not when the fate of my world hangs in the balance.”

“You–you can’t make me stay.”

“I can, actually,” he replied in an icy whisper that froze all remaining warmth between us.

I’d meant it when I told him I didn’t want to hurt him. Okay, so maybe that ship had kind of set sail, but I didn’t want to physically fight him. I had no idea if I actually had a shot of winning, and if I did, was it worth the cost? Using Corry’s emotions to win my freedom seemed like a few steps less drastic than ripping his head off. And if I actually harmed him, his brothers would come after me looking for revenge.

I shivered at the prospect. No, there had to be another way.

“Come on, Corry. Let me go. Please,” I said with a little whine in my voice, hoping to stir the vampire’s compassion. I gave a hard jerk to my hand, but his grip remained steady. It only pulled him closer under the lights, the fluorescents chasing away the shadows masking his face.

My heart pulsed, seeing the way his irises were now red, his pupils fixed to my chest like a starving man eyeing a hunk of meat.

My dress now had a plunging neckline all the way down to my belly button, courtesy of the vampire Corry had chased off. My breasts were still contained in a black bra, its lacy material crusted over with a mix of red and black blood. The cut the vampire had given me when he’d been seconds away from a full-on bite was worse than I thought. My neck and chest were streaked with dark red, and it had even seeped into the padding of Corry’s jacket, the metallic tang of my blood mingling with his dark, spicy scent ingrained in the coat’s lining.

He didn’t look like he was ready to force himself on me like the other two vampires had attempted.

Despite some of his mischievous quirks, Corry Cross was a gentleman. Vincent seemed to distrust his youngest brother around me, but it seemed the youngblood had more restraint than everyone let on.

I knew if I offered, he wouldn’t be able to resist. And now, there was no one else to stop him. No moral quandaries that I didn’t know what I was getting myself into.

I forced my muscles to relax in his grip, and I softened my voice as I said his name, smooth and sweet in my mouth like candy. “Corry. Let me go. Let me go, and as a goodbye, I’ll…”

His eyes narrowed, his head canting to the side. “You’llwhat?”

Before, the youngblood struck me as the least dangerous of all the vampire princes. But right now, with my arm pinned to the gas tank of his motorcycle, his predatorial gaze brewing with a heady mix of hunger and hurt, I was recalibrating my assessment.

“You can bite me,” I pushed out on a fractured breath.

His lips quirked into a sardonic smirk. “Not good enough, babe.”

“Wha–what?” I balked with a series of aghast blinks. “How is that not enough?”

“Don’t get me wrong. I want to taste you. I want it so bad the fucking sight of your blood makes me hard.”

He wasn’t exaggerating. The testament to that was straining against the dark denim of his jeans.

“But you used me. Played me like a fucking fiddle, and now you owe me.”

Lifting my hand off the gas tank, he pulled on my arm so that my body was forced to lean over the bike. His lips pressed against the skin behind my ear, the knuckles of his free hand gently grazing my jugular. When my breath hitched, and my heartbeat lurched into a gallop, the fringe of his lashes fluttered, and his nostrils flared.

“Now it’s my turn to play with you.”

I was no longer battling against his touch. Despite the prickly details of our tense stand-off, his touch felt just as safe and inviting as it had in the roller rink.

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