Page 19 of Bleeding Love

I lunged.

He tried to dodge, but he was too slow.

He tried to fight, but he was too weak.

He tried to flee, but he was too late.

I sank my teeth into his neck, biting deeper and sucking on that warm blood. It tasted vile and burned me, but I didn’t stop, couldn’t stop. His struggling stilled after a while and his body slacked to the ground, me along with him. I kept drinking and drinking until there was no more to drink. Then I kept tearing—his throat, his face, his arms, his chest. I tore until I reached his heart. Yanking it out, I stared at the unbeating thing before squeezing it so hard it burst. Only then did I allow myself to rise.

“Very messy,” the woman said with a click of her tongue. “But it’s alright for your first time, I suppose. I will teach you.”

I looked at her just as she stepped around the body, keeping her skirts up as if not to brush against it. She stopped in front of me, so small and delicate, yet so powerful, I almost dropped to my knees.

“How does revenge taste, amor?” she asked, gently caressing my cheek. I didn’t answer, I couldn’t answer. “Do not fret, the guilt shall pass. Now…” She let her hand fall to my chest, resting it over my own heart that I could no longer hear. “Do you want to die, amor, or do you want to live?”

I didn’t reply this time either, but her gaze told me I wasn’t getting out of this one. She expected an answer, and the harshness in her gaze made me eager to give one.

‘Don’t give up on life before you have fully experienced it,’ my mother’s words echoed in my head.

“I want to live,” I whispered.

“Good.” She smiled, and I sensed her nails digging into my flesh through my blood-soaked shirt. “Then…”

Pain exploded in my chest and I jerked while my skin burned like it was melting. Looking up, I opened my mouth to ask her why she was killing me when I noticed the long red hair falling over my face. A pair of green eyes met mine before she leaned more of her weight into the stake she was pushing inside my chest.

“Die!” Celeste snarled, twisting the weapon so it could reach my heart.

I did the only thing I could think of. I attacked.

Chapter 8

Celeste

Imissed.

That was the sudden realization that hit me when Roman gasped in surprise. I wanted to believe that it was the stake that failed me or the noise I made when I climbed onto the bed, not the expression of devastation and sadness that had been written all over his dreaming face.

In the end, it didn’t matter because even as I pressed the stake harder, wiggling it so I could hopefully reach his heart, his eyes flashed red and his lips curled to reveal a pair of sharp, deadly fangs.

I didn’t have time to try again. I didn’t even have time to consider what would happen next. I moved by instinct, leaping off the bed at the same time he did. He tried to follow but then seemed to realize that I had opened the curtains and the late afternoon sun was shining right through the middle of the room, keeping a very thin, very insubstantial wall of light between us.

The sound that came out of Roman’s mouth was not human. His expression—even less so. Just seconds ago, lying in that bed was a very handsome, very pale man, with the most heartbreaking expression I had ever seen in my entire life. Now his place was taken by a monster made of violence and death.

“I triedsohard,” he said quietly, almost like he was talking to himself, “to treat you like more than just food because there is something…about you.” He raised his chin, stopping just outside of the pool of light while he gazed at me with a hunger that made my heart drop. “But you picked the wrong time to test me, Celeste.”

I gasped in surprise—as much from the tiredness in his voice as from the way he had said my name. He sounded...heartbroken. It didn’t make sense.

“I am not afraid of death,” I snarled, taking a step toward the door. “You don't scare me,” I retreated further, painfully aware of his eyes on me even as I reached for the handle. I had at least half an hour of sunlight left before the sun dipped behind the nearby houses and the room was drowned in shadows again. Half an hour to think of a way out.

Or so I thought.

“If you run now, I will chase you, and if I catch you, you will suffer more,” Roman said, his voice back to his calm, unreadable tone. I swallowed the lump in my throat, looking down at the cuffs still hanging from my wrists. If I could figure out a way to get at least one of those off, I already had an idea about breaching the ward. It might destroy this entire street, which was why I had dismissed it before, but at least I’d be free of him. One weakness of those cuffs was that they only worked if you had a hand to put them on.

“Go to hell,” I said, pulling the door open.

Roman’s lips pursed into a thin line, and he stepped through the sunlight. He burst into flames almost instantly, but then he was on the other side, his body already repairing itself as he cracked his neck.

‘Run!’a voice screamed in my head and I dashed into the corridor, despite knowing I could never outrun him. I hadn’t even taken two steps when an arm wrapped around my middle and yanked me back, another latching onto my hair and twisting it until my neck was bared. I didn’t even have time to scream before he sank his fangs into my neck.

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