Page 18 of Crimson Shifter
But her brother and mother…I could end them with half a thought?—
Cassandra punched me right in the nose, hard enough that my head snapped back and my vision went thermal.
“Yes!” she cheered. “Finally got one.”
“Good,” I said, shaking my head to clear my vision. I was snapping to thermal too quickly, and my throat burned at the memory of my hunger.
It didn’t help that Cassandra smelled like salvation.
She’d offered to feed me…
I couldn’t.
Feeding led to other things…more intimate things.
First it would be my fangs sinking into her, then my cock. It really was hard to separate the two and the last thing I needed, especially after that hot-as-hell kiss, was to lose myself in afemale I wasn’t sure if I could fully trust. Fuck, I didn’t even know if I trusted her atall.
“You’re looking at me like you want to eat me,” she teased, dodging one of my advances. “You need to feed.”
“I’m fine.”
“You keep saying that, kitty cat,” she said, hopping up to dodge one of my kicks. “But I can tell you’re not. For gods’ sake, I can feel it, Talon.”
I cocked a brow her direction, slowing my movements. “You shouldn’t be able to feel it,” I growled. “The connection doesn’t work like that.”
She shrugged. “Maybe your shifty senses are broken, because I can,” she said, tapping the center of her chest as if that’s where she felt my hunger. “It’s maddening. Especially when I’m right here, willing to feed you so when the shit hits the inevitable fan, you won’t be too weak to get us out of here.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not some two-hundred-year-old vampire,” I said. “I’m a thousand?—”
“Yes, yes,” she cut me off. “You’re ancient. I know, but we run off of blood. If you don’t feed, you won’t be able to shift properly. You know that?—”
“I don’t need a lecture,” I said. “Fuck, you sound like Zachariah.”
The smallest of smiles shaped her beautifully red lips. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Shit. She was right. It was a compliment.
“Are you warming up to me?”
“Maybe I feel sorry for you because you’ve been shit on for the past five days,” I fired back, then cringed at my lack of filter.
“Right,” she said, her shoulders falling an inch. “Because gods forbid you actually work your way up to a simple respect for me rather than hate.” She rolled her eyes. “The whole not-trusting me thing is getting so boring. If I was going to betrayyou or your brothers, I could’ve done it a dozen times already.” Her eyes crackled with fire as she tipped her chin at me. “Especially with you starving. I landed a hit, at least, finally.”
“You could be waiting for the perfect moment to strike,” I countered, though I couldn’t deny my instincts weren’t screaming at me that she would. But, then again, I’d lived with Samuel for half my life and didn’t know he was going to betray us.
Something lit over her features, and she nodded, striking out again with a hit I easily deflected.
It was seconds before I had her pinned to the floor again.
I kept a watchful eye on that mouth of hers, both wanting and not wanting her to use that particular brand of weapon against me again.
She bucked her hips against me, and I growled, “Don’t do that.”
“Or what?” she fired back. “You’ll actually lose some of that ridiculous control and back up your cocky mouth with something real?”
I groaned when she did it again, this time lifting her mouth toward mine. I turned my head, knowing if our lips touched that would be it. I only had so much control. “You’re impossible?—”
She struck.