Page 43 of Midnight Kiss
Emily grabbed for the wall, and I looped an arm around her waist, holding her upright, as I found that hard button of pleasure between her legs. Gently, I circled it, toyed with her, until she panted and clawed at my sodden shirt.
“Please, Alex. Please.”
She was begging for release, and I couldn’t deny her. I brought her over the edge with deft fingers, plunging them inside her, working her body like an instrument attuned to my touch and mine only.
Emily broke apart beneath me, crying my name out in a way that drove me to the edge. My erection demanded that I take her now, my fangs pricked at my bottom lip, desperate for a taste of her.
Once she was spent, I rose and carried her out of the shower. I wrapped her in a towel then stripped off my shirt and tossed it aside.
Emily groaned and hugged me, her hands on my pecs, moving down my abs, toward the line of my pants. “Please,” she whispered. “More.”
I grunted under my breath. “I can’t give you more tonight, Emily.”
“I want you.”
“And I want you,” I said. “But you’re sick, and when I take you for the first time, you’re going to be healthy enough to participate.”
“I can participate now.”
I dried her then brought her to her room and laid her down on her bed. “Sleep now,” I whispered, and kissed her forehead.
Emily murmured softly and curled up in bed, tired from the constant drain of the book and sated by her orgasm. The gentle scent of satisfaction was adorable.
It was a bad idea. Even as I moved back to the bathroom and dried off my clothing with my crimson magic, even as I walked out of the apartment and shut the door behind me, I was aware of the danger I’d put us both in by touching her intimately.
Now that I had felt her beneath my hands, I would do anything to have her as mine. Almost anything.
15
EMILY
It was a dream. It had to be a dream.
I stood in a room that I didn’t recognize, flanked by marble pillars threaded through with gold. A raised dais dominated the space, two thrones atop it made of gold and upholstered in deep red velvet.
Where am I? What is this?
My feet were bare and cold on the marble floor, my flesh prickling with goosebumps beneath an opaque cotton shift dress, but there wasn’t a hint of wind or noise. It was as if time itself was frozen, and I was the only thing moving or alive in the world.
But where was I? What was this place?
There were pictures in gilt frames on the walls, visible between the pillars, and there were statues of marble or stone, beautiful tableaus of men and women locked in loving embraces. Except every statue, every picture depicted one of the other, man or woman, biting into their partner’s flesh.
Blood dripped down throats and limbs. And the pictures seemed to come alive, bodies contorting, limbs twisting at odd angles, and I cried out, pressing a hand over my mouth.
The sound of a door opening and shutting sent me into a panic, and I rushed toward the pillars and hid behind one of them, breathing through my nose rapidly.
“—a trial,” a man said, his voice accented lightly.
“I am not entirely sure that’s a wise idea, Jacques, my love,” a woman replied.
I peered around the column, just as they came into sight. The woman wore her hair in gorgeous white-blonde updo and wore a brocaded gown that spoke of French royalty. The man wore his hair in a white ponytail—a wig.
They were French nobles. They had to be. How was that possible? A dream shouldn’t have felt this real.
The man walked over to a table I hadn’t noticed before and poured thick red liquid into a glass.
Blood.