Even if I hadn’t promised, even if he wasn’t looking at me like I was something he intended to devour, I would have drunk the blood anyway. This wasn’t a day form, the true face of a vampire before its evening meal. This was Ronnie starving herself for fear of killing someone. This was Jillian serving a life sentence in a silver prison in the Underneath. This was the face of death, not my face, not even as a vampire.
I didn’t tell Dominic he was right. He knew it, and if I acknowledged every time he was right, his head wouldn’t physically fit through a threshold, permission or not. Besides, my willing consumption of the rest of the blood, every last drop, was acknowledgment enough.
Dominic took the glass from me when I’d finished, set it on the bedside table, and slanted his mouth over mine. My fangs didn’t slice into his lip this time—I had lips again!—but I only had that one moment of clarity to revel in my improved appearance before the insistence and distraction of Dominic’s tongue stole my lucid mind. I became the taste of cinnamon, the scrape of his calluses down my stomach, and the smell of pine and spice of Christmas and chai. The bite of his insistent desire against my thigh as his lips left my lips and kissed down the side of my neck blazed a trail of goose bumps lower and lower, until my thigh felt a different bite followed by the accompanying heat of his breath, the pressure of his tongue, and I—
Someone took a jackhammer to my temple.
I flinched away from Dominic’s lips. Pain split through my skull, but when I touched my fingers to my head, the skin was smooth and dry. My brain wasn’t bleeding from a hemorrhaging head wound, no matter the insistent pounding that claimed otherwise.
Dominic glared at the door over my shoulder, and I realized that the sudden, vicious physical pain inside my head wasn’t a physical injury but an auditory stimulant manifesting as one. Someone was knocking on the door, and the rap of knuckles on wood interrupting our kiss felt like someone driving rusted nails into my skull with a power tool.
Jesus Christ.
“Lysander? Cassidy? Are you okay in there?” Ronnie asked, her hesitant, little-girl voice like a cheese grater scraping my eyeballs.
The bird in the adjacent room squawked again, one shrill, impatient bleat.
I pressed my palms forcefully over my eyes. Every sound had a feeling and every feeling had a smell and every smell had a taste, and the strange combinations of everything I could sense was suddenly unbearable. She knocked again, and even knowing the jackhammer against my temple was just the feeling of a knock, I winced anyway.
I couldn’t breathe.
I reminded myself that I didn’t need to breathe to live, but that didn’t loosen the vise suddenly constricting my chest again.
I felt Dominic lift his head from my thigh. Otherwise, his hands and body didn’t move. They nearly vibrated in their complete stillness, and I squirmed uncomfortably under him.
My movement seemed to penetrate his awareness, but when he spoke, his words were clearly for Ronnie.
“Now you interrupt? Not when she was alone and hurting and frightened, newly transformed and needing you, but now, when I am with her? When I am nearly one with her?”
My face flamed, and I squirmed more insistently. Dominic’s arms still did not budge, but my squirming was stronger than his stillness. I wiggled free, and Dominic transferred his glare from the door to me.
Ronnie cleared her throat. I could feel the vibration of her embarrassment like a muscle spasm, visibly uncontrollable and painful to watch. “It got so quiet, I wanted to make sure you were both okay,” she said, her voice very small.
Dominic growled. “We were not being quiet.”
I pulled down my bra and twisted my shirt back into place, mortified. When had I become half dressed? When had I forgotten we weren’t alone in…well, wherever the hell we were?
“You were, compared to how loud you were before,” Ronnie insisted, but even her insistence sounded like a question. The bird’s squawking bleats returned in full force.
“I think what Ronnie is trying to ask—” Keagan began, and the confidence in voice was solid and sure. Despite the bleating bird, I could imagine him placing his arm around Ronnie’s shoulders to share in his strength and sureness. “—is if Cassidy is all right. We’re all worried, we’ve been worried for seven days, and we’re all on the edge of our seats, waiting on an update.”
Keagan didn’t say it, but I could hear the implication all the same. They were worried, on the edge of their seats for an update, and here we were on the floor like animals, not even having made it to the bed.
I looked over at Dominic. He met my gaze, and the heat in that one look incinerated my embarrassment. He brought out every base instinct inside me. We were on the floor like animals because together we were animals; I’d never felt anything more primal and passionate and confusing in my life.
“Cassidy?” Keagan asked, pounding on the door again.
I winced from the jackhammer. “I’m here,” I said, my voice clear. The glassful of blood had done the trick, and my voice, if not completely back to normal, wasn’t just a rattling growl. My voice was deeper than I remembered, but not in tone; it was deeper in depth, as if I had more vocal cords and although they were striking the same pitch they’d always played, the many tones that vibrated to create that pitch were richer and more alluring a sound any human throat could produce.
“And are you okay?” Ronnie insisted, obviously not convinced.
I stared at Dominic on the floor next to me. I was here, wherever “here” was, after having my throat ripped out, and after seven days, I’d survived. Seven days.
“Patience, Ronnie,” Dominic answered for me. “We’ll be out in a moment.”
Chapter 3
The living room and kitchen outside the bedroom were as bare, neat, and utilitarian as the bedroom had been before being destroyed by my vampire-sized temper tantrum, but the many people and their suffocating emotions made the room feel infinitely more cramped. Logan and Theresa glared at me from the far corner of the room, their anger like rubber band snaps against my skin. Rafe and Neil stood beside me, their hovering proximity like flies swarming overripe fruit.
Jeremy’s wary gaze looked back and forth between me, the bedroom, and Dominic as if he were trying to determine who had won, who he needed to guard against, and how much damage we were still capable of. The old me might have reassured him that my emotions were under control, that I’d obviously freaked, but I wouldn’t freak again, and the old me might not even be lying. The new me let Jeremy squirm, because the smell of his fear tasted like chai, just like Dominic had always described, and I liked the taste of chai more than I liked Jeremy.
Ronnie, on the other hand, wasn’t looking at the wrecked bedroom at all. She didn’t waste one second looking at anything other than my face. Her fear was even more poignant than Jeremy’s—sweeter, spicier, and substantially more savory—but the taste of her fear wasn’t the least appealing because I almost liked Ronnie, and I still felt responsible for her. The old me definitely would have reassured her that I was fine, that we would both be fine, but even as a vampire, my guilt over her current circumstances was overwhelming. I was struggling now, but I’d adapt and eventually I’d survive. I honestly wasn’t sure about Ronnie.
Her face was like looking into the mirror at myself that first time—her sallow cheeks, prominent features, and gray complexion like the reflection of living death—but she’d been a vampire for weeks now, almost three weeks to be exact. After only a fraction of that time and a glassful of tepid blood, I looked more alive now than she did.
Keagan was the only person in the room I genuinely liked—my complicated addiction for Dominic excluded—especially