Author: Kalayna Price

“It was my fault, Kitten. Biana said we needed to drain the poison. You were unconscious, seemingly dead. I was… not myself. I did not stop to consider the fact that once we drained the blood and you woke, you would be beyond conscious control.”

I blinked at him. Nathanial considered everything. If he hadn’t considered what would happen when they drained me of blood… He must have been frantic. About me. I looked away. And how, exactly, was I supposed to apologize for going crazy and clawing open someone’s shoulder? Sorry didn’t really cover that.

Nathanial carried me to the recessed shower in the corner of the room and set me on my feet. When my knees gave out he lowered me gently to the tile. He turned, sliding the glass shower door closed.

Closed, with him still in the shower. With me.

“What are you doing?” He couldn’t be in here. He needed to leave. Like now.

He didn’t.

He adjusted the shower knobs, and streams of water jetted from the walls and the shower head. “We are both covered in blood, Kitten. It needs to be washed off.” As if to illustrate his point, he drew a finger through the tacky mess drying on my shoulder.

“Right, shower. Got that part. But you have to get out.”

“Can you stand?” he asked and I frowned at him. “Then you need my help.”

I growled under my breath but didn’t argue. After all, he had a point—we both needed the shower. It’s efficient. The fluttering in my stomach didn’t agree.

Still, I raised my arms, indicating I was ready to accept his help. His mouth quirked, but he didn’t say anything as he leaned down. He gathered me in his arms and lifted me until only the tips of my toes touched the ground.

Water poured over me, turning pink as it rinsed blood from my dress and skin. I blinked away the water running into my eyes, and Nathanial turned us so I wasn’t directly under the shower head. The jets of water from the walls beat against my back, but it wasn’t an unpleasant feeling. The already blood-sodden dress grew heavier as the lining soaked in water, the ruined material stretching with the weight.

“Drink,” Nathanial said. I expected him to hold out his wrist. Instead he tilted his head, baring his throat.

“Uh…” I’d have rather taken from his wrist. The neck was more intimate. Much more. This was already weird enough.

“Nathanial, I don’t think…”

“It is not an option. Not anymore.” There was more force, more command, than I’d ever heard in his voice. His tone made my teeth grit, made me want to struggle, to fight, but at the same time, the fluttering grew frantic in my abdomen, my instincts reacting to the power lacing his words, to the strength in the arms holding me still.

“Drink,” he said, the word both demanding and compelling.

He lifted me higher. My toes left the floor and slid across the tops of his dress shoes. His throat was so close. My heart crashed against the front of my ribcage like it was trying to break through my skin, to join Nathanial’s, where I felt his heart beating against my body.

My fingers trembled as I peeled away the collar of Nathanial’s shirt. Then I hesitated. A fresh bite decorated his throat, the edges torn in a jagged line down to his collarbone.

I touched the puncture marks with my knuckles, not trusting my claws in such a delicate area. Nathanial drew a sharp breath, and I dropped my hand.

“I did this?”

“You were not yourself.”

No. No, I wasn’t. And maybe I wasn’t myself now, either. I dropped my gaze.

“Put me down. Let me shower.”

He drew me tighter against him, tight enough to verge on pain. “No,” he whispered. “No. I almost lost you. Again. I need you strong. Healthy. Take from me, Kitten. Please.” The please was a frayed whisper, like his heart was breaking with the word.

As confused as I felt, I knew one thing: I did not want the heart pounding against me to break.

My lips parted, and my mouth sealed over the pulse in his neck. His arms convulsed around me as my fangs slid into his skin. A wave of tension flowed between our bodies. Then I lost myself as my consciousness dove into his mind.

For a single heartbeat, I was so deep inside his mind that I felt my teeth in his throat as if it were my throat. The woman in my arms was small, so very small and fragile, and I was so very frightened for her. The world shifted, his mind pushing me away. I fell into his memories.

Tatius holds her and she quivers in his arms. Her lips part as she gazes at him, wraps her small fingers in his mesh shirt. No. She is supposed to be mine. I found her. Turned her. He has no right.

She leans into his chest, content, sated. No, not quite content. Yes, remember who you are, Kitten. Remember you are mine.

Like a door being slammed in my face, Nathanial expelled my mind from the memory and I slipped into another.

Tatius stands in the center of the room, blood dripping from his torn frock coat and from the daggers in his hands.

Bodies litter his wake, bodies of people I’ve known since I was a child. He turns, his gaze falling on me as he considers whether I will live or die. He lifts the dagger—

Nathanial’s mind hurled me from the memory. I slid through the darkness of his past, looking for an open door, until I found myself in the memory of him teaching a class.

The memory was empty of emotion and completely uninteresting.

Safe.

I wasn’t sure if it was my thought, or his.

I pulled back and sealed the wound on his neck. His memories still flashed through my mind. His anger moving under my skin. His hope. I blinked, seeing myself through his memory. Feeling his hopelessness when he could do nothing but watch me in Tatius’s arms. Confused emotions tangled at the edge of my mind.

Does he know what I saw? Did I even understand everything I saw? Did I want to? I needed something else to think about. To focus on. My gaze landed on the other bite on his neck. I can heal that. I flicked my tongue over the torn flesh.

Nathanial jerked his head back. His eyes were still cloudy from my bite, but they cleared as he studied my face. “That is the equivalent to a kiss in Firth, is it not?”

“What? No, I was only—” My eyes flew open as his hands slid under the short dress to my mostly bare bottom. He lifted me higher, pressing against me, and flattening my back against the shower tile. “What are you—” but the words stalled as he leaned forward and ran the tip of his tongue along my collar bone. My breath hitched, caught in my throat, stuck around unspoken words.

Words I couldn’t remember. Couldn’t think about. I didn’t want to think right now, anyway. My legs rose, folded, hugged him. I locked them around his waist.

Nathanial nuzzled my cheek with his—not a human gesture, but one that set my skin ablaze. His tongue flicked against the edge of my chin, and my heart fluttered. A purr thrummed deep in my chest. My good hand went to his hair, my claws breaking the pony grip that held it. His hair fell around me like a black silk curtain, and he leaned down. The sigh that escaped his lips danced over my earlobe and sent shivers down my spine.

I’d waited so long to feel his hair between my fingers, but the lethal tips of my claws were in the way. I growled in frustration, and a spasm ran through my hand. My joints popped back into normal alignment as my claws retracted. I had only a moment to be amazed before Nathanial’s fangs nicked my throat.

I gasped, shivering in his arms. A dark sound tumbled from his throat, something between a growl and a moan, and he pressed harder against me, his hips grinding against mine.

My fingers trailed through his water-soaked hair, following the strands down to where they plastered to his chest, exposed below his torn shirt. I ripped the material further so I could feel more of the hard planes of his smooth flesh.

His mouth locked on mine.

I froze.

The tips of his fangs pressed against my lower lip, making me squirm, but the heat gathering in my body chilled. I tried to move away, but there was nowhere to go with my back against the wall. I pushed at his chest, my palm bearing into the wounds near his shoulder.

Nathanial pulled back, crystal eyes swimming with heat. I looked down, away from his gaze, and he groaned.

“Kitten,” he whispered, leaning forward to rest his face on the tile behind me. Our bodies were still pressed together, and I felt the shaky breaths he took, acutely aware that mine matched.

I had to get out of there. Away from him. Away from the tumbling of my heart. He made me feel crazy, like my skin wasn’t big enough to hold all the chaotic emotions whirling through me. I couldn’t stay. If he hadn’t kissed me…?

Animals didn’t kiss, not by locking lips, at least. Neither did shifters. And what am I? I didn’t know anymore.

I shivered, my skin burning from all the touches before the kiss. Nathanial’s body went still against mine.

“Elizabeth’s master is the one called the Traveler,” he said without looking at me. “She is older than I am and has been a master at least as long.”

I frowned. What does that have to do with anything?

Maybe it didn’t. Maybe he was just trying to distract himself. I could use the distraction.

I asked the first coherent question that came to mind.

“Why does she remain his companion if she is a master?”

He pulled back. “Why do you think?” He studied my face, watching for something. Something my face apparently didn’t give him. “I thought that perhaps, after some time, you would…” He squeezed his eyes closed and lowered me to my feet.

My legs shook but held. His blood. He’d been right. His blood had helped. A lot.

I took an experimental step, and Nathanial’s fingers flew down the few surviving buttons on his shirt. He slipped it off his shoulders. I tried not to stare, but I’d never seen Nathanial in anything less than a casual suit. He looked good in a suit.

He looked better out of it.

My fingers had felt the hard planes of his chest, but my brain hadn’t translated that tactile information yet, and my eyes drank in what my skin already knew. Sleek muscles accented his chest and arms, and I stared at his lack of hair, so different from the shifter males I’d become accustomed to seeing while growing up. Water ran down his skin. A blush crawled to my cheeks, and I turned away, stared at my toes.