A Shade of Vampire (A Shade of Vampire #1)(16)

I once again looked at his palm, unable to believe what I was about to do. I held his wrist with one hand, his fingers with the other. I noticed how his jaw twitched the moment I touched him. I gulped before doing the unthinkable – I began sucking the blood off his palm until his self-inflicted gash closed. I stepped back, the strange taste of his blood overwhelming my taste buds.

“Good,” he said and wiped off the thick red liquid dripping from the corners of my mouth.

I checked the gashes I had on my legs. Just like he said, all of them had gone. I didn’t know whether to be relieved. I still could not wrap my mind around the fact that I just drank blood, a vampire’s blood. I didn’t even think they had their own blood. I was aware of how badly I was trembling.

Derek inched closer to me and brushed his thumb against my cheekbone. “Are you alright?”

I stood, unmoving, my eyes drawn to the guard’s corpse on the ground.

“You killed him,” I said, betraying how stunned I felt. “Just like that… He’s dead.”

Derek heaved a deep sigh, a stoic expression coming over his chiseled face.

“I had to make an example of him. The other guard will make it known to the entire coven that you are not to be harmed because of what I did. You’re safer that way. Besides, he’d tasted your blood. He had to die.”

I still looked at him with a stunned expression on my face.

“He was going to kill you. He’d tasted your blood, Sofia. I doubt he would’ve had enough self-control to keep himself from devouring you completely.” He raised a brow, his mood lightening up a bit. “From the expression on your face as they were both about to sink their teeth into you, I figured you knew that you wouldn’t be able to talk them out of supping on you like you did me.”

Recollections of the previous night flowed through my head. I remembered how conflicted Derek seemed as he raised me up on that pillar ready to sink his teeth into me. There was no conflict of that sort evident in the vampire he just killed.

I found myself intrigued by Derek – even more so than I was before. He was a paradox, a walking contradiction. How he could do such a violent act with no hesitation in one moment and be as gentle as he was with me right afterwards was something that left me completely unnerved.

I could sense his eyes traveling my body from head to foot, then back up.

“You’ve been running for hours, haven’t you?” he concluded.

I almost felt embarrassed to admit it. “It feels like it.”

“Even if you get past the wall, you’re on an island, Sofia. Unless you can swim for miles, past the sharks, and get back to the mainland, there’s no way out of here.” Before I could respond to that, he scooped me up in his arms and in a matter of minutes, we were back at his Penthouse. He carried me to my bedroom and laid me on the ground.

“We’ll have breakfast in a couple of minutes. Get dressed in something other than that,” he looked at my outfit pointedly. It dawned on me that considering the time he’d been asleep, he’d probably never seen a lady wearing a hoodie with shorts before. Considering how my outfit was tattered and worn down after my morning “run”, I saw why it lacked appeal.

Before he turned toward the door, he stopped and asked, “Is there anything you need, Sofia?”

I need to get out of here was I wanted to say. Instead, I shook my head. “No.”

He nodded and headed for the door. He stopped just as he was about to open it. He gave one final warning.

“You will only risk your life trying to escape, Sofia. So let’s make this simple. Don’t ever try again.”

CHAPTER 12: DEREK

Despite my efforts not to, I kept staring. I was seated over the edge of what Sofia called a counter, watching her as she made her way around the kitchen in a light yellow dress clinging to her curves at just the right places. She was making her breakfast – two pieces of bread that she stuck in a contraption she called a toaster. She retrieved a bottle of strawberry jam and a slab of butter from the “two-door refrigerator,” which was apparently a cooling closet for food.

As she began dabbing butter over one piece of toast, her emerald green eyes rose to meet mine. She stopped what she was doing and stared for a couple of seconds.

I found it rather unsettling to have her look at me that way. I couldn’t even understand why. She’s just a girl, Novak. When have you ever been so riled up over one girl?

“What?” I asked her.

“Thank you… for rescuing me this morning. I was pretty sure nothing would stop the guards from turning me into their breakfast.”

I didn’t answer. She was my responsibility. It was my duty to see to her safety.

“I’m sorry you were taken away from life outside. I understand how all this could be… traumatic,” I said.

She focused on preparing her breakfast, though her long lashes fluttered at my apology.

After a pause, she spoke up. “I can’t make this clear enough. No matter what you think, I’m not yours, Derek. You told the guard that I was yours. I’m not.”

I admired her boldness. She was talking to me like she would an equal, never holding back from speaking her mind and yet she managed to pull it off with a feminine grace I found charming and rather off-putting. I debated with myself whether I should address her statements. As far as everyone in the Blood Shade was concerned, she was mine. It was just the simple truth and no matter how she would like to believe otherwise, it remained true. I heaved a sigh and let it go. Let her believe what she will.