Forget About Midnight (Alexa O'Brien, Huntress #9)(3)

He gazed at me with glassy eyes. For a moment he didn’t react, and I thought I’d have to tear the woman away from him. Then he dropped her. She hit the ground with the dull smack of flesh on pavement.

My hungry manipulations had been disrupted, but my longing for satisfaction didn’t fade. With complete abandon, I went to Kale and kissed him like I’d wanted to so many times since he’d carried me out of the graveyard before sunrise.

Maybe I expected some resistance on his part because I was mildly surprised when he kissed me back with a thrilling voraciousness. The taste of blood was intoxicating when he slipped his tongue between my lips. Several months of longing burst forth to drown us in a desire that had long gone denied.

His hands were in my hair, on my face, my waist. When his lips moved to my neck, I knew that we were crossing a line, and God how I wanted to.

“We have to go,” I repeated, unable to form any other words.

Before the writhing force that drove us could pull us deeper into its thrall, I dragged him along beside me, fleeing the scene without a glance back.

Chapter Two

Once I released Kale from his self-imposed cage, he was ravenous and ready to terrorize the city. Somehow my transition to vampire had revived his self-restraint, a trait I barely possessed these days. It wasn’t really his strongest trait either though. As soon as we killed together, he was back to his vicious, vampy self.

It was the same pattern he’d followed for the past few nights. Dusk found him subdued, calm in a way that was almost suspicious. As we hunted, he hovered, watching me as I chose and claimed my prey. Then he changed. His mental state shifted, and together we encouraged one another to be terrible.

I kept waiting for the guilt. Every moment that passed without it left me feeling like I walked in some kind of twisted alternate reality. I wanted to feel bad about the things I’d done since waking up at The Wicked Kiss, really I did. But I didn’t.

It would come though. At some point it would all catch up to me. Then the real struggle would begin. Then I’d fight to walk the line between madness and calculated control, choosing my victims discriminately, fairly even. I wasn’t sure how seasoned vampires managed. It was so f*cking hard to give a damn when all I wanted to do was make living things beg and bleed.

Together Kale and I enjoyed a guy who’d shouted something derogatory at me about tits and ass as I’d walked by. He was a drunken mess, leering at me from the doorway of a small, dirty pub where he puffed heavily on a cigarette. With just a smile and a finger bent in invitation, he’d fallen into step beside me without a word.

Now he lay dead, sprawled on the overgrown, yellowed lawn of an abandoned house in a derelict neighborhood. Several feet away, Kale too was sprawled on the crunchy grass. I straddled him, gazing down into his handsome face as he stared up at me in a blood-drunk haze.

“I knew we would be amazing together,” he said, tracing a finger over my bloodstained lips.

“We’ve barely started.” In a teasing motion, I squirmed atop him, a playful brush of my groin against his.

“I don’t want to do it like this.” Kale gestured to the dead man with a grimace. “You’re too good for that. Since our night in the rain together, I’ve always known that if I had another chance, I’d love you the way I always wanted to.”

The tension between us had grown unbearably in the past few months. Denying the way I wanted him had become a nightly occurrence. Of course being mortal had made it dangerous to even be alone with him. Until now.

I leaned down to kiss him, reveling in his leather scent. “And how might that be?”

“Slow. Tender. I want to savor every second of being with you. No rush. Just us exploring each other for the first time.” To accompany that delicious visual, Kale sucked my bottom lip into his mouth.

Our one and only night had been a rushed, wild, and relatively brief encounter. It had replayed in my memory more times than I’d care to admit.

The first few nights after the turn had been difficult. Not only was the blood hunger at it’s worst, I had been desperate for comfort in any way I could get it. More than once I’d thrown myself at Kale, and each time he’d resisted, refusing to so much as kiss me in such a vulnerable state. My first day as a vampire had been spent in his arms. But since, he would only touch me when riding the high of the hunt.

After the first few kills, I’d started to come back to myself. I was different, but I was still me, somewhere deep down. And I still wanted Kale. However, what I wanted was so rarely what I needed.

Slow and sensual sounded fantastic… for another time. What I wanted right then was a mad, passionate frenzy of lovemaking that would leave us both disoriented and spent.

Kissing with vampire fangs was tricky. I bit Kale’s lip, murmuring an apology as I flicked my tongue over the blood that welled up. Metallic and tangy, it tasted like an explosion of honey-drenched power.

Laughter echoed around us. Falon announced his arrival with a malicious chuckle before he appeared. Kale and I both jumped up, like we’d been caught doing something sinful.

I smoothed back my hair and squared my shoulders, doing my best to appear composed. “Maybe I should just give you my phone number, Falon. That way you can annoy me from a distance.”

The fallen angel stood there smirking, his arms crossed and his silver wings spread wide. I hadn’t seen him since the night I died. Even though it had been for his own selfish reasons, he’d come through for me that night.