Wild and Free (The Three #3)(106)

With all that, there wasn’t much conversation to degenerate.

However, when he cornered her in the living room of her home, she again tried to conjure magic rather than listen, which eradicated any patience he had left.

“Of course. And apparently, in order to explain your unwarranted attack, you wish me to believe that they’re coming true,” she replied as if she didn’t believe him in the slightest.

“They are.”

“Right,” she muttered, pushing up further, and Yuri regarded her.

Long, dark hair with a lustrous sheen and attractive wave, the mass of it curling over her shoulders and down her chest. Big eyes that were a startling blue with a midnight edge to the iris. More than ample breasts from which he would very much enjoy feeding. The same with her thighs and ass. A musky scent that would not normally be his preference, but mingled with her residual fear, as well as her courage, he couldn’t help but find it alluring.

With the restrictions on vampire feeding finally lifted, if this was any other time, and indeed if he were not vampire and she were not witch, he’d take her, making her enjoy it. He’d start with her inner thigh, close to her sex, so he could feed at the same time he watched his fingers thrust deep and listened as excitement overcame her fear.

“Uh, I don’t have to read minds to see you’re looking at me like I’m your next meal,” she pointed out, taking his attention from where it had fixated on the pulse in her neck and bringing it back to her eyes.

“I’m hungry,” he warned. “And you’re immensely beautiful,” he went on, seeing her blink again at his words. “And you smell magnificent, like blood and earth and wind, fear and bravery. I want that taste on my tongue,” he told her with blunt honesty and watched as her eyes grew round. “So perhaps we can hurry this along so my control doesn’t snap along with my patience.”

“You’re hungry?” she asked, the fear edging back, but he couldn’t help but notice there was a hint of curiosity.

“This mission is important and dangerous, so I left my concubine behind.” He ignored her wrinkling her nose, not only because he didn’t like the indication she found his use of a concubine distasteful, but also because it was annoyingly adorable. “This means I haven’t fed in three days.”

It also meant he hadn’t f*cked in three days. Since the restrictions were lifted, he, like all other vampires, took advantage. And after five hundred years of having the sweetest blood to be tasted in his mouth, blood that came from attractive women who very much enjoyed his feeding to its fullest (when he could not), he took everything a concubine could offer, not only her blood.

But he wasn’t doing this now.

Which was yet another reason he was in a foul mood.

At his words, her eyes got huge and she pushed against the wall, whispering, “Oh my God.”

Yuri sighed and forced them back on track. “A witch. In this town. Twenty years ago. With a blessed athame that can scar an immortal. A name and address would be useful.”

He watched her head twitch and he knew she knew of whom he spoke, something that wasn’t surprising. Since he began hunting witches, when he sensed this one, he knew she was the one he’d approach—the only one he’d found who was young enough to be malleable and old enough to know what he needed to know.

So he crouched and she pressed deeper into the wall. He could hear her heart thumping hard and fast in her chest.

“A name,” he pushed.

“Scar an immortal?” she asked.

“A hybrid vampire wolf.”

That time, she jerked her head side to side in a sharp negative. “There are no such things.”

“There are. I’ve seen him. Spoken to him. Fought at his side when someone tried to kill him and his mate along with the others who make The Three.”

“You’ve got to be lying.”

Bloody hell.

He threw out an exasperated hand. “Why would I be lying?”

“Because if he exists, The Prophesies actually are coming true.”

Yuri clenched his teeth.

She stared at him. Then she did it harder. Finally, she squinted at him so hard he thought she’d have an aneurysm.

Watching this, it caused Yuri to have the contradicting desire to shake her because she was being aggravating, smile at her because, regardless of how maddening it was, it was still adorable, and kiss her, mostly because it wasn’t just adorable, it was damnably adorable.

Suddenly, her face went slack and she breathed, “Holy crap, The Prophesies are coming true.”

He had no time for this.

“Stop being charming and tell me what you know,” he ordered.

Another blink and a breathed, “Charming?”

He bent closer so his face was in hers. However, she simply stared into his eyes, no longer pressing back.

“You know of the athame I spoke of,” he bit out. “Now, you can choose to tell me who possesses it, or possessed it twenty years ago. Or you can choose to force me to extract that information from you. What you can’t do is take time to make your choice since I don’t have time. So choose now.”

“Extract it from me?”

He shrugged. “Waterboarding, flaying, skinning, tearing your fingernails out by their roots, pulling your teeth out one by one, burning, pressing, choking, or I could feed from you while I play with you, denying you your climax until you tell me what I wish to know,” he shared.