Like that wound closing was going to go far enough, though? He required proper medical attention.
“I need you to live through this,” she muttered as she dragged her sleeve up.
Scoring her own wrist with her fangs, she waited for her blood to well and then she extended her lower arm out over his mouth. The first drop to hit his lips did nothing but give her a really bad comparison between his pasty skin and what a living person’s was like. The second did nothing. The third—
The gasp that came out of him was so loud, so abrupt, so violent, that she jumped and nearly dropped his head off her lap. And then those eyes opened, but not in the dreamy way she’d fantasized.
That hostile glare was right out of his playbook, however.
And then he slapped a hold on her wrist.
As her bones were crushed in his grip, pure fear had her jerking back—or trying to. There was no freedom to be had, not until he chose to give it to her.
The male sat up, his torso curving, the musculature bulking as his chest contracted to lift the weight of his shoulders. And then his head ripped toward the open vein at her wrist.
The growl that came out of him was that of an animal.
Now that tattooed bony hand was reaching for her. Claiming her. Dragging her into the hell he kept in his black soul—
“No,” she commanded. “You may not take more than you need. You may not hurt me.”
As the words left her, strong and steady, Mae had no idea where the conviction came from. But she wasn’t going to argue with it.
She needed to be alive for her brother.
That was just the way it had to be.
• • •
As Sahvage’s brain came back online, his first awareness was the smell of the female’s blood. Even with so much of his own all around them, as well as on her hands, her sweatshirt . . . her mouth . . . her scent managed to overpower everything. She was a fresh meadow, on a starry night, just after a warm spring rain.
Captivating. Nurturing. Clean.
And he needed more of her in his nose—
With a frown, he focused on her pale and frightened face. She was beautiful, he thought, in a non-flashy kind of way, her even features un-slathered with makeup, her eyes naturally lashed, her hair pulled back in a simple way. And her lips were moving. She was talking to him. Probably telling him to let go. Not to hurt her. Maybe she was begging—
Fuck.
He was still alive.
Goddamn it.
With a numb, enduring frustration, he looked at his hand as it squeezed her forearm. Thanks to a fresh bite mark on her wrist, her blood, red and glistening . . . rivered down onto his grip.
That was the taste in his mouth, the heavenly taste that had lit him up, called him back, brought him to her like a dog summoned by its master.
And now? He had a decision to make. Kill her and take everything in her veins. Or let her go and leave right away. Because if he stayed and she was alive? He was going to fuck her while he drank her dry.
As Sahvage mulled over the polar opposites, he supposed the fact that he had to weigh the choice to let an innocent survive didn’t reflect well on his character. But after all this time, he had no character left. There was no part of who he had once been remaining. He was a death machine roaming the earth, and the tragedy for the female was that she had chosen to stay with him instead of run away with the crowd.
“Are you the Reverend?” she asked in a husky voice.
Or at least he thought that was what she was saying. He was distracted by that scent of hers, that taste . . . the fact that he was now fully erect.
“I need to know,” she said. “And you need to live. Take what you need, but no more.”
With that, she put her wrist against his mouth, pressing the puncture wounds to his lips—and instantly, he was as lost as he had been while dying, his mind floating on a sea of compromised senses, his body no longer his to order, his heart skipping beats, his lungs freezing.
He couldn’t swallow fast enough. He was a bottomless pit.
As Sahvage reclined back into her lap, he stared up at her as he drew against her vein. She wouldn’t meet his eyes, and he wasn’t surprised. He was not the kind of male a female like her should have had anything to do with voluntarily—and not because she was an aristocrat. He could tell by the clothes she wore and that handbag that she was a civilian, but that wasn’t the divider between them.