Blood Debt (Kingdom of Blood #1) - Callie Rose Page 0,62

know it. A headbutt and a quick twist of my neck, and I’ll be finished. That’s all it will take, and I can’t figure a way to avoid it.

But he doesn’t move.

I meet his eyes again, still breathing hard. He’s conflicted, I can see it. It’s the same conflict that made me hesitate to take his head off. My heart rate ratchets up a couple notches, but it’s not from fear, although I wish it was. I can feel heat building in his groin, which is pressed hard against me. My body—betrayer, indeed—is reacting. He inhales sharply and his eyes darken. He knows. He can probably smell it on me with his enhanced senses.

Silence deepens around us, heavy with meaning, vibrating with indecision. The longer I gaze into his eyes, the deeper the silence gets.

My breath steadies as I draw his scent into my nostrils. Maybe it is Stockholm syndrome. Maybe it’s just the way he’s looking at me right now, like he wishes he’d caught me doing literally anything else. Like he cares about me enough that I actually have the power to hurt him.

Whatever it is, I can’t break our gaze.

When he does move, it’s slow and uncertain. Rather than his forehead connecting with mine in the headbutt I was expecting, it’s his lips that press against my own, soft and warm… and angry. It’s a different kind of anger, a specific kind, like when I’m reaming Nathan for being stupid and putting his life in danger.

Arching beneath his large body, I kiss Rome back, throwing everything I have into it.

It’s not quite an apology, not quite an explanation—just an acceptance of his anger.

And of my own.

Chapter Twenty

Rome’s lips are bruising, and I can feel the scrape of his teeth against my tongue as our mouths open, gasps and grunts pouring back and forth between us as the kiss deepens. He tastes good, so fucking good, like warm mulled wine and the richest kind of chocolate—with just a hint of the coppery tang of blood.

As he devours me with his mouth and I do my best to consume him right back, I realize how badly some part of me has wanted to do this ever since that first time he drank from me. The way he prepared my neck and then finally bit into it was careful and almost tender, everything about it measured and controlled.

But this?

This is the opposite.

The other side of the coin.

This is Rome when he’s not holding himself back, when he’s letting both his sensual gentleness and his rage run free.

It’s addictive and terrifying all at once, and I lose myself in the weight of his lips and the heat of his breath until he suddenly pulls back, breaking the connection between us.

I let out a quiet, strangled cry of disappointment, my head lifting from the stone floor as I chase his mouth. But he wraps a hand around my throat and squeezes just hard enough to keep me pinned down, his dark blue eyes meeting mine. The look entirely black in this light, like staring up at a night sky when it’s so overcast you can’t see a single star.

My eyelids flutter as I gaze up at him, my chest rising and falling as I suck in a breath past the pressure of his hand. His fingers are long and calloused, and his palm is so broad that it covers my entire throat. I know he can feel my pulse fluttering wildly against his skin, and his nostrils flare as his jaw muscles ripple.

For a moment, I wonder if he’ll snap my neck. He wouldn’t even have to twist my head to kill me—he could crush my windpipe and the bones of my spine all in one vicious squeeze if he chose to do it.

Maybe he’s thinking about it.

Maybe that’s what’s going on behind those midnight-blue eyes of his.

I can’t tell what internal battle he’s fighting with himself. I only know when it ends.

With a low snarl, he releases my throat and drops his head again, kissing me even more savagely than the first time, as if he’s trying to punish me or himself or both of us. I barely have time to return the kiss before he’s ripping his lips away from mine again, but this time, he doesn’t draw back. He just drags them downward, over my jawline and chin and down the column of my throat.

His sharp fangs tease the throbbing pulse of my carotid artery, making bolts of sensation