King replied wryly. Thankfully, he did not seem angry with her. He was watching her in fascination instead, as though something about what she was doing struck him as noteworthy.
She wasn’t quite sure why.
Walter quietly thanked her for the tea again and sipped it. “Master, I also came to inform you that…” He paused and glanced to her. He was marking his words. “The work with the older hunter has begun to show progress.”
“Good.” Dracula’s expression darkened. “I will inspect him personally this afternoon.”
Maxine sighed. “You are committed to torturing him?”
“It has already begun.”
“Out of petty revenge? Or because you enjoy it?”
He sneered. “Both.”
She winced and shut her eyes. She had been expecting that answer, but it had still stung. For the same reasons he slept in a coffin, she wanted to remind herself of it. “I wish to see.”
“Not yet, Maxine.”
“Why not?”
He growled. “I wish to ensure that my work is…presentable.”
“No, you wish for me to linger at your table. You wish to draw out this moment as long as you can. I sympathize. But I will not allow it. A man—a city as a whole—suffers at your command. I will witness it. You will take me to see him now.”
He raised a dark eyebrow. “And you think I take orders from you?”
“You are not my King, nor my Master. I am not one of your servants. Not now, not ever. You may assert to me that I belong to you all you wish, but I refuse this notion that I am subordinate.”
“If I wished you to be my slave, I would already have it.” He narrowed his eyes at her angrily. “I have never asserted that I wish to break you beneath my boot. Do not tempt me to change my mind.”
“Good. You wish me to witness your horrors? Take me to see him now. I would see the whole of it. Not only your finished work.”
“You will beg me to stop. You will plead for his release. I will be forced to tell you no.” Dracula stood from the table, smoothing out his coat, and walked to a window to turn his back to her and gaze out at the darkened city below. “Are you prepared for this eventuality?”
“Are you?”
His hands tightened into fists, and she watched as he clearly forced himself to relax. He lowered his shoulders and clasped his hands at his back in lieu of clenching them. “You are unkind, Miss Parker. It is the ultimate hypocrisy that I feel myself wronged by you. I had hoped to spare you the act in progress. I had hoped to soften the knowledge that we do not simply embrace the violence that is our nature…we relish it.”
“You wish for me to judge you wholly? Then why are you now too shy to lay down all your cards? Or do you already know how today will end, and you are simply ashamed?”
He turned to look at her, and all the warmth and tenderness she had seen in his gaze had been whisked away as though it had never been there. Finally, perhaps she had gone too far. She stood from the table.
Walter was the last to do so, and he took a step back from them. “I will go and inform the Chainmaster that they will have company shortly.” He turned and left the room quickly—a little faster than he had walked in. She was sorry for the poor bastard.
Vlad walked up to her, and she forced herself to hold her ground. She refused to cower, even with the look he was giving her. He closed the distance between them. Without a moment’s notice, he gathered the hair at the base of her neck into his hand and yanked back on it, wrenching her head up to him.
Her gasp of pain was captured by his devouring lips. The embrace was searing, bruising, and all-consuming. Her hands flew to his lapels and clutched at them like a drowning man might a raft and held on for dear life as all that he was rolled over her like a storm.
An inhuman growl bore through him, low and deadly, resonating from him and into her. When he broke off the kiss, she was breathless and holding on to him to keep from collapsing to the floor. His hand in her hair did not relent. He craned his head farther to whisper into her ear, cold breath pooling against her skin.