to face up to it, especially now Death had turned her interest to him.
“Not to sound churlish, Pat,” Ven said, fixing Patrick with a steady gaze, “but I died protecting you. The vamp that attacked us outside the pub was not after me, it was after you.”
“He was hungry. I was the weaker target. That’s all.”
“That’s bullshit, and you know it.”
Patrick shot him a silent look, a stubborn glint in his eyes, jaw bunching with tightness. Patrick’s shields were coming up. As they did every time Ven raised the issue.
Biting back an inhuman growl, Ven stormed across Patrick’s bedroom, heading for the door he’d so recently barged through. “Fuck this,” he threw over his shoulder as he crossed the threshold. “I want answers.”
And there was only one creature he knew who could provide them.
It was time to face Death.
Again.
3
Amy Elizabeth Mathieson lay stretched on her bed, gazing up at the ceiling. She ran her hands over her ribcage, down her waist, across her hips, noting with pride the toned muscles and complete absence of fat. She worked hard to stay in shape, spending hours in the gym, even more in Pilates and yoga classes every week. If she didn’t, who knew what vacuous bimbo with a vampire fetish might lure Ven away from her.
Sliding her fingertips up her torso, the sound of Kings Cross’s nightlife wafting through her open window like background music, she traced a slow line over the swell of her bare breasts, circling the nipple on each until they puckered into hard tips.
A shot of heat stabbed into her core and she closed her eyes, releasing a soft, hitching sigh. She wanted to feel Ven’s fangs on her nipples. He’d never drawn blood from her there, no matter how often she’d suggested he could. He’d bitten her once or twice, but never with his fangs. Never to feed. What would it feel like for him to do so? To suckle her blood from the tiny wounds he made as he massaged and cupped and squeezed each heavy curve of flesh?
Would it feel good? Would she ever find out?
Opening her eyes again, she studied the small black cracks marring the white plaster of her ceiling. They looked like tiny varicose veins.
The comparison made her think of her own blood and she lifted her hand to her neck, fingering the pulse beating just below her ear. Ven’s preferred spot to bite.
For three years, she’d been his primary feed source. Almost every night he came to her, made love to her, drank from her. The burn of his penetration into her flesh was something she didn’t want to live without. It consumed her. The nights he didn’t visit, she lay waiting, her body on fire, trembling, aching for the pain and the pleasure he brought upon her.
She was a good feed. She knew that. Always there for the vampire when he needed her, never saying no to anything he suggested—and when the mood took him, he suggested some pretty kinky things—offering herself to his every whim and desire. Just as a loyal and loving pet should.
Amy released another sigh, this one not so ragged.
Loving. What a hideously dangerous word. A word fraught with pain and complications. How had she let herself fall in love with a vampire? A vampire who’d once been a surfboard-riding journalist, of all things. A smoothie both with his body and his words.
If she’d known what he was when she’d first met him—during a nighttime beach volleyball game at Bondi where he and his brother were wiping the sand with their opponents—she wouldn’t have asked him out for a beer.
Who are you kidding, Amy? The idea of vampires has turned you on since you first saw Eric in True Blood.
A shiver rippled through her and she rolled her eyes. Eric had been hot, but Ven pushed all her buttons. That he hadn’t revealed to her he was a vamp for close to a month after that first post-beach-volleyball beer only made his appeal all the more intoxicating. She’d been well on her way to falling for him as a human, his dry sarcasm making her laugh, his smoldering green eyes making her burn and his tender, attentive lovemaking making her melt. When he’d finally revealed her fangs to him, his eyes almost nervous, she’d wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders, bowed her neck and whispered yes, oh, Lord, yes, without hesitation or fear.
Three years later and here she was—in lust, in love, and intoxicated.
Pressing her