Dark Destiny (Dark Sentinel #1) - Lexxie Couper Page 0,48

the room, and for a moment Patrick wondered if Fred had left. A sharp stab of disappointment speared into his chest and he bit back a growl. Damn it, he was fucked up.

“Not to kill you, Patrick.”

Her whisper caressed the back of his neck and, before he could stop himself, he turned. He gazed down into her eyes, his throat so tight he could barely breathe, his thighs brushing hers, his chest rubbing against her nipples. “To do what then?” he repeated, voice strangled.

She looked up at him, her heat folding around him, seeping into his body. Warming him from the icy embrace of the event’s haunting memory. “Talk to you. If that’s okay?”

“Talk?” Why was he disappointed with that? Why did he want…more? “Is that it?”

Her eyes held his. “It…it doesn’t have to be.”

And she went up on tiptoe and touched her lips to his.

7

Ven snarled, pushing through the crowded Kings Cross street. He’d never been so hungry. So pissed off.

So desperate for a pair of bloody sunglasses.

He glared at the hot morning sun hanging low above his head, drowning him in ultraviolet rays. He hadn’t needed a pair of sunglasses for over eighteen years. His old pair of Ray Bans were probably at home somewhere, maybe tucked in his underwear drawer along with the boxers he’d stopped wearing the night he’d become a vampire.

At the thought of his transformation, his demon growled, making a push for release. He struggled with control of it, the hunger for blood gnawing at his core like an insane monster…which it was. An insane, ravenous monster cringing at the daylight.

If he wasn’t so hungry, he’d stop and buy a cheap pair of sunnies from a street vendor. But he was hungry. Damn hungry.

Shouldering his way through a gaggle of tourists snapping a multitude of photos of God knew what, he headed for Amy’s apartment. She lived above a vegetarian café a few blocks away. Pulling in a deep breath now, he could almost convince himself the taste of her scent danced on the air already.

His stomach growled, almost as loudly as his demon.

Fuck, he was hungry.

Unbidden, an image of Death flashed through his head, a carnal reminder it wasn’t just blood he craved. He scowled, hissing at one tourist foolish enough to come too close. The man’s sweat threaded into Ven’s breath, sweet with salt and minerals. Hot saliva flooded his mouth.

He swallowed, tongue pressed to his fangs. How easy would it be to lunge at the man, sink his nails into his bony shoulders, and throw him to the sidewalk. He could all but feel the warm coppery fluid of the man’s lifeblood trickle down his parched throat.

The muscles in Ven’s face shifted. The light burned into his eyes. Sound amplified. He could hear the man’s heartbeat. Could hear the man’s blood flow through his thin, delicate veins, pulsing under his thin, vulnerable flesh. Waiting to be sucked from his neck in deep, long pulls. Waiting to be—

“Fuck.” Ven snapped his fists closed, sinking his nails, no, his claws, into his palms. The pain stabbed into his bloodlust and he bit back a growl. He was close, too close to losing it. He needed to get off the street immediately. He needed to lock himself away from the sun, away from the cattle around him until he could sate the thirst in his body with Amy’s blood.

And after he’d fed, after he’d gorged his demon on the bright red fluid, he’d sate the other more carnal lust in his body.

Again, an image of Death filled his head, pale limbs bare, eyes smoldering with pure white energy. Her ancient, inhuman power called to the demon in his core and a surge of hot electricity shot through him, making him growl once more.

Louder. More bestial.

A woman hurrying along the sidewalk gave him a startled look. She stumbled, her eyes bulging, and it was only then Ven realized he no longer wore his human façade. He was in vamp mode. The early stages, but vamp mode all the same.

Fuck.

He spun on the spot, taking in the gawking, gaping people around him in the blink of an eye. Their confused fear leached from their pores in sweet, delicious waves. Their hearts leapt into deafening tattoos, pumping their blood around their bodies in delectable, irresistible rivers of—

Get out of here, Steven. Now. Before you tear open someone’s neck and bathe yourself in what gushes from the wound.

The thought made him giddy, and for a dangerous, terrible, wonderful