Incipient A Dark Paranormal Romance - Bianca Scardoni Page 0,68
move. With my stomach in knots and my breath caught somewhere between my lungs and my mouth, I tried to steady my nerves. I knew that a racing heart only pounded the blood faster through my veins and that was precisely the thing that spurred a Revenant.
“Tell me what to do,” I whispered carefully as he inhaled my scent and gripped my waist with both his hands. This was going very, very badly. I needed to put some space between us. To give him breathing room—not fill his nose up with my damn scent. But I was too scared to take a step in either direction.
It felt like a lifetime before he spoke, and a part of me knew he was at war with himself. With his instincts. “Please don’t…hate me,” he finally said raggedly, and my eyes snapped wide with terror.
“Gabriel!”
The stabbing pain jolted me upright. Instinctively, I tried to dash away from the hurt, but he tightened his hold on me, keeping me pressed against his front as he buried his teeth in me. Within seconds, his venom burned through my blood, mollifying my fear and replacing the throbbing pain in my neck with numbness and then pleasure.
It was the way Revenants were designed, the way they hunted for centuries, turning even the most hostile participant into nothing more than a willing donor.
I knew this, even as he savagely tore into my neck and the blood spewed from my jugular in unreplaceable gushes. There was nothing I could do to fight him off. Nothing I could do to make him stop.
I knew this, even as tears ran down my cheeks, and the room blurred around. Even still as I lost all strength in my body and fell limp into his arms. I knew all of that, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
Seconds melted into minutes and then all sense of time left me. I vaguely remember wondering if he was ever going to stop. And then the blackness came for me just as it had so many times before…
25. TALK THAT TALK
My eyelids snapped open as a razor-sharp pain thumped against the side of my neck. The room was blurry, and my memory foggy as though I’d just woken up from a nightmare I couldn’t place. Padding the cushion underneath me, I recognized the fabric as being from a sofa and then immediately noticed someone pacing the floor across from me.
Where the hell was I?
Squinting and straining my eyes, my vision came into focus as I took in Gabriel and his flustered expression. And then I remembered what had happened.
A gasp ripped out of me as I scrambled backward off the futon and then pushed myself into the corner of the room.
Gabriel’s gaze flew to me like a lion spotting its prey and my heart all but jumped out of my chest. His face was twisted with agony and regret and only worsened when he took in my cowering stance.
Oh, how the tables had turned on me, once again.
“Stay the hell back,” I warned him as my hand raced up to cover my neck. To my surprise, it had already been bandaged. Glancing down at myself, I noted my crisp white blouse was covered in brownish-red liquid.
It was my blood and a whole lot of it at that.
If this were any other time, any other Revenant, I would be firmly standing my ground, ready to rip him a new one. But this was Gabriel. And I had probably lost half my blood volume, if not more. I was in no condition to take on a kitten let alone a very powerful, very recently well-fed Revenant.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you, Jemma.” He dropped his head into his hands and crouched down on bended knees. “I’m a monster. No better than my brother. No better than any of them.”
My natural instinct was to comfort him. To assure him that he wasn’t a monster. But I was too frightened to move. Too traumatized to take a step toward him. The only thing I wanted to do was leave this apartment in one piece.
“I have to go to school, Gabriel.” I hated that my voice trembled when I spoke. “Will you let me leave?”
His gaze flicked up to mine. “I never wanted to hurt you. You have to know that.”
“I do.” I nodded and then mentally traced my route to the door. I needed to get around him and the thought was making my knees shake.