His arm tensed along her waist as he shoved his face into her neck, smelling her skin, her hair, the perfume that she didn’t need, hearing the blood sing warm and moist through her veins. He heard the breath move out of her in a gasp and knew he was using too much strength.
He kept her pinned to him and didn’t let go.
Mine, he declared.
Never, she returned.
His mouth moved to her ear and he murmured, “We’ll see.”
He felt her shiver.
Then he freed her mind and her body from his control.
She felt it immediately, turned in his arm to glare at him a moment before she tore herself free and ran directly from the room.
Chapter Three
The Bloodletting
I stood at the window staring out at the night.
The sky was free of clouds, the moon full, its brightness frosting the dark, immaculate garden below in a way that was appropriately eerie.
My eyes moved from the garden and I caught my reflection in the glass.
I looked like an idiot.
I was wearing a pale pink nightgown, simple, unadorned by lace or any other accoutrement. It was ankle length, slit up both sides all the way to my h*ps with spaghetti straps holding up the bodice and the back under my shoulder blades between a deep exposed V.
Some strange woman named Edwina had come in to do my hair and makeup. She’d been quiet and watchful but smiling and obviously excited like I was about to be crowned queen of the world.
I let her have at it and stayed quiet too. I had too much on my mind.
I shouldn’t have stayed quiet. She gave me way too much hair. She also gave me way, way, way too much makeup.
I was, imminently, going to get my throat gnashed open by that f**king vampire’s teeth, he was going to suck my blood and then go home to his mate.
Why all the fuss?
After The Selection I told my mother what happened in the Contract Room and demanded she contact the Vampire Dominion and appeal the contract.
At first, she looked shaken. Then she called my aunts. My aunts called in my sister but surprisingly not my cousins.
They had a meeting I wasn’t invited to which pissed me off.
Then they contacted The Dominion but not to appeal the contract, to get a copy of it.
As was my and their due, this we received. Avery delivered it personally. Behind closed doors, without me there, they’d perused it for hours.
Okay, more like an hour but it felt like a million of them.
My sister came out first, her face pale, eyes shocked. She said not one single word before she took off. This was surprising. Lana was chatty. She could chat anyone’s ear off. I didn’t think it was even in her not to say a single word.
This was not a good sign.
My Aunt Kate came out next. For some reason she looked shocked too but determined. The oldest of the four Buchanan matriarchs, as tradition had ingrained in me for four decades, she had the final say. I just didn’t like the final say.
It was this: “You’ll abide by the contract.”