you ready to be marked?” Ryker asks, his questioning gaze locked on Siah.
Siah looks shocked by the question, and his eyes bounce from me to Ryker. He looks at each of the other guys in turn and then lands back on me again. “Just like that?” he asks, his features perplexed.
Sabin walks out of the bathroom, a towel tied low around his hips. He dries his hair with another towel and stops in his tracks to take in the intense looks on everyone’s faces. I run my greedy gaze all over his sculpted chest and abs, the sleeve of tattoos on his left arm are dark and delicious against the creamy skin of his abdomen. Water droplets fall from his hair down his chest, and I whine from the self-control it’s taking me not to move toward him and start licking the trails of water up.
“What’d I miss?” he queries.
“Vinna’s magic needs to mark Siah,” Ryker fills him in.
Sabin nods, and I’m once again thrown by how cool they all seem to be about this. “How do you feel about it, Vinna?” Sabin asks, but I’m so busy studying the V of his lower abdomen like there’s going to be a pop quiz on it at any moment, that it takes me a minute to process that he just asked me a question.
“Well, judging by the way she just gulped down his blood, I’d say she’s on board,” Valen announces with a smirk.
“That’s new,” Ryker observes as he wipes at blood on my hip. “Anywhere else hurting, Squeaks?”
I unbutton my dirty as fuck jeans and push them down my hips. I peel them off and reveal a nasty black bruise on my thigh from where a piece of the cell wall nailed me when Becket was practicing with his mace. My knees are cut up and badly bruised too, and Ryker crouches down in front of me and places his palms on my thigh.
“How long have you two been exchanging blood?” Sabin asks, his tone clinical, and I turn to stare at him, confused.
“I’ve only fed from her the one time in the barn. She’s had my blood maybe five times now, but this was only the second time she’s fed directly from me,” Siah explains, and Sabin nods like all that information is important to know and not simply a case of TMI.
“What does his blood taste like to you?” Sabin turns to me and asks.
Ryker trails his hands from my thigh down to my knee, and I close my eyes and bite my lip against a moan. Knox snickers at my obvious struggle to keep it together. I ignore him and focus on Sabin’s question and the feel of Ryker’s hands on my legs.
“Um, I don’t really know how to explain it,” I admit.
“Do you like it, or does it just taste like blood, and you choke it down because it helps you to feel better?” he clarifies.
“Oh, um…I definitely like it,” I tell him, but the response comes out a little squeaky, and I feel like a fucking psycho admitting that I like drinking blood. Like is really an understatement in this case because I fucking love the taste of his blood. It’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted, and I’d like to pack it into little Capri Sun pouches and sip on that shit all day, every day. Or better yet, sip on him when he’s fucking me hard and then beg him to return the favor by sinking those sharp little teeth in my neck. I shake away that sudden and deliciously graphic train of thought and refocus on Sabin.
He’s staring at me like he’s asked me another question and he’s waiting for the answer. “Um, what?” I ask. I have no clue what he might have just said to me.
“I asked if you’d read any of the books in Lachlan’s library about lamia,” Sabin repeats to me.
“No, I only stole the ones about the different branches of magic,” I admit.
“A lamia knows his mate when he starts to crave the magic in their blood. It changes the flavor of the blood itself and holds a different quality to them, they develop a need for it. The same can also be said for their mate. The fact that you like his blood, or rather the taste of his magic which is in his blood, since really that’s where the flavor comes from, is a big deal.”
“Meaning?” I ask, not exactly sure where he’s going with