Forget About Midnight (Alexa O'Brien, Huntress #9)

He was both delighted and horrified to find me in such a state. He loved it as much as he hated it. And he sure did hate it. Especially once he realized that Kale remained my partner in crime.

However, Arys himself was certainly no saint. The mental door between us worked two ways, and I saw very clearly that he was with Jenner, a woman stretched out between them as they feasted upon her. To be fair, Arys wasn’t as into it as his blood brother was. I got the impression that he’d been dragged along. Still, he was there, doing the same damn thing that I was.

There was the unwelcome sensation of attempted communication. Arys wasn’t content with just a look. But I wasn’t ready to allow him back in. Not yet. I forced him from my mind with more aggression than necessary. His shock and dismay lingered, leaving me with a bad taste in my mouth.

The moment had been ruined. My concentration had been broken, and the magic had faded. Arys would come. He could easily find me, and now he would come. I would not be around when he did.

Disappointed that my fun was over so soon, I jerked my victim’s head aside and plunged fangs deep into his artery. There was still a pleasant rush from the spilling of blood and the man’s arousal, though it was a far cry from what it should have been.

“We have to go,” I announced to Kale who had silenced the woman’s screams. She hung limp against him as he drained her.

He gazed at me with glassy eyes. For a moment he didn’t react, and I thought I’d have to tear the woman away from him. Then he dropped her. She hit the ground with the dull smack of flesh on pavement.

My hungry manipulations had been disrupted, but my longing for satisfaction didn’t fade. With complete abandon, I went to Kale and kissed him like I’d wanted to so many times since he’d carried me out of the graveyard before sunrise.

Maybe I expected some resistance on his part because I was mildly surprised when he kissed me back with a thrilling voraciousness. The taste of blood was intoxicating when he slipped his tongue between my lips. Several months of longing burst forth to drown us in a desire that had long gone denied.

His hands were in my hair, on my face, my waist. When his lips moved to my neck, I knew that we were crossing a line, and God how I wanted to.

“We have to go,” I repeated, unable to form any other words.

Before the writhing force that drove us could pull us deeper into its thrall, I dragged him along beside me, fleeing the scene without a glance back.

Chapter Two

Once I released Kale from his self-imposed cage, he was ravenous and ready to terrorize the city. Somehow my transition to vampire had revived his self-restraint, a trait I barely possessed these days. It wasn’t really his strongest trait either though. As soon as we killed together, he was back to his vicious, vampy self.

It was the same pattern he’d followed for the past few nights. Dusk found him subdued, calm in a way that was almost suspicious. As we hunted, he hovered, watching me as I chose and claimed my prey. Then he changed. His mental state shifted, and together we encouraged one another to be terrible.

I kept waiting for the guilt. Every moment that passed without it left me feeling like I walked in some kind of twisted alternate reality. I wanted to feel bad about the things I’d done since waking up at The Wicked Kiss, really I did. But I didn’t.

It would come though. At some point it would all catch up to me. Then the real struggle would begin. Then I’d fight to walk the line between madness and calculated control, choosing my victims discriminately, fairly even. I wasn’t sure how seasoned vampires managed. It was so fucking hard to give a damn when all I wanted to do was make living things beg and bleed.

Together Kale and I enjoyed a guy who’d shouted something derogatory at me about tits and ass as I’d walked by. He was a drunken mess, leering at me from the doorway of a small, dirty pub where he puffed heavily on a cigarette. With just a smile and a finger bent in invitation, he’d fallen into step beside me without a word.

Now he lay dead, sprawled on the overgrown, yellowed lawn of an abandoned house in a derelict neighborhood. Several feet away, Kale too was sprawled on the crunchy grass. I straddled him, gazing down into his handsome face as he stared up at me in a blood-drunk haze.

“I knew we would be amazing together,” he said, tracing a finger over my bloodstained lips.

“We’ve barely started.” In a teasing motion, I squirmed atop him, a playful brush of my groin against his.

“I don’t want to do it like this.” Kale gestured to the dead man with a grimace. “You’re too good for that. Since our night in the rain together, I’ve always known that if I had another chance, I’d love you the way I always wanted to.”

The tension between us had grown unbearably in the past few months. Denying the way I wanted him had become a nightly occurrence. Of course being mortal had made it dangerous to even be alone with him. Until now.