Saved By Blood (The By Blood Vampire Series Book 3) by Samantha Snow Page B

by now.  By asking what was back there, she was all but asking for an invitation but by God, he was not going to extend it.
     
    He would not lower himself to something one step above begging, he wouldn’t, but she only continued to look at him with those wide, strange eyes and after some unknown amount of time had passed, he could stand it no longer. 
     
    He took her by the hand, seeing her wince at the feel of his ice cold skin, and couldn’t have cared less.  Good.  Let her be afraid -- at least a little bit afraid.  She was too sure of herself here in his presence.  He knew that she sensed the otherness in him, just as he felt the brokenness in her.
     
    They saw each other in some deep, primordial way that he could not explain and, frankly, did not care to.  He was tired of looking for explanations for things, at least at the moment.  He was tired of waiting for her. 
     
    Let her be afraid!  He did not care.  It would only serve to stoke the fires of their desire for one another because yes, that desire was there, too, so thick he felt that he could have reached out and plucked it out of the air. 
     
    He took her by the hand and strode through the massive mahogany room that had once served as the home’s grand ballroom, many years ago.  As he walked, he could see the ghosts of his past moving around him, unconscious of the fact that their time had passed and they weren’t really there at all. 
     
    He saw balls he had attended when he was young and still believed there was a future ahead of him.  He saw balls he had hosted himself as the owner of the property, after his turning was complete.  He could still hear the sound of horse’s hooves clomping skittishly in the wet cobblestone streets outside of his gardens. 
     
    He could hear the tinkle of laughter from countless numbers of breathless ladies, smell the smoke of many lifetime’s worth of pricey cigars.  Those ghosts could be suffocating if he thought about them too much, but on this evening, thinking about them was the last thing on his mind.  It was only her and the feeling of her too thin, slightly trembling hand wrapped up inside of his own. 
     
    Tripping down a long hallway with a thick plush carpet that still to this day made Philip wonder if this was what it would feel like to actually walk on air, her heartbeat was thumping so hard in her slender wrist, involuntarily, his unusually sharp incisors extended themselves.  It was such soft flesh, so supple, so easy to sink his teeth…
     
    “No!” he hissed to himself, so softly under his breath that Megan didn’t hear it at all (or if she did, she made no mention of it which to Philip amounted to pretty much the same thing), “No, not her.  She’s not for that purpose.  Not to be devoured, at least not like that.”
     
    And of course he wouldn’t, not ever.  He would never sink his teeth into that flesh unless she asked him to, and maybe not even then.  That hummingbird beat of her heart was not for the eating.  It was for the bedroom, which was where he was now taking her.
     
    “It’s so dark” she said breathlessly, stopping short in the front sitting room. 
     
    She looked around her in frank astonishment, her eyes hungry for as much detail as she could possibly absorb.  He let her hands go then and stepped deeper inside of his chambers.  He looked around him, trying to see things the way that she might be seeing them, but he couldn’t concentrate.  Being in here seemed to have removed all pretense that they had spent this evening together for any reason other than to experience every part of each other’s bodies.
     
    The massive ebony carved bed front and center served as an excellent reminder, had either one of them been inclined to forget.
     
    “Philip?”
     
    That’s all she got out, only that one word, before he was once again upon her.  This time it was not just her hand he held.  He wrapped his arms around the lithe length of her body,