I straighten my head again, clenching my jaw. “What do you mean?”
He chuckles, and the sound pours over me like rolling thunder.
“I see everything, you know,” he murmurs. “I watched as you fucked the male tributes with your eyes. You couldn’t stop staring.” He leans close to me, his breath brushing against my earlobe as he speaks in a low voice. “If that’s the kind of satisfaction you’re looking for, my bed is always open to you.”
My stomach dips and sways sideways, as if I’m on the deck of a ship in the middle of a storm.
“I wouldn’t be caught dead in your coffin,” I hiss out through my teeth, the words slipping out before I can stop them.
My heart thumps hard, and I bite my tongue. I know I’ve made a mistake. Again. I’ve always had grit, determination, and anger on my side, but I’m never been the best at disguising my feelings, and it’s been biting me in the ass all night. It’s only a matter of time before it gets me killed. Any willing blood tribute would be thrilled to have the prince himself make them an offer like that, and I just threw it back in his face.
Bastian draws back a little, but not enough to let me go. “You surprise me, tribute.”
“Stop calling me that. Please.”
Both eyebrows go up now, and he coughs out a surprised laugh. “I wondered why no one drank from you at the celebration. I’m beginning to understand it now. Have you not experienced that yet, my feral little—well, what would you have me call you?”
Mikka. Fuck. No. “D-Darcy.”
“Darcy, then. Have you never experienced a vampire’s kiss?”
My heart, the fucking traitor, speeds up. The prince grins, sensing it, and moves in closer.
“Ah, I see,” he murmurs, his breath caressing my neck like a physical touch. “Then you really don’t know.”
He’s testing me. I’m sure of it. And if I fail this test, I doubt he’ll even bother calling the guards in to deal with me. He’ll probably kill me himself, right here in this dark hallway.
I tell myself to relax, but my body isn’t listening. It’s going to happen, the one thing I’ve been dodging for most of my life, and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it. My fingers curl against the wall behind me, my nails digging into the smooth stone to keep them from flying into his face. Every muscle is tense, waiting for that brutal moment.
Bastian leans closer to me, his large body and dominating presence overwhelming me. He seems to take up more space than his physical body could possibly encompass, like there’s an aura around him that pulses in the air, affecting all the atoms between us.
His fangs trace along my jugular, cold and hard and sharp, but they don’t penetrate my skin. Goosebumps rise up all over me, from my head to my toes, as my skin itself tries to defend against the attack—but still, he doesn’t bite down.
Tongue and teeth tease my tender flesh as his body presses close against me. His teeth scrape over my neck, sending a shiver of anticipation down my spine.
I don’t want it. I don’t want this.
But I have to keep telling myself I don’t want it, because his tongue and teeth and proximity are doing strange things to my body. My head feels too heavy, and it rolls away from him, lengthening my neck for his mouth. Shivers of dread change ever so subtly, morphing into something else entirely. That arousal I felt in the ballroom flares up again deep in my belly, making my clit throb as my neck warms under his attention.
He nips my ear, then trails his tongue back down to my shoulder, nipping me there too. His sharp teeth press against my skin hard enough for me to feel them, but they never penetrate it.
Dammit, get it over with! I scream at him inside my head. I can’t take the fucking anticipation.
But that isn’t what this feeling is, not really. It’s… it’s want. He’s putting me under a spell with his touch, that’s what this is. That has to be it. Because right now, for the first time in my life, I want him to bite me. I want him to taste me, want his fangs inside me.
Then the teasing stops abruptly.
My neck is still whole. There are no puncture wounds, not even closed ones. He never once bit down.
I open my eyes to find the prince stepping away from me, his expression unreadable. The long line of his nose and vicious cut of his cheekbones make him look like a statue of an angry deity. Even in the dimly lit hallway, his eyes are clearly visible, and I could almost swear I see lightning crackling in the storm gray of his irises. He fixes me with a hard look, any emotion he might be feeling hidden behind the stoic mask of his features.
“Get back to your room, Darcy.”
And just like that, he turns and walks away.
I have to press my back against the wall to stay upright. Adrenaline and something else I can’t quite name race through me, making me tremble and shake.
I know I’m lucky. I know he could’ve just as easily killed me as talked to me. He could’ve ripped my throat out and left me to bleed out in the corridor, gasping and choking until my last breath.
But instead, he did… nothing.
Why didn’t he bite me?
Chapter Twelve
A timid knock at my door wakes me after not nearly enough sleep. I throw on some clothes, if you can call them that, and answer it as fast as I can, not wanting to be caught half-dressed by Anastasyia or some other vampire.
But it’s not the matron of
