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PAIN NOT ECSTASY. DEATH not life.
That’s what I thought in the brief amount of time the vampire had me under his hold. For as long as I’d craved the feeling of fangs digging into my skin, I suddenly found myself sorely disappointed and utterly afraid. I was the prey. An easy, unprepared target that had let her enemy get way too close.
That is until the vampire sealed the wound. A hot, powerful tongue swept along my neck in spirals, dodging in and out of the place his teeth had marked. From the center of the bite, heat radiated outward along every part of my skin. The desire I’d felt when Ashby had been touching me came back in a rush. I let out a small noise of satisfaction and the man on top of me chuckled.
“So easily swayed,” he whispered against my lips. “Surprising for one of Ezra’s famous hunters.”
Recognition slammed into me like a train. A hundred ton train that derailed all of the Order’s meticulous plans. “I...I know you,” I said to him.
The vampire smiled, not even attempting to hide his fangs. High cheek bones, a chiseled jaw, and exotic features swept me up into his spell again. My neck scorched at the place he’d bitten, but my mind fought hard to force recognition into my eyes.
His lips found mine at the same time his hands squeezed my breasts. His thumbs tweaked my nipples and even under my bra, they responded quickly. Desire flushed through me. An uncontrollable and undeniable urge that exploded from the inside out. I wrapped my hands around his waist, trying to pull him down on top of me. I felt him smile a moment before he pushed his tongue inside my parted lips. He explored every inch, inviting me to dance with him. I complied. Willingly.
And there was nothing I could do to stop myself.
“Sebastian!”
Viktor’s voice flooded the room a moment before he ripped the vampire off of me. Like with Ashby, his absence left a cold, gaping wound. But then my brain started to work again. Sebastian? I know a Sebastian don’t I?
“Viktor Kaska,” Sebastian said after he straightened his suit and faced his opponent. “I heard you were looking for me.”
Viktor’s concerned eyes found mine, his gaze darting quickly to my neck and back to Sebastian again. “What did you do to her?”
Sebastian took a moment to glance in my direction. My neck tingled under his gaze, and not in the way it should as a hunter. “Consider it a warning,” he said cryptically.
Viktor stepped forward, his tall frame barely towering over Sebastian. Again, my brain worked furiously to break all of the magical spells I’d endured tonight. Sebastian...Sebastian.
“This is all you’re doing?” Viktor asked and Sebastian shrugged in response. “Why?”
Sebastian’s eyes found mine again before walking over to the bar and lifting a glass filled with thick, red liquid. “The time for change has come, my friend.”
“You’re going about this all wrong,” Viktor said calmly, all the while moving closer toward me.
“Am I?” Sebastian mused. “I have waited a long time to earn my place, only to be passed over by necromancers and witches three generations younger.”
Suddenly, everything clicked. “You’re Sebastian Braziano,” I said, pushing myself to my feet. “You’re supposed to be helping us.” Sebastian was Ezra’s friend and our liaison to Human Affairs.
We’d been set up. And Viktor had suspected as much.
“Nice to finally meet you, Ms. Sophia.” Sebastian’s old accent raced to the front of his words, the charm oozing from his voice even more than Ashby had done.
At that thought, I turned around to find the demon twins. Sometime since Viktor had stepped into the room, the women had disappeared. Damn them. I wished I could disappear right now too.
“Why are you doing this?” Viktor asked. His voice broke a little, making me wonder just what kind of history these two, old and very powerful vampires had shared.
“You’ll find out soon enough.” Sebastian sipped his drink, his eyes glued to the bite on my neck.
Viktor grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the exit without saying another word. His touch shocked my skin as though it rejected him. Viktor’s gaze snapped in my direction as he squeezed my hand hard enough to feel pain. “Don’t let go of me,” he pushed out through gritted teeth the moment we stepped into the main part of the club.
“It’s not like I have a choice,” I grumbled. Viktor squeezed even harder.
He pulled me to the center aisle that weaved through the tables. Only unlike our arrival, everyone stopped what they were doing and stared as we rushed by them. Every vampire in the place, male and female, glowered at us with their predatory blues. Several of them dropped their fangs, biting their lips or obnoxiously hissing at us.
“What’s going on?” I whispered to Viktor, suddenly thankful for his death grip. But he didn’t respond and instead kept yanking me though the crowd. I tripped several times, once actually stepping clear out of my shoe.
Someone grabbed my shoulder, pulling me to a stop while Viktor had tried to take another step forward. I screamed in surprise, embarrassed by that reaction but also aware of how all of my senses seemed to be hyped up right now. Viktor’s hand slipped from mine and a wave of nerves swirled around the wound in my neck. My hunter senses jumped into full alert, but the lingering desire in my body tempted me to run back into the private room.
“You dropped your shoe,” a female vampire said. Her voice trilled over the dance music in the background, hypnotizing me at the same time igniting more fear. She held out my heel, her tongue darting across bright red lips while she waited for me to respond. Her short, cropped hair had been pasted to her face, long, fake eyelashes accentuating the size of her almond eyes. At any other time, I would have been mesmerized by her beauty, but in all honesty, she had nothing on the demon twins.
Viktor suddenly jerked me away and snatched the shoe from her. The vampire hissed at him when he turned his back and pushed me toward the door. “Don’t stop,” he whispered into my ear. I heard the fear in his voice and that was enough to shake off any lurking hormonal urges and focus on getting out of here alive.
While all of the vampires and other creatures watched our every move, I had a fleeting thought that maybe they wouldn’t let us leave. But that was squashed the moment one of the human bouncers opened the front door and a rush of cold air enveloped us like a spell.
Or more like a cold shower.
The power racing through the club and taking over my ability to control my own body snapped away like a whip. I pressed my hand to the side of my neck, feeling the heated skin around the bite. It took a moment for it all to sink in, and then I found myself growing angry.
“He bit me,” I said in disbelief.
Viktor was doing something on his phone when he popped his head up and really looked at me. He stepped forward and removed my hand. I tensed at first, but then let him have his examination time. He had gotten me out of there after all.
In a split second, Viktor leaned forward and sniffed the bite. His nose tickled my skin, but it didn’t give me the same feelings I tried to fight inside the club. Instead, I was repulsed, angered even, that he would come so close without an invitation. It was the other extreme for me tonight.
I pushed my hands into his chest and shoved him away. “You don’t need to get so close,” I snapped.
He stared at me for a long moment before replying. “You didn’t seem to mind earlier.”
Whether he was referring to himself, the demon sisters, or Sebastian, it didn’t matter. All I felt was white hot anger simmering at the surface of a pot ready to blow. “You’re the one who brought me here,” I shouted back. Why I was shouting, I didn’t know. It just felt so good to let some of the instant rage out.
He paused again, face wrinkling in concentration and jaw clenched in frustration. “We need to get out of here.”
“I’m not going with you,” I said before I could stop myself.
Viktor, with his super speed, grabbed my hand and yanked me forward into his chest. “We need to find Ezra. Now.”
I tried to break free of grasp, but my attempts were futile. “I’m not going with you,” I said again into a chiseled and way-too-hard chest.
“You are,” he argued. Then, without invitation, he brushed his finger over my neck and the bite. “We need to let him know about this right away.”
“About Sebastian?” I asked, clarity of some sorts finally taking hold again.
“That, and about your bite.
“What about it?”
Viktor wrapped his arms around me tight and pulled me closer to him. “You’ve been marked, Sophia.”
“Marked?” I said. I’d heard about that, but never saw someone who had only been marked. Usually, they’d been fed upon and had been left for dead, the idea of a “mark” becoming useless at that point. “What does that mean?”
Viktor squeezed me hard and I felt his muscles tense. “It means that Sebastian can find you anywhere and bend your will to his own.”
Not happy with the thought of my free will being stripped from me, I looked up at Viktor. “Can you take it away?” I whispered.
The front doors of the club slammed open and at least twenty vampires rushed outside. As one, they all turned and faced us. Some crouched low, ready to pounce. Others slinked side to side like Ashby had done to me earlier. I knew, in this moment, that everything had changed the second Sebastian sank his fangs into me. I was a hunter, used to killing unruly vampires. But never before had I been hunted like this.
My skin tingled with the instincts to fight while my neck burned with desire to have another vampire take a taste. The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on me. For so long, I had wondered what the rush would be like. What that feeling of pure desire could do to a person. Do to me.
I craved to be one of those human girls who bathed in the luxury of a vampire consort. And now, this bite on my neck got me one step closer to fulfilling that twisted fantasy. Could Viktor really take the mark away?
Did I really want him to?
“I’m going to try,” he whispered to me.
And as an unwelcomed feeling of regret raced through my blood, and the vampires from the club took their first step after us, Viktor pushed off the concrete sidewalk and ran us out of harm’s way.
*