Dawn Walker

Chapter 359: Game Preparation V

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There was still the bright edge of angel blood hidden inside the darker sweetness. Not purity. Not innocent. Something older and cleaner laced through vampire hunger. It made her blood unlike any other he had taken.

"Good. Very good."

He pulled back slowly.

"Ahhhhhhhh"

Lily made a sound low in her throat that was almost protest. Not because she was hurt. Because she wanted more of the feeling and hated that she wanted it with such honesty.

His thumb brushed the bite mark once.

He said, "Now you."

Lily looked at him with dazed red eyes.

He did not need to explain what he meant. She had already stepped too close. Already tilted toward him with the open hunger of a wife whose body had just been made to remember exactly what his blood could do to her.

He turned his throat toward her. That was all the invitation she needed.

She went to him immediately. It was not crude. Or neither clumsy. Not the wild first desperate feeding from before.

This time there was desire in it. Not only thirst. Her mouth touched his skin first, and the contact alone made both of them still for one charged breath. She could feel his pulse.

It was strong. It was warm. It was alive. His scent filled her. Male, blood-rich, dangerous, darkly familiar now in a way that reached too far into her.

Then she bit.

Sekhmet’s body tightened once around her.

Lily drank. And the effect was devastating every time.

His blood entered her like heat and velvet and ruin. It filled the spaces his own bite had opened inside her and turned them molten. The hunger eased, yes, but not gently. It broke apart in waves, each swallow taking the edge off pain and replacing it with something lower, deeper, and much harder to endure with dignity.

Her knees weakened. His arm at her waist held her up. She needed the support and hated that too.

Her mouth remained on his throat, drinking in small desperate pulls at first, then slower when his hand found the back of her head and his voice came low and commanding against her ear.

"Slowly."

She obeyed. Barely obeyed him.

Because his blood was not simply satisfying. It was intimate and cruel. Her body softened around it. Every swallow sent another pulse of warmth through her. Every pulse carried his taste, his strength, his bloodline, his permission. She felt claimed by it and relieved by it and undone by it all at once.

By the time she finally pulled back, she was breathing hard enough to be embarrassed and too full of his blood to care for more than a second.

Sekhmet looked at her. Blood can be seen at the corner of her mouth. He wiped it away with his thumb.

Lily closed her eyes once at the touch because of course she did. Then she opened them again and found him still watching.

That should have unsettled her.

Instead it made the hunger inside her shift from sharp to heavy and warm and much harder to reason with.

Sekhmet said, "Listen carefully."

Lily forced herself to focus.

"You can feed from me as much as you like," he said.

Her throat moved. That part pleased her.

Then he finished the truth. "But not only from me."

That made her expression change. It was not anger.

He saw it and continued before she could dress it in words.

"Yesterday, You refused that filthy man because you did not want him in your mouth." His gaze remained steady. "That was the right instinct. You do not have to feed on filth if better blood stands elsewhere."

Lily held his gaze.

Sekhmet’s voice lowered.

"But you still need to drink from others too. Not every time. Not carelessly. Not from trash. You can choose your prey properly."

That settled into her more slowly.

"Choose," she repeated.

Sekhmet replied, "Yes."

He did not soften the lesson.

"Predators. Criminals. Enemies. People who deserve to lose blood. You pick the target. You decide whether they are worthy to enter your body as food." His hand slid once over the back of her neck, grounding her in the command. "That choice is part of what you are now."

Lily breathed in. Then out.

The resistance did not fully leave her. Good. It should not. Some hungers needed rules if they were not going to turn a person into an animal wearing beauty.

At last she nodded.

"All right."

Sekhmet’s mouth moved faintly.

"Tonight you choose."

She replied, "Okay, tonight I will choose the hunting place."

A few moments later... Sekhmet sat in his position again. They were having some small conversation about hunting.

Then she looked again at the pages spread before him.

She asked, "It’s from Kess?"

Sekhmet replied, "Yes."

She said, "He knows a lot."

He replied, "He should."

Lily reached toward one page but stopped short of touching it. "I know he is useful. I also know I do not like him very much yet."

Sekhmet answered, "You do not need to like him."

"Good."

She leaned back in the chair, more at ease than she would have been before marriage or transformation. That too was new. She belonged in his rooms now without needing to act as though she had wandered in by mistake.

"He smells afraid all the time," she added.

That was her bloodline talking.

He believed her.

Sekhmet said, "Fear does not make him useless."

She replied, "No."

"But it does make him hard to trust."

"Then do not trust him. Use him."

Lily looked up at that. Then nodded.

Good. She was learning.

A few minutes later, the quiet room was no longer quiet. Bat Bat arrived without knocking.

Elena arrived because Bat Bat had arrived.

And two maids arrived because no one with sense let Bat Bat move freely for too long when the house still had windows and social order to protect.

Bat Bat entered with all the force of a public announcement.

"I have a complaint."

"No," Elena said behind her.

Bat Bat stopped in the middle of the room, turned halfway toward Elena, and looked wounded in three directions at once. "You did not even hear it."

Elena replied, "I know your complaint already."

"That is impossible."

Elena said, "It is never impossible with you."

One maid lowered her eyes very fast because she was dangerously close to laughing.

Bat Bat looked at Sekhmet for support and found none.

Then she looked at Lily and found less.

This deeply offended her.

"My complaint," she said with severe dignity, "is that everyone treats me as if I am not a grown up. I am not a child anymore."

Lily’s mouth moved faintly.

Sekhmet took a drink of tea which a maid gave him in between the Bat Bat question.

Elena folded her hands. "Your complaint was that breakfast came too late."

Bat Bat froze.

Then recovered with astonishing speed. "I contain multiple complaints. You must respect the complexity of my suffering."

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