I Bite She Sucks, Bloom, Penelope [recommended reading TXT] 📗

snow. I wanted to clutch onto them and never let go of that feeling of warmth they provided.

I opened my mouth, feeling my teeth elongate. When I bit into his skin, it was harder to puncture by several orders of magnitude than the human man’s had been. It was like Riggs’ skin was woven through with steel. But my vampire fangs were apparently strong enough and eventually punched through with an audible pop.

Hot blood rushed into my mouth. I swallowed, gasping against his skin with the impossible deliciousness of it. I felt myself clutching him hard with both hands and drinking greedily. Something like sexual pleasure started to pulse between my legs and I had to press my thighs together to stop from succumbing to it.

What the hell?

I could feel the blood spreading through me like air into a deflated balloon. I could feel my body returning to normal, my cheeks filling back out. I felt the intoxicating strength swell in me with each swallow, too. More strength than I’d felt before. More by far.

Strangest still, vivid images flashed in my mind as I drank. I saw myself, but through someone else’s eyes. I saw me sleeping on the bed at The Wet Flea beside Maisey and I felt a pounding, harsh kind of feeling. It was foreign, but I thought I understood it as resistance. Like I was drawn to myself but was fighting it with tooth and nail.

I saw me getting sicker and felt an urge to protect more powerful than anything I’d ever experienced. It was like I would’ve literally thrown myself in front of a train if it meant saving her. Saving me.

It was all a confused rush of images and emotions—too quick for me to process it all. My smile when the sunlight was hitting my eyes in the truck and how beautiful I looked to him. My body beneath him as he plunged into me, his mind split in two between himself and the wolf within. My face when I’d walked into the room and the devastation and disappointment he’d felt at letting me get so bad.

Sylvie. Sylvie. Sylvie!

I blinked and realized I was still drinking. With immense effort, I yanked myself away from Riggs, having to literally throw myself to the ground to stop. Riggs slumped over as soon as I was done, eyes closed.

Oh, God, I thought. I went to him, shaking him by his big shoulders. “Riggs?”

I looked to Kyla, panic all over my face. “How long was I feeding?”

She was checking over Riggs too, looking just as worried as I felt. “Too long. I tried to get through to you but you were in a trance. Riggs refused to push you off because he said you needed all you could get. He didn’t even care when I said he was going to die if he let you keep going. I tried to pull you away but he pushed me back, the big fucking idiot,” she said, pressing on his cheeks and lifting one of his eyelids.

His eye was rolled back, pulsing slowly with yellow.

“Fuck!” she screamed. “This is all my fault.”

A hot tear rolled down my cheek. “He’s not dead, though. I can feel his heart.”

“Let’s hope he stays not dead,” she said.

Gravy Boat emerged from under the bed, did a weird, whispering sort of meow, and curled up next to Riggs neck, where I could see the two puncture wounds from my fangs.

“I didn’t even realize I was drinking after the first second or two,” I said. “It was like his memories were mine and I wasn’t in my body, I-”

“It’s not your fault,” Kyla said. “Letting you feed on someone so strong was a risk I shouldn’t have let you take. All we can do is wait and hope he recovers. I’m going to go get him something to eat. It’ll help him replenish the blood if we can get him to hold it down.”

We spent the next hour force feeding soup and bread to Riggs, who was aware enough to chew and swallow, thank God.

Little by little, his strength seemed to return. Kyla let out an audible sigh of relief when the puncture wounds on his neck healed up before our eyes. “I think we’re in the clear,” she said.

I let out a breath I felt like I’d been holding for an hour. “What happens with the plan? Riggs made it sound like it was all in motion already.”

“It was. The Pack will be getting to Westwick ahead of us. If we’re not there to lure Lazarus out like Riggs wanted, he’ll be there to fight them off. We’ve got to go now. With or without Riggs.”

“With,” Riggs said gruffly. “Fucking with.”

I jumped on him, hugging his neck, which drew out a groan of pain. “Sorry,” I said. Then I slapped him on the chest harder than I intended. “You should’ve pushed me off, you big idiot.”

“You’re welcome,” Riggs said. “How did I taste?” he asked, grinning. “It sounded like you enjoyed that quite a bit.”

Kyla rolled her eyes. “I’m going to go start the truck. Are you good enough to drive?”

Riggs looked at his hand, turning it over and forming a fist. “I feel weak as hell, but I can drive. Let me get on a shirt.” He threw on a black shirt, then his jacket, and we all headed out to his truck.

46

Sylvie

Westwick was in the middle of nowhere, just like Blackridge had been. It struck me while we drove through the darkened streets that the world was so much bigger than I’d realized. I’d seen maps, obviously. But once you picked a random road and followed it out past the well-traveled paths of normal civilization, the world stretched on and on. There were so many hidden places in the world for this secret world to exist.

I’d been one of the people who believed modern humanity knew too much and had too much science to miss something like this. If monsters were real, we’d