Chapter 3: Bloodbound
The meeting with Lysander had been a trap. A beautifully laid, brutal trap in a warehouse that stank of rust and river water. He’d been all smiles, then his enforcers moved. Silver flashed. Sera had been too focused on the duplicitous warlock’s eyes, reading the lie a second too late. The blade meant for her ribs never landed. Alistair moved with a speed that blurred the air, a shove that sent her staggering, and a wet, tearing sound that silenced the room.
He took the knife. A mean, serrated thing, lodged deep in his side.
Chaos erupted. They fought their way out, a bloody ballet of snarls and snapping bones, leaving broken bodies in their wake. Sera drove, her knuckles white on the steering wheel of her vintage Jaguar, his blood soaking into the cream leather seats. He was silent beside her, teeth gritted, a hand pressed hard against the weeping wound. The coppery scent of his blood filled the car, thick and vital. It should have repelled her. Instead, it sparked a frantic, fearful energy in her gut.
She didn’t take him to his territory. She brought him to her sanctum, the speakeasy below her jazz club. The hidden door swung shut behind them, sealing them in the dim, smoky silence. A single piano note echoed from a forgotten recording.
“Stupid,” she hissed, half-dragging him toward a deep velvet booth. “Spectacularly stupid, Thorne.”
“You’re… welcome,” he managed, sinking onto the plush cushion with a stifled groan. His charcoal suit jacket was ruined, the silk shirt beneath plastered to his skin with dark, gleaming blood. It wasn’t clotting. The blade had been treated with something.
He was losing too much. A vampire could heal from most wounds, but depletion was depletion. His skin, usually a healthy pallor, was taking on the grey cast of stone.
“It wasn’t a gift. It was a tactical error,” she snapped, kneeling before him. Her hands tore the fabric away from the wound. It was ugly, deep. His life, centuries of it, was leaking onto her velvet. The temporary alliance on the rooftop felt like a lifetime ago. This was something else. A debt.
“Look at me,” she commanded.
His green eyes found hers, the arrogance dimmed by pain and blood loss. “I’d rather look at you bleeding, Moreau. More my style.”
She ignored the jab. A cold, logical part of her mind presented the only viable solution. Her blood was strong. Ancient. It could fuel his healing, jump-start his own vampiric systems. The idea of offering her vein to him, her rival, was insanity. It was the ultimate vulnerability.
But he’d stepped in front of the blade.
“This is purely transactional,” she said, her voice low and final. “You are a useful asset in this fight. That is all.” Before she could talk herself out of it, she shrugged off her leather jacket, swept her heavy raven hair over one shoulder, and tilted her head. The line of her throat was pale and exposed in the low light. “Do not make me regret this.”
A flicker of shock, then understanding, in his eyes. He didn’t jest. He simply reached a hand out, his fingers, slick with his own blood, tracing the line of her jaw with a startling tenderness. Then his other hand came up to cradle the back of her head. He pulled her closer.
His breath was cool on her neck. Then his lips brushed her skin. A shudder, involuntary, ran through her. The first piercing sting of his fangs was sharp, clean. Then the pull began.
It was not like anything she had imagined. This was not the clinical transfer of energy she’d coldly conceptualized. It was an invasion, intimate and profound. A river of connection bursting its banks. She felt the draw of her essence into him, a dizzying, draining swoop. But beneath that, she felt him. The fierce, chaotic spark of Alistair Thorne, a tempest of pride, cunning, and a loneliness that mirrored her own. It echoed in the hollow places inside her, vibrating in sympathy.
A low groan vibrated against her throat. His. Or hers? She couldn’t tell.
Her hands, which had been braced against the booth, slid up his chest. The pull from her neck was becoming something else—not just taking, but wanting. A raw, desperate hunger mirrored back through the connection, amplifying. His arm around her tightened, his hand fisting in her hair. The pain in his side was forgotten, washed away in a rising tide of pure, undiluted need.
Reluctance evaporated. It scorched away in the heat.
Before her mind could register the movement, she shifted, climbing onto the booth to straddle his lap. His free hand clutched at her hip, grinding her down against him. She could feel the hard, desperate evidence of his arousal even through their clothes. The sensation, combined with the relentless, intoxicating pull at her throat, unspooled her completely.
She gasped, arching into him. The feeding became possessive, deep. Her own hands were everywhere—tangling in his silver-blond hair, raking down the taut muscles of his back. He broke from her neck for a ragged breath, his lips stained crimson, his eyes black with hunger. Not just for blood.
“Sera,” he growled, the word raw.
Then his mouth found hers. The taste was metallic, potent, uniquely them. It was a battle and a surrender all at once. His hands moved from her hips, one sliding up under her thin top to roughly cup her breast, his thumb circling a peak already taut through the lace of her bra. The other gripped the curve of her ass, pulling her tighter, harder against the thrust of his hips.
Rational thought was ash. Centuries of guarded solitude burned up in minutes. She moved against him, a frantic, seeking rhythm, driven by the feedback loop of sensation—the thrum of his healing, the dizzying loss from her throat, the expert, demanding rush of his hands on her body. He kissed her like he was trying to consume her memory, to own every century she’d lived without him.
It was too much. The coil inside her, wound for lifetimes, snapped.
She came with a broken cry against his mouth, her body shuddering violently, scraping over the edge into a pleasure so sharp it bordered on pain. White light shattered behind her eyes.
The connection broke.
He released her neck. She tore her mouth from his. They stared at each other, chests heaving, breaths mingling in the scant space between them. Her own blood smeared his lower lip. His hands still burned brands on her skin beneath her clothes. The reality of what they’d just done—the violence of the intimacy, the complete obliteration of the lines they’d drawn—crashed down like ice water.
Stunned. Completely, utterly turned on, and utterly stunned.
His gaze was wide, almost wild with a mirroring shock, but beneath it swam a desperation so deep it looked like fear. The hard line of his desire pressed insistently against her, a blatant, undeniable testament to the loss of control.
He blinked, and the shutters came down. The arrogance, badly fitted, slipped back into place. He carefully, deliberately, moved her off his lap and stood, swaying only slightly. The wound on his side was a pink, closed scar.
“I should…” He ran a hand through his hair, avoiding her eyes. His voice was rough, stripped. “I’m covered in blood. Warehouse filth. Mine.” He gestured vaguely, awkwardly. “I should clean up. Where’s your…?”
“Down the hall. Through the arch,” she said, her own voice a stranger’s. She didn’t move from the booth, her limbs liquid.
He nodded, already walking away, his stride faster than necessary. He couldn’t get out of the room fast enough. At the archway, he paused, but didn’t turn. “Don’t… overthink it, Moreau. Adrenaline. Blood loss. Means nothing.”
Then he was gone, disappearing toward the sound of running water. A retreat. She heard the distant click of a lock.
He wasn’t washing off warehouse filth. He was hiding. Hard and desperate in her shower, using the water to mask whatever sound he might make, preserving the last shreds of his pride where she couldn’t witness it. Where he wouldn’t have to see the same desperate wanting reflected and acknowledged in her eyes.
Sera slowly brought a trembling hand to her neck. The punctures were already sealing, leaving only sensitive skin. She looked at the blood on her fingertips, then at the closed door down the hall. The piano played on, a lonely, restless tune in the smoky dark.
Nothing would ever be the same.
Nothing would ever be the same.
The thought echoed in the hollowed-out silence he left behind. Sera sat in the ruined velvet, the ghost of his hands on her skin, the taste of their shared blood still coating her tongue. She heard the distant shower kick on, a steady hiss from down the hall. A retreat. She stood, her legs unsteady, and began peeling away the blood-stiffened leather and silk of her own clothes, letting them fall to a pile on the floor. The cool air of the speakeasy raised goosebumps on her alabaster skin. She needed to feel clean, to scrub the scent of violence and his vulnerability from her. She needed armor.
She pulled a short white silk slip from a concealed cabinet, the fabric whispering over her hips. It was low-cut, barely containing the full curves of her breasts, the hem skimming high on her thighs. It was not armor. It was a garment for her own private space, a tactile comfort. She ran her fingers through her tangled hair, listening to the relentless pour of water. He was taking too long. The silence from the bathroom was absolute, no movement, just the water’s white noise. A sliver of cold concern cut through the post-feeding haze. Had the wound reopened? Had Lysander’s poison done something slower, something worse?
A sharp, bitten-off groan sliced through the door. It was pure, unfiltered pain.
Sera moved without thought. She crossed the space in a blink, shoved the unlocked door open, and burst into the steam-filled room. “Alistair—”
He stood under the spray, naked, one braced hand against the tiles. His head was bowed, water sluicing down the tense cords of his back. In his other hand, glinting under the shower lights, was a jagged, two-inch shard of blackened metal. Blood, thin and watery, bloomed from a fresh puncture just below his ribs where the fragment had been. He’d pulled it out himself. The serrated knife had left a piece behind.
“Fuck,” he rasped, dropping the metal shard with a clatter onto the shower floor. He sagged against the wall, breathing hard.
“You idiot,” she breathed, but the anger was fear in disguise. She stepped into the shower, the hot spray instantly plastering the white silk to her skin, rendering it translucent. It clung to every dip and swell, the dark points of her nipples pressing against the wet fabric. He turned his head, and his eyes—wide with pain—dragged down her body, a scorching, startled look. The recognition of her state of undress flickered and was immediately swallowed by a sharper need. The wound was bleeding freely again, the water tinged pink at their feet.
“It’s fine,” he grunted, trying to straighten.
“It is not fine.” Her voice left no room for argument. She pushed him gently back until his legs hit the tiled bench built into the wall, and he sat with a defeated slump. She knelt in the rushing water between his legs, the warm spray soaking her hair, her face level with the ugly, weeping hole in his side. Without a word, she bent forward and placed her mouth over the wound.
He jerked, a muscle in his thigh jumping. “Sera, don’t—”
But she was already sealing the puncture with her tongue, the familiar, coppery tang of his blood flooding her senses. Her saliva carried its own healing properties, a minor vampire trait, but applied with intent it could seal a wound like this. She laved the spot with slow, firm strokes, feeling the torn flesh begin to knit under the insistence of her tongue. It was intimate in a way that made the feeding seem casual. This was service, and submission, and something dangerously close to tenderness.
The pain visibly left his body, replaced by a rigidity of an entirely different nature. She felt it before she saw it. The charged air. The sudden, captive stillness. She finished her work, the skin now smooth and whole beneath her lips, and slowly looked up.
Water streamed down her face. His gaze was locked on her, his green eyes blown black with a hunger that had nothing to do with blood. His cock, thick and fully erect, lay against his stomach, proof of an arousal that was now brutal and undeniable. The sight of it, so close to her mouth, sent a lightning bolt of pure want straight to her core. The hypnotic state from the speakeasy returned, tenfold, amplified by steam and skin and the raw, naked fact of him.
No words. None were possible.
Holding his gaze, she leaned forward and took the head of his dick into her mouth. He hissed, a shattered intake of breath. She swirled her tongue around the crown, tasting clean skin and salt, then took him deeper, her lips stretching around his girth. His hands flew to her head, not forcing, but gripping, his fingers tangling in her wet hair.
“Christ,” he choked out. “Oh, fuck, Sera.”
She worked him with her mouth, slow and deep, then fast and filthy, using every ounce of centuries of practiced control to reduce him to a shaking, pleading wreck. His hips began to move in tiny, helpless thrusts. The noises he made—guttural groans, her name like a curse—were the most honest things he’d ever said to her. He was right. He’d never felt anything like her. She was deliberate, relentless, a consummation of their rivalry.
“I’m gonna come,” he warned, his voice strained to breaking. “Stop, or I’ll—”
She didn’t stop. He tugged her hair, trying to pull her off, but the sensation only made her take him deeper. Just as the tremors began in his thighs, he moved with a predatory surge. His hands slid under her arms and he hauled her up, water flying, and deposited her onto his lap in one fluid motion. The soaked silk of her slip rode up, bunching around her waist.
He was already guiding himself, the blunt head of his cock nudging at her entrance. She was drenched, ready, her own need a throbbing, aching void. She sank down onto him in one slow, devastating stroke, her inner muscles clamping around his invasion. They both cried out, the sound swallowed by the steam.
He was so deep. Deeper than before. She braced her hands on his shoulders, her body bowed, and began to move. She rode him with a frantic, rising rhythm, each descent a claiming, each lift a torment. He met her, thrusting up from beneath, the angle relentless, punching breaths from her lungs. His mouth found her breast through the soaked silk, sucking the nipple into a tight, aching peak, his teeth grazing in a promise of pleasure-pain. Then his lips were on her throat, not biting, but suckling the place he’d fed from, claiming it anew.
It was too much. The dual assault, the water cascading over their tangled bodies, the full, stretching completeness of him inside her. Her control shattered. She came with a sharp, broken scream, her inner walls convulsing around him in violent pulses. It tipped him over the edge. He drove up into her one last time, a hard, possessive jerk of his hips, and spilled himself inside her with a raw, shuddering groan, his face buried against her neck.
The water beat down. Their harsh breaths were the only other sound. She slumped against him, spent, her forehead coming to rest against his. Their eyes locked, so close their lashes almost touched. Shock. Awe. A terrifying, naked understanding reverberated in the space between them. This changed the game. This changed everything.
Wordlessly, his arms still tight around her, he stood, lifting her with him. He stepped out of the shower, water pooling on the floor, and carried her, dripping and silent, through the speakeasy and into the deeper dark of her private bedchamber. He laid her on the black silk sheets, her wet slip clinging like a second skin, then stood beside the bed, just looking at her, water beading on his skin, his expression unreadable. The city’ distant glow faintly lit the planes of his body.
He didn’t speak. He just watched her, as if memorizing the aftermath.