Page 45 of Hidden

All thanks to the agreement they made with humans.

I bite my knuckle. Angela. The collector’s tea set. Five cubes of sugar. The bodyguard who watched her too closely on the last day. She was trying to tell me the whole time. She found me. She hired me.

And without my knowledge, she protected me. All those years.

I press my palms to my eyes, the blur of tears smearing my mascara before I can do anything about it.

But when I drop my hands, I see him. Leif Dagon. Just suddenly there in front of me.

“Hear me out.” He holds up his hands. His eyes drop to my throat and then drag back up to my face. And there in the slight tug of his lips I’m pretty sure he’s proud of those marks. Like he marked something that’s his.

I’m not his, I don’t belong to anyone.

“How?” I look around the very empty terrace. “Did you get up here?”

My hand goes to my throat again. I can’t stop it. They fucking bit me. And I allowed it, I wanted it. But hell I didn’t know what I was even agreeing to when I said just tonight.

I stand up and brush past him. My feet slapping on the cold ground. I steer clear of him.

He doesn’t answer my stupid question. We both know it’s a stupid question.

“Where’s Davi?”

“I sent him back down.” Leif doesn’t move. “This part is mine to own.” He pauses, his eyes pleading with me.

Never turn your back on them. Angela said it over tea one day. Not the last day.

I thought she was warning me about her board of investors.

Her board of vampires.

“The Viagra.” I release a laugh that isn’t at all humorous. “Valium. Vodka.”

Leif’s lips twitch. “He was asking me if I wanted help getting through the evening. Champagne does nothing for me.”

“He…” Oh my gods. “Wanted to get you drunk.”

“He asked for consent, Hadley,” he says. His white button-down is still ripped open, untucked. I did that. His suit jacket long gone. Love bites across his chest. Bites I gave him not even an hour ago.

Before I knew.

Before I knew exactly what he was. Is.

“My bites.” I toss a hand at my throat.

“I want to keep them.”

“So that’s a choice, like consent?”

“Consent is very important to us.”

“And I said no.” I take a cautious step back. But where would I go? Where would I run? He’s a vampire, I’m a human.

A human with the potential to feed a vampire for eternity.

I just have to say yes.

“I said no,” I repeat, taking another cautious step back.