Page 30 of A Betrothal So Bloody

My jaw drops clean open, and I hurl the damp rag at him. “I almost miss your charade of being an air-headed noble—when every other word out of your mouth wasn’t the most vile shit I’ve ever heard!”

Dante clucks his tongue at me. “You really shouldn’t speak to your husband like that. Misbehavior provokes punishment.”

My hand closes around the nearest rock, and I hurl that at him next. Dante’s laugh echoes through the clearing as he dodges, the rock smashing into the formation behind him harmlessly. This time, he winces a little from the sudden movement.

“Fuck…” Dante looks down at himself, fingering the sliced fabric of his tunic. The bear’s claws had torn right through the finely-stitched navy fabric in several areas, dampening the fabric with smears of dark blood. He peels off the garment—muttering gripes about its loss—to analyze the damage directly.

Immediately, I see why he’s concerned. The gouges rendered across his chest and abdomen are still there—stitching up as vampires did, but very, very slowly. I frown, leaning in to watch as Dante gingerly touches one of the slices across his abdomen with a furrow in his brow. Blood still oozes slightly, but he looks irritated more than anything.

The sheer foreignness of his bare torso holds me captive long after I’ve registered the issue. I’ve studied anatomy at the abbey, been surrounded by soft curves and modestly-covered forms my whole life. But this? It was forbidden, new, and…entrancing.

My eyes trace the hard angles where his shoulder meets his arm, the well-defined plane of his abdomen. The firelight dances over his skin, shifting his fair complexion to a warm bronze. An ache blossoms in my stomach as I wonder what it would feel like, to reach out and squeeze one of those rounded biceps.

Two pinpoint scars lay at the base of Dante’s neck, almost silvery in the flickering light. Alessandro’s long-ago claiming bite—the moment that turned him.

“What’s wrong with you?” I demand, wrenching myself from my stupor to jut my chin at his wounds.

Dante glares at me, scoffing indignantly. “I’m hungry. Healing usually takes minutes at most.”

“Weak, you mean,” I say.

He growls in his throat. It’s a pleasant change, getting under his skin for once. “If you had just let me steal a bite from you earlier, this wouldn’t be an issue. I’d have been strong enough to manage that creature single-handedly. It would have been easy.”

He balls up his half-ruined tunic and chucks it across the circle in frustration. A beat passes as he stares accusingly into the fire. Gradually, I feel the tension crackling off him in waves soften into something more reproachful.

“I don’t suppose you’d reconsider.” When he speaks again, he’s wrestled his voice back into a restrained decibel. “I meant what I said before… A modest little swallow would restore my strength—to protect you. To protect us both. You know as well as I that a bear has nothing on a tyrant like Alessandro. Next time, your tricks may not be enough. If we’re going to make it through this, you need me stronger than this.”

I press my lips together, studying the wounds between us. There is no denying we’d been lucky. One ill-timed movement, a missed blow, and we’d be gone. I would, at least. Dante is, at present, a little harder to kill. Once again, I hate that there’s truth threaded there; even another well-fed vampire of his stature would have been harrowing—let alone a vampire lord, with their unparalleled powers.

“Seems like this benefits you far more than it does me,” I quip, giving him an icy once-over. He was enough to manage at half-strength.

“I’ll owe you a favor,” Dante presses. “I don’t put myself in others’ debts often, mind you. You can ask it of me anywhere, at the time of your choosing.”

I scoff out a cold laugh. “Even if I needed someone eliminated, I’d simply end the poor bastard myself before setting a leech on them.”

“There’s more to life than stabbing, you know. For example, I’m exceptional at blackmail—”

“I can handle my own threats just fine, thank you.”

“Ariya—please.”

That single syllable gives me pause. His voice is deep, tethered, urgent. God above, I think he’s close to grovelling on his knees—not that it wouldn’t be deserved. A part of me—one I’d never admit to—wonders what he would look like, prostrated and desperate before me.

I try to study Dante’s face for any deception. His odd, weary earnestness makes all the fire in my chest flicker, falter. An honest vampire? I’d sooner expect the pope to paint the Sistine Chapel himself.

Yet… He had defended me back there, shoving me out of harm’s way. A gesture of goodwill, even if we were both likely fantasizing about ways to kill the other if things didn’t go our way. And perhaps most astonishing of all… He’s offering me a choice. Even if every word drips with manipulation, it carries a startling human quality rather than a vampire’s hypnotism.

I worry my lower lip with my teeth. Feeding on me won’t turn me—that requires a far more deliberate exchange, with the vampire forcing the victim to swallow their own cursed blood after a thorough draining. And Dante’s never turned anyone—or so he claims.

One minute. I’ll give him one minute to drink from me, and not a second more.

“Fine,” I say. “Just this once.”

Dante blinks, eyes going wide. He smiles, and it’s not wicked—it’s a breathless, happy thing. “Really?”

I rub my temples. “Don’t make me come to my senses.”

He nearly trips over himself in his haste to stand. He comes to kneel by me, hands grasping my waist.