Free Vampire's Kiss by Verónica Wolff Page B

parchment or vellum were too valuable to be squandered.”
     
    I nodded, even though I was familiar with everything he was telling me. And what was with the minilecture, anyway? Because I knew he had a point—I saw it coming in the satisfied gleam in his eyes.
     
    “Acari Drew, you are like that palimpsest. Scraped clean of who you were. Altered, yes?”
     
    I’ll say.
But was that a bad thing? I couldn’t figure out where he was going, so I just nodded warily.
     
    “We are reinventing you. Writing over the former you, as it were.” He touched me then. It was the merest contact, outlining my shoulder, down my arm, but I felt the impact like a cannon shot.
     
    I clenched my teeth, my knees, my elbows at my sides. Anything to keep my mind in control of my body. Because I made no mistake—Alcántara was trying hard to seize that control.
     
    “Yet you still bear traces of your former self. All the best Watchers do.”
     
    He told me these things, and I was baffled, unsure whether there was a compliment or a reprimand in his words. But then his eyes raked my body, and again that naked feeling seized me, and I thought there might be something else in his words, too.
     
    “Your body is the same—stronger, yes, but the same height.” He brought his hand to rest heavily on my shoulder, his other hand on my head.
     
    I had the absurd—and frightening—urge to cry.
     
    “You, like those old sheets of parchment, are still recognizable. Your hair is shorter perhaps—a regrettable consequence of the Challenge.” He sounded disappointed as he stroked his hand along my head. But rather than comfort me, the gesture made me feel like a pet whose pedigree he was considering. “And yet your hair still holds the same texture, the same brightness.”
     
    Moving from my hair, he extended a finger and touched it over my heart, pressing gently into the soft flesh above my left breast. I held my breath, my world reduced only to his touch and the shrilling alarm bells in my head.
     
    “The essence of your heart remains unchanged.…I hear it speak when you are with your peers, and yet its beat is steadier since the
Eyja næturinnar
. You have killed, and it has made you stronger.” He pressed more firmly, dragging his finger the barest fraction down my breast.
     
    As if he might
really
touch me.
     
    “Your father could not batter your heart from you. Nor could the other girls.” He retracted his hand, and though his eyes were narrowed, the slightest smile curved his lips. “Nor perhaps any vampire.”
     
    The words sank into me, and I inhaled sharply, breathing again.
     
    “Not just your heart remains unchanged,” he said, continuing his litany as though he hadn’t just been about to fondle me. “Your eyes are the same. The nose and brow. Your mouth…” He tsked, and leaning in for a closer look, said, “But I see we haven’t finished tending your wounds.”
     
    “We haven’t?” My voice crackled high and tight.
     
    He raised his hand to hover just over my split lip, then paused, asking, “May I?”
     
    He wanted to touch me again. And I was supposed to stop him?
     
    “Yes.” I cleared my throat of its warble. “You may.”
     
    His thumb was cold as it swept beneath my lower lip. “Open your mouth, please.”
     
    In my panic, I opened wide like at the dentist.
     
    He chuckled, and the sound was pretty much the most terrifying thing ever. “Not that wide,
querida
. Simply part your lips.”
     
    I did as I was told. And somehow, sitting before him with softly parted lips horrified me more than my jaw-crackingly wide-open mouth had. I’d wanted someone to kiss me, but not now, not like this. Not with Alcántara.
     
    “It is simply on the lip, and lips heal.” His voice pitched low and husky, that chuckle long gone. “You see, I have much experience with broken skin.” He parted his own lips, gently baring his fangs.
     
    I got a good look this time, utterly mesmerized. They were long and