Free Wicked Ever After (A Blud Novel Book 7) by Delilah S. Dawson Page B

burped softly and smiled. I’d always expected blood to taste coppery and meaty, but it was delicious, like the finest red wine, velvety and rounded with just a hint of . . . was it butter?
    Charlie touched my face, turning it left and right in the light, and nodded. “Now, m’lord.” Crim didn’t move, and Charlie jerked his chin toward my husband’s still form. “You’ll have to help him at first. Be gentle, m’lady.”
    I was cozy warm all over, as full as I’d ever been after a Thanksgiving dinner. It was strange, remembering how to navigate my limbs, which seemed to move more fluidly, more powerfully. I was sitting cross-legged, and then, as if lightning had struck me, my legs were underneath me, and I was crouching over Crim, hands on either side of his fine face. I took a moment to wonder at the smooth, unmarked skin of my hands. The knobby veins and age spots that had sprung up in the last year were fading, and my hands looked like a teenager’s. Only the faintest shading of gray told me that the process was truly ongoing, that I wasn’t already a proper Bludman and might still botch the process.
    “Beautiful,” Crim whispered, and then his cloudy gray eyes rolled back in a swoon.
    “He needs you now. He gave too much,” Charlie said, indicating a line along his own throat.
    I nodded. “He always does.” Taking a deep breath, I plucked Crim’s hand from the ground and used the talon from his pointer finger to score a deep scratch along my neck; my nails hadn’t yet found their points. I felt the blood—blud?—well up hotly on my skin and set my throat against his cold lips. “C’mon, Crim. You can do it. Goodness knows you’ve waited long enough.”
    I felt as if lightning was coursing through me, making me twitch, forming new connections and reknitting the parts of my body that had grown old. And yet, at the same time, a chill pool of fear was seeping up my throat the longer Crim lay there, unmoving, not drinking. I rubbed my neck over his lips, scored my skin more deeply, dipped fingers into the blood, and slipped them into his mouth. His tongue barely curled around, too dry, and I worried the wound to make it flow.
    He could only lick feebly at first. When his fingers wrapped around my neck, I could have cheered. But something in me knew that my place was to hold still, to give, to be the vessel for the man I loved, who had drained himself for my benefit when he’d claimed he wouldn’t do it until we were both ready.
    Death had a way of hurrying along readiness, I supposed.
    A long, soft sigh whispered over my skin, and I quivered and felt heat pool in my belly. I knew that sound, a sound we only shared alone, behind closed doors, or in the wilderness, pressed against a tree or crushed over a patch of flowers. His tongue dragged over my throat, and I gave an answering sigh, almost a begging whimper, and then I heard a door close as Charlie Dregs prudently left the wagon.
    “About damn time,” Crim purred, and he hooked a leg over mine and flipped me onto my back.
    In response, I let out a loud, careless laugh and ran my hands down his shoulders.
    “Welcome back,” I said.
    His fangs brushed over the wound, worrying it wider, and he drank deeper and slipped a hand under my skirts. My breathing sped up, and I felt wet all over and thrumming with new energy. Eyes closed, I saw the red sun again, and Crim washed over me like hot water pressing for entrance at every gate of my body, my being. I moaned and caressed the nape of his neck, urging him to drink faster, deeper, harder, trying to edge closer and closer to the red-hot wire, deep inside, that he was so close to plucking like a guitar string.
    “Waited forever for this,” he murmured, breaking from his thirst to kiss me with blood-painted lips, a finger held tight over the wound on my neck.
    “Don’t stop. So close.”
    He chuckled and opened my eyes with his thumbs, gently, hunting for something and smiling when he found it.