Dawn Walker

—

Sekhmet took one slow breath and let the whole of the hidden world fall away in his mind until only she remained.

Not the twins.

Not Auri.

Not the sealed half-gods in the distance.

Not the red grass and black sky of the Void Land.

Only Lily. His first wife. His newly born Cruoraphim.

His hunger’s answer and his responsibility are in the same shape.

He reached up and touched the side of her face.

The gesture was light. It was deliberate. More deliberate, perhaps, because of what would come next.

Lily’s eyes fluttered for one tiny moment under the touch, and when she looked back at him, the red in them had deepened again. She was trying very hard to stand like herself. Very hard not to let the first true wave of blood-hunger turn her into a creature of instinct and embarrassment. He could see that effort in the way her fingers curled at her sides, in the way her breath kept changing and being pulled back into order, in the way she looked at his throat and then forced her eyes back to his face as though ashamed of how honest her body had become.

Let her be ashamed for only a breath.

He would not let shame make this ugly.

His thumb moved once, just beneath her cheekbone.

“Listen to me.”

Lily nodded.

“When I let you feed, you do not rush. You do not bite as if you are starving in a ditch. You take what you need, not everything your body begs for in the first wave.”

Her throat moved.

“All right.”

“If you feel yourself losing control, you stop because I tell you to stop.”

This time her answer came a little softer.

“All right.”

“And Lily.”

Her eyes sharpened in immediate attention to the change in his voice.

“You do not fear what your body wants from me.”

That hit her harder than the rest.

He saw it.

She needed that truth before his blood touched her mouth.

Because yes, hunger was part of it. But for vampires, and especially for those bound through blood and intimacy and choice, feeding was never only hunger. The body knew too much. The blood carried too much. A mouth at the throat was not simply survival. It was surrender and trust and possession and relief, each one dressed in the language of hunger so the mind could pretend it was not also the language of desire.

Lily looked at him with that full understanding beginning to dawn, and that understanding itself made her shiver.

“I am trying not to,” she whispered.

“I know.”

His hand slid from her face to the side of her neck then, fingers resting where her pulse beat under the skin. The place he had bitten before. The place her body now remembered with too much clarity.

Lily’s lips parted.

Sekhmet stepped close enough that there was no distance left between their bodies but the thin honesty of cloth and breath. One arm came around her waist, not to trap her, but to hold her through what would come. The other remained at her neck, thumb brushing the sensitive line there in one slow pass that made her knees weaken by half an inch.

Auri looked away first. Not from immaturity. But from instinctive respect.

Vera and Vela did not look away. They knew this moment. They knew it too well. Their own first feedings from him had taught them what the body became under that kind of blood-bonded hunger. They watched with still faces and the quiet understanding of women who knew there was no clean line anymore between feeding and a kind of dark intimacy most mortals would never understand.

Farther back, Sofia and Natasha remained silent.

But they too were watching.

Of course they were.

Old true vampires recognized such scenes the way wolves recognized the first throat offered inside a new bond.

Sekhmet lowered his head toward Lily’s throat and let his mouth brush her skin before speaking again.

“You ask.”

Lily’s breath shook.

“What?”

His lips touched the place below her ear, warm enough now that the contrast between his mouth and her skin felt intimate in a way that nearly broke the rest of her composure.

“You ask for it.”

That made her flush.

He wanted her to be honest in this.

Her hands rose slowly, uncertain only for one second before they settled against his chest. She could feel his heart under her palm. It was strong. It was steady. Waiting for her while the rest of her body felt as though it stood on the edge of some cliff built from need and trust and dark curiosity.

When she spoke, her voice was small.

“Please.”

Not enough.

Sekhmet’s hand at her waist tightened.

“Again.”

Lily’s eyes closed for one breath.

Then it opened.

This time she did not try to sound detached.

This time she let the hunger and the tenderness both into the words.

“Please let me feed from you.”

There. That.

He turned his head slightly, exposing the line of his throat to her.

Lily went still.

The sight of it did something terrible and immediate to her blood. The hunger in her rose so fast it almost made her lightheaded. His throat. His pulse. The warmth beneath the skin. The place where blood and life and trust ran closest to the surface.

She could smell him there. Better than before. She could smell the deeper notes too now. His own Chaos strength, the subtle sweetness that belonged only to him and no other.

It made her dizzy.

She did not move.

Sekhmet’s hand slid from her neck to the back of her head, fingers entering her hair and resting there not in force, but in command. A gentler sort of command. One that said come to me correctly.

“Now,” he said.

Lily did what she was supposed to do. Her mouth touched his throat first.

She had expected a cold touch. But he was not cold. Not there.