I couldn’t admit that Bellamy was right without admitting to my ruse with Julian.
“Have you known Julian a long time?” I needed to steer this conversation in a different direction.
“A couple of centuries.”
Would I ever get used to answers like that? Would I ever fit into this world? A sudden surge of dizziness answered for me and I nearly fell off my seat.
“Are you okay?” Bellamy was at my side, kneeling to check on me.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I murmured.
“I do,” he said grimly. “You should lie down.”
I didn’t have much of a choice since I could barely stay upright.
Bellamy stayed crouched next to the chaise. “Once Julian gets back, he’ll make it better.”
“How?” I moaned. My skin felt too tight. I wanted to rip it off like I’d nearly done to my clothes earlier.
“You really don’t know, do you?”
“Are you a sphinx or a vampire?” I grumbled. “Just tell me what he did to me.”
“Well, when a girl and a vampire meet,” he began in a teasing tone.
“I think you covered the birds and the bees earlier when you were making love to…what was her name?” I couldn’t remember.
Bellamy snorted. “Hell if I know. But I would hardly call that making love.”
“I was being polite.”
“Polite doesn’t really belong at an orgy, princess.”
“Do you call every woman you meet by some cutesy name?” I muttered.
“Only the ones who hate it,” he assured me.
My body began to tremble. Shivers rolled through me like waves battering a shoreline. Bellamy stood and took off his jacket. He placed it over me, looking worried. “Maybe I should go find Julian.”
I tried to agree but my teeth began to chatter too hard for me to get a word out.
“I could kill him,” Bellamy said with a sigh.
“You could tr–” An inhuman growl drowned out the rest of my response. I sat up, dropping Bellamy’s jacket in the process. He didn’t notice because he’d turned in the direction of the voice, too.
“Julian…” I trailed away as he prowled closer and I got a good look at him–and his jet-black eyes.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
JULIAN
Blood-lust wasn’t what humans imagined it to be. They conflated the term with violence. Not that blood-lust and violence weren’t bedfellows. They usually came hand in hand. But blood-lust always preceded violence. Violence never sparked the frenzy I now felt. That always started with desire–some craving left unfulfilled. I didn’t just crave blood, I craved flesh on my lips, against my skin, under my bare fingertips. And if I didn’t get it–if something or someone got in the way–that’s when the violence occurred.
“Julian,” Bellamy’s deep voice ran like an electric undercurrent in the background. “Get control.”
I snarled, sweeping one arm at him like a hook. Bellamy was not suffering from blood-lust, so he dodged me easily. A younger vampire might have frozen and wound up shorter by a head. A stranger might have attacked. I’d known Bellamy for centuries, and we’d been in enough bar fights and battles to know how to handle each other.
“Why does she smell like you?” I growled, stalking toward him. Thea scrambled to get between us, but instead, Bellamy shielded her.
Anger bellowed out of me, tearing through the air like a crack of thunder.
Thea tried to push Bellamy aside as if she understood she was the key to diffusing my rage.
Bellamy held his ground, looking unimpressed. I might rip him apart just for acting like a total bastard. “She was freezing.”
“And you thought you could claim her?” I lunged toward him, but Bellamy sidestepped me. He twisted and caught me in a choke hold.
“I forgot how stubborn you could be,” he grunted as I fought his hold on me.
“I forgot you wrestle.” Every time I managed to get loose, he caught me again. That was the other thing about blood-lust. It was usually only dangerous when all parties were suffering from it. If a vampire kept a clear head, they could easily handle an opponent being controlled by a raging hard-on.
“She is stoned out of her mind,” he hissed so that Thea couldn’t hear. His arm remained locked around my neck.
“What did you do to her?” I asked in broken gasps.
“I didn’t do a thing. Your scent is all over her. Another vampire wouldn’t have come within ten feet of her. Are you trying to tell me you didn’t feed her your venom?”
That was exactly what I was telling him, except that he made a damn good point. Some of the blind fury I felt seeped away. I’d made a point to mark Thea as mine. Only a suicidal vampire would go near her. Or Bellamy. “She smells like you now. Maybe you fed her venom.”
