Blood and Lace: 5. The Temptation

The castle had a way of swallowing sound. Even Elena’s footsteps, light as they were, seemed to vanish into the red velvet silence of its halls. She didn’t know if it was enchantment or simply the weight of history pressing in on her ears, but the effect was the same—she was alone with her own breathing, her own pulse.

And the knowledge that somewhere in these walls, he was listening to both. And that knowledge excited and thrilled her.

She hadn’t seen Lucien since the night before, when he’d left her trembling, needy and wet beneath silk sheets, her blood humming from his slow, deliberate bite. But his absence wasn’t freedom; it was bait. The air in the room still held the faint trace of his scent—amber, smoke, and something sharper, metallic, like the taste of him when he fed. Even feeding on her gave her such thrill and pleasure that she sometimes wondered if she was going insane. 

Elena pressed her back against the cold stone near her chamber door, as if d