---
There was still the bright edge of angel blood hidden inside the darker sweetness. Not purity. Not innocent. Something older and cleaner laced through vampire hunger. It made her blood unlike any other he had taken.
"Good. Very good."
He pulled back slowly.
"Ahhhhhhhh"
Lily made a sound low in her throat that was almost protest. Not because she was hurt. Because she wanted more of the feeling and hated that she wanted it with such honesty.
His thumb brushed the bite mark once.
He said, "Now you."
Lily looked at him with dazed red eyes.
He did not need to explain what he meant. She had already stepped too close. Already tilted toward him with the open hunger of a wife whose body had just been made to remember exactly what his blood could do to her.
He turned his throat toward her. That was all the invitation she needed.
She went to him immediately. It was not crude. Or neither clumsy. Not the wild first desperate feeding from before.
