Read Blood Born: Cora's Choice #2 for Free Online

kept his eyes averted carefully from my face. He picked up a silver fork that had somehow in his sudden charge at me been bent into a sharp curve. Effortlessly, fastidiously, he straightened it in his fingers. The fingers that had just touched me so gently. When he finished, he held the utensil balanced perfectly in his hand for a moment, then began to eat from the plate in front of him.
    “The breakfast was prepared especially for you,” he said a fter a moment when I made no move to join him.
    “Heaven forbid I insult you by not eating it,” I muttered, then instantly regretted it. I sounded like a brat.
    “Not me,” he said coolly. “My staff. The chef was in raptures at the thought of preparing a meal for you for the first time. He truly outdid himself.”
    “The first time,” I echoed.
    “ Indeed.”
    I didn’t bother to argue with him. Instead, I looked at my plate and regarded the food there—crepes with fresh fruit, omelets, small gourmet sausages and delicate miniature crab cakes. They should have filled me with delight, but I could feel nothing right now—nothing except the overwhelming presence of the man, the creature who sat across the table.
    I began to eat mechanically, tasting nothing. What was wrong with me? I was terrified and still half-dazed with all that had happened to me. I should be clamoring to go home. But I couldn’t force myself to ask.
    Shameless, indeed.
    He seemed to be able to read my every expression, but I could tell nothing of his thoughts or motivations. Lust and hunger—those were clear enough. But the other flashes beneath his icy demeanor were so fleeting that I could get no handle on them. What did he see me as, other than a way to sate himself?
    What did I want him to?
    After several minutes, Dorian broke the silence. “You did not like Worth’s clothing selection?”
    “ I didn’t look at it,” I said stiffly. “Thanks for the gesture, but you’ve done more than enough already. I don’t want to owe you more.”
    “ There can be no debt between us,” he said.
    I took a swallow from one of the goblets in front of me —a bright concoction of seltzer and juices. “I don’t see it like that.”
    “ You should. You will.” The last word was a promise.
    I finished the last bite of crab cake. Intellectually, I could appreciate the delicacy of the flavoring, the extravagance of lump crabmeat with just enough luscious breading to hold it together. But now it lay like lead in my stomach.
    Dorian’s staff. I turned the idea over in my mind. There had been the butler, then woman in the gray dress when I woke up, this Worth person, and before that, the people—doctors?—who had attended to me when I was reacting to his bite, and now there was the chef and his helpers. There must be dozens of people working in the depths of the great mansion. I wondered if they all knew about me. I wondered if they were curious about what I was like.
    Not that it mattered, since I wouldn’ t be meeting any more of them, I told myself.
    I took a last gulp of juice and pushed back from th e table, wanting him, wanting home, wanting to be free. I rubbed the small mark on my wrist while Dorian ate on, seeming to be oblivious to my state even though he was the cause.
    Finally, I forced myself to speak. “I’ve imposed on you too long. I really need to get back to my apartment. I haven’t even bought books for next semester, and I was planning on doing a deep clean on my apartment, and I need to catch up with all my friends and let them know I’m okay.”
    It was too much— I was just babbling, inventing excuses where none needed to be made at all. I shut my mouth.
    “ All that in the thirty days before the end of Winter Break?” he asked, his voice steeped in irony.
    “ It’s my life,” I said staunchly. “I need to get back to it.”
    “ And when I need you?” he asked quietly, that pale gaze looking straight through me and sending my heart into a frantic, skittering