Read Life Blood: Cora's Choice #1 for Free Online Page B

it so badly that my bones ached. 
    My breath came more quickly, and a fluttering came from deep inside that had nothing at all to do with nervousness.  I could almost feel his hands on me again, could feel my body tuning to his.  My body prickled with heady anticipation, not the fear of harm but the expectation of pleasure.
    I reached for the candle that sat between us.  A soft sound escaped my lips, and even I didn’t know what it meant.  I extended one finger, thrusting it into the flame.  The fire danced around my fingertip, sending the most exquisite pain up through my arm until I gasped with it, welcoming it, meeting with a wrenching sensation deep in my core that was a very different kind of heat.
    In an instant, it was gone.  I blinked, panting.  The flame was extinguished—his hand, cool and strong, was over my hand, my finger immersed in his water glass.  Through the dripping sides of the water goblet, I could see the border of angry red flesh with a white blister in the center.
    I watched, stunned, as he lifted my hand from the glass to his mouth.  Keeping my gaze with his icy blue eyes, he bent his head until his lips met my blistered finger, sucking the drops of water from it.
    My voice was not mine—it moaned, softly.  A shudder went through my body, pure pleasure as my heated senses screamed at the touch.  I pushed back against my chair without meaning to, my feet bracing against the ground.
    He dropped my hand, and I was left reeling, gasping, my finger throbbing to the hammering of my heart. 
    “What are you doing to me?”  The words were half-question, half-plea.
    “Nothing but what is in my nature.”  His expression was full of infinite pity and infinite regret.
    “I can’t—” I stopped.  “You can’t—” 
    I stared at my finger.  The blister was every bit as real as the flame had been. 
    “It’s not possible.  I wouldn’t do that,” I said, even as I remember the ecstasy of pain.  “I never would.”
    “But you did,” he said.
    I did.  I did.  I remember it, I felt it, I had wanted it....  The pain and the pleasure all tangling into a mass of sensation so intense that it was like drinking pure life.  If he told me to do it again, I would. 
    Maybe I was going mad.  Maybe he was driving me mad.
    “What are you?” I demanded.
    “Something more dangerous than you can imagine,” he said, and I believed him.  Oh, how I believed him.
    “What you are promising me—the cure.  Is it real?”  Or do I also believe that because you want me to?
    His voice was fervent, his brows lowering.  “Oh, it is very, very real, Cora Shaw.  I have no need to lie to you to take what you would freely give.”
    He was right.  I knew he was.  I closed my eyes, but I could still see him in my mind, looking at me, looking through me.  He could hurt me.  The throbbing of my finger had reached my wrist now, a very real pain.  He had hurt me.  But still, I wanted to give him everything.
    “That is why you must decide for yourself,” he said gently.  “Far away from here.  Far away from my influence, and far away from me.”
    Though only anticipated, I already felt the separation like a jolt.  “No,” I breathed, my eyelids flying open.
    The sorrow on his face wrung my heart even though I didn’t understand it.  “You may be the one, after all, Ms. Shaw.  But I will have your permission, of your own free will.  Not now.”
    “In two weeks,” I said then, defeated.
    “In two weeks,” he agreed.  “Not a day before.  You have the number.”
    I nodded dumbly.
    “Then call.  And if you still wish to gamble the last months of your life on an outside chance, I will be happy to assist you.”  He treated me to a lopsided smile that made my lungs hurt.  “For now, you have a dinner to enjoy in the finest restaurant that a glittering capital can boast.  Enjoy.”
    The rest of the evening was a long blur, my unrelenting awareness of him pushing all my senses