Chapter 13: Hate and Want

"Get up," I said.

Edmund stayed on his knee.

"Get up, Edmund. I'm not forgiving you on the carpet."

He rose, slowly, with the red mark of my hand still on his cheek.

Hester had gone, and the door was shut, and the whole keep was holding its breath on the other side of it.

I walked to the window and back, because I could not be still.

"Here's what happens now," I said. "You don't speak into my head again unless I'm dying."

"Agreed."

"If you ever frighten me on purpose again, I leave, and I take the crown with me."

"Agreed."

"And you tell me everything. Every plan, every secret, every two-hundred-year-old habit that's going to jump out of a cupboard."

"Imogen." His voice was rough. "I will tell you anything you ask."

"I'm not done."

"Then go on."

I stopped in front of him, close enough to feel the cold coming off him, and the heat under it.

"I'm still angry," I said.

"I know."

"I want you anyway."

His breath went out of him.

"I spent six months in that crypt wanting you," I said. "I'm furious, and I want you, and I don't care which one wins tonight."

"Then let it be both," he said.

I took the front of his shirt in both fists and he came down to me.

This kiss was nothing like the first.

It was angry and it was slow, and I bit his lower lip until I tasted blood, and he made a sound I felt in my knees.

"Careful," he said against my mouth. "I have been hungry for a very long time."

"I know exactly how long."

I pushed the black shirt off his shoulders, and it fell to the floor.

He was cold marble on the outside and burning underneath.

I put my palm flat on his chest where there was no heartbeat, only a slow, steady pull that answered my hand.

"There," he said. "That's you. That's all you."

He turned me around by the shoulders and undid my mourning dress button by button, and every button took him too long.

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Vampire King Husband Died on Our Wedding Night? from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.