02 Blood Roses - Blackthorn by Lindsay J Pryor Read Free Book Online Page B

‘And where would your kind be without ours to sustain you? We die, you die. You die, we survive. I think there’s a pecking order in that, don’t you?’ The glare was brief before she reverted her attention back to the view, her pretty eyes brimming with a defiance and indignation that both irritated and aroused him.
    ‘Your vehemence is admirable, fledgling, even if the ignorance that gives it its foundation is laughable.’
    ‘I know more than you think.’
    ‘As if I would dare to underestimate someone so experienced and worldly. Someone with such textbook knowledge.’
    Leila frowned at his mocking as her eyes snapped back to his. ‘Textbook knowledge that saved your brother’s life.’
    But serryns didn’t save vampires. Not even if their last breath, the final beat of their heart, depended on it. Serryns existed for one purpose and one purpose only: to kill as many vampires as possible – male, female, even youths – in as cruel and vicious a way as they could.
    And under any other circumstances, this witch’s – or if his instincts were right, this serryn’s – entertainment value would have taken some surpassing. And he would have already been breaking her down, stripping her of everything she was until she was nothing but a shell.
    Yet something about this one was already niggling him. Beneath her flattering knee-length tea dress, her feminine, slender body was toned but most definitely not honed from training or combat. There were no bruises, no marks and not a single scar that he could detect. Every inch of her skin was pale, smooth and unblemished. Even her long, delicate fingers ended with flawless nails.
    He looked back at her pretty eyes, her sensual mouth, not a hint of make-up to emphasise either. But it wasn’t that her appearance was void of purposeful seduction, it was that her whole demeanour was. Because although he knew only too well from experience that a serryn’s facade didn’t have to mean a thing, her nervous tension in his presence most certainly did. He was either looking at his first latent or she was one hell of an actress.
    ‘And you did good tonight,’ he said in response. ‘You and your textbook.’
    ‘I did what I had to,’ she said, maintaining her avoidance of the intimacy of eye contact.
    Strolling over to join her, he eased up onto the table beside her, purposefully an inch too close so that their thighs were almost touching. ‘I know it wasn’t easy for you.’
    Leila tensed, her breath quickening, but she didn’t move, her eyes saturated with unwavering tenacity.
    He leaned back on one arm, bracing it just behind her, not close enough to touch, but close enough for her to feel the threat of its proximity. Her cheeks flushed and she clenched her hands until her knuckles were pale, holding her breath for longer than he was sure was comfortable. But still the wilful little witch remained rooted to the spot. ‘In fact, it must have really stung, considering how you feel about us.’
    When she refused to respond, he couldn’t help but smile.
    ‘I make you uneasy, don’t I?’
    She met his gaze, albeit fleetingly again. ‘You don’t.’
    He raked his gaze slowly and purposely intrusively from her dainty feet, up over her shapely legs, her pert chest to then linger on her eyes. ‘So, is all this nervous tension because you’ve never been alone with a vampire before? Or is it that you’re not good with males of either species?’
    She frowned. ‘You’re a vampire and I’m, as you like to put it, a witch. Our kinds have never exactly got along have they?’
    ‘Which makes you coming here tonight all the more brave. Alisha tells me this is your first time out of Summerton.’
    ‘I’ve been to Midtown before.’
    ‘But never Blackthorn.’
    ‘I have no reason to come here.’
    ‘I bet you’re itching to get home, aren’t you? It must be very uncomfortable for someone like you here, with nothing but vampires for miles.’
    She glanced at him, the