“I have turned many mortals into my kind. Some are shifters and some are not, but none have ever lost their minds.”

“You did not change me,” I pointed out.

“I could,” he said, and once more, I felt his lips touch my skin. “I would. You have only to say the word.”

I held my breath, feeling a familiar heat stirring in the bottom of my stomach. It made me feel heavy and want to feel full all at the same time.

“How would you do it?” I asked, my voice hushed.

In truth, I had not let myself entertain the idea of turning for long, and when I did, I’d stopped myself, always with Lara on my mind.

Adrian smiled against my skin, and as he spoke, his teeth grazed my ear.

“I cannot decide. I have thought of it so often and in so many ways, but it always starts with you,” he said. “With the moment you say yes, with the moment you beg to be like me.”

I clung to each of his words and the way he said them. There was a desperation beneath and it called to me across lifetimes. This wasn’t about the bite or the blood. It wasn’t even about being like him. It was about loneliness.

Adrian did not want to be alone.

My hands tightened on his arm.

“So far, you have told me nothing about what I should expect.”

It took Adrian a moment to speak, and I wondered if he was holding on to my words as well. There was an element of assumption in the way I spoke, as if I had already accepted my fate.

“I have changed my mind so often, I no longer know how it will happen, but if I were to take you now, it would be within the grove where I buried you, and I would draw out your pleasure until you were delirious with need, until your body was hot and your blood rushing, until you forgot all the horror it took to get us here, and only then would I enter you.” He paused and his hand moved to my upper thigh as he whispered, “Are you wet for me now?”

“I would challenge you to find out,” I said. “But I would like to hear the rest.”

He chuckled, a warm hum that only succeeded in making me far more aroused.

“The rest is simple,” he said. “I would fuck you to the point of climax and not let you come until I was ready to drink from you.”

“So,” I said. “It isn’t unlike how you already take my blood?”

“Is that a challenge, Sparrow?” he said.

“Well, if you are going to make it memorable,” I said.

“It will be memorable,” he said. “You will never forget the first time you take my blood.”

For the first time since he had begun detailing this fantasy, I stiffened and Adrian noticed.