This is, of course, exactly what I’m worried about. It’s almost ironic: Only days ago, I was asking Jude to make me into a vampire—to exploit a supernatural loophole, and save both me and the world. But now I’ve got a chance to live again, to save everyone, and I don’t want to lose it. If this drinking game goes wrong, all my plans are destroyed. But I trust these two undead boys, I realize, and I think I want to know what Jude means when he says feeding can be pleasurable.

My nerves are snapping like castanets, and I can’t speak—but I manage a staccato nod. I want to know what this feels like, and I trust them as much as I’m willing to trust anyone. “Okay. Yes.”

“Say stop when you need to,” Gunnar purrs against the beat of my jugular, while Jude sinks his fangs into his own wrist, breaking the skin and drawing blood to the surface.

“Swallow as much as you can,” he advises me. “It’ll make the experience last longer for all of us.” He presses his slippery flesh against my mouth, and my tongue lights up with it, an irresistible current of energy pouring into me.

I knew what to expect, and yet it still takes my breath away, this heart-pounding taste of forbidden fruit. My body warms as I drink, my own blood stirring as it meets the magic, electricity spiraling through my limbs.

Gunnar’s hand finds its way under my shirt, lifting it over my head as I release Jude’s wrist, and his touch against my bare skin is a million feathers—it’s a hard rain, a lightning storm—and a sound presses from my lungs. The air sharpens, candlelight climbing to the ceiling, as bright as their eyes. My back arches when Gunnar’s teeth pierce the flesh on one side of my neck, the pain momentary and somehow exquisite, and Jude whispers just beneath my ear, “No matter what happens Friday, tonight only has to be about us.”

He bites down, then, and as they drink, swallowing in time with the beat of my heart, the electricity jumps from my body. Tendrils of my expanding mind flow into the two vampires that feed from me, their thoughts spreading open like petals at the softest touch. Their memories and emotions run through me, a current that swirls and eddies, volatile and aching and filled with want. Jude’s hand slides across my skin until it reaches Gunnar’s, and their fingers interlock, pressing against my bare chest.

It’s love and hunger, a temporary truce, a moment where they both relinquish the past and choose bliss. Tonight is about us.

Warmth pours out of me, lifting us up, and we float toward the ceiling.

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