Ivy put her forehead against the wall beside mine as if to gather her resolve. Her hair made a silk curtain between us. I felt the warmth from her through her body stocking. I couldn’t move, wire-tight with fear and want, wondering if she would sate it or if I would be strong enough of will to push her away.

“You don’t know what it’s been like living beside you, Rachel,” she said, her whisper coming from behind her hair as if from a confessional grate. “I knew you’d be frightened if you knew how vulnerable your scar makes you. You’ve been marked for pleasure, and unless you have a vampire to claim and protect you, they all will take advantage of it, taking what they want and passing you to the next until you’re nothing but a puppet begging to be bled. I was hoping you might be able to say no. That if I taught you enough, you would be able to drive a hungry vampire away. But you can’t, dear heart. The neurotoxins have soaked in too far. It’s not your fault. I’m sorry.…”

My breath came in small pants, each one sending the promise of coming pleasure through me, flowing back to renew that which ebbed, building on those that came before. I held my breath, trying to find the will to tell her to get off me. Oh God, I was failing.

Ivy’s voice went soft, persuasive. “Piscary said this is the only way to keep you. To keep you alive. I would be kind, Rachel. I wouldn’t ask anything you didn’t want to give. You wouldn’t be like those pathetic shadows at Piscary’s, but strong, an equal. He showed me when he bespelled you that it wouldn’t hurt.” Her voice went little girl soft. “The demon already broke you. The pain is over. It will never hurt again. He said you would respond, and my God, Rachel, you did. It’s as if a master broke you. And you’re mine.”

Fear flashed through me at her hard, possessive tone. She turned her head, her hair falling back to show her face. Her black eyes were an ancient hunger, faultless in their innocence. “I saw what happened under Piscary, what you felt with no more than a finger touching your skin.”

I was too frightened and enraptured by the waves of feeling coming off my neck in time with my pulse to move. “Imagine,” she whispered, “what it’s like when it’s not your finger but my teeth—slicing clean and pure through you.”

The thought sent a pulse of heat through me. I went slack in her grip, my body rebelling against my railing thoughts. Tears slipped down my face, warm on my cheeks to fall on my collarbone. I couldn’t tell if they were tears of fear or need.

“Don’t cry, Rachel,” she said, tilting her head to brush her lips upon my neck in time with her words. I almost passed out from the ache of desire. “I didn’t want it to be like this, either. But for you,” she whispered, “I’d break my fast.”