It’s as if he’d dropped a match into a pool of gasoline. The femme whirls to life, lunging for his hunger-tightened face with daggers unsheathed and fury shrieking from her gore-fed gullet. Instinct should have forced Skrillex backward—should have jerked him out of harm’s way with an iron grip on his puppet strings—but instead the tin soldier stood perfectly still, a sense deeper than instinct and more powerful than self-preservation keeping him in line. Acid-colored lanterns watched the she-demon’s descent in slow motion, heightened awareness tracking each and every motion in stark definition. He saw the liquid flex and bunch of her muscles. The effortless trajectory of her leap. The perfect white glitter of her teeth as she slams her jaws shut mere centimeters before his muzzle before slithering backward. Skrillex didn’t even blink. It was as if he expected her not to harm him, despite every sign beforehand warning him of doom.

The pathetic trembling of his princely frame did not cease, even when Jaidah had retracted her weapons and lowered herself back to the earth. Was she . . . trying to tempt him? Or did beauty just come naturally to her, like the hellish appetite that ruled her guts? She bristled with savagery, yet reposed on the ground, forelimbs curled protectively around the pile of gristle and bone that had been a living wolf, she might have been a fallen angel. Skrillex unconsciously stepped closer. He swore he could feel the ferocious pounding of her heartbeat through the surface of his paw . . . or maybe that was his own pulse, thudding against packed dirt and echoing back at him. He did want to bite her. The realization was a serrated knife plunging through his clenched abdomen. Yes—the white knight wanted to bite her, he wanted to unwrap her like a gift and run his tongue along the sweet pink silk of her tender flesh. If anyone had been built to handle what sort of monstrous lust commanded Skrillex’s soul, it was this fearless beast of a woman.

All at once the inky creature uncoiled. Skrillex’s talons curled into the soil, to keep him in place or prepare him to run he had no idea. His ears had flicked forward at her intense declaration—“mine”—but now they flattened against his crown. The shadowy purr bubbling from the velvet curtains of Jaidah’s maw bathed the pallid soldier’s mind in smoke and ambrosia. He found himself leaning down to welcome her touch, nosing the diamond-studded splendor of her smooth brow. Hypnotized.

“Who are you . . . ?” Skrillex meant it to be a gentle question, but the needy growl thundering in his chest turned it into studded leather and the edge of a blade. They were inches away from each other’s throats; one quick, decisive move, and either of the vampires might be gasping their last in a bloody pool at the other’s paws. He skimmed over the fur above her eyes and then moved his attention toward one of her satin audits; he took the lovely triangular shape lightly between his fangs and tugged, playfully. “No. What are you? Where did you come from? Where are you going?” Skrillex pulled back a little, but only so he could trace down the bridge of her snout with his wet nose, half-lidded eyes carefully searching her own bottomless jade oceans.

“. . . why haven’t you bitten me yet?”