Bitten Surrender Read Online Free Page B

reasonable...person. Can’t we come to some sort of arrangement?”
    Hanzi stood very still. She wasn’t sure he breathed. “What kind of arrangement did you have in mind?”
    “Maybe I could do something for you. Find you a woman who wants to be with a vampire. Surely there must be groupies, women who know what you are and want to hook up with you before dying and being reborn.”
    The vampire walked forward so effortlessly, he practically glided. Next to her, he seemed huge. He raised his hand like he wanted to stroke her and then stopped.
    “Okay for me to touch you, kincsem? ”
    She didn’t know what that last word meant, but it sounded like it belonged to the language he had used on the phone. Would it be really bad if she said no?
    “I won’t harm you. I only wish to show you something.”
    She took a deep breath. To say no would be cowardly. “Go right ahead.”
    He pulled at her shirtsleeve, and his mouth hung open. She followed his heated gaze. Oh, he was seeing her ink for the first time. She’d known it would be a shock to whoever was supposed to be taking her. The vampires at home always stared and then ran away.
    Hanzi ran his hand over her arm with gentle fingers. Every place he touched jumped to life. He raised his eyes finally to meet hers.
    “I’m a tattoo artist. You obviously don’t want to be with a woman who is inked. So, we can part ways.”
    He furrowed his brow. “How do you keep the color so vibrant?”
    “I....” Wow she hadn’t expected that question. “Um. I stay out of the sun. Probably best anyway. Skin cancer and all.” Her mouth had gone dry. Where was the coffee?
    “I haven’t seen markings on skin in a long time. Once, on a woman from the east. When I was a young man. Before things happened to change the course of my life. I have been in China for the last decade. Handling a...situation. I’ve not been around people other than our servants in a long time. Is tattooing common? And you say you make these? You do your own artwork?”
    She ripped her arm from his grasp. Their conversation had become a little personal. She didn’t want to mate him; therefore she shouldn’t know him or let him learn about her. There had been a point to letting him touch her.
    “Why did you want to touch me?”
    He took her wrist. “The mark on you, I’m shocked you haven’t had it removed or covered it.”
    The stupid strawberry marking had started the whole mess. “I like to look at it. To remember my days are numbered.”
    He held out his own hand for her to see. “I have the same mark.”
    She looked at his arm and for a second she couldn’t believe what she was actually seeing. His mark was identical to hers, he hadn’t exaggerated—exactly the same, all the way to the tiny swivel of a black outline, which really made it seem a strawberry.
    “So we match, what does the sameness mean?”
    “It means you’re mine.” He dropped her wrist and took a step back from her. One second later, a knock sounded on the door. Hanzi had already travelled halfway across the room to answer it when the noise came. She’d deliberately spent so little time with vampires over the last years she’d almost forgotten how good their hearing was.
    Hanzi swung open the door. “Jerome.”
    The older man came into the room pushing a cart loaded with a pot of coffee and a delicious smelling breakfast. Eggs, salmon, bacon, and three different kinds of toast stared back at her.
    Her mouth watered. Another thing she had been doing to perversely stick it to Hanzi—before she met him or knew his name—was to have become a vegetarian. Non-meat eaters didn’t taste as good to the vampires.
    “Does the food look, okay, miss?” Jerome smiled at her.
    “Um. I haven’t eaten meat in years.” Although she wanted to, badly, as she did almost any time she smelled bacon cooking.
    “You’ll have to go back to consuming animal product.” Jerome’s eyebrows shot upwards. “I wouldn’t want you to become