Black Blood (Series of Blood Book 4) by Emma Hamm (scary books to read .TXT) 📕

whatever we wanted. And they probably would have, but I had a panic attack. So we got away from the crowds and people watched. That always helps, for some strange reason. It’s people that make me nervous to begin with, but watching them makes me calm down.

“That’s where you found us. I was finally getting ready to go down there and be brave. I was going to try it. Juice. I don’t know why I was so afraid of it. It’s just a little smoke.”

Something changed in the surrounding air. At first, Lydia didn’t see it. It was an ominous feeling pressing down against her shoulders, reaching into her lungs. Then she saw it.

The muscles in his shoulders tensed. She had never seen them tense before although she would have sworn she had if asked the question. He had always been painfully relaxed around her.

Now he was not.

Deceptively, he lifted his glass of water to his lips before he spoke. “You think Juice is just a bit of smoke?”

“Logically, I know it’s more than that. Normal smoke doesn’t make people feel things that aren’t actually feeling. But it’s all just a game isn’t it? Feel good for a little while and then leave. The same as any other drug.”

She was pushing his limits. She watched the muscles in his shoulders tense and his jaw tick.

“A game?”

“Or something like it.”

“Why do you believe, little girl, people come into my club and use Juice?”

A loaded question, she thought, and a dangerous one. “To feel good.”

“To feel good?” he repeated. A cruel laugh burst from his chest. “You know nothing about Juice. If you did, you would never lower yourself to try it.”

“You sell it on a daily basis, but you say that?”

His chair scraped the floor. The sound grated her ears and made her flinch into perfect posture in her wheelchair. His hands slapped down on the table, thrusting his body away.

She could feel his breath against the back of her neck moments later. The warmth of his fingers bled into her shoulders but he was not touching her. Not yet.

Somehow, she had unleashed the beast. She had called his life’s work a game, a drug like any other, and then criticized him for disliking selling the drug itself. Never provoke a drug lord, she chastised herself.

“And what would you have taken?” His murmured words stirred a lock of hair sliding past her ear. “Euphoria? Love? Romance?”

“Why do you assume I would have taken those?”

“What else do women wish from moments like that?” He finally touched her. His fingers traced the outline of her neck, lingering upon the delicate bones of her shoulders. “They wish for something they do not get at home. They want to feel taken care of, swept off their feet, all the things that men can’t seem to do for them in the squalor of their lonely lives.”

“Not me.”

“No?” He moved to her other ear. His breath teased the seashell curves. “What would you have taken then, my lovely little captive?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know, but you know it wouldn’t have been one of the Juices I listed?”

“What do you want me to say?” she cried out. “I don’t know what you want from me! I don’t know if I would have even followed through! I might have walked up to the counter, told the bartender what I wanted, and then stared at it for hours before I gave it back to him.”

“He would never have let you do that.”

“You don’t know that!”

Pitch’s hands danced over her shoulders and down her arms. It brought him forward until his chin was nearly resting on the top of her head. “I know my employees, and I know the people who use Juice. I know how addicted they get to the feelings Juice can inspire.”

“It can’t be that good.”

And there it was. The final moment she would always look back upon and think that’s when it happened. That was the first spark lit off between them until they were both consumed by fire.

“No?” His voice deepened, laced with anger. “And what do you know of Juice?”

Lydia remained frozen in place as his hand trailed from her wrist, up to her neck, and then outlined her jaw. She felt the soft pads of his fingertips. The light scrape of his nails as he forced her to turn toward him. The puff of his breath against her lips.

“I know nothing,” she whispered.

“You would have chosen Happiness,” he told her.

Smoke curled out of his lips as he spoke. She was too close to tell, but out of the corners of her eyes she could see sparkling golden smoke.

She inhaled.

He breathed Happiness into her. Greedily, she gasped in the feeling as it burst forth from her chest. She wanted to laugh. She wanted to stretch out in the sun and run her fingers through her hair.

Her lips curved into an astonished smile. Although her eyes wanted to drift shut, she did not let them. Because his hand had curled into her hair and he was tilting her backward just enough so that the Juice was pouring into her lips now.

It was overwhelming. The Happiness overflowed from him until she could not tell where hers started and his began. Surely it was his Happiness that he shared with her. It was his experiences, his life, his wonderful pure golden Happiness.

“But Juice is dangerous business,” he said around the smoke pouring from his lips. “One small slip, and you aren’t Happy anymore.”

A different smoke bled from his nose. Blue like the deepest ocean, it was sluggish and slow. She didn’t want that. She didn’t want that Juice, but she didn’t have a choice as it dripped into her mouth and sank into her skin.

This didn’t feel good at all. Tears pricked at her eyes and she wanted to struggle but she didn’t. Her body locked in place. Unable to move as shock and horror and awe and denial all mixed together. Her chest clenched.

“Happiness can disappear so