Shadow Touched: A Paranormal Vampire Romance (A Touch of Vampire Book 1) by Becky Moynihan (great reads TXT) 📕

Not gonna happen, I told him with my eyes, even as I trembled under the intensity of his stare.

He ever so slowly followed the path I took, his face set in determined lines. Closer, closer, closer. Reaching my position, he raised a hand, then the other, placing them on the fridge on either side of me.

He wasn’t wearing gloves. I stopped breathing.

This game had suddenly become dangerous. I knew it, and I was betting that he did too. Oh, he most definitely did. The glint in his deep red eyes turned wicked as one hand left the fridge. My eyes started to water from the strain of holding his gaze when all they wanted to do was check on his hand’s whereabouts.

A strangled gasp left me a moment later as I felt his fingers slide down my clothed arm.

Stop that, I silently commanded, narrowing my eyes.

He tilted his head, face relaxing as he sent his reply. No.

I clenched my hands into fists when his fingers stopped just shy of touching them. Then they reversed their course, traveling back up. The whole time, my heart threatened to leap out of my chest, equally terrified and thrilled at the precarious predicament. Stupid heart. I needed to end this. Now. Before something worse than werewolf symptoms flooded my body.

“Do you want more?” he suddenly murmured, and curled a finger around a lock of my hair.

I felt the contact to the very tips of my toes, but nothing negative happened. I guessed only skin contact could do that supernatural trigger thing. I licked my lips, not failing to notice how his eyes flickered, like he’d almost broken the staredown to watch my mouth. Victory swelled in my chest. “More what?”

“Steak. But if you do, you’ll have to move.”

At the mere mention of food, my concentration broke, and I looked behind me at the fridge. Immediately realizing my mistake, I whipped my gaze back to his and growled, “You cheated!”

Pure male satisfaction was etched on his face as he straightened, tugging gently on the strand of hair before releasing it. “Don’t feel bad,” he said and gestured for me to move aside so he could open the fridge. “You lasted longer than most. I’d even consider your inner wolf an alpha female.”

I opened my mouth to retort, then paused, wrinkling my nose. “Is that what just happened? Some territorial thing?” My mouth snapped shut. Did I seriously just act like an animal over food?

Lochlan seemed to be enjoying this way too much. I’d never seen his face so animated before—besides the bouts of rage, of course. “Every living creature has an instinct to protect what they deem is theirs—even humans. Vampires and werewolves are natural predators though. We can’t help but fight for dominance.” He closed the fridge and I eyed the container he held. But when he added, “I just happen to be more alpha than you,” I glared up at him.

“You cheated, plain and simple. I didn’t know the rules.”

“We could try again, if you like,” he practically purred, and my heart gave a pathetic jolt. Who was this man, and where had dour Lochlan D’angelo run off to? Whoever this new version was, my body let me know quite clearly how it felt about him by heating up in all the wrong places.

I cleared my tight throat and dropped my gaze to the food container once more. “Um, I think I’ll just take that.” He didn’t immediately hand it over, and I squirmed on the spot, keeping my eyes averted. When he finally did, I wanted nothing more than to hide in a corner and eat where he couldn’t assert his alpha-ness again. But I behaved like a civilized person and reclaimed my seat at the table.

Now that my stomach wasn’t trying to gnaw a hole through me, I savored the meat, and even used my utensils. The steak wasn’t cooked at all, as if it had come straight from the butcher’s. I should be thoroughly repulsed that I was eating it, but wasn’t. Its presence, however, sparked my curiosity—and raised suspicion.

Swallowing a bite, I looked to the side where Lochlan was leaning against the kitchen counter. “Where did you get this meat anyway? Did you go shopping while I slept?”

Or did he already have the fridge stocked for this very purpose?

I shoved that thought aside. He couldn’t have known ahead of time. Could he?

“Hunting, actually,” he said, and lazily crossed one booted foot over the other. “That’s deer meat, fresh off the bone.”

At the news, I expected my stomach to rebel. Nope. It seemed to like knowing that Bambi was filling it up. But knowing that Lochlan had bagged me a deer was a different matter entirely. A strange feeling swelled inside of me, a fullness beneath my sternum. I quickly busied myself with cutting more meat, refusing to dwell on what it could mean. “Um . . . so you shoot then?”

“Not really. I wasn’t prepared to have a gun with me anyway.”

My eyebrows inched upward. “Did you catch it?”

He inclined his head.

“With your bare hands?”

Another nod. His left cheek indented, briefly flashing his sole dimple. “The deer didn’t suffer,” he said after a moment when I continued to stare.

A crazy thought came to me and I gulped, focusing on my plate again.

“You can ask,” he said quietly, and my heart thumped extra hard. Was he always this intuitive or were my expressions that transparent?

I fiddled with my fork, wishing he would just tell me and not make me ask. But I had the distinct impression that Lochlan D’angelo never gave away information for free. If I wanted answers, I’d have to work for them.

Gripping my fork tightly, I forced my gaze to his, then expelled the words in a rush. “Did you drink its blood?”

“Yes,” he said without pause. Before I could digest this admission, he muttered, “Revolting stuff.”

I almost choked on my spit. “Then