Chapter 69: Veins Of Desire
"Lord.....Lord Ivan?" Uttering his name through trembling lips, Samantha couldn’t bring herself to look away from his glowing red orbs. His dark irises had taken a different shape, contracting ovally that they didn’t appear as the type of eyes any vampire would bear. As terrifying as they may appear to her, they burned with an intensity that matched the flickering flames on the candles, but strangely, she wasn’t as frightened by the sight as she had imagined herself to be
Her heart drummed at the thought of what he might do to her, a feeling of incertitude taking over, but she heaved a deep breath and pushed all her negative conclusions aside, knowing this was her chance to win some of Ivan’s trust.
"Are you.... Does it still hurt?" She carefully leaned forward, placing her palm to his solid chest yet feigning ignorance to his glaring eyes. "I don’t see any visible wounds. Is it internal? Do I need to call the Physician’s attention?"
Keeping mute, Ivan’s gaze lowered to the soft delicate palm that rested on his chest, close enough to feel his raging heartbeat, and when he lifted his gaze to look at the woman he assumed would be terrified to her wits, she hardly cowered in front of him, rather, he saw the concern in her green eyes as she continued to stare intently at his bare chest, searching for any scars or wound.
She was still afraid, he could sense it, but why wasn’t she running away from him? When he revealed this side of himself to her in the orb room, she had passed out on the spot, but somehow this side of him had been triggered, and the concern in her eyes disturbed him.
His heart, although dormant for many years, began to stir with an unfamiliar emotion whilst he struggled to control the sudden turbulence within himself.
"There are no scars." She managed to say after taking note of his flawless skin, "no visible wounds–" her breath immediately ceased in her throat when he unceremoniously grabbed her wrist, and she was forced to meet his glowing red eyes. Gently, he pulled her hand away from his chest, but he didn’t let go of her wrist.
"Are you still in pain, My Lord? Is there anything I can do to help you?" She asked, staying dutiful to her role as his servant, but then, she noticed the way a subtle glimmer of crimson red began to emerge from the darkness of his irises. His grip on her wrist tightened in his attempt to suppress the unsettling feeling in his chest.
"You know not what you speak of." He whispered icily. "And your concern is terribly misplaced, it will be better not to hide your fears from me or it might send the wrong message." Ivan was by far intrigued and infuriated when she kept staring at him in the face, although not sympathetically, but her green eyes made him feel she could see the man behind his vampire facade.