God, I wanted to.
I wanted to pick a fight with him.
To lay claim to him, to demand he finish what he started back in his bedroom, but...my headache hadn’t receded and no matter how much water I’d splashed on my face in the bathroom, I couldn’t seem to rid myself of the feverish heat he’d caused.
If he didn’t want to talk about what happened, then fine.
Tomorrow was another day.
“I’m not calling you anything,” I muttered, carrying his horribly cooling blood to the fridge. Placing it on the rocking shelf, it looked like a snack for a vampire.
A wave of nausea made my skin prickle.
I slammed the glass door and spun to face him. “Is that everything? Can I go?”
“No, you can’t.” Grabbing the armrests, he climbed unsteadily to his feet. “Today isn’t over.”
I frowned because usually on the days I bled him, he’d spend the rest of it in bed.
Did that mean he wanted me tojoinhim in bed?
I swallowed hard as hope—
“Come with me.” His footsteps sounded as lethal as Whisper’s panther paws as he headed toward the cupboard full of nasty implements, needles, and vials. Noises echoed—the tear of plastic, the clink of metal, followed by a masculine hiss.
I blanched as he hooked up yet another blood bag and gritted his teeth as glossy dark red siphoned into the empty bladder.
“What the hell are you doing?!” Dashing toward him, I grabbed his forearm, trying to unhook the line from his silver cuff. His bare arm stung my fingertips. The rolled-up cuff of his black shirt was far too sexy.
Pushing me away with his free hand, he huffed, “Grab me a vial.” He cocked his chin at the drawer by my hip, his voice as dry as ash. “Do it.”
I wanted so badly to refuse because I knew what he was doing, and it made guilt settle like a boulder in my chest.
Gritting my teeth so I didn’t say something I’d regret, I did as he asked and grabbed the same sort of vial that Evelyn and Lydia had stolen from me.
“Unhook me and empty the bag into the bottle.” He shoved his arm out, blood still flowing. I wanted to argue. To cringe away. But I wouldn’t let him bleed any more than he already had.
With now-practised hands, I grabbed his thick cuff and pinched the sterile coupling. Twisting counterclockwise, the seal broke with a soft click. A few droplets of blood smeared the silver, but I dabbed them up with gauze.
Nausea gushed through me as he swayed backward, planting a palm against the side table. Needing to distract myself—so I didn’t wrap my arms around him—I blurted any stupid question. Mainly to stop myself from begging him to talk to me. To demand to know what we were now, after we’d...you know.
“The permanent access points in your veins. How do they work?”
He chuckled under his breath, sounding so tired he was almost drunk. “Why? Is that vial not enough? Are you trying to figure out how to get more the next time I’m unconscious?”
I didn’t even have the capacity to scowl or scold him. It took all my willpower not to throw up as I cut the top of the blood bag and squeezed his blood into the small glass bottle. “Forget it.”
Was he deliberately putting distance between us again? Because it was working.
He watched me transfer the blood, his hand massaging his forearm above that nasty cuff. I expected him to stay quiet—to drag out the scratchy silence like he was so good at, but he murmured, “Most permanent ports are on the chest, close to the heart.” His lips twisted. “However, my heart is already host to a different kind of device.” Holding both hands up, he shrugged. “The wrists and forearms have multiple veins in them. The stabilising cuffs mean I can’t remove or accidentally dislodge their access.” He dropped his arms. “They can drain my heart blood whenever they damn well want, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
His voice turned arctic, his hands balling.
I shuddered. “I’m suddenly very sorry I asked.”
“You’re squeamish.” He laughed again before pinching the bridge of his nose as if he suffered the same headache I did. “How ironic.”
I didn’t know what was ironic about that.
