“Can you switch places with me?” she asked again. He seemed not to have heard her the first time, but that was only a guess. She had no idea what happened in a vampire’s brain when the thirst attacked like this. Tai was clearly in physical pain, clearly fighting a battle with himself. He clung to the steering wheel as though this point of contact was the only thing preventing him from tearing off into the night to…
To hunt humans. To slake from humans.
She tried to imagine what Peter would tell her to do, but if Peter struggled the way Tai was struggling right now, he’d never told her. She nudged Tai’s rigid shoulder.
“Tai, I’m going to help you, but—”
“Help,” he whispered, and her heart gave a hard beat that hurt for him.
“I will help. I promise. But for me to drive, to help, you have to move. Can you do that?”
He nodded. He lifted his head for the first time in what felt like a year, and his eyes… They were past dilation, solid black to the cornea.
“If I try to get away,” he rasped quietly, his beautiful baritone in raw tatters, “you have to stop me.”
“I will.”
“Whatever it takes. If you have to hurt me to stop me, then do it, Claire. Never let me hurt a human.”
She took his face between her hands and stared into his black eyes, and Tai stared straight back at her, all of him, letting her into his anguish and his fear. “I promise I will not let you hurt anyone. Whatever it takes.”
His hands curved around hers. She wanted to let him hold onto her, though she didn’t know how she understood in this moment that he needed to hold on, needed to holdher. Then Tai released her hands, and Claire lowered them to her sides.
Simultaneously they got out of the car and walked around the hood. When they passed each other, she took his hand and squeezed, and he squeezed back. She watched, coiled for action, as he slid into the passenger seat and shut the door. He made no attempt to escape. Instead he curled into a ball on the seat, arms wrapped around his bent knees, face hidden against his thighs.
This was the man who had held the banquet room in thrall a few hours ago. The man who spoke with such ease to a room full of people, who admired art, enjoyed food, composed original music, and made a tuxedo look scandalously hot. This same man experienced vampire thirst as an agonizing drive and need.
Tai was a bloodfiend. And Claire hadn’t known.
She slid behind the wheel, tucked the folds of her dirty gown away from the door, shut it maybe a little too hard, and began driving. Illegally, on the shoulder. Not far from a whole lineof police cars, one of which had deliberate line of sight to the shoulder and the exit ahead. Maybe they’d all be too preoccupied with the wreck to stop her.
No such luck. The nearest squad car popped its siren and pulled onto the shoulder to block her. Instantly Tai sat up, his feet on the floor, his arms at his sides. As the officer got out of his car and approached Claire’s window, Tai looked out the passenger side.
How much control did he have left? Would she have to fight him to protect the human officer?
She rolled her window down, then set both hands on the wheel at ten and two.
“Ma’am, we’re going to route y’all off here as soon as we can, but—” He peered closer at her, then into the car at the back of Tai’s head. “Hey, you’re the vampires who helped out.”
“Yes, sir,” Claire said. “And I’m sorry to cut the line, but after that degree of physical exertion, we need to slake.”
“I’ve heard of that.” The officer pursed his lips in thought, then nodded. “Guess it wouldn’t be fair to leave y’all hangry for another hour. You really were a big help to us. All right, I’m going to back up and let you out. Then I’ll park across the shoulder again so a hundred cars don’t follow you before we can get directions set up.”
“Thank you so much.” She gave him an easy smile that betrayed none of the thoughts zipping through her head and none of the anxiety that any moment, Tai would dart out of the car to grab the man and break the most sacred vampire code in existence.
“No problem. Y’all have a good night, and thanks again.”
She rolled the window back up. Tai had gone into statue mode. “Tai?”
No response, not even a twitch.
“Just tell me you’re still okay.”
The cop car backed up, and Claire continued forward on the shoulder, squinting as her rearview mirror caught his lights. In a few minutes, she exited the highway. She made it to Slake It Off about fifteen minutes later, just after midnight. Tai still hadn’t said a word or moved a muscle. Claire parked in the employee lot and shut off the car, then turned in her seat to face him.
“We’re here. Ready to go inside?”
His left hand, resting at his side, tightened to a fist. Then, as she got out of the car, he did the same. She kept her arm around his waist as she unlocked the entrance behind the building and disarmed the security alarm. She guided him through barely lit corridors, past the break room to the front. At the bar, she walked him all the way to one of the stools. Then she slipped behind the counter.
