The vampire eased his wrist free of her lips. She couldn’t even wonder how he’d cut himself, she was too busy struggling with the urge to grab his arm, clamp her mouth to the wound, and get another dose of memory-laden painkiller—even if she was always scared of eating too much, and sometimes had lain in her childhood bed at night wishing she wouldn’t grow out of hershoes or clothes, since they were so expensive and Meemaw only had the monthly check plus a few pennies from taking in sewing work.
If she got greedy now, what might happen?
The thought drifted away. Blessedly, the warmth didn’t quit, settling behind her breastbone and expanding like a balloon, pushing down her legs, along her arms. Finger- and toe-tips tingled; she blinked hazily, managing to lift her right hand.
The bruises on her forearm were shrinking in fast-forward, their edges turning yellowy green instead of deep fresh red-purple. Scrapes on her knuckles now seemed days old instead of livid and fresh. Golden light from incandescent bulbs, hazy and wonderful, stroked her wet skin; when her fingers twitched slight rainbow dazzles followed the motion.
Christ have mercy, I’m stoned on biter blood.
The urge to laugh returned, nearly overwhelming. It wasn’t the screaming-meemies but genuine amusement, however drugged or disconnected. A giggle bubbled in her throat; she forced it down, licking her lips for any remaining trace.Holy cow.
“See?” His voice was deep and soft, a tiger’s purr vibrating along her bones. “No pain, little Leila. Let it work.”
I ought to be scared. But the floating, numbing relief was too intense, wiping away fear-twinges almost before they could begin. There was still something she wanted to know.
“Why are you doing this?” She had to concentrate to form the words; at least she didn’t sound drunk, just sleepy.
“You need healing.” Water lapped as he shifted, smoothing her hair once more, finger-combing as if he had some experience with the operation. “And this will render you stronger, more durable. I feared the worst, finding the car.”
Oh, crap.She’d almost forgotten crashing the Volvo. “I’m so sorry about—” she began, a sudden sharp spike of unease verynearly managing to break the flood of warm forgiveness, of pure relaxation.
“No, you did as you should.” As if he forgave her. Which was great even if conditional, as all male forgiveness tended to be. “It served its purpose. Better the chariot than my leman.”
Was he callinghera broken-down car? This was fucking confusing. “What’s with you and the lemons, huh?”
“Leman.” More careful enunciation—much less stilted now, the ghost of a strange accent merely hiding behind the words, not poking through every syllable. “It meansbeloved, andcompanion. You are a gift of the gods.”
Man, are you in for a surprise. “That’s not me.” Maybe she should have kept her mouth shut, but all this was just too confusingly hilarious. Beloved? Who the hell even used that word anymore?
Another rumble in his chest, turning into words. “You do not compass your own value.”
I’m a fuckup, sir. My own mother didn’t even want me.This was why she avoided weed and too much booze; not only did it let bad thoughts out of the barn but it was a good way to get hurt by any male in the vicinity.
Every woman knew that danger on some deep level. Just part of living in a world made for men, that was all.
Still, the cascade of sparkles around every movement was fun to watch. She lost the thread of hurtful memory and when he moved again, she barely noticed. Quiet encouragement in a deep, soft voice—lift your arm… tip your head back, good… close your eyes—as soap slid against her skin, as water spoke in its own liquid language, as for once simply existing wasn’t painful but almost kind.
Helluva drug, she thought, hazily, and gave up wondering when the agony of living would start again.
She was too tired to care.
CHAPTER 14
Lovely to seethe evidence of damage fade, to bathe a heavy-lidded leman and gently chafe languid, beautiful limbs to dryness. To carry her to the bed, arrange her in its precise center, to sample a velvet mouth freighted with the taste of his own blood. The Gift was rising swiftly in her now, urged along by a Maker’s initial feeding; the memory of her drawing against his veins was pleasurable torment, the rising thrall a prickling goad only salved by pushing her legs apart and driving himself into her hot, slick center once more.
Her back arched, starry eyes half-opening. Maximus froze, an unwelcome awareness of how a mortal female might interpret this act sending cold trickles down his back. Glacial ice meeting the volcanic heat of her core, his own existence steel caught between the two; he was helpless to withdraw, yet could not advance.
“Christ,” she whispered. “You could just find a regular girlfriend, you know.”
“No.” His teeth—both true and camouflage—ached desperately. So did the rest of him, held in precisely painful equipoise. He needed to move,hadto, but what would thatcost? She had already been battered and terrorized well past mortal bearing, and now he was doing… this. He could barely find words in her modern language, struggling against a sea of contradictory imperatives. “Sanguinant, we need…Ineed this. You.”
“Nobody needs me.” Achingly quiet, resigned to the idea, as her heavy charcoal lashes drifted down.
The statement was so utterly, incredibly bizarre. Had her mortal companions been blind to the miracle living among them, unaware of a divine gift burning golden amid the piled trash of their warren?
“Then I am nobody,” he murmured, and was tempted to laugh. A good soldier must be wily as Odysseus if he expected to become a general, and now he must not only keep what he had found but become a patricide as well.
Nemesis’s orders had been to murder the sanguinant elder who held this territory. There was no reason for one of his fellow senior legionnaires to be sent so closely afterward… unless Father intended to discard an elder son.
