When Laurentius had told her what it would feel like to be a vampire, he should have mentioned this. This, Lucy thought dizzily, should have been a key selling point. Or maybe this was just how it felt, after so many days, to experience something that didn’t hurt. If Mila’s touch had been sparks, her body against Lucy’s was a live wire. The last time Lucy had touched anyone like this had been after graduation, when Jo Seward had her so gloriously overstimulated that she’d been laughing and shrieking protests into her pillow.
Jo was sweet. But Jo had never kissed her like this.
Lucy’s hands slid up the outside of Mila’s thighs, and Mila made a little sound directly into her mouth. Lucy reeled back, grinning. She felt drunk. Maybe she was. “You’re cute.”
That brought a bit of blood back to Mila’s cheeks. “It’s been a while.”
Lucy ran a hand down her side again, a soothing gesture this time. “We can stop,” she said.
“Don’t you dare,” Mila said. And as Lucy adjusted her grip to cup her face, an overwhelming fondness cut through the hunger. That was her hunter. Laying her head in the wolf’s mouth.
Lucy leaned in, nudging past Mila’s hair, and pressed her lips to Mila’s neck. “A classic for a reason,” Mila murmured. Lucy felt the vibrations of it more than she heard the words, but she shook her head. She wasn’t going to drink again. She took the skin into her mouth, running the borders of it against her teeth. Mila’s pulse fluttered against her breath, but she was careful not to bite down, or break the skin. She just let it roll against her tongue.
Mila held her lower back with one hand. The other brushed the inside of her thigh, at the juncture of her leg, and Lucy chased the pressure of her fingers until they were flush together. Lucy was shaking—her tremors were jolting the both of them, but the harder she shook, the harder she held on. Mila was saying something to her, something soft. But with her face pressed into the crook of Mila’s neck, the sound of her blood was all there was.
Lucy reeled back to take in a lungful of air. And as the cool air of the room hit her face, the euphoria broke like a fever, leaving only blissful blankness in its place. She dropped her head onto Mila’s shoulder, breathing heavily, and for a while, she reveled in thinking of nothing at all.
Mila eased her back down to the bed. Lucy started to protest, until she realized this was more of a controlled fall. All the life Mila’s blood had given her had settled into her body. The exhaustion on its heels didn’t feel like the heaviness of the past few days. It was decadent. Like something she was getting away with.
“Are you okay?” Lucy giggled at the sound of her own voice. She was slurring a little.
“I’m fine. A little dizzy.” Mila stretched out along Lucy’s side, draping an arm across her chest. “We should both get some rest.”
Lucy nodded, her eyes already closing. She was going to sleep easy this time.
“Do you need anything?” Mila asked. Lucy, already half-gone, could barely turn to kiss the side of her jaw.
“Just stay,” she mumbled. And she let herself drift.
The crawl back to consciousness was slow and delicious. Lucy allowed herself the luxury of keeping her eyes shut. It was still dark, she could tell that much. Which meant that all she needed to do was go back to sleep.
But sometime while she’d been out, Mila’s arm had disappeared from across her collarbone. She hadn’t left the bed—Lucy could feel the pressure of her hip—but she was sitting up, speaking softly. Which probably meant that Lucy should be paying attention.
The sounds swam too slowly through her mind to make much sense at first. But eventually, they formed into words.
“…realize this is going to sound like an excuse,” Mila was saying. “But you saw her. She wasn’t going to last much longer. I think that if you looked at Jon’s autopsy report, you would have done the same. I know you’re probably listening to this like,The hell I would. But I know you, boss. You’d have wondered if it was the right thing to do, but you wouldn’t be able to stop yourself, either. Even if you were ninety-nine percent sure she was beyond saving. You’d do it for the one percent of doubt.”
Lucy crawled a little closer to wakefulness, but not quite close enough to open her eyes. Mila was saying something important. Mila was usually saying something important. But Lucy’s thoughts moved like a pleasant sludge. She could have rolled over and pressed her face into Mila’s side and buried herself there for the foreseeable future. But if she moved, Mila might hang up. So she feigned sleep, and she continued to listen.
“I just didn’t want this to go on without you knowing,” Mila said. “I’ve kept a few secrets from you. Since we found Lucy. From the beginning, I guess. I thought you’d be disappointed in me if you knew I’d never really gotten more patient. But I don’t want to lie anymore, even by omission. You’re the closest thing to a friend that I have. Maybe I should actually let myself be a friend to you, instead of whatever the hell I’ve been doing.”
She paused long enough that for a second, Lucy thought she was done. “Anyway,” she said. “This is getting long, and it’s late. Maybe you’re actually sleeping through the night for once now that you’re off the air, though I doubt it. But I guess I’ve got good news and bad news. The bad news is, I think Lucy might be right. She just drank my blood, and she’s still herself. And I know that makes things more complicated. Believe me, I already kind of miss when I thought my bow was all I needed to end this. But—the good news is that maybe there’s something we can do to help those girls. And that maybe it’s not too late for Lucy.”
She let out a long exhalation. “I know you think about Sadie and Addison every day. I know how badly you wish that you could have helped them. Even if it makes things hard—even if it makes things complicated—I think this might be the best news we’ve gotten in three years.”
There was a pause. And then Mila said, “Good night, Athena.”
Lucy sank into the silence that followed. Her thoughts were still moving too slow to parse everything Mila had said. But good news was a good thing. Maybe Athena would even let herself believe in it.
“And”—Mila pushed a lock of hair off Lucy’s face—“good morning to you.”
Lucy blinked owlishly. Mila laughed at that, for some reason. “How did you know I was awake?” Lucy said.
“Heard your breathing change,” Mila said.
“Hey.” She scowled. Mila laughed at that, too. “That’s my trick.”
Mila tucked Lucy back into her arms. “How are you feeling?”
