As a conversation starter, it wasn’t very comforting.
“Do I look like I’m freaking out?” he answered.
“I don’t know, I can’t really see your face.”
The faint light from the single bulb in the middle of the room barely poked through his feathers and though he could see her face—her achingly beautiful face—clearly, she was struggling to see his.
Honestly, it was a comfort. He needn’t control his features as carefully as he had been, could gaze upon her with all the longing in his heart and not be worried about the truths he might reveal.
“I’m not freaking out. Tell me what you need, Cassandra.”
I’ll give it all to you and more, he nearly followed with.
She toyed with the end of her braid as she regaled him with the incredible story of an obliviate restored. How, somehow, the blood he’d fed to her in Vaengya had deepened her power and allowed her to save a young mother from being shipped off to the continent by order of his heartless brother.
“Borea said it wasn’t permanent though,” she whispered, leaning closer, her face so close to his chest that he could hardly breathe. “I’ll need to take a dose every night before I do this work.”
He nearly bit into his wrist right then and there, ready to offer himself up to her, when the gravity of what she’d asked of him, of what she planned to do, crashed upon him.
“If Eamon or any of his soldiers catch you doing this…” He couldn’t even finish the sentence.
“I know.” She grasped his hand, running her thumb along the back of his palm, and goosebumps shivered across his limbs. She wasn’t playing fair. “Tristan, Iknow. But I can’t just sit back and do nothing. Not when whatever divine forces exist in this world have seen fit to provide me with this power.”
“Thought you saidIwas the reason you’ve been given this power. Are you calling me a divine force?” He tugged her in closer.
She pressed her other hand against his chest, and her answering laugh warmed his insides, the effect far deeper and richer than the bourbon he’d tried to numb himself with earlier.
“You know you are,” she murmured. She tilted her face up, her pleading gaze tearing through every reasonable part of his brain that knew this was a terrible risk, a terrible idea.
And yet.
Her compassion and selflessness were the very reasons he’d been drawn to her in the first place. To ask her to deny that part of herself was like asking a bird not to fly or a wolf not to hunt.
And he supposed that by helping her, at least being here and being present for the insanity, protecting her from her own destructive, though well-meaning, tendencies, made the whole thing a little easier to stomach.
“Okay,” he breathed, and the tension melted from her body.
“What body part would you like to feed from?”
* * *
Cassandra snorted a laugh,Tristan’s tease sending warm heat crawling through her.
He didn’t play fair. Though she didn’t know why she expected he would.
Seeing him again was torture. Self-imposed torture, she knew, but torture nonetheless.
She needed to focus on her task though. Reminded herself that he would never belong to her in the way he belonged to Ione.
“Your wrist will do just fine,” she said.
She couldn’t see his face, but thought she noticed his shoulders slump.
He lifted his wrist to his mouth, bit into it, and then held it out to her.
She gripped his forearm, swore she heard a soft sigh at the contact, then suctioned her lips onto the cut.
Her knees nearly buckled at the taste of him, the rich, spicy, oaky flavor of his blood. She took several long pulls, then removed her mouth with a pop.
