“Because you screamed.”
“No, I mean…” She cleared her throat. “I’ve always wondered why the Scribe Virgin brought me to the Sanctuary. But Lassiter, the angel, is right. I am here to help you, as you helped me long ago.”
“I didn’t save you, remember. Not at the end.”
“You did, though.” He was shaking his head when she cut him off. “I used to watch you sleep—back in the Old Country. You were always to the right of the fire, and you slept on your side facing me. I spent hours memorizing the way the low glow from the peat played over your closed eyes and your cheeks and your jaw.”
Suddenly, the room seemed to retract in on them both, growing tighter, smaller… warmer. “Why?”
“Because you weren’t like the symphath at all. You were dark and he was pale. You were big and he was thin. You were kind to me… and he was not. You were the only thing that kept me from going completely mad.”
“I never knew.”
“I did not want you to know.”
After a moment, he said grimly, “You always planned on killing yourself.”
“Yes.”
“Why not do it before the birth?” Man, he couldn’t believe how candid they were getting.
“I did not want to curse the babe. I had heard the rumors about what happened if you took matters into your own hands, and I was prepared to accept the consequences for myself. But the unborn? It was coming into the world in such sadness to begin with, but at least it could make of its destiny what it could.”
And yet she had not been cursed… maybe because of her circumstances—God knew, she had suffered enough on her way to the exit.
On that note, he shook his head again. “About the feeding. I appreciate your offer, I really do. But somehow, I can’t imagine a repeat of that scene downstairs is going to do either of us any good.”
“Admit that you feel stronger.”
“You said you haven’t dreamed of that shit since it happened.”
“One dream is not—”
“It’s enough for me.”
That chin of hers went up again, and damned if that habit wasn’t… well, not appealing, no. No, it was not appealing.
Really.
“If I can live through the events,” she said, “I can get through the memories.”
In that moment, staring across the room at her show of will, he felt a tie to her, sure as if a rope had linked the pair of them chest-to-chest.
“Come to me again,” she announced. “When you are in need.”
“We’ll see about that,” he dismissed. “Now, are you… okay? Here in this room, I mean? You can lock the door—”
“I shall be all right, if you come to me again.”
“No’One—”
“It is the only way I have to make things right with you.”
“You don’t have to make anything right. Honest.”
Turning away, he went to the door, and before he stepped out, he glanced over his shoulder. She was staring at her entwined hands, that hooded head of hers bowed.
Leaving her with what little peace she had, he took his grumbling stomach to his room and disarmed. He was righteously starved, his appetite for food carving a bottomless pit out of his lower torso—and though he would have preferred to ignore the demand, he didn’t have a choice. Ordering up a tray from Fritz, he thought of No’One, and told the doggen to make sure she got some eats as well.
Then it was shower time. After he turned on the water, he undressed and left the clothes on the marble floor where they landed. He was in the process of stepping over the mess when he saw himself in the long mirror over the sinks.
Even to his uncaring eye, it was obvious his body had rebounded, the muscles tightening under his skin, his shoulders back where they should be instead of down around his diaphragm.
Too bad he didn’t feel better about the recovery.
Getting into the glass-enclosed space, he stood under the jets, braced his arms out, and let the water run off his flesh.
When he closed his eyes, he found himself back in the pantry, at No’One’s throat, working her vein. He should have taken her wrist, not her throat—matter of fact, why hadn’t he—
Abruptly, the memory went full-bore on him, the tastes and scents and feel of that female against him shutting his mind down and cranking up his senses.
God, she had been… a sunrise.
Opening his eyes, he stared down at the erection that had made itself known at the first image. His cock was in proportion to the rest of him—which meant it was long, thick, and heavy. And capable of going for hours.
As it strained in a demand for attention, he feared the arousal was like the hunger in his gut: going nowhere until he did something about it.
Yeah, whatever on that. He was not some posttrans with a perma-boner and a hairy palm. He could choose whether or not he jerked off, for fuck’s sake—and that would be a big NO.
Snagging the bar of soap, he sudsed up his legs, and wished he was V—no, not with the black candles and shit. But at least if he had that vampire’s mind, he could think of, like, the molecular makeup of plastic, or the chemical composition of fluoride toothpaste, or… how gasoline powered cars.
Or he supposed he could think of dudes—which, given that he wasn’t attracted to them, might well lead to a merciful deflation.
The problem was, he was just Tohrment, son of Hharm… so he was stuck trying to remember how to make Toll House cookies: He didn’t know shit from Shinola about science, he didn’t give a crap about sports, and he hadn’t read a newspaper or watched the TV news in years.
Plus those were the only goddamn anything he knew how to make… what did you put in them? Butter? Crisco? Spackle?
As nothing came to him, he began to worry that his Food Network channel was not only incompetent, but wasn’t going to do shit for his dumb handle.
He gave it another shot. And could only remember how to open the goddamn bag of chips.
Stalled, stiff at the hips, and despaired, he closed his eyes… and thought of his Wellsie, naked and in their bed. Of how she tasted and felt, of all the ways they’d been together, of all the days spent interlocked and panting.
Gripping himself, he pinned the pictures of his mate to the forefront of his mind, plastering them over anything that had to do with No’One. He didn’t want that other female in this space; he might have to take care of business, which he didn’t want to do, but he could damn well set boundaries.
He sure as hell couldn’t pick his fate, but his fantasies were totally up for grabs.
Stroking his shaft, he tried to remember everything about his red-haired beauty: the way her hair had looked across his chest, the gleam of her bare sex, how her breasts had peaked when she was on her back.
It was just part of a history book, though, and the illustrations had faded—as if his mind had lifted the ink from the pages.
His concentration lost, he popped open his lids and got a hi-how’re-ya of his hand wrapped around that stupid-ass arousal, trying to pump off something, anything.
It was like milking a Coke machine—getting him nowhere. Well, except for a vague sting where the skin got pinched at the head.
“Goddamn it.”
Dropping the whole bad idea, he got busy with the soap, running the bar over his chest and under his armpits.
“Sire?” Fritz called out from the other room. “Would you require aught else?”
He was not asking the doggen for porn. That was blech on so many levels. “Ah, no, thanks, my man.”
“Very good. Have a blessed sleep.”
Yeah. Right. “You, too.”
After the outside door was shut again, Tohr shampooed his head like he supposed all males did: Squeeze out a crapload, rub it into your hair like you were trying to get a stain out of a carpet, and then stand under the spray forever because you’d used too much of whatever Fritz had bought you.
Later, he would decide it would have been best to keep his eyes open.