Her delicate hand eased him back. “I’ll do it.”
As he watched her limp across the way, it was obvious she was in pain. “How long have you been standing?”
“Awhile.”
“You should have left.”
She rolled the stool over and groaned as she took the weight off her feet. “Not until I knew you were home safe. They said… that you walked into the line of fire.”
God, he wished he could see her eyes. “It’s not the first time I’ve done something stupid.”
Like that somehow made things better? Idiot.
“I do not want you to die,” she whispered.
God. Damn. The heartfelt emotion in those words left him nonplussed.
As the silence ruled once again, he stared into the shadow created by the hood, thinking of that moment when he’d stepped out from behind that Dumpster. Then he went back farther into his memory.…
“You know what? I’ve been mad at you for years.” As she appeared to recoil, he tempered his tone. “I just couldn’t believe what you did to yourself. We’d come so far, the three of us, you, me, and Darius. We were a kind of family, and I think I’ve always felt like you betrayed us in a way. But now… after I’ve lost all I have… I understand the why. I truly do.”
Her head dipped down. “Oh, Tohrment.”
He reached out and covered her hand with his own. Except then he noticed his was bloody and stained, a horrific travesty against the purity of her skin.
When he went to pull away, she held on and kept them together.
He cleared his throat. “Yeah, I guess I understand why you did it. At that moment, you couldn’t see anyone but yourself. It wasn’t to hurt the other people around you—it was ending your own suffering because you simply couldn’t fucking stand it another minute.”
There was a long moment of quiet, and then she said quietly, “When you walked out into those bullets tonight, were you trying to…”
“That was just about the fighting.”
“Was it?”
“Yeah. Only doing my job.”
“Given the reactions of your Brothers, they appear to think that is not in the description of duties.”
Shifting his eyes upward, he caught the reflection of them in the stainless-steel contours of the operating chandelier, him laid out and leaking, her curled in and hooded. Their forms and figures were distorted, bent, twisted out of shape because of the uneven reflecting surface, but the image was accurate in more ways than one: Their destinies had been such as to make them both grotesque.
Strangely, their two hands clasped were the clearest of all, that image being caught on a straightaway.
“I hated what I did to you last night,” he blurted.
“I know. But that is no reason to kill yourself.”
True. He had more than enough cause for that from elsewhere.
Abruptly, No’One took her hood off, and he instantly zeroed in on her throat.
Shit, he wanted that vein, the one that ran up so close to the surface.
Chat time was over. The hunger was back, and it wasn’t just about biology. He wanted to be at her flesh again, drinking not simply to cure his wounds, but because he liked the taste of her, and the feel of her fine skin at his mouth, and the way his fangs punctured in deep and let him take part of her into him.
Okay, maybe he’d fibbed a little about that bullet shower. He absolutely had hated hurting her—but that wasn’t the only reason why he’d walked into all that lead. The truth was, she was calling something out of him, some kind of emotion, and those feelings were starting to turn gears inside of him that were rusted and cranky from lack of use.
It terrified him. She terrified him.
And yet, looking at her strained face right now, he was glad he’d come back from that alley alive. “I’m happy I’m still here.”
The breath she exhaled was relief made manifest. “Your presence eases many, and you are important in this world. You matter a great deal.”
He laughed awkwardly. “You overestimate me.”
“You underestimate yourself.”
“Ditto,” he whispered.
“I’m sorry?”
“You know exactly what I mean.” He punctuated that with a squeeze of her hand, and when she didn’t reply, he said, “I’m glad you’re here.”
“I’m glad you are here. It’s a miracle.”
Yeah, she was probably right. He had no idea how he’d gotten out of that one alive. He hadn’t been wearing a vest.
Maybe his luck was changing.
Little late in the game, unfortunately.
Staring up at her, he took in her lovely features, from her dove gray eyes to her pink lips… to the elegant column of her throat and the pulse that beat beneath her precious skin.
Abruptly, her gaze went to his mouth. “Yes,” she said. “I will feed you now.”
Heat and raw power resurged in his body, jerking his hips up and oversolving that blood pressure problem of the surgeon’s. But all the off-the-chain was still a no-go. The part of him that wanted things from her, things that she wasn’t going to be comfortable giving anybody… things that were all about what he had done in the shower and in his bed alone during the day… was not getting airtime here.
Besides, his mind and his heart weren’t interested in any of that shit, and this was another reason she was perfect for him. Layla might well take his body up on the arousal; No’One never would. And there were worse betrayals to his shellan than wanting the unattainable. At least with No’One, and thanks to his self-control, those impulses would forever be just a fantasy, a harmless, unrealized, masturbation fantasy that had no more substance in his real life than porn on the Internet—
God help you, a small voice pointed out, if she ever wants you back.
Too right. But as she appeared to hesitate, he was certain that was never going to happen.
In a guttural voice, he told her, “I’m in no hurry. And know this, the lights will stay on this time… and I will take from your wrist only as much as you care to give me.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
As No’One sat beside Tohrment, she heard herself say once again, “Yes…”
Dearest Virgin Scribe, something had changed between them. In the thick, charged air that separated their bodies, some kind of heat was sparking, the current of electricity warming her skin from the inside out.
This was totally different than when she had been in the dark of the pantry with him, struggling against the past’s perennial stranglehold.
Tohrment cursed softly. “Shit, I should have them clean me up first.”
As if he were naught but a countertop that had been spilled upon, or a bolt of cloth that required laundering.
She frowned. “I care not what you look like. You breathe and your heart beats—that is all that matters to me.”
“You have very low standards for males.”
“I have no standard for males. For you, however, if there is health and safety, I am at peace.”
“God damn,” he said softly. “I really don’t get it… but I believe you.”
“ ’Tis the truth.”
Staring at their entwined hands, she thought about what he had said… about the past, about the cobbled-together family the three of them had formed in the Old Country.
About how she had shattered that for them all, including her daughter.
Indeed, she had always viewed the resurrection she had been given as an opportunity for penance for taking her own life, but yes, she realized once again, now there was another purpose to serve.
She had hurt this male, but she had also been granted the opportunity to help him.
It was the Scribe Virgin’s fundamental tenet at work: all things coming full circle so that balance could be retained.
Assuming she could help him, that was.
With a sense of purpose, she looked down his body—or what she could see of it under the surgical sheeting. His chest was padded with muscle, a star-shaped scar marking one pectoral, and his abdomen was ribbed with strength. All along, there were a number of bruises that she didn’t want to guess the causes of, and small round holes that scared her.