“Who are you?” he asked, his voice harsh and rough from his coma.
She didn’t answer; she just lay across his torso, her body warm on his. He closed his eyes for a moment at the pain that awareness brought with it.
Dammit, he wasn’t even allowed to escape the hell of his life through near death. He was to have no peace, no relief; not even the insensibility of a coma was to be granted to him. His heart, or what remained of it, was sick with the knowledge that he had an eternity of even more torment to exist through.
“All right,” he told the woman, shoving at her arm. “You’ve done what you were sent to do. I’m awake and miserable. Get off me.”
She made no move, just continued to lie there on top of him.
And the damned rock still dug into his back.
He sighed, wondering how much more torment he could survive before going stark, staring mad. Insanity seemed like the only route open to him, the only escape of the torment of his life, and yet, his pride had always held him back from just simply going mad. Now he wondered if it wasn’t easier than existing for each excruciating second.
“You’re hurting me. Not that you probably care, but I’d like to get up and smash a certain rock to gravel, so if you’d kindly remove yourself from me, I’d appreciate it.”
The woman still didn’t move, and it struck Alec at that moment that her heartbeat was too slow, her body too heavy on his.
“Miss?” he said, prodding the woman.
She lay limply on him, her breath shallow on his neck. For a moment, he closed his eyes, breathing in the scent of her. She smelled like wildflowers after a rain, clean and pure and sweet as honey. Unable to stop himself, he turned his face into her hair and breathed deeply, pulling her scent into his lungs, burning it to his memory.
Something inside him thrummed as the deep hunger awoke again. He inhaled deeply again, wanting to feed on her, wanting to take within himself the warmth he knew she held, the sweet, spicy taste of her blood still on his tongue. If he turned his head just a little more, he could reach her shoulder. He could drink until he was full. He could take everything she had to offer, every last sip of life, and roll her off him. She deserved it for torturing him this way. If only she didn’t smell so damned good . . .
He growled a few oaths to himself as he shifted her off him, letting her roll into the spot he had chosen for his final resting place, crushing that foul rock into nothing before examining his torturer.
She was mortal, apparently in her early thirties, with brown hair, arched eyebrows, and a delicately boned face that was covered in freckles. Her lips were slightly parted, and he had to fight with himself to keep from bending over her to taste their pink sweetness. With a connoisseur’s eye, he cataloged the rest of her—large breasts, broad hips, probably slightly over medium height, big-boned . . . not at all the type of woman he found attractive. He preferred his women on the slight side, delicate and frail. This woman, while not an Amazon, looked every bit the phrase “hearty peasant stock.”
Hearty peasant stock or not, he knew he’d taken too much of her blood. Her heartbeat was steady, but it had probably been a close thing. He wanted to tell himself that it didn’t matter, that she was clearly there as part of his punishment, but guilt pricked him nonetheless.
Guilt and something else. He caught himself enjoying the sweep of her hips, the rounded weight of her breasts beneath a washed-out blue tank top. Her arms were also freckled, and for some reason, that pleased him.
“Wake up,” he told the woman, placing his hands on her arms and shaking her slightly. “I’m tired of looking at your hips. You will awaken now.”
She said nothing, just lay there, unconscious. He frowned at her, his gaze straying once more to her breasts, down to the curve of her dusty jeans. He would not be attracted to his tormentor.
“Wake up!” he said louder, and shook her again. “If you don’t wake up, I will slap you.”
Her chest rose and fell with a shallow pattern of breathing.
“There are times when I’d give anything to never have been born,” he muttered, staring at her mouth before tapping her on the cheek.
She didn’t move.
He tapped a little harder.
Her forehead wrinkled in a frown. “Ow.”
He smiled. “Are you awake now?”
The frown grew, although her eyes remained shut tight. “No. Go away. I was floating. I want to float again.”
“You’re done floating. Wake up.”
Her eyes screwed up. Just what he needed, a stubborn torturer. “Don’t want to. Want to float.”
“By the saints, woman, that wasn’t floating. I almost killed you.”
Her eyelashes fluttered a little, but remained closed. Color was returning to her cheeks, he noticed, his gaze once again on her mouth. Lips like strawberry cream, he thought, then gave her another little shake. “It’s time for you to wake up now. You’ve floated long enough.”
A little smile turned up the corners of her mouth. “I like your voice. It’s sexy. If I can’t float, talk some more.”
You don’t know what you’re saying. I took too much blood, and almost killed you.
Blood? Oh, yes, I remember that. You’re the vampire who looked like three-day-old roadkill.
Alec jerked backward. She couldn’t have just done what he thought she had done . . . could she? Only Beloveds or someone with a close family tie could do that, and lord knew, his family and Beloved died out centuries ago.
Thanks to you , I no longer look like roadkill, he said, eyeing her.
That’s good. She stretched and opened her eyes.
“Oh, pretty,” the woman said, reaching up to touch his face. “I always wanted to have green eyes.”
You shouldn’t. You have lovely dark eyes. They’re very exotic. What the hell was going on here? Why was she able to talk to him this way? It made no sense, unless the fact that he had been so close to death and she had fed him had established a blood bond.
They’re plain old brown. She blinked a couple of times, her eyes widening, surprise and no little amount of wariness filling her mind. “Uh . . . how did you do that?”
“I don’t know.” He examined her face again, finding its delicate lines more pleasing with every perusal. “I don’t recognize you, yet you seem familiar somehow.”
“Maybe we knew each other in a past life,” she joked, rolling herself up to a sitting position.
As soon as she spoke, she froze, staring at him with huge, horrified eyes.
“What is wrong with you? ” he asked, not used to women gawking at him as if he were a monstrous beast.
“Vampire,” she whispered, tickling a memory in the back of his mind.
He saw again the pooled light from the front of his house in California as it spilled onto the tiled front walk, remembered the three women who had too much to drink, and had evidently picked his house to visit. He remembered also the woman who took one look at him, screamed, “Vampire!” and fainted at his feet. “You were at my house a couple of months ago, weren’t you?”
“Oh my god, I didn’t recognize you.” The woman tried to backpedal, to crawl backward, but the boulder was in the way. All she did was succeed in plastering herself up against it. “I didn’t realize it was you, or I wouldn’t have—”
“Wouldn’t have what? ” he asked, his eyes narrowing. “Tortured me? Dragged me back to awareness? Made my life once again an endless cycle of damnation ? ”
“Fed you,” she said, making Alec shake his head.
“Where do you know me from?” he asked, not believing her pretense of innocence.
“I saw you kill a woman,” she said, glancing to her right, obviously weighing up the chances of her success escaping him.