by J. R. Ward
Her wrist was close to his lips—he could smell it.
Eyes flaring open, he saw her fragile vein within striking distance—and, merciful Virgin Scribe save him, all he could think about was reaching out to her, caressing her smooth cheek—
A black blade forced his arm back down. “No touching,” Phury said darkly.
Well… at least if that was all the Brother was worried about, obviously he had not caught on to the issue below the waist. And short of agreeing to have himself neutered, Throe would do anything to have this happen—so no touching was good.
No touching was fine with him.…
As Tohr lay in his bed, he came awake with the thought it was a little early to be sleeping. Shouldn’t he be out fighting? Why was he—
“Get Layla in here stat,” a male voice barked. “We can’t operate until his blood pressure is up—”
Say what? Tohr wondered. Whose blood pressure was bad…?
“She’ll be there ASAP,” came a far-off response.
Were they talking about him? Nah, they couldn’t be—
As he popped opened his eyes, the industrial chandelier hanging right over his face cleared things up fast. This wasn’t his bedroom; this was the clinic in the training center. And they were talking about him.
Everything came back in a flash. Him stepping out from behind that Dumpster. His body getting drilled as he walked forward, opening fire. Him shooting until he stood over the slumped, stinking form of that slayer.
After that, he’d wobbled back and forth, like a stick only partially drilled into the ground.
Then it had been lights out.
With a groan, he went to push himself up, but his palm slipped on the padding of the gurney. Guess he was leaking—
Manello’s handsome puss popped into his line of vision, replacing the bright-and-shiny of the light fixture. Wow—check out that expression. The bastard looked like someone had just gotten him tickets to Disneyland. Surprise!
“You shouldn’t be conscious.”
“That bad, huh.”
“Maybe a little worse. No offense, but what the fuck were you thinking?” The good surgeon pivoted and jogged to the door, shoving his head out into the corridor. “We need Layla in here! Now!”
At that, there was some conversation, but he couldn’t track any of it, and not because he was injured. In spite of all the owie-owie, his body had a huge opinion about who he was going to feed from—and as far as it was concerned, as lovely as the Chosen was, it was not going to be her.
And it was a shock to realize why.
He wanted No’One. Even though it wasn’t fair—
“I shall do it. I shall take care of him.”
At the sound of No’One’s voice, Tohr gritted his teeth, and felt a surge go through him. Turning his head, he looked past the rolling tables of operating instruments… and there she was in the far corner, her hood in place, her body still, her hands churning under the robe’s sleeves.
The instant he saw her, his fangs elongated, and his body filled out its own skin, the residual numbness receding and revealing all kinds of sensation: pain at the side of his neck, his ribs, and under his arm; tingling at the tips of his canines sure as if he had already struck; hunger in his gut—for her.
Starvation in his cock—for her.
Shit.
He quickly camo’d the arousal by yanking the surgical drape around and holding it to the front of his hips.
“Okay, you shouldn’t be able to sit up,” Manny muttered.
Was he? Oh, hey, check it… And as for the doctor’s second dose of surprise? Nice guy, but he was being a dumb-ass human when it came to the feeding thing. With this kind of hunger for that particular female? Tohr was frickin’ Superman, capable of bench-pressing a Hummer while he juggled Smart Cars with his free hand.
He was worried about No’One, though. Last time had been such an epic fail.
Except from across the room, she just nodded at him, as if she knew exactly what he was worried about, and was ready to follow through anyway.
For some reason, her courage made his eyes sting.
“Leave us,” he told the surgeon without looking at the man. “And don’t let anyone in until I call for you.”
Cursing. Muttering. All of which he ignored. And as he heard the door finally shut, he took firm control of his instincts, the knowledge that he was alone with her tempering all that drive to feed: He was not going to hurt or scare her again. Period.
No’One’s reedy voice cut through the silence. “You’re bleeding so badly.”
Oh, man, they must not have cleaned him up yet. “It looks worse than it is.”
“Then you should be dead.”
He laughed a little. Then laughed a little more—and blamed the ha-has on blood loss. ’Cuz none of this shit was funny.
As he rubbed his face, he hit a raw patch and had to lie back—which made him wonder whether he might be in trouble—and not the sexed-up variety. How many bullets were in him? How close had he come to dying?
No offense, but what the fuck were you thinking?
Shaking all that off, he extended his hand and beckoned her. As she closed in on him, her limp was pronounced, and, when she reached the table, she leaned her hip against the edge like maybe her leg was bothering her.
“Let me get you a chair,” he said, making a move to get up.
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.
But what was happening below his waist captured her eyes. He was holding the blue sheeting in place over his hips as if hiding something, his forearm and hand tightening up as she stared.
“Don’t worry about that,” he said in a guttural voice.
He was aroused, she thought.
“No’One, come on—meet my eyes. Don’t look down there.”
The temperature in the room shot up even higher, to the point where she considered taking off her robing. And abruptly, as if he could read her mind, his pelvis rolled in an arch that was… sensuous.
“Oh, fuck—No’One, you gotta not go there.”
A strange anticipation threaded through her veins, making her head buzz and her stomach feel vaguely sick. And yet she had no cognition of not feeding him; if anything, she wanted his mouth on her even more.
With that thought, she brought her wrist up and over his lips.
His hiss was quick, the bite was fast, the pain sweet as the prick of a hundred tiny needles. And then… he was sucking, his warm, wet mouth fitting a seal against her flesh and pulling at her rhythmically—
He moaned. Deep in his throat, he moaned in pleasure, and as he did, her heart jumped in her chest and then beat even faster. More of that heat, insidious and suffusing, bloomed on the underside of her skin, her mind growing woolly and her body getting languid.
As if Tohrment sensed the changed in her, he moaned again, his head craning, his chest rising, his eyes rolling back into his head. And then he began making mewing noises, the supplication fitting not at all with his tremendous size, the plaintive sounds rising repeatedly up from his throat, alternating with his swallows.
With the lights on, and her arm her own to retract, her panic flared only briefly, before being dismissed wholly. There was just too much of Tohrment in this for her to mistake him for anyone else, and the well-lit room they were in had nothing in common with that root cellar: All was bright and clean, and this male at her vein… was very much vampire and nothing even remotely symphath.
The more at ease she grew, the more aware she became.
His hips were moving all the while now.
Under the sheeting she would soon be washing, beneath the cup of what was now both of his palms, his pelvis was gyrating. And every time it did, his abdominals tightened and his torso arched… and those noises grew a little louder.
He was deeply aroused.
Even terri
bly injured, his body was ready for mating—desperate for it, if the way he moved was any indication.…
At first, she didn’t understand the tingling that came over her, numbing her up and hypersensitizing her at the same time. Mayhap it was the fact that she had given him two feedings in less than a day… But no. As Tohrment’s hands tightened anew at the front of his hips, as he gripped himself even harder through the sheeting, it was clear his sex had cried out for attention and he had been forced to give it some—
The sparkling returned even more keenly as she realized he was rubbing himself.
No’One’s own lips parted as breathing became difficult, and under her robing, the warmth cranked up even higher and focused in her lower gut.
Dearest Virgin Scribe, she was… aroused. For the first time in her life.
As if he could read her mind, his eyes shot to hers. Confusion was in them. And an eerie darkness that seemed to be near to fear. But there was also more of that heat, so much more…
Whilst she met his glowing stare, one of his hands unlatched from down below and traveled up his chest. When he touched her forearm, it was not to keep her in place or restrain her, but to stroke her flesh softly, slowly.
Breathing became impossible.
And she did not care.
His fingers running lightly over her skin were intoxicating, drawing her closer to this flame that she could not see. Closing her eyes, she allowed herself to fly far away from any worries or preoccupations, until she knew nothing but the sensations in her body.
Indeed, as she fed him, she was fed herself, a part of her innermost soul nourished for the first time.…
Eventually she heard licking and realized he was done.
She wanted to tell him to continue.
To beg him, was more like it.
Raising heavy lids, she could not focus her eyes, and that seemed only appropriate. The world was fuzzy and so was she… boneless and fuzzy, with honey in her veins and cotton batting in her brain.
Tohrment was anything but, however.
He seemed sharp as a blade, his muscles straining now not just in his hips but his whole body, from his biceps to his abdominals—even his feet beneath the sheeting stood up straight.
