Page 81 of Hungry Like the Wolf

“If you need me?—”

“I know,” she said. “Thank you, Hank.”

He closed the door quietly behind him, and Nadja felt it the instant the room was sealed again. Robbie had always had a presence, but he was radiating energy like never before. She could taste the funnel cake richness of his desire on the air and didn’t know whether to be grateful or bereft that he still wanted her. But there was more. Anger and surprise and worry and a dozen other things she couldn’t identify swirled around him like an aura.

His hands were still wrapped around her calves, but he dropped his head and leaned forward on his knees until his head pressed against her lap.

He was still as a statue except for his back, which rose and fell with the huge gusts of his breath. He didn’t speak. He did nothing but hold her legs and rest his head. Her hand was so close to the long brown strands, shot through with red that glowed in the lamplight. She resisted for a scant second before resting her hand on the back of his head. She threaded her fingers through his hair, tracing the shape of his skull beneath.

He groaned.

Her hand froze, but he released one calf to reach behind him and hold her hand against his head, to keep her close.

“Robbie, I?—”

“You left,” he said, his voice crackly.

“I left.”

“You’re not taking care of yourself.”

She couldn’t refute that. “I know.”

He shot upright, still on his knees but looking up at her now. “You know? You know? You leave me to believe that you’ve been dragged back to hell or whatever the fuck it’s called. You. My mate. And then I come to find out that you’ve been here all along. You’re here, and according to Callum, you look like you’ve got one of those Victorian wasting illnesses where people just fucking died in their sleep. My mate.”

“I’m not your mate,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper.

“You disappeared and I thought I could never get to you, never see you again. I wanted to die, Nadja. I wanted to die. Do you know how it feels when your fated mate abandons you?”

“I’m not your fated mate!” she screamed, sucking in a breath as the spots in her vision grew ever darker.

“The fuck you aren’t,” Robbie growled. “My body knew you were my mate before my brain even knew what they were.”

“I’m not… I wasn’t… You’re not…” she stammered.

“I am. You were. You are,” Robbie said, leaning closer. “And the fact that my mate is suffering is something I can’t handle. We’re going to have a long talk after this. For hours. We might still be talking in the morning when your first client shows up and I have to kick them to the curb because I’m not done with you yet. But before we do any of that, Doc, I have to ask you a question.”

The ease with which his nickname for her dropped from his mouth brought fresh tears to her eyes. She squeezed her eyes shut against them.

“Doc?” Robbie asked.

“What?”

She opened her eyes and saw that his face was mere inches from hers. His whiskey-colored eyes were bright in the golden glow of the table lamp next to her. But she could see the dark circles underneath them, deep and purple, a mark of a man who hadn’t slept well in a very, very long time.

She felt his hand shake slightly when he cradled her jaw with it, the other shaking in kind when it carded through her hair to reach her neck.

“What?” she asked, a breath of air between them.

“Can I feed you?”

She needed to say no. It would only hurt worse in the end when he left again. But she was so desperately hungry and he was the only thing she wanted. He had always been the only thing she’d wanted.

Before she could come to her senses and protect herself, she nodded.

“Tell me. Say it,” he said, closer, his lips feathering against her cheek with every word.

Apparently she was more of a masochist than any of her Voyours clients, than anyone in the history of humanity or succubi or sentient beings everywhere in the universe. Because even though she knew how badly it would hurt when he left, when she convinced him to leave, she was powerless to refuse him, to refuse herself.