Page 30 of Bought for Blood

“Hold still,” the handler says, bored. “You’ve been paid for.”

I make my hands let go. I put them on the chair arms and grip the steel. I brace myself for what’s about to happen. The trick. It’ll feel like it feels with him, and it won’t matter, because it never meant anything. I know the trick now.

Let it come.

I don’t want it to. Not with this one.

His mouth hits my throat, teeth first, no preamble at all. I grunt. The sound is out before I know it’s mine. Pain tears down the side of my neck into my shoulder. I wait for it to turn. It doesn’t turn. It stays teeth.

He pulls at the vein in gulps, fast, greedy, and every gulp drags the wound wider. I hear him swallowing. I feel each swallow as a tug inside my throat, a deep wrong pulling, and cold spreads from the punctures down my chest instead of heat. My stomachrolls over. Bile climbs into the back of my mouth, and I swallow it down. My nails bend against the steel.

Where is it? Where’s the flood?

I don’t feel it. My legs are shaking. My skin is crawling everywhere his hands touch. His smell is all the way inside my nose now, cologne and sourness and something spoiled underneath.

“Stop!” I didn’t decide to say it. My body wants him off me so badly that my arms are trembling with holding still.

I waited for my body to betray me. It didn’t.

It only does that forhim.

My wolf tears herself away from what’s happening, as far from his mouth as she can get inside my own body. Days ago she lifted her head at a vampire and pointed her ears at him, and I slammed her down for it. Now she’s clawing to get away from one.

I had it worked out. It was a trick they all do.

It isn’t.

If it were the trick, this would feel the same. It doesn’t. So the flood was never the trick.

It’s him.

There’s nowhere left to put that except in me.

“Time,” the handler says.

He keeps pulling.

“Time!” She crosses the floor and takes his shoulder.

He comes off my throat wet, breathing hard through his mouth. Blood runs from the wound, warm down my neck, into my collar, and I press my hand over it before I’ve decided to. It pulses against my palm. Open.

He drags the back of his hand across his mouth and blinks at me, his eyes gone loose and unfocused. “They’re right about you. Whatever he’s paying, it’s worth—”

“Out,” the handler says. “Clock’s done.”

He goes. He argues with nobody. The door swings shut behind him. His shoes squeak away down the corridor. I sit there with my hand at my throat, and I can’t get my shoulders to be still.

“Take this.” The handler pries my fingers off the wound and presses a cotton square in their place. Blood has already soaked through my collar. The wound throbs under the cotton, deep, in time with my heart.

“It’s supposed to close,” I say. My voice comes out level, and I hold it there.

“Some of them close it after.” She tears tape with her teeth and straps the cotton down without looking at me.

She hauls me up by the arm. The room swings once and settles. We walk back the way I came, but I’m barely aware of it. I keep one hand out for balance. Every breath pulls at the tape. The whole side of my neck is hot and tight.

We pass cell seven. Kalli’s warmth comes through the wall the same as always, and I keep my eyes forward, because if I look at her door right now, I’m going to start sobbing.

The lock turns behind me. I sit on the cot and put my back against her wall. I’m shaking.