Page 73 of Bought for Blood

I take my wrist back. She’s too weak to make me answer, and she stops trying. I hold her against my chest until her heart climbs into something I recognize.

Then I fetch the basin from the washstand. I soak the cloth, wring it out, sit on the edge of the bed and clean her throat, going carefully round the punctures because I can’t put my mouth on her tonight. The blood has run under her collarbone and dried there. I work it off her skin with the corner of the cloth, and when I’m done, I fold it and lay it over the marks and hold it there with two fingers.

She lifts her hand and puts it over mine. She doesn’t say anything, and neither do I.

I told myself it was just for the blood. Just a game to amuse myself. I said it to Crowe, and I tried to convince Odile.

I’ve been lying to myself.

Her heart stopped in my hands, and I have never been so afraid.

I put the basin on the floor. My hands aren’t steady; no part of me is steady.

Her eyes are shut, and her breathing has evened into something almost normal. I stroke the hair from her pale cheek, then gather her up against me and press my lips to the top of her head.

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper.

I’d give up her blood tonight. I’d never taste her again for the whole of what she’s got left. I’d sit across a fire from her for fiftyyears with her blood untouched, if the alternative is what her heart was doing four minutes ago.

The irony is that the magic in her blood stops me from remembering it. It’s why I’ve kept going back for more. I can never get enough of it.

That has to change now.

She’s supposed to be safe here.

Beyond Crowe and Faine’s Court and all that’s expected of me, I know why I’ve been going into that compound. To root out the people who priced her. Burn the file, burn her rare blood classification, and she stops being worth hunting. And then, if she stays here, it’s because she wants to, not because she has no other choice.

I haven’t called Crowe with a report. Three nights now, and every one of them I’ve found a better use for my hands than a telephone.

I told myself she was safe here.

Nobody in that building did this to her tonight.

I did.

She’s asleep by the time I’ve thought it through. I lean back against the headboard, settle her onto me, and she curls closer without waking. She’s warm now. Warming my skin.

Her heart goes on under my palm. Ninety-two. Ninety-four.

I count them because I can’t make myself do anything else.

Chapter 25

Serenity

My fingers are on my throat before I’m awake enough to know I moved them. Two punctures, high on the left side, the skin around them tight and sore. Open.

He closes them. Every time, since the first night, without me ever asking him to. Not this time.

It’s dark, and I don’t know what time it is. No gray under the curtains. No lamp. The sheet over me is heavier than mine.

His room.

My arms are too heavy. There’s a stale taste across my tongue, and my mouth is dry all the way to the back of it. Hollow. Drained. I know this feeling. I had it every morning for a year.

And he’s the one who did it to me.

Then the rest of it comes back. His teeth. My own hand in his hair pulling his mouth down onto my neck because I wanted it there. The pull going on past the place where it stops. Theroom getting further away from me. My arm sliding off his back because I couldn’t hold it up.