Page 88 of Bought for Blood
“He wouldn’t take money. That was inconvenient.”
“Then what did he take?”
“Something I don’t need.”
I rest my hand on top of the cage. The metal is cold under my palm. My throat has gone tight, but I’m not letting him see me cry, so I look at the bird until it passes.
“You told me you paid a fortune for this,” I say. “For a bird that doesn’t work.”
“It works now.”
“But why would you give it to me?”
“Because I like giving you things. You loved the bracelet, didn’t you? And the emeralds.”
“Of course I did. And all the other stuff. I’m not ungrateful. I’m just curious.”
“Stop being curious and enjoy it.”
First the bracelet. Then a painting by an Old Master. Now the bird he loves more than anything. He’s stopped taking the one thing he ever wanted from me, and he can’t seem to stop giving me things instead. I don’t like what that looks like.
It looks like a man paying off a debt.
Or saying goodbye.
He lifts the cage out of my lap and sets it on the floor beside the chair, careful with it. Then he pulls me off my seat and into him.
I go. I don’t decide to. His hands come, and my body goes. That’s just how it is with us now.
He settles me against his chest with my legs over the arm of the chair. One hand rests between my shoulder blades. Then he stops.
I wait for it. His hand moving down my back. His mouth at my neck. The press of his teeth.
It doesn’t come. It never comes anymore, and I’ve stopped pretending I don’t miss it.
He holds me. That’s all he does. His arm around me, his chin somewhere above my head, and not one finger moving toward anything.
I don’t know what to do with a man who just wants me here.
“You can say something,” I tell his shirt.
“I don’t want anything tonight.”
“Nobody says that.”
“I’m saying it.”
“You’re a vampire. You always want something.”
“Yes.” His hand moves once between my shoulders. “I have it.”
I should leave it there. I don’t.
“You haven’t fed from me since that night.”
His hand stops on my back.
“No,” he says. “I haven’t.”
