Page 89 of Bought for Blood

“Why not?”

“You know why.”

“I know what you told me. You lost control, and it won’t happen again.” I sit up enough to see his face. “Fine. I’m fed now. I’m strong. I’m sitting in your lap. So either you’re afraid, or you don’t want me anymore. Which is it?”

He holds my eyes.

“Wanting you has never been the problem,” he says.

“Then feed.”

“Not tonight.”

I stop talking after that. There’s nowhere left to go that doesn’t end in the same two words.

The fire goes down in the grate, and neither of us gets up to fix it. My cheek is on his chest, and there’s no heartbeat under my ear. That used to bother me. Now the quiet of him is the steadiest thing I’ve got.

My hands are open on his shirt. I don’t remember them letting go of it.

At some point I stop listening for the door.

I sleep. I’m not sure how long I’m out. It can’t be long. I come back with my face creased against his shirt and his hand on my back. My first thought is that I fell asleep on a vampire, and my second is that I don’t care.

“Serenity.”

“Mm.”

“Tell me about your sister.”

I go still against him.

He’s never brought her up since that first dinner, when I asked him to find out what happened to her and he told me he’d look into it. Nothing ever came of it. I’ve said her name to him twice more since then, and both times he let it lie there, and I was almost grateful. Because the answer to that question might be something I don’t want to hear.

“Why?”

“I’d like to know about her.”

I sit up so I can see him. He lets me.

“She’s smaller than me,” I say. “Everyone always thought she was the younger one. She isn’t. She used to climb into my bed during storms, right up until she was about fifteen. Then she stopped, and I never found out why.” My voice stays level. “She’s better at controlling the glamour than I am. Much better. Our grandmother used to say Grace could walk out of a room while you were looking at her.”

His hand tightens once on my back.

“Serenity,” he says.

“Yes?”

His mouth opens, and then it closes.

“What?” I say.

Silence.

“Bastien. What?”

“Nothing.” He puts his hand under my jaw and lifts my face. For a second I think this is it, this is the feeding, and my whole body leans into the thought before it lets go again. “Eat something tonight. Marthe’s cooked for eight again.”

“You had a whole other sentence ready before that one.”