Hunger (13 page)

He sat with his eyes closed, as if asleep, but he was pale and gaunt, his skin grey and dark arcs curving beneath his lashes.

He had given her blood from bags and then from his body, and by the looks of things he had substantially weakened himself in the process. For her. Why?

Eve pulled the needle out of her skin, grimacing as it tugged, and sat up with effort.

“Tor?”

He didn’t respond.

She shuffled to the edge of the double bed and tried to stand. Her legs gave out and she hit the pale carpet, a sharp jolt running through her bones and making her thigh ache.

Tor snapped awake and instantly launched from the chair, scooped her up as if she weighed nothing and set her back down on the bed.

“Are you alright?” he said, genuine concern warming his crimson eyes as he checked her over from head to toe.

He looked at the end of the tube on the floor and then at her arm. His pale eyebrows drew down above his beautiful eyes and the corners of his firm mouth dipped with them.

“You were meant to be resting.” He looked as if he was considering ordering her back into bed.

She had been worried for nothing. He was as strong as ever, and as bossy too.

“I’m fine.” The moment the words left her lips, he wavered and slumped back into the armchair.

A hazy smile curved his lips. “That’s good.”

He closed his eyes again and the back of his head hit the armchair.

Blood dripped from the end of the tube he had left in his arm, spotting the carpet.

Eve risked his wrath and took a scrap of bandage off the bed, slowly moved across the small strip of carpet to him, giving her legs time to adjust to her weight, and pressed the material to the inside of his elbow. She eased the needle from his skin, her stomach turning as it slid out of his flesh, and kept pressure applied.

Tor didn’t stir.

Her chest ached and a low thrumming went through her veins, a mounting sense of alarm setting her on edge.

There were empty blood bags on the bed and the floor, but he must have given her a large quantity of his own blood too. His eyes had been red. His fangs had been down. He had hurt himself by giving her so much of his blood, something she felt unworthy of because she knew she had needed extra because she had been refusing to drink from humans. Her behaviour had placed her in danger, and now Tor was in danger because of it too.

Her stomach squirmed and she tried to ignore it, tried to shut out the guilt and the pain.

Maybe she could do something to make things right.

She lifted her hand and touched Tor’s cheek, marvelling in how soft it was beneath the fine layer of pale stubble that coated his jaw.

His eyes opened slowly, wearily, the visible sign of his fatigue only worsening her guilt.

“Is something wrong?” he whispered, as if he couldn’t get his voice to go any louder. “Do you need something?”

Eve nodded.

“What?” He pushed himself up into a sitting position.

“I’m worried about you.” Admitting it to him didn’t make her feel any better, not even when he smiled, a real one. She had never seen him smile before. It made her insides quiver and heat.

“Don’t. I’m fine.”

The same lie she had used on him. He didn’t sound fine. His voice was low, scraping over gravel, husky and weary. This close, she could feel his fatigue too.

“Why did you give your blood to me?” she whispered, part of her afraid to know the answer to that question.

“You needed to regain strength quickly,” he murmured and blinked slowly. “I had thought to hunt for you, but you wouldn’t feed from me. You’re stubborn.”

“One of my many flaws.”

His lips quirked again and even she smiled this time. Stubborn was about right. She was surprised it had taken him this long to notice it, or perhaps he had seen it when they had first met but had held his tongue until now, when he was more comfortable around her.

Letting his guards down.

Her smile grew at that.

She had been trying to crack the barriers he had in place for days now. If she had known it would take her being near-death to shatter them, she might have tried that method earlier.

“I did what I had to in order to save you.” He lifted his hand a few inches and then let it fall back into his lap.

Eve took hold of it, brought it to her cheek and laid it there, knowing that was what he had wanted to do but his strength had failed him.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered and he shook his head and frowned.

“Don’t. I promised to keep you safe. I’m only keeping that promise.”

Eve dropped his hand, her heart stinging. He hadn’t given her blood because he cared for her. He had done it because he was under orders.

He smiled weakly and closed his eyes again. “I just need to sleep it off.”

She wasn’t convinced.

A brief flicker of a thought flitted through her head and she waited to feel repulsed by it.

The revulsion didn’t come.

Eve didn’t probe into it and ask herself why. She lifted her hand to his face, placing her wrist near his mouth. He slowly inhaled, frowned and opened his crimson eyes. They shifted to her wrist and he pushed it away.

“No. I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine,” Eve snapped and put her arm back. Her heart stung a little again. She hadn’t thought he would reject her offer, not when he knew how she felt about this sort of thing. She wanted to make it up to him and make him strong again, and this was the only thing she could do.

“Stubborn.” Tor closed his eyes. “I’ll be strong enough to hunt soon.”

She still wasn’t convinced. He looked so tired and couldn’t keep his eyes open for longer than a few seconds. It would be hours or more before he was strong enough to hunt without being in danger. She was offering him a chance to restore that strength, and he was damn well going to take it.

Eve shoved her wrist in his face again. “Feed, Tor. You need it. If you’re worried you’ll weaken me again, then only take a little… but I feel fine now, as if you gave me too much.”

She had never felt this strong and aware of everything. It was easy to sense people moving on the floors above and below them in the hotel, and hear noises clearly that would have been muffled before.

He whispered something like a curse in his dark language and opened his eyes again. They settled on her thigh, his intense scarlet gaze heating her skin there and making it quiver with awareness of him and the fact she wore only her t-shirt and underwear.

His voice dropped lower still. “You’re so tempting. You taste like heaven.”

Eve looked down at the bandage around her leg and realised that he must have sealed the wound on her thigh by licking it. Heat swept through her, burning up her blood. He had licked her there, so close to her underwear. He had swept his tongue across her skin.

The burning exploded into an inferno as a vision of him leaning over her and licking that spot, his strong back arched and muscular arms tensed as he braced himself above her, played out in her mind.

She shook her head to chase it away and avoided Tor’s steady gaze as she offered her arm again.

He frowned at her. “How can you accept a bite but refuse to feed?”

She didn’t have an answer to that question. She kept asking herself the same thing. All she knew was that the thought of Tor biting her didn’t make her want to run away. It made her want to step towards him.

“You need to learn to feed. Has no one taught you anything?”

She trembled as he slid his hand along the length of her arm and settled it around her elbow. He drew it towards him, every muscle on his honed bare torso shifting as he moved towards her at the same time. A fiery shiver swept through her when he dipped his head and licked the red spot where the needle had been.

She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to feed.”

She sounded too breathless. She cleared her throat and reined in her desire before it blazed out of control and made her do something crazy.

Tor lifted his head from her arm and met her gaze, his irises still crimson. “You don’t have a choice. As a human cannot live without food, you cannot live without blood. I can teach you.”

Eve pretended she hadn’t felt a sliver of temptation to accept that offer and shook her head. “Feed, Tor.”

He released her arm and sat back, leaving her unsteady on her legs without his support. She hadn’t realised how much she had been leaning into him until he had pulled away. Was she that eager for him to take her blood?

No, not eager for him to bite her. She was eager for something else, something more startling in a way. Something she had wanted from the moment he had swept into her life.

A taste of him.

“I’ll take your blood,” Tor said, his voice low and silken, persuasive. “If you take a little of mine in exchange.”

She immediately shook her head. “No. That’s ridiculous. I’m giving you blood to make you stronger. You need it. I don’t. I’m full, thank you.”

Her refusal sounded weak to her ears when her mind was flashing images of her licking Tor’s throat just as she had imagined countless times. Her fangs itched. She looked away from him, unwilling to let him see the struggle in her eyes and that she was losing the battle.

“You’ll be hungry if I take blood from you,” Tor continued, the silky persuasion in his voice beginning to sway her again, eliciting more images in her mind, ones that were becoming more risqué by the second. “I’m hungry now, and while I would try to take only a sip, I need more than a small quantity to appease my thirst. Once I taste you again, I’ll want my fill.”

She trembled, hot all over, her mind racing to imagine all the outcomes his wicked words promised. He was doing it on purpose, playing on her desire and goading her into it. He was trying to trick her into biting someone.

Biting him.

Just the thought made her knees threaten to buckle beneath her.

She grasped the arms of his chair to steady herself.

She couldn’t give in to the temptation of biting him, but he needed her blood to restore his strength and wouldn’t take it without the bargain. She wasn’t the only stubborn one. The only way to make him accept her blood was by making him think she would take his.

She would give him the blood he needed, and then she would back out of the exchange.

She nodded.

Her arm shook as she offered it again and she pulled down a hard, deep breath to battle her rising nerves. Tor noticed. He gently took hold of her wrist and smoothed his thumb over the inside, sending a shiver dancing up her arm.

“Relax,” he whispered, a soft seductive murmur designed to lure her into doing as he suggested, and one she found she couldn’t resist.

She moved closer, her knees brushing his, and let out her breath and her nerves with it. This was alien to her, went against every instinct she had as a hunter, but she could do it. She could make Tor strong again.

He closed his eyes, drew her arm up to his mouth, and swept his lips across her skin. Heat rippled outwards from where he touched her, the soft caress of his mouth threatening to undo her and unleash the dark desire that had been a constant companion since first setting eyes on him.

He trailed his lips from her wrist to her elbow and sank his fangs into the soft flesh close to it. Pain overwhelmed the heat, a sharp fire that burned her bones to ashes and shocked every nerve in her body. She gasped and ground her teeth, her stomach turning as she felt his first pull on her blood.

Tor removed his fangs and murmured against her skin, “Worst is over.”

She didn’t think it was, felt convinced he was lying to stop her from taking her arm away, until he wrapped his cool lips around the twin puncture wounds and sucked.

Fire the magnitude of which she had never experienced before blazed through her in response, her body heating to a thousand degrees, until she felt sure that she would melt into a puddle before he was done. Each pull he made on her blood cranked her temperature higher, made her breath come shorter, and her head spin harder.

Eve breathed fast and deep, lost in the haze coming over her.

The high.

It wasn’t just the way her body reacted to his feeding that created the high that carried her away.

It was how intimate it felt.

She had never felt this close to someone. Providing for him, sharing herself with him in order to make him stronger, was beautiful. It floored her, leaving her changed and knowing she would never feel the same again.

He was so gentle with her, cradling her arm in a soft grip and taking slow careful pulls on her blood. She couldn’t stop watching him, listening to his heavy breaths against her skin as he suckled her arm, not spilling a drop. She had never seen him breathe before. That he did so now, while drawing blood from her, connecting them as it flowed into his body, a little piece of her that he welcomed, made it all the more intense and erotic.

Tor lifted his head, his lips blush with her blood, tempting her. He licked them, capturing every last drop of her blood, as if he couldn’t bring himself to waste a single one. His eyes blazed crimson, as though her blood had set him on fire. She felt aflame, hot when she knew she couldn’t possibly be, dizzy with the riot of emotions and sensations colliding within her.

Her gaze fell to his throat and the pronounced line of his artery, and then dropped to her arm and the two perfect red dots on her pale skin. She hadn’t been prepared for how good it had felt or the words that bubbled up and escaped her lips.

“Will it hurt if I bite you?”

He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

“No,” he said, voice husky and throaty, filled with dark promise and need that she could see in his eyes as they held hers. He wanted her to bite him. God, he wanted it.

And damn her, she wanted it too.

Needed it.

Her gaze leaped back to his throat, breath coming faster and fangs dropping as she imagined sinking her teeth into him, feeling what he had experienced when he had bitten her. She needed to know the other side. She needed to know what he had felt when he had taken her blood.

“You just need to do it right and it will feel incredible, Eve,” he whispered, his deep voice curling around her, a wicked temptation that she couldn’t resist.