“That’s just it. If it’s just the same, you can test whether you can stop. And… even if you can’t, here, this time, I… won’t be angry with you. We’ll just know that it’s not an option. But I think you can.”
“Nothing can stop me, if I start,” he said desolately.
“Yes. You can stop you. So I can stop you. I’d say, No, can’t spare any right now and you’d stop and go back to the horrible stuff from the blood bank.”
His gaze turned from its inward lock, and a smile warmed them without quite reaching his lips.
“You trust me that much?” he said quietly.
“I trust you that way with other things. You’re a lot stronger than I am physically, and I always knew that, so I trusted you every time I got into bed with you, or even was alone with you. Trusted you not to hurt me; trusted you not to make me do anything I really didn’t want to. I couldn’t physically stop you; I had to rely on your being a… good person. How’s this different?”
“I… the need is very strong,” he said softly. “And I’m not a good person. I just try to act like one.”
“Adrian, that’s what a good person is; someone who controls what they do. You’re what you do, not what you think about doing. And even your crazy sister can stop feeding on me when she decides to, and she doesn’t care about me at all, not really. I trust you with my life.”
“You would have to,” he said somberly. “I… don’t… Who could be worthy of that?”
“Adrian, you’ve got the Power. If we’re going to live together, the only way I can do it is knowing you won’t use it on me against my will. But you can’t stop being what you are.”
“Ellie, more than anything, I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I know. I really believe that now. That’s why we should try this. But not if you say no. It’s got to be both of us.”
He turned on his stomach and put his face in his hands; she could feel his back shake with muffled sobs as she stroked it.
“It’s all right, Adrian. Whatever you decide, it’s all right.”
She cuddled against him. Gradually the tremors ceased. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand as he turned over to face her, unselfconsciously.
I haven’t often seen a man who can do that, she thought.
He regarded her levelly, the gold flecks in his irises glinting a little. “You are sure?”
“Yes. Well, I’m feeling fluttery and breathing quickly and my heart’s racing, but yeah, I’ve decided I want to try it. Bite me, for God’s sake. That’s an order.”
She brought their faces together. “I need to do this with someone I love, too.”
One arm went under her shoulders. She let her head fall back against his biceps and arched her neck again. Then she put her arms around his shoulders, hand behind head.
“Do it.”
The mouth touched her throat, and she felt the familiar motion of the lips and tongue arranging the angle.
The feeding bite is verra precise.
For a single instant a stab of cold terror went through her, like ice water in her chest and stomach, and something inside her screamed:
What… are… you… doing! Nonononono!
Then the teeth, hard against the skin, and a faint growl, rumbling, deeper than Adrienne’s. The sting of the cut, as the incisors moved in their exact lateral slice. Instantly the fear vanished. Warmth surged through her, deeper as she made no resistance. The blood flowed strongly under the hard insistent suction of the feeding, but she could move a little, though lights swam in front of her eyes. Her free hand stroked his throat, feeling the swallows. Peace was utter and complete, a fulfillment that needed nothing more.
“Oh, yes,” she murmured. “Yes. Take it. Take what you need.” She waited for a time that stretched. Then: “That’s enough, lover,” she whispered.
Nothing changed, except that his grip on her shoulder tightened. She tugged at his head and pushed at his jaw-feebly, the lightest touch against the ruthless predator’s strength she felt. Her mind forced her lips to move: “That’s enough. Adrian, stop. Stop! ”
One more long moment… and his mouth broke away from her neck with a small wet sound, and he rolled over onto his back, shuddering. The cut itched fiercely for a moment, then almost vanished; she was just barely aware of it.
Ellen gave an exultant wiggle. “Oh, my,” she murmured, and raised herself on one elbow to look down at him.
His eyes were closed; there was a slight smile on his lips, where beads of her blood glistened darker than rubies in the firelight.
“Your mind was like… moonlight making a path on water,” he said.
“You say the nicest things,” she chuckled, and leaned down to kiss him.
The blood tasted of salt and metal, like the sea but with a hint of organic muskiness.
“I wish I could taste that the way you do,” she said, with her hands on his shoulders.
“I think… here… you can. Let me try.”
His hand buried itself in her tangled gold hair and held their foreheads together. There was a tickling behind her eyes…
“Oh! ” she said.
Like golden light poured down the throat until the tongue tingled with it, like the taste of song, like the thing that wine tried and tried and failed to be, like an infant’s memory of mother’s milk, and caramel and spices and the first sip of darkly rich hot chocolate on a winter’s day.
“Oh, God, no wonder you want it!” she blurted.
His eyes opened. “Now you know.”
“Now we know.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“So, any contact?”
“Yes,” Adrian said.
He finished dressing and leaned against the musty-sour smelling wall of the motel room and hissed as he cautiously stretched the healing leg. The Power could speed the process, but he still needed to make sure there weren’t adhesions if he was going to recover full use. The pain was deep but not shrill; he monitored it carefully.
Pain is just a sensation. Let it go by without paying too much attention. It’s paying attention to pain that hurts.
“OK, that was informative,” Harvey said dryly.
Adrian grinned. “I had a nice long chat with Ellen.”
And fortunately woke up first, so I could attend to the… evidence.
“She’s… nothing worse has happened to her. Except that Adrienne forced her to spend a day shopping together. Adrienne was buying her clothes and seeing to her hairdo.”
Harvey’s worn face scrunched. “Hell, that’s a new one, and I thought I was something of an expert on Shadowspawn brutality. ’Course, it would only be hell for me to be forced to spend a day looking at clothes ’n’ shoes and shit. Lots of females like that stuff.”
“How perceptive. You were divorced three times, Harv. I wonder why? At least I like shopping, within reason.”
“They all left you too!”
“Yes, but that was because I wasn’t human, not because I was but did it badly like you, my old. To a woman, forced shopping is probably a subtle but horrible form of psychosexual dominance behavior.”
“I think I liked you better depressive,” Harvey said dryly. “Why so cheerful?”
“Amid the dresses and pantyhose, Adrienne had lunch with Michiko… and Dale Shadowblade.”
“Oooohhh, shit.” The humor died out of Harvey’s eyes. “That is one mean motherfucker, even in the crowd he
