Page 29 of Just for a Taste

This was nothing like donating blood. This was intimate and vulnerable for both parties. A soft whimper escaped my lips, and instinctively he pressed his lips to me harder and began drinking more feverishly. My legs began to shake, and the shaking traveled up my body. When my arm faltered, his free hand traveled up my dress and between my legs to grip the back of my thigh so tightly, the keen pain of his fangs on my arm was mirrored by his nails digging into me.

He scooped me close, chest heaving, his body surging with electricity. I moaned, soft and quivering.

We sat like that for only a few seconds. When he separated from me and pressed a piece of gauze against my wrist, a mixture of relief and disappointment struck me. He retreated into the darkness, expression flat.

It appeared nothing had happened at all. Or maybe that it meant nothing.

I touched my shaking fingers to the indents on the back of my thigh and trailed my fingertips across the grooves. The heat of his hands still lingered, and the remaining blood in my body rushed to my face, burning the tips of my ears. I fell to my knees, cupped my face in my hands, and squeezed my eyes shut. Humiliation washed over whatever I had been feeling.

The noises I had made! The way my body had reacted! To have acted so lewdly with a man I barely knew, who likely had no interest in me in that way, was beyond humiliating. In a matter of seconds, I feverishly planned my resignation from this position, along with my subsequent move to some remote cabin in the woods, where I would never see another living soul.

As I was midway through my mental packing list, something I didn’t notice before caught my attention. I held my breath, listened beyond the heartbeat in my ears, and peeked through my fingers. Despite Duca de’ Medici’s cool appearance when he’d stalked back across the room, I heard his heavy breathing; I could smell the intermingling of sweat and cologne. He had unbuttoned the collar of his shirt down to his sternum and flung himself onto his sofa. Even with only the flickers of candlelight across his features, I could see his normally opalescent face was bright as a tomato.

I caught his eye, and he quickly shifted into the darkness. “You can go now.”

I stood quickly, staggered back a few steps, and cried, “Yes, of course, thank you!” before rushing to the door.

I slammed it behind me, shielding myself from the peculiar dimension I had clearly wandered into. I crashed into someone immediately.

I fell onto my ass hard and hit my head against the door.

“Shit,” I hissed between my teeth, my hand bounding to a freshly blossoming knot on the back of my head.

Since when was it such a challenge to remain standing? I squinted into the light, saw the blurry figure of a hand reaching out toward me, and grasped it. As I rose to my feet once more and my vision adjusted, Doctor Ntumba came into view.

“You’re going to need an ice pack and some ibuprofen for that,” she said with a frown.

I rubbed the bump again and winced. It had already grown. But that wasn’t my concern right now. I had forgotten Doctor Ntumba had been waiting in the hall for me. I had forgotten anything but he and I existed.

Chapter 14: Diminuendo

Irequired a full bag of saline after the vampire drank directly from me for the first time. Duca de’ Medici had been far too greedy, Doctor Ntumba later informed me, but I could have discerned as much. The world was a blur of sound and color, and I could only gather snippets of Doctor Ntumba’s snappy Italian scolding.In my current state, I could not translate.

She carried me into my room and gave me the IV in my bed. I drifted in and out of sleep until the following afternoon, strange, staccato dreams broken apart by a handful of minutes where I would drowsily listen to birdcalls outside my window until I fell back into slumber. Even after I recovered, I struggled to resume my studies for the rest of the week. My focus had waned entirely, all thanks to Duca de’ Medici’s confusing behavior.

We had shared a noteworthy few days, I thought, and yet I had hardly seen him at all since. He did not even allow me brief daily glimpses or stilted conversation around the abbey like he had at the beginning of my stay. I saw him through my window at night once, stalking around the grounds and scrawling furiously in a notebook. But even if I had the chance, I wouldn’t have called out to him. No, instead I had relegated myself to replaying every moment together over and over in the desperate hope of finding where I had gone wrong. Had it been how pathetic I looked, bawling in front of him in the aviary? What if I had been too informal and offended him? Most horrifyingly of all, was it my reaction to his teeth plunging into me?

I tried to speak with Doctor Ntumba about it once, but she pointedly changed the topic. The way everyone was dancing around the question, I was alone in trying to answer it.

Signora Carbone and Signore Urbino had also been unusually absent. Prior to that first feeding, I saw them daily, and now I only crossed their paths when I went through the gardens for meals. Even then, they always huddled together, muttering inaudibly to one another.

Lucia noticed the difference in me long before the others. She pointed out the torrents in my moods as astutely as a weatherwoman, and sometimes I swore she could predict where they were going from one morning to the next. At one point, I theorized that she was gossiping with Signora Carbone about the differences in the music I checked out. Maybe she was mentally cataloging how much I was eating, or perhaps I was that easy to read. Regardless, I quickly came to appreciate her jokes and the general pleasantness of her company.

“Would you like to go on a walk, or have dinner with me?” I asked her one day during my bath. She was scrubbing me gently today, which meant she could tell today had been difficult for me. She paused what she was doing and gave me a strange look.

My face felt warmer than the water. “What is it?”

Lucia smiled, then picked up my other arm and resumed her scrubbing. “I never expected you to ask me that, signorina. How come?”

I shrugged, lowered myself into the water past my chin, and blew bubbles out of my nose.

“Signora Carbone says you’ve been so needy because you don’t have teatime anymore.” Lucia’s tone was light.

Needy? I had been called many things in the past by many people—distant, reserved, avoidant.Needywas a first. I wasn’t sure how it made me feel.

I sat up in the tub, and to my dismay, the minute movement had a dramatic effect. Water rushed to fill the space I had left, a cascade of bubbles rolled down my arms, and steam rolled out around me. “I’m done with my bath, Lucia.”

“I’m sorry, Signorina Cora!” Lucia cried, holding up her hands. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

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