Page 4 of Lost and Bound
He finished his business and washed his hands, splashing water on his face. I could imagine it, moisture on my dry skin and in my parched mouth. Cool and soothing.
All I could think about was water.
And I needed a piss, too. Badly enough that my bladder ached.
He strolled back to the pallet, the chain rattling, and resettled himself against the wall, crossing his ankles and leaning back like he didn’t have a care in the world. He closed his eyes, blinking slowly, and then opened them slightly, a gleam of silver under blond eyelashes.
He didn’t seem eager to try to reach me. He hardly seemed to give a fuck about my presence in his cell one way or the other. Had the guards been trying to fuck with me? Maybe he wouldn’t do anything to me at all, if I moved into range.
“What did he mean?” I rasped. “Something to play with.”
He sat still and silent long enough that I started to wonder if he’d ever speak again. I shifted around, trying to relieve the ache in my belly, in my back, in my cramping legs.
“I can smell your blood,” he said at last, his voice as low and rusty as before. But he spoke softly, conversationally, like he’d made a remark on the weather. Goosebumps rose on my skin. “I can almost taste it on the air.”
And then it clicked. The scent of him that I hadn’t been able to identify…it wasn’t completely foreign, but I hadn’t been able to parse it, because of the conflicting information it was giving me.
Vampire. At least partly vampire, mixed in with the rich scent of a powerful alpha shifter, and tinged with raw, wild magic that I still couldn’t pin down. My blood, hot and rich and aromatic…I could feel every pulse of it through my veins, too quick, fluttering.
“I can smell how afraid you are, too,” he went on. “Terrified. And weak.”
“I’m not weak!” I cried, sounding…thin and reedy. Pathetic.
He chuckled and shook his head slightly, and I closed my eyes tightly, biting my lip raw.
I couldn’t possibly have said anything more calculated to reveal my weakness than that defensive, pitiful denial.
“We’ll see how you feel after another day without water.”
I opened my eyes.
They met his, that glow undiminished. Steady. Mesmerizing.
“You don’t want to kill me,” I whispered, my fists clenching. “Why would you? I’m a prisoner. Like you. I’ve never hurt you. We’re in this together.”
“Together?” His lips twisted in a sneer. “No. You’ve never hurt me. But I’m going to hurt you.”
It wasn’t a threat. Just a statement of fact.
Gods, we could find a compromise, couldn’t we? My mind spun in circles, faster and faster, panic starting to build.
“Feeding doesn’t have to hurt,” I said desperately through numb lips. “Vampires can make it…”Feel good, I didn’t say. But it was true, I’d heard. Being fed on could be ecstatic. I’d never tried it to find out for myself. Werewolves didn’t go around offering themselves up to vampires, and I didn’t submit to anyone, anyway. “It doesn’t have to hurt.”
The chain rattled as he shrugged slightly. “I’m not a vampire.”
I blinked at him. “I don’t understand.”
He bared his teeth at me. “You’ve spent some time upstairs, I’m guessing.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m not a vampire. I don’t know what I am,” he said roughly, and then stopped abruptly, as if he’d said more than he’d meant to. “Anyway, whatever vampires do to make their prey enjoy it, I can’t do it even if I gave enough of a fuck about you to want to.” Those massive shoulders moved a little as he shrugged again. “I’ll feed on you. And it’ll hurt.”
All right, okay, it’d hurt. I could take pain. I’d taken a lot of pain over the last couple of years, and here I was, still kicking.
Well, twitching, at least. Alive.
And fuck, but I really, really wanted to stay that way. What the hell was up with survival instincts? I ought to want to die. Part of me, a large part, the conscious part,didwant to die rather than live in this cell as this…creature’s…victim.
