Page 47 of The Hunger
I consumed everything. At least, it should have been everything. But the more I ate, the more there was. An endless supply of sexual energy at my fingertips. The other emotions I stole from him weren’t as consistent. They surged and faded as I fed, delicious accompaniments to the main course.
Submerged in my gluttony, I barely noticed the glittery snow falling around us or the fact that Fenris didn’t set me down to undress before entering the cave. I very much noticed, though, when he dropped me into the first hot spring.
I came up sputtering and gasping.
“Are you ready to listen now?” he asked.
Wiping my eyes, I saw him squatting beside the pool.
“Me?”
I thrust my hands out of the water, dousing him.
“Feel better?” he asked, water dripping from his hair.
“Hardly! I warned you it was dangerous for me to feed on you, but did you listen? No. You tricked me, and I still don’t know how or why. Why, Fenris? You weren’t supposed to be like everyone else. I thought you were my friend. But it was all what? Lies? Some trick or game to cause trouble?”
I could feel his building frustration and, under that, growing anger.
“Will you just stop and listen for two seconds?”
“All I’ve been doing is listening to you. Don’t run from your problems, Eliana. Stand up for yourself, Eliana. Have fun, Eliana.” My scowl faded with the rise of my desperation. “What did I do to start your fascination with me? We need to end it before you get any worse, Fenris. Please.”
He took a deep breath and looked down at his hands. I was pretty sure he mumbled “impossible” before lifting his gaze again.
“Do you know why I wanted to meet your parents so badly? I wanted to meet the shell of a man with hollow cheeks and a dull look in his eyes who raised you for twelve years. But that wasn’t who I met. I met a man in love with his wife, struggling to understand a previously-unknown-to-him world. A world with completely different rules. He wasn’t hollow or dull. He was alert and caring and a little afraid. Which just makes him smart.
“And when we talked, it wasn’t just about your mom. It was about you and all the things he was learning. He was curious and asked about me. Knowing about my species had nothing to do with Nicolette and her needs. That was his need.
“So tell me again how your kind are nothing but life-stealing monsters, and I’ll tell you why I had to use underhanded means to feed a succubus so stubbornly biased against her own kind that she was willing to starve herself to death.”
I couldn’t say anything, stunned by the vehemence in his tone and the truth in his words. Dad had been normal during the breakfast we’d had with my parents. But that didn’t mean I was wrong about what a succubus could do to a person. Dad had been a mess during my childhood. I didn’t dream up all the nights I cared for him. But then I remembered my dad’s admission that he’d been hiding from the truth of what Mom was for all those years. That he’d been an angry, weak man unable to cope with reality.
It had sounded like something Mom would want him to say.
But other memories were insistently abrading my brain. Mom telling him to apologize to me and him flat-out telling her no. Mom’s reaction to my self-doubt and how she’d yelled for Dad to get the car so she could kill Adira. And Dad had essentially told her to sit down and shut up.
Fenris was right. That wasn’t a shell of a man without his own thoughts. But how? Why? Had his behavior after Mom left truly been all him? Is that why, after a week in her company, he was acting more human and less obsessed than ever?
Yet, I knew what my kind could do. I’d seen the way men and women begged for Mom to return to them. But after they were mind wiped?
“I don’t know what to think anymore.”
Fenris let out a long breath and slid into the water with me, jeans and all.
“Come here, Eliana.”
I shook my head.
“Maybe you’re right,” I said, “and I’ve been wrong all these years about the long term-effects of sustained feedings. But I’m not wrong about the short-term ones. I’ve seen how people are before they get mind wiped. I’m not turning you into a mindless puddle, Fenris. I know I need to eat. I’m not trying to starve myself. I’m just trying to figure out how to feed without hurting anyone.”
Fenris studied me for a moment.
“Do I look hurt to you?” His gaze locked with mine as he started to swim closer.
Panic hit me hard as I read the intent in his expression, and I scurried backward. His eyes narrowed, and before I could reach the side of the pool, he rushed for me. With a squeal, I tried to lift myself out, but he was far too fast. An arm snaked around my waist, and my fingers left the ledge. Water engulfed me, and suddenly stone pressed against my back.
“Don’t run, Eliana.”
