Page 98 of Desired for Her Blood
Inhaling deeply, I absorb the sensations I haven’t experienced for seventy years, feeling overcome with more guilt at the pleasure.
My scalp tingles under my thick hair as if my skin cells are trying to reach through toward the rays, and as grief-filled as I am, something that feels like joy enters the quagmire of my emotions, unfurling through me as the natural heat penetrates.
My head tips back to let sun fall on my face, and I breathe deeply. Even the air in my lungs is different when warmed by the sun. I’d forgotten how that feels.
But my brief moment of joy is smashed by the scent of burning hair and flesh.
Ember’s body remains rigid and trembling in my arms. Every part of me wants to shield her from the burning rays—so life affirming for me, so damaging to her.
“Remain strong,” Zuben calls out. “She needs the pain to complete her transition. Thrice burned, thrice reborn!”
“I know it’s rough, buddy,” Ryker adds. “Tough it out.”
The men’s words fuel my courage to ignore my instinct to shield her from the obvious pain. My love’s features become unrecognizable under charred skin and her body blisters even where it’s under the water.
When will this be enough?
“A little longer,” Zuben says, as if I voiced my question, and I turn toward his voice, realizing that both men are in the water now too, but well back from the sunlight.
Fuck this. It’s enough.
With a strong kick, I join them, and the three of us keep her afloat between us, watching as her burn damage dissipates—thephysicaldamage in any case.
Her eyes snap open wide, and she gasps, sucking in air as if taking her first breath after near strangulation. Her face is still red, but the worst of the burn damage is already gone.
Her back arches, tipping her forehead back into the water, then she bends forward, jackknifing in the water.
“Ember!” I cry out, hope fighting fear for dominance inside me.
Her body convulses, her spine arching and curving in rapid succession, so quickly that the water churns around her. The three of us instinctively grab each other’s wrists to create a quasi platform beneath her to keep her from sinking.
“Is this normal?” Ryker asks Zuben.
He shakes his head. “How would I know?”
Fear wins the battle royale of emotions inside me, and I try to pull my wrists from the other men’s grips so that I can take her suffering, surely dying body into my arms.
But then, as suddenly as her writhing began, it stops.
Ember’s body stills, floating peacefully in the water, her eyes closed, her skin and hair back to normal—better than normal in my eyes. To me, Ember is beauty personified.
But will she ever wake?
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Ember
Intense pain consumes me,alternating between scalding flames and ice shards. My body flails, heavy with agony, and yet weightless, like I’m floating in air—or in water?
I sense my men around me, but can’t see them, can’t see anything. And yet I can feel their soothing presence supporting me, surrounding me, giving me the will to push through this pain to the other side.
The other side.
Even if the other side is death, I want to get there, but it’s too far away, unreachable through this impenetrable prison of pain. A prison from which I’ll never escape.
I surrender myself to the anguish, yield to the agony, become one with it—and as I do, my body relaxes.
Truly weightless now, I float on the sea of support created by the three men who surround me. My strength, my fuel, my loves. Energy and pleasure slowly permeate my pain, overtake me cell by cell, feeding me with joy, power and contentment like I’ve never known. If this is death, I accept it.
