Page 32 of From the Shadows
“I’ve reached out to Ms. Connelly. She’s in the process of setting up donors. Mr. Biggs, the boss, is willing to pay people whatever it takes to get them to line up.”
“Diego won’t be happy about this,” Borne muttered. “He toldme he appreciates the bagged stuff, but he doesn’t want to take it from living humans.”
“Well, he’ll have to deal!” Shay snapped, irritated over the fact that… what? They were going to find people for Diego to feed from? That Diego might not be happy he had to feed from others? He had no idea why he was angry, but he was. “He has a son waiting on him, and if he’s going to let something like this take him away from Jeremy, he can fuck all the way off!”
“I agree with Shay,” Ranna said. “Diego is, for better or worse, a vampire. It’s kind of in the job description that he will be drinking blood one way or another.”
Borne held his hands up. “I’m just saying.”
“At least he’ll be alive to be pissed off,” Dr. Oliver muttered.
And the comment sobered Shay. Diego couldn’t die. He had Jeremy to worry about and… okay, fine. Although he wouldn’t admit it to anyone, Shay enjoyed it when Diego cared for him too.
Jeremy’s words came back to him.“You like him.”
And God help him, Shay did.
Chapter 10
The procedure was painless,just as the doctor had said. They opened a vein in Shay’s leg, popped in a tube, which was held against Diego’s mouth by tape, and let the sap run free. For the first several minutes, it didn’t seem as though anything was happening as Shay’s blood pooled in Diego’s mouth, but then he gulped greedily, sucking hard on the tube. Dr. Oliver stood nearby, waiting for Diego’s hunger to subside, at least a little.
“Ms. Connelly has five people waiting already,” Dr. Oliver told Shay as he lay on the table. “Once we have Diego stabilized, we’ll bring them in one by one.”
“Can’t I give him more?” Shay asked, suddenly desperate to help Diego.
“I’m afraid not. Your body needs time to regenerate the blood cells, or you’ll be at risk for complications.”
Shay wasn’t sure he cared. He needed Diego to be okay. Had to see him with Jeremy. Had to be with… him. Fuck, where was that coming from? Yeah, Diego was sexy and all, but why was Shay lusting so hard? He’d never felt like this with anyone else.
“Dr. Oliver? If I ask a question, can it be strictly confidential?”
“Of course.”
But it was becoming hard to think. The more of Shay’s blood that entered Diego’s body, the more muddled his mind was getting.
“I’m having… thoughts about Diego.”
“What kind of thoughts?”
“You know….thosekinds of thoughts.”
Dr. Oliver cocked his head, and then his eyes went wide. “Oh!Thosethoughts. I’m not sure why. Unless… has Diego fed from you before?”
“What? No, of course—wait.” A fuzzy memory of Shay’s meeting with Diego not long after arriving at the mansion rose up. Surely it couldn’t have been that, though. It had only been that one time, and he hadn’t gotten much more than a drop or two of blood. “Before we got the blood bags, his fang nicked my neck. He only had a taste, if even that, because he pulled back right away.”
“Oh.” Dr. Oliver’s brow wrinkled as he frowned. “Well, this complicates matters, I’m afraid.” He came around and stood in front of Shay. He seemed fuzzy, like he wasn’t all there. Or maybe it was Shay that wasn’t. His head was swimming. “Okay, let me see if I can explain this. When a vampire feeds off a human, it creates a connection between them. In bygone days, a vampire would use this link to make the subject more pliable so they wouldn’t freak out to find someone with fangs buried in their necks. When they took the fill of blood, they’d break the link, and the human wouldn’t remember it. I’m not saying this is how it went, but if Diego ingested any of your blood, even just a drop, and didn’t complete the act, that connection might still be at work between the two of you. Has it always been like this, or do you feel it intensifying?”
Shay had always thought Diego was sexy. From the minute he opened the door and snarled at Shay, he’d been hot. Still, over the last few months, he’d become keenly aware of Diego’s presence. That big, solid body that seemed to seek Shay out more often than before.
“I….” He hedged. “I’m not sure. My mind is so foggy right now.”
“Foggy?” He opened Shay’s eyelid and flashed a light into it. “How long has this been going on?”
Shay tried to recall when it started. “It’s been a while, I think. Not bad, just annoying. I’ve been taking aspirin and that seemed to help, but now my head is pounding.”
He put two fingers on the side of Shay’s face. “Shay? Look at me. What color are my glasses?”
He squinted hard, trying to focus, but everything was fuzzing in and out. “Black? Maybe blue?”
