Jess Haines - Forsaken By the Others

I would’ve answered, but I was a bit too busy trying to pull him back to nibble on my ear some more. I pouted when he drew back despite my urging him to continue.

That earned another wicked twinkle in his eye and a razor smile that made my heart do a funny little leap in my chest. My cheeks burned at his next comment.

“Be glad of my constraint, Ms. Waynest. If I had waited much longer to drag you to my bed, you might not have survived my efforts to scrub every other partner you’ve ever had out of your mind. When I return, I intend to finish what I started. Be ready.”

He turned away. I huffed and, with my newfound resolve not to be afraid of him, found it in me to slap his ass as a parting shot. My God, I had to be insane; he was going to kill me for that—

The look he shot me over his shoulder was dark and full of promise, a hint of fang visible in his grin. It was all the things he didn’t say in that heated look that made me burn with a flash of desire. Much to my surprise, this left me breathless and quivering in anticipation instead of from holy-hell-I’m-going-to-pee-my-pants-before-I-die terror. He grabbed a towel to wrap around his waist and disappeared into the bedroom.

Maybe a bit disappointed, but no less enthusiastic for what would no doubt happen once he returned, I took my time picking out which product to use to get soaped up like he’d mentioned.

The shower was gigantic, and the selection of skin and hair care products looked like it belonged in a spa. Some of them didn’t have labels, and I took my time enjoying taking in the unusual scents and rubbing the different oils between my fingers to see what would work best for what I had in mind.

I sat down on the marble bench that ran along the wall, closing my eyes and enjoying the warm spray as I rubbed some vanilla-and-something-scented shampoo into my hair. While I was massaging my scalp, something stung my eyes. Figuring it was just some soapsuds, I rinsed a hand off and splashed some water on my face. The sting didn’t alleviate.

The tickle in my throat grew worse as I scrubbed furiously at my eyes. When I managed to squint them open, I spotted a mix of blood and black crud on my fingers being rinsed away.

Coughing, I pressed a hand under my nose. The warm wetness there was from another nosebleed, not the shower spray. Crap.

It wasn’t as bad as it had been while I was hiding with the White Hats, but it was still nasty. I stuck my face under the spray and groped for a washcloth, scrubbing the residue from the corners of my eyes and around my nose.

A cold hand closed on my upper arm and yanked me back, another soon pressing against my jaw to tilt my head back. It hurt too badly to open my eyes, but I wasn’t afraid.

Well, maybe I was a little afraid.

Shut up; you’d squeak like that too if you couldn’t see who was grabbing at you while you were naked in someone else’s shower.

“When did this start?”

Royce’s voice was sharp, cutting. I wasn’t expecting it and coughed a few times before stammering out a response. “Just a minute ago. I’m fine. Let go!”

He did release my arm, but only so he could cup my face in both hands this time. “Did this happen last night? Is this what happened before you came here?”

I nodded. He swore and crushed me against his chest. The combination of hot/cold from the shower and his body was suddenly discomfiting—almost more so than the pain under my eyelids and building in my sinuses—but didn’t compare to the sudden fear that the vampire knew more about what was going on in my body than I did. Why else would he be clutching at me like I was his favorite set of pearls?

Between coughs, my voice shook with not a little fear. It was hard to say whether I was more afraid of this strange sickness, or of what Royce might know about it. “What’s happening to me?”

“It may be your body still fighting off the lycanthropy virus. What I tasted in your blood last night—I assumed it would fade over time.”

I still couldn’t open my eyes, but I would have glared at him had I been able. Snarling, I punched his shoulder, though it was about as effective as hitting a stone statue. “You asshole! You knew there was still something wrong with me last night and didn’t say anything?”

His grip shifted from my jaw to my upper arms, keeping me from twisting away or hitting him again. “Stop this foolishness. Do you know how unusual it is for someone to be both bound to a vampire—two vampires—and then infected with lycanthropy? I did not want to start you needlessly worrying about something that we may not be able to change. I don’t want to meddle with your blood and can’t be certain what side effects you will experience, because this does not happen. You are an anomaly, Shiarra. A very unusual anomaly, and all of the normal methods I would use to deal with human sickness do not apply here.”

I would have plied him with more questions, but a more severe bout of coughing wracked my body. He helped ease me to the tiled floor as I bent double, a pulsing pain building in my stomach and sinuses. The cramping wasn’t so bad, but the abrupt onset of the sinus headache made my head feel like it would split in two.

The water washed away the secretions of blood and whatever the hell the black stuff was. When Royce realized I was clutching at my head because of the pain there, he carefully moved my fingers and gently stroked over the parts where the pressure was the worst. He could probably see the black stuff under my skin, because he knew exactly where to rub. It helped, because the choking wave of crud that flooded out of my nose and mouth a minute later made the headache all but disappear. Though I was still coughing, breathing came much easier, and the stinging in my eyes, nose, ears, and throat was fading far faster than it had the night before.

The vampire gathered my trembling hands in his and pulled me to him, using the cloth I’d dropped to carefully wipe the stuff from around my eyes and mouth. Blinking a few times, then squinting at him through my lashes, I took in the angry knot between his brows and the way his jaw muscles had tensed. He wouldn’t meet my eyes, but I could still tell his thoughts were racing by the determined way he stared at me.

I said his name, the sound mangled by the lingering crud lining my esophagus. Then cleared my throat, trying again. “What’s happening to me?”

“You,” he said, voice thick with what sounded like regret, “are no longer entirely human. Nor are you quite Other. This is some kind of transition. I cannot say how long this will last, or what the end result will be.”

Tears—real ones this time—trickled down my cheeks, mixing with the condensation from the shower.

“I would not have asked you to become permanently bound to me until you had more time to adjust, but it is possible if you take more of my blood that it will keep you from succumbing to whatever this sickness is. I cannot promise it will work, but it may help.”

Swiping my hand under my nose, I closed my eyes and bowed my head. I’d already known that I’d chosen a hard road, but I hadn’t expected my descent into becoming less than human would include permanent servitude to the vampire. Or, at least, that it would come this soon.

While I would remain attracted to him for the rest of my life, no matter what I’d felt about him before, and while he could call me to his side or influence me in other ways if we were in close proximity, agreeing to being permanently bound was a whole new ball game. I wasn’t ready to take a leap off the edge of that cliff.

“I can’t, Royce. Not now. Not this soon.”

He didn’t say anything else, just held me, the two of us silent and unmoving as the water sluiced over us and washed the last remnants of the black liquid off our skin.