Skin Trade

“So it’s not that I fed, but that you did something strenuous afterward,” I said.

“Yes, it would have been good to simply sleep afterward, or feed myself.”

“Would feeding help?” I asked.

He nodded, while his body trembled in an effort to stay leaning against the wall. Even with my hands to steady him, he was still in trouble.

“I can’t leave you like this, Truth. Either you have to come with me, and let the cops keep you safe, or…” I did not want to open a vein for him. I’d done it once before to save his life when he’d been stabbed with a silver blade trying to help me and the police catch a very bad vampire, but I didn’t like playing walking blood bank. But there was no way that Grimes and his men would want a vampire inside their place. How would I explain him to the other cops, and how did I explain what was wrong with him? When opening a vein is the lesser evil, you need to rethink your priorities.

“Take blood from me,” I said.

“You don’t donate to anyone.” His voice was rough, and his legs began to give. I helped ease him to a sitting position, with his back solid against the building.

“Not usually, but this is an emergency, just like me needing to feed the ardeur on you.”

He gave me fluttery eyes.

I held his face between my hands. “Damn it, Truth, don’t you dare pass out on me!”

His eyes opened wide, and I watched him fight to do what I’d ordered. I did the only thing I could think of; I offered him my left wrist. It would hurt more than the neck, but it would be easier to hide from the other policemen.

“I am not vampire enough to cloud your mind. I can only hurt you.”

“Feed, damn it,” I said.

He raised shaky hands and wrapped one of them around my wrist at the hand, and used the other to scoot the sleeve of his jacket away from the wrist. The sleeves were big enough on me that he had no problem pushing the leather out of the way and baring my lower arm.

I braced for the bite, then blew out a breath and tried to relax into it. If I tensed up it would hurt more, just like a shot.

Truth opened his mouth wide, so I had a glimpse of fangs before he struck. I tensed at the last minute; I just couldn’t help it. I was caught between the sharp immediacy of the pain and the sensation of his mouth locked around my wrist, forming a tight seal, while the fangs dug in deeper. The deeper part hurt, but his mouth on my wrist, and the sucking, felt good. I’d been feeding Jean-Claude and Asher more often in the last few months, and apparently my body had started translating feeding into pleasure. I’d started associating it with sex, because with Jean-Claude and Asher, we’d made the blood part of our foreplay, and sometimes part of our intercourse. I hadn’t realized until this moment how much that had colored how I felt about this whole thing.

I stood there, caught between pain and pleasure, while my body tried to decide which box to put it in. Truth sat up, away from the wall, his hands so strong around my arm, his mouth feeding harder, his throat swallowing, swallowing me down.

I had to put a hand on the wall to keep me kneeling and not falling over, because my head had finally decided that it felt good. Good enough that I was getting weak-kneed.

It was Truth who stopped, pulling his mouth away from my wrist. He kept his hands on my arm and laid his forehead against my skin. I leaned into the cool concrete of the wall, heavier, fighting not to give into that weak-kneed feeling. I was wet, my body prepped for what usually came afterward. When was the last time I’d let a vampire take blood when sex wasn’t involved? I couldn’t remember. I didn’t donate blood outside sex. Shit.

Truth’s voice was still rough but not breathy, a little deeper. It wasn’t sickness or tiredness that deepened his voice. “You taste… your energy… You didn’t taste this way when you fed me last.”

“You were dying. You just don’t remember.”

He raised his face and looked at me. His eyes glowed flat silver-gray in the dimness. “A vampire doesn’t forget the taste of blood, Anita. Something has changed in you since we first met.” He licked the wound on my arm, one long, sensual movement. He closed those shining eyes and licked his lips, as if to catch every drop of blood. The wound was still bleeding, and would for a while, because of the anticoagulant in vampires’ saliva.

“Let go of my arm, Truth,” I said, and my voice was a little uncertain. He wasn’t acting like himself, and I didn’t like the idea that my blood tasted different. What did that mean?

He opened his eyes but didn’t move his hands. He stared up at me with his eyes gone blind with vampire powers. “I feel amazing, Anita. Your blood has more kick to it than a shapeshifter’s does.”

“Let go of me, Truth, now.” My voice was firmer this time.

He smiled and let me go.

I pushed away from him, using the wall to stand. I’d never seen Truth smile, not like that.

He just sat there against the wall, smiling up at me.

“Are you drunk?” I asked.

“Maybe.” He smiled happily.

I’d seen only one vampire react like that, and that one had taken a feeding from both Jason and me. Werewolf with a chaser of necromancer had made Jean-Claude giggling drunk.

“I need to go, Truth.”

“Go,” he said, his smile wide.

“I need to know you’re all right before I leave you.”

“Oh,” he said, and he stood, in one of those too-fast-to-see movements. One minute on the ground, the next standing. Vampires are quicker than human-normal, but for the standing trick, they have to use vampire mind powers to appear that fast. If I’d had a gun, I’d have tried to aim it, just out of habit.

I had moved back out of reach, but after that speed, I knew that it did me no good. “Shit,” I said.

“I didn’t mean to frighten you, but as you can see, I’m very all right.”

My heart was in my throat. “That wasn’t mind tricks,” I managed to say.

“You mean the speed?” he asked.

“Yeah, the speed.”

“No,” he said.

“I’ve never seen a vampire that could move quite like that.”

He gave a little bow from the neck. “High praise from you, but it was a trait of our bloodline.”

“You mean the speed without mind tricks, all of your bloodline could do it?”

“Yes.”

“No wonder you were the warrior elite. That’s faster than most lycanthropes.”

“Once, if the vampire council wanted shapeshifters killed, they sent our bloodline.”

“But now you and Wicked are the last, right?”

He nodded.

“I’ve seen you fight; you weren’t this fast.”

“I haven’t felt this good in a long time.” He stretched his arms skyward, making the muscles in his arm bunch and move. “I feel made new. I feel”-he looked at me, as his eyes drained from silver glow to normal-“like I did before we killed the head of our line.” He frowned. “You bound me to Jean-Claude with your blood and his power. What have you done, or what has been done to you, since that last feeding?”

“I don’t know what you mean by that,” I said.

He was frowning harder, thinking harder. “I mean, Anita, that I feel born again, as if our old master should walk down the street and greet us.” He moved toward me, and I moved back, keeping our distance. It made him stop. “Are you afraid of me?”

“I don’t know what just happened, so let’s just say I’m being cautious.”

He nodded, as if that made perfect sense to him. “I will see you safely to your friends, and then I will go back to the hotel.”

“Good,” I said, and then because it was me, I couldn’t leave it alone. “No offense, but you don’t seem bothered that I’m nervous about you now.”

He shrugged those broad shoulders. “I startled you, and I don’t know what happened just now, either. Until we know whether it was your blood, your power, or mine, caution is not a bad thing.”

“Okay,” I said, “then just watch me walk around the corner, and you can go.”