Hunted

“Sit up here. Hold her head in your lap. Then give me your arm,” Darius told Heath.

Heath got up on the end of the table, and with Erik and Darius’s help my head was soon resting against his warm thigh, like he was a living pillow. Heath held his arm out and Darius grasped it firmly. My mind was too fuzzy to make sense of what they were doing until Darius reached behind him and took the all-purpose knife/scissors/bottle opener from the first aid kit, flipped the knife partway open, and pressed the blade against the soft skin on the inside of Heath’s muscular forearm.

The scent of his blood settled over me like a delicious fog.

“Press her mouth against it,” Darius said. “Make her drink.”

“Come on, babe. Take some of this. It’ll help you get better.” Okay, my rational mind knew that Erik was standing right there beside me watching along with all of my best friends. Under normal circumstances I would never have done what I did next, no matter how delicious and amazing and enticing Heath’s blood smelled.

But I wasn’t currently experiencing anything that even mildly resembled normal circumstances. So when Heath pressed his bleeding arm against my lips, I opened my mouth, sank my teeth deep into him, and started sucking.

Heath moaned and wrapped his other arm around me, pressing his face into my hair as I drank from him. The world immediately narrowed so that there was only Heath and me as his blood exploded into my body. With that first drink, awareness slammed back into my chest, and with it pain so intense that I would have wrenched my mouth from his skin had he not tightened his grip on me and whispered into my ear, “No! You can’t stop. If I can stand it, so can you, Zo.”

See, I knew I wasn’t just causing him to feel the exquisite pleasure feeding from a human usually caused both vamp and victim. We’d instantly Imprinted again. Even in the bad shape I was in I could tell that. Heath’s whole awareness filled me along with his blood, and we were bound together through the magical fabric that was the need and attraction between human and vampyre, stitched together in a single garment of the ancient bond that was an Imprint. But I wasn’t just drinking from him. I was feeding in a frenzy that was a natural instinct for survival, and through our co

I whimpered, still feeding from him, but was miserable because I knew what I was making him feel.

Of course, he knew what I was feeling, too, and how sorry I was that I was hurting him.

“It’s okay, babe. It’s okay. It’s not that bad, really,” he whispered in my ear through teeth gritted against the intense mixture of pain and desire.

I don’t know how much time had passed when I realized that, even though the cut across my chest hurt like hell, my body was warm, and I could feel caressing me a soft breeze that carried the scent of spring rain and a hay-filled meadow. My spirit, too, felt invigorated, and I knew that Heath’s blood had energized me enough that now I was able to accept the healing aid of the elements that comforted my soul as they soothed my body.

At about the same time I realized Heath had stopped talking to me. I opened my eyes and glanced up. He was kinda slumped over me but was being held upright by Darius’s firm grip on his shoulders. His eyes were closed and his face was pale.

Instantly I pulled my mouth from his arm. “Heath!” Had I killed him? Panicked, I tried to sit up, but the pain shooting through my body stopped me.

“The human is fine, Priestess,” Darius soothed. “Stanch the wound on his arm so that he will not lose any more blood.”

Automatically I ran my tongue over the narrow slice on Heath’s arm and the bigger gash I’d made when I bit him while I thought Heal…don’t bleed anymore, and when I pulled away this time I saw that the knife wound, as well as the marks my teeth had left, had completely stopped bleeding.

“You can close the circle,” Darius told Aphrodite, who was watching me with undisguised curiosity.

See, I wanted to tell her, there are a lot of different kinds of Imprints. What I have with Heath is definitely not what you have with Stevie Rae. But I couldn’t summon the energy to say the words. Actually, I wasn’t looking forward to the gazillion questions I was sure she was going to have for me. And then before she turned to Stevie Rae to begin thanking and then sending away the elements, I saw Aphrodite send Darius a sexy smile filled with promise, and I remembered that the first Imprint I’d shared with Heath had been broken when I’d had sex with Loren, and I realized that it was Darius who was going to have to field her questions. By the intimate smile he gave her in return, I was guessing he was going to like that kind of questioning wayyyy more than I ever would.

Okay, gross.

As a gri

“Erik, help me get him over to the bed,” Darius said.

A stone-faced Erik lifted my head out of Heath’s lap. He and Darius carried him the short distance to the bed and laid his still body on the spot so recently vacated by Jack (who was watching, wide-eyed, from the side of the room while he manically petted Duchess over and over).

“Go get something fast to eat and drink. Oh, and find some more of Venus’s wine,” Darius told Jack. “But tell the red fledglings to stay away,” he added before Jack nodded and scampered off with Duchess at his heels.

“They’re not go

“I don’t have time to test whether they will or will not right now,” Darius said. He came back over to the bed and started inspecting my wound again. “Good. It has completely stopped bleeding.”

“I think I’ll take your word for that. I don’t really want to look again.” I was pleased as hell that I had my voice back, even if I did sound weak and more than a little shaky. “Thanks, guys, for the circle,” I told my friends, who gri

“No!” Darius put up a hand, halting their jubilation. “I need room to work. Aphrodite, find some of those butterfly bandages in that kit and bring them over to me.”

“Hey, am I done almost dying?” I asked the warrior.

Darius looked up from my wound to meet my eyes, and I saw there a relief that told me exactly how close I must have been to not making it.

“You are done dying.” He paused, clearly at the brink of saying more.

“But?” I prompted.

“There’s no but about it,” Stevie Rae said quickly. “You’re done dyin’. Period.”

I didn’t look away from Darius, and he finally answered me. “But you need more help then I can give you if you’re going to recover fully.”

“What do you mean, more help?” Aphrodite asked as she moved to Darius’s side, a handful of weird Band-Aids clenched in her fist.

Darius sighed. “Zoey’s wound is severe. The human’s blood has saved her life by replacing the blood she lost and strengthening her enough that she was able to accept the energy of the elements, but not even Zoey can recover from so great a wound by herself. She is still just a fledgling, though even were she a fully Changed vampyre, an injury like this would be difficult for her to recover from.”

“But she looks better now, and she’s talking to us,” Damien said.

“Yeah, I don’t feel like I’m not really here anymore,” I said.

Darius nodded. “That is all good, but the truth is you need many stitches so that the wound can close and heal.”