Chapter Kaitlyn
KAITLYN
Linton loosens his grip, his hand falling back onto his chest. His entire body goes limp.
“Blood?”
“Blood.”
He turns his head away from me.
“Any blood? Or specific blood.”
“It used to be any blood, but I haven’t been able to feed properly for…” Linton flaps the arm which lies next to him on the floor from side to side. “I don’t remember.”
“You haven’t been eating at all?”
“No.” He returns his gaze to mine. “I…can’t.”
“You have to, Linton, or you’ll die.”
“I like it when you say my name,” he says, with the hint of a smile.
“You like it when I say Linton?” I ask, brushing my hands down his face and onto his shoulders where one wing sits like a cloak.
It is so, so soft, like a fluffy cloud and absolutely not what I was expecting.
“I like it.” He sighs. “I like you touching my wings too. It makes my spicket happy.”
“Your…spicket?”
“Mmm-hmm,” he hums, but doesn’t expand on what he means.
Could it be that Linton is delirious from lack of food? That so much of his strange behaviour, some of which I thought was perhaps related to alcohol or another narcotic, is simply a result of the fact he simply hasn’t been…feeding?
“Linton?”
He looks at me from under half-lidded eyes.
“Yes, Kaitlyn,” he says with another wet smile.
“Do the…creatures you feed on have to die for you to eat?” The moment I ask the question, I know there’s no going back, but I don’t want him to die, not in the least because he seems to want to protect me from the other horrors in the Yeavering. “I mean, could you take my blood?”
His eyes open wide, then he shakes his head.
“Most don’t even know I’ve been feeding.” He runs his dark tongue over the sharp fangs in his mouth. “I have venom. It makes feeding pleasurable.”
I try to get the image out of my head of my close to seven foot tall, ripped mothman creeping into people’s houses and biting them like a low-rent vampire.
“But you do generally ask permission, don’t you?”
The way Linton looks at me tells me all I need to know. He has absolutely been a low-rent vampire in the past. But in his head, as it doesn’t hurt anyone, he thinks it’s all okay.
Linton logic.
“But why haven’t you been feeding?”
“I dunno,” he grumbles. “I can’t.”
“You have to. After all, you’ve said I belong to you and that Tam Lin wants me…”. I leave the thought hanging in the air for a beat or two. “You can have some of my blood, if you want.”
I offer it because he hasn’t asked for it. I offer it because of the way his face lost all the hard edges only moments ago. I offer it because of the way he said my name when he came to.
Linton has, despite all his strangeness, done nothing to me other than kill some Redcaps and bring me to this inn.
I already know monsters are not monsters here in the Yeavering. My friend Wynter is not only happy with her Barghest but she’s pregnant with his child.
While I can’t imagine ever wanting to be with a man ever again after Lord Guyzance, I know the Faerie are the worst of the worst and those others who inhabit this strange land are the ones who will give you their last morsel to eat or protect you with their own hide.
For whatever reason, I’m wanted by this Tam Lin, and Linton has decided to make me his and provide me with a protection I’m not sure he actually understands.
It says a significant amount about beauty and truth that I find what sustains the Bluecap not abhorrent but necessary.
“It won’t hurt will it?” I ask.
“No,” he says.
“Then take it.” I thrust my wrist under his nose. “Just don’t take too much.”
Linton doesn’t move, his gaze not leaving mine, as if not entirely sure I’m serious, like I might withdraw the offer.
“No one offers themselves to a Bluecap,” he says slowly.
“I am.”
His eyes trace their way over my face and slowly down to my arm, which I’m still holding and which shakes a little.
He reaches up and takes hold of it, one large clawed hand curled over my palm, enclosing it entirely, the other around my forearm, more than easily encompassing it. His eyes flick to my exposed wrist, my veins standing out blue against the skin.
I brace myself.
Linton brings me to his lips, their softness brushing over me like a kiss. He runs a dark tongue over my skin, and it tingles. He bares his teeth, and unable to help myself, I look away, screwing up my eyes, waiting for the searing bite of his sharp fangs. There’s some pressure and then…nothing.
A kind of bliss slides through my body, and I relax. With some trepidation, I open my eyes and turn my head back.
Linton has his lips fastened over my wrist, his eyes half closed, his antennae raised. He draws slowly, almost reverentially, not spilling a drop.
I find I don’t care in the slightest. My vision rainbows and my heart feels heavy in my chest. And there’s another part of me reacting too. A part which really shouldn’t be involved.
My core pulses in time with every gentle draw. My thighs get slippery. Unbelievably, a wave of extreme pleasure flows through me. It doesn’t matter Linton warned me about his venom, I’m suddenly closer to a climax than I have been in years.
I need to distract myself somehow, so I reach out to run my free hand over the closest antennae to me. The thing looks like a fluffy ostrich feather and at the moment I touch it, Linton groans over my wrist.
His hips jerk and his entire body goes rigid.
I try to pull my hand away in panic, wondering what I’ve done wrong as his eyes roll in his head, and he releases my wrist, two tiny puncture wounds being all which remains of his meal.
“Kaitlyn, you’ve made my spicket explode.”