Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Showering and getting dressed had been more difficult than Thomas had anticipated.
After he’d choked down a single mouthful of blood, Mira had needed to help him with the simplest of tasks.
Getting down the stairs with her arm hooked around his waist to keep him stable had been its own humiliating challenge.
By the time he was seated in one of the tufted chairs near the burning hearth in the lower library, Thomas was ready to lie on the floor and call it a night.
When he’d been in the bathroom getting ready, he’d hated what he saw in the mirror. His hair was a bit too long and his clothes were hopelessly ill-fitting, not only due to his lack of feeding and eating but because they were years out of fashion.
Staring at his ghostly and sad reflection, Thomas briefly thought that this was perhaps the most undignified he’d ever felt in his life.
Then he remembered being covered in filth in the dank dungeon and realized his life was now a steady stream of undignified moments.
Thomas was leading an indecorous existence.
His insecurity doubled when Cameron cautiously stepped into the library.
He wore a thick cream-colored sweater with a classic houndstooth pattern and dark slacks.
He looked handsome and strong, overflowing with life and vigor.
Cameron approached, and he smelled superb.
Like an herbal apothecary tucked deep within an enchanted forest, but it only carried healing and sweet potions. Nothing poisonous nor deathly.
Essentially, he was Thomas’s polar opposite. A being of prosperity and life while Thomas sat there watching him like a harbinger of death.
“Hello,” Cameron said, sitting down across from him. “How are you feeling today?”
Thomas smiled weakly, genuinely pleased to bask in the warmth of Cameron’s presence. “I’m alright—”
“You’ll forgive me for calling your bluff, but I don’t think that’s true.”
Thomas exhaled a weighted breath and reminded himself to be honest. To be vulnerable. “Yes, fine, I am not alright, but I am managing as best I can. Thank you for the striking tulips. That was thoughtful of you.”
“You’re welcome. It’s the very least I could do…”
Beyond the window, the sky was shifting to winter twilight.
Pale purples and blues with a smattering of stars above the wispy clouds.
Thomas leaned forward and began arranging his side of the chess board.
“Mira said you had errands in town this morning,” he began, wanting to fill the weighted silence and distract himself from the heady pull of Cameron’s essence. “Did you accomplish your tasks?”
There was an odd pause where Thomas expected Cameron to respond, but the moment carried on a beat too long. Thomas looked up from the chess board to find Cameron’s light hazel eyes intensely fixed on him.
“Thomas, can we speak candidly about your health?”
Thomas’s hands stilled over the board. They were bony and pale, and he knew how bad he looked. Especially juxtaposed with such a radiant vampire. Thomas lifted a hand and pushed the heft of his hair away from his forehead. He felt so very pathetic. He didn’t use to be like this.
“Please?” Cameron said softly. The tenderness in his voice made Thomas want to burst into tears—which then made him want to scream and flip the table and chess board over. Possibly throw some of the pieces. None of it made sense. This wild torrent of emotions pulsing through him.
Not willing to commit to any of those acts, Thomas sat back and rested his palms in his lap. He took another deep breath and blew it out. “Yes…” he said. “What would you like to discuss?”
Cameron shifted to the edge of his seat, his gaze unwavering in the firelight. “Mira has expressed that you might have specific feeding preferences that aren’t being met.”
Thomas withheld his immediate displeasure at the thought of Mira talking about him to Cameron. “Has she now?” Thomas asked. What exactly had she told him?
“She didn’t disclose any specific reasons why,” Cameron went on, damn near reading Thomas’s thoughts, “but she said you might benefit from having a natural source as opposed to feeding from the blood bags. Is this true?”
The atmosphere within the room stilled despite the fire burning and crackling beside them. Thomas didn’t move an inch. “It might be.” Not might. It was absolutely true, but Thomas didn’t know where he was going with this.
Cameron nodded. One of his large palms migrated up to massage the back of his neck, which told Thomas that the man was nervous about whatever was coming next.
“My wish is to help you obtain a natural source. If you desire it, I can speak with Lennon and get his advice—perhaps we can have something arranged with a local purebred? Or, I…” Cameron took a breath as he stared down at the board.
“I know that I’m not an ideal choice, but I would be willing to offer myself as well.
I—As the sole instigator of this arrangement, of course it is my responsibility to address your needs.
I would be happy to help you, Thomas, but it is your choice. ”
Thomas stared at him while Cameron kept his gaze fixed on the chess set between them. He wanted to bite Cameron. Embarrassingly so, he wanted to taste him and confirm his suspicions—that he was already drinking Cameron’s bagged blood.
But the way Cameron had phrased it sent up a red flag within Thomas. He wanted him, but not like this.
“No,” he said simply.
Cameron lifted his gaze. “No? To… to which part?”
“No to you, Cameron. To your offer.”
“Ah,” Cameron said, sitting straighter. “Of course, I—It was very stupid of me to think that you’d find me agreeable—”
“No,” Thomas reiterated. “You shouldn’t offer yourself to someone because of responsibility.
Feeding is… It’s a very intimate and vulnerable act.
You’ve disclosed to me that you’ve never experienced it before—and that you don’t particularly care to.
With a viewpoint as strong as that, you should only offer yourself if you want it, Cameron.
Not because you feel pity for me, or because I am a troublesome task to check off your to-do list. Do you understand my meaning? ”
Yes, Thomas hated feeding from bags, and increasingly, the very thought of it made him want to retch.
He might be weak, but he wasn’t so pathetic as this.
Exploiting a man who was so accustomed to shouldering every obligation thrown at him that the behavior was second nature, regardless of his personal convictions.
“I do understand,” Cameron said, hesitating. “It feels as if you’re scolding me.”
“I’m not scolding you. I simply—It is clear to me that you’ve been expected to take on many serious responsibilities, and from a young age.
You’ve handled them beautifully, as far as I can tell.
But this should be where you draw the line.
Where you refuse to sacrifice your personal reservations for some perceived sense of duty. ”
The room fell silent once more. Cameron sat back and dropped his hand from his neck, blinking and visibly distressed. Thomas thought he should backtrack to clear up any misconceptions.
“And it isn’t that I don’t want you, Cameron. It isn’t that in the least. However, I would never sacrifice your personal boundaries for my well-being—”
“But I care about your well-being, Thomas. I want you to feel better and I wish to help. Does that mean nothing?”
“Of course it does. But when you have no interest in feeding—”
“I never said that,” Cameron asserted, meeting Thomas’s gaze head on. “You didn’t ask me how I felt about feeding, I only told you that I’d never done it—and now you’re scolding me for something I didn’t even say!”
Thomas flinched. He couldn’t remember how exactly the conversation that day had played out. It was strange, because Thomas had always prided himself on being able to read other vampires—social situations and their deeper contexts. Had the imprisonment taken that ability away from him, too?
Was he misreading Cameron? “I—I’m not scolding you.”
“You are. I said I’d never been in a circumstance before where I wanted to offer myself, but now I—” Cameron took a breath and cast his gaze toward the fire and away from Thomas. “Never mind. I hear what you’re saying and I know you mean well. Let’s leave it, then.”
Thomas shifted to sit on the edge of his seat, watching the slow rise and fall of Cameron’s chest and shoulders as he breathed.
Suddenly, he remembered Mira’s telling him that the house chef thought Cameron had a crush on Thomas but that he didn’t know how to wrangle it.
That Cameron had no idea what to do with the feelings because they were likely so foreign to him, and perhaps he needed guidance…
When Thomas altered his perspective to view this moment from that angle, he saw things differently. But he wanted to be certain. It was one thing to hear it second-hand from Mira (who’d heard it from Sulee), versus hearing it from the man himself.
Thomas ventured softly, “I would prefer it if we talked this through, please?”
“We needn’t discuss this further.” Cameron rubbed a palm down his face. “You’ve made yourself very clear, and I… It’s too shameful. All of it.”
“What do you mean?” Thomas waited, unmoving. The moment felt like trying to coax a monarch to land on his finger. After he’d scolded it, apparently.
“It’s mortifying that I brought you here against your will,” Cameron confessed, still avoiding Thomas’s eyes.
“I thought you might… I didn’t know you hadn’t consented to this arrangement.
If I hadn’t been a hasty, antisocial idiot and had instead followed protocol, I would have learned that your fathers were forcing you into this. ”
“I’ve said this before, but truly, you did me a favor by bringing me here, Cameron. You needn’t beat yourself up over that.”