Chapter 4 #2
All in good time. His true teeth were free now, each faint breath sliding painfully past, and though a fledgling’s sleep was often mistaken for mortal death he sensed the infinitely slow tide-change of her sweet, beckoning blood.
She did not stir as he crept, inch by fraction of inch, onto the bed.
Slow as sinking quicksand, he slithered to embrace his deliverance, and the first touch was hesitantly reverent.
Arranging sleep-heavy limbs was no difficulty.
Nor was tipping her chin aside—she was tall for a woman, fitting perfectly against his own neglect-wasted frame—and finding the near-imperceptible pulse.
His fang-tips hovered uncertainly as a new thought intruded upon careful, one-pointed concentration.
Such a blessing, the ability to focus again. To have considerations instead of mere murderous distraction.
First the bite, then the claiming, a sanguinant proverb. Yet she was unconscious, clearly ill-fed, and had endured the trespasser’s violence to boot. To wake and find herself suddenly…
A faint thrum was the growl beginning deep in his ribcage, provoked by the thought of a now-gone intruder laying hands upon her.
The need struck, dark and terrible, every inch of cloth against his skin a fierce irritant, and even the mating-thrall was a vivid, razor-edged pleasure after so much terrified numbness.
How long had it been since he had felt the urge, a full erection uncomfortably bound and gagged?
Must protect. Yes, that was the overarching goal, yet when a thoroughly modern fledgling awoke, what would she think of attentions paid during her somnolence? It did not matter; a leman must be claimed.
And yet.
His control slipped, instinct striking snake-quick. Had she a bonded protector still living, his teeth would have been unable to pierce, but his fangs sank into glorious yielding.
Molten syrup, clear and fine as the strongest unwatered wine. So hot, so sweet, so good; the essence of heat and beauty hit the back of his throat and slid down, spreading through every vein and artery bright-quick as lightning, lingering in a deep haze.
The second gift of a leman—an immediate addiction, a single mouthful rendering all other blood into tasteless sludge.
Necessary and nutritious, certainly, but the temptation of glut was wholly erased in a moment, since what could compare to her?
He would never feel the craze again, the Sanguinant’s Thirst narrowed to one very specific flavor.
If he had not already cherished the scent which repaired his sanity, the taste of her would have provided worshipful reverence.
Oh, yes, now he understood the whispers through the demimonde, the proverbs translated into any language those of the Blood knew.
Most held leman to be a fiction, yet he held one in his very arms and his fangs sank deeper as he pulled a second mouthful, the growl rattling every surface of this tiny habitation.
A welcome obsession, a rock catching a falling man’s hand, a rope clutching a drowning swimmer. She burned through him, the blood carrying sadness, an eternity of lonely nights, a complex pattern of emotion and instinct making up a leman.
His leman. And by every god or spirit ever honored he longed for the next step, to rid them both of clothing and take her in time-honored fashion.
One last pull against her veins, the burnt-caramel edge far more pronounced now. She was on the very edge of starvation, tissues ready to self-cannibalize. To take more would be a criminal misuse, unworthy of a man granted a miracle.
It required a great deal of will to withdraw, to clean the slight wounds with his tongue, healing agents spread with lingering care.
To lie still, eyes closed and unfamiliar serenity filling him to the brim, as his arms tingled with the feel of her and the rest of him burned with pleasurable almost-pain.
The sun had mounted quite high, pressing against thin metal walls.
A single finger of its light would cause irreparable harm, but she had shielded this small cave well.
He had some few hours to prepare for her waking; he must re-accustom his tongue to her native language, acquire better clothing, begin arrangements for her comfort and protection.
Licking his lips, absorbing every last trace of her taste, his nose buried in her tumbled hair and her scent wrapping about his very bones, he reveled in the sheer luxury of finally thinking clearly.
If he left her vicinity, how long before the killing dust grimed his senses afresh? He sensed unreason crouching outside the small bright circle of her presence, and the prospect of suffering a splintering, howling madness again was unpleasant at best.
Be precise. It is terrifying, and to be avoided at all cost.
So. He would leave her to rest under his own invisible seals, test how far the effect of her grace extended, make what arrangements he could, and return at speed.
Another luxury—to have a direction, a series of tasks, a purpose. The largest difficulty would be in tearing himself away from this most beautiful of enigmas.
He set his jaw and began the process of doing so, inch by laborious, resisting inch.