Chapter 6 Cadeon #2
"Then we will plan," I tell her. "Together."
Her smile could rival the sun but tempered by reality.
The feeding is due.
I have been avoiding acknowledging this fact for two days now, but the hunger is starting to make itself known. That hollow ache that begins as discomfort and will eventually become consuming need.
I should simply inform her. This is what the bond is for: maintenance, sustenance, the practical necessities of keeping the familiar functional.
But the memory of the last feeding stops me. The heat that spread through her. The way her heart raced. The small sound she made when I bit into her creamy skin.
The way I felt her pleasure through the bond and wanted. Oh how I wanted.
No. I cannot think about that.
"Cadeon?"
I turn. She is in the doorway of the library, backlit by evening light. She has changed for dinner into something softer than her usual work clothes, her hair loose around her shoulders.
"Yes?"
"It's been a week." She says it gently, without judgment. "You need to feed."
Of course she has been counting. Of course she remembers.
"I did not wish to presume..."
"You're not presuming. This is part of the bond, right? Maintenance?" She steps into the room. "Besides, I'd rather do it now, comfortably, than wait until you're weakened."
Practical. Sensible. This should be easy. A biological function.
It is not easy.
"Where do you wish to do this?" I ask, aiming for the clinical tone this transaction should have.
"The sitting room? By the fire?" She is already walking that direction. "It's warmer there. More comfortable."
Comfortable. As if comfort has anything to do with feeding.
But I follow her to the sitting room, where the fire burns bright and the chairs are arranged in a way that suggests conversation rather than formal ritual.
She settles into one of the chairs, curling her legs beneath her in a way that is utterly unselfconscious. Then she looks up at me expectantly.
"Aren't you going to sit?"
"I typically kneel for this."
"I know. But you don't have to." She pats the chair beside hers. "You could sit with me."
I could. She is offering me the choice.
But the thought of kneeling beside her chair, of being at this angle where I must look up to meet her eyes, where she is above me not through dominance but through geometry...
I want that. I want to kneel for her.
The realization is startling. Unsettling.
"I prefer to kneel," I hear myself say. "If you don't mind."
Her eyes widen slightly, and through the bond I feel a flutter of something warm. Pleased, perhaps. Or surprised.
"Okay," she says softly. "Whatever makes you comfortable."
Comfortable. That is not the word for what I feel as I lower myself to kneel beside her chair. But it is something. Something I have not felt in a very long time.
"Before we do this," she says, and I force myself to focus on her words instead of the pulse beating in her throat. "I wanted to ask... will you tell me about yourself? About before?"
I almost stop breathing. "Before?"
"Before the bond. When you were human. Alive." She is looking at me with open curiosity, no judgment in her expression. "I want to know."
"Masters don't ask," I say automatically.
"I'm asking." She reaches out slowly, carefully, and takes my hand. Her fingers are warm against my cold skin. "Please."
That word again. That impossible kindness.
"What do you wish to know?"
"Everything." She smiles. "But we can start small. Were you really a knight?"
"Yes." The memory is old, dusty, but still there. "I was the youngest son. No land inheritance, so I went to the lists. Won my first tournament at sixteen."
"Were you good?"
"I was adequate." A pause. "No. I was very good."
Her delighted laugh surprises me. "There's that dry humor."
"I am simply stating facts."
"Uh huh." She is grinning now. "What else? What did you love? What made you happy?"
No one has asked me this in two hundred years.
"Spring," I hear myself say. "I loved spring. The way everything came back to life after winter. Flowers. My sister used to make chains of them for her hair." The memory surfaces, crystalline and sharp. "She had the brightest laugh. Like bells."
"What was her name?"
"Eleanor." I have not said her name aloud in centuries. It tastes like grief and love and everything I lost. "She was four years younger than me. Married a merchant's son the year before I was bonded."
"Did you ever see her again? After?"
"Once. Thirty years later. She was old. I was not." The memory is ash in my mouth. "She did not recognize me. I did not tell her."
Iris's hand tightens on mine. "I'm sorry."
"It was a long time ago."
"That doesn't make it hurt less."
Doesn't it? I have assumed the ache dulled over centuries. But sitting here, speaking of Eleanor, of tournaments and springs that will never come again...
Perhaps it does not dull. Perhaps I simply forgot how to feel it.
"What else do you remember?" Iris asks softly. "Good things. Happy things."
"Strawberries," I say without thinking. "The first strawberries of spring. They were..." I search for words. "Bright. Sweet. Like capturing sunshine in fruit."
"We'll have to find you strawberries, then."
"It is winter."
"Then I'll find a way. There are the fancy things in the moral world called grocery stores. The magic of a search engine is useful like that." She is still holding my hand, her thumb brushing absently across my knuckles. "Thank you. For telling me."
"You asked."
"And you chose to answer." She shifts slightly, turning to face me more fully. "Should we... should we do the feeding now?"
Reality crashes back. Right. This is why we are here. Not for conversation. For sustenance.
"Yes." I release her hand reluctantly. "If you would offer your wrist?"
She extends her arm, but she is watching me with an expression I cannot read. "Cadeon? This time... can you just let yourself feel it? Not just go through the motions?"
"I don't understand."
"Last time, you were so controlled. So distant. Like you were performing a duty." She touches my cheek gently, and I freeze at the unexpected contact. "I want you to be present. Here. With me."
Her words lodge somewhere vital. Present. Here. With her.
"I will try," I manage.
"That's all I ask."
I take her wrist in both hands. Her skin is warm, her pulse fluttering against my fingers. I can feel her life, her magic, the bright burning core of what she is.
From this angle, kneeling beside her chair, I must tilt my head to reach her wrist comfortably. It puts me in a position of supplication that should feel like servitude.
It does not feel like servitude.
The hunger rises sharp and immediate.
"This will hurt," I tell her, the old warning automatic.
"I know." She does not pull away. "I trust you."
Those three words nearly undo me.
I lower my head. Press my lips to her wrist, feeling her pulse against my mouth. She shivers. Not from fear. From something else. Something I can smell.
I bite down.
She gasps from pain, yes, but then the blood hits my tongue and everything narrows to this. The taste of her. Rich and complex and alive in a way I have not experienced in... I cannot remember.
Her magic floods through me with her blood, nothing but warmth and comfort and something almost like joy. It fills the hollow spaces, chases away the cold that has been my only companion for so long.
And through the bond, I feel her.
Not just the pain of the bite fading into warmth, though I feel that. But deeper. Her pleasure at giving this freely. Her satisfaction at providing for me. The heat that is building in her, turning the act of feeding into something intimate.
I should stop. Should take only what I need and withdraw.
I take more.
Not enough to harm her. Never that. But enough to savor. Enough to feel truly fed for the first time in decades.
Her other hand comes up to my hair, fingers threading through it with a gentleness that makes my chest ache. "It's okay," she whispers. "Take what you need."
I am trying to be careful. Controlled. Everything I have been trained to be.
But her permission, her trust, the way she offers instead of merely tolerating.
Something in me cracks.
My free hand moves to her waist. I pull her forward, not roughly, but deliberately, until she slides from the chair and into the space between my knees where I kneel.
Close. So close I can feel the heat radiating from her body, can smell the herbs in her hair mixed with something sweeter. Her scent surrounds me.
She makes a small sound: surprise, maybe, but not protest. Her hand tightens in my hair.
I adjust my hold on her wrist, drawing her even closer as I feed.
Through the bond, I feel what she feels, the lingering sting of the bite transforming into liquid warmth.
The way it pools low in her belly, makes her skin flush, her breath quicken.
The way my closeness affects her, the solid press of my body against hers.
She likes this. More than tolerates it. She likes it.
And I...
God help me, I like it too.
I have fed a thousand times over the centuries. Always clinical. Always dutiful. Never like this. Never with this heat building between us, never with a woman in my arms, never with our hearts racing in counterpoint through the bond. Never with her melting against me like she belongs there.
When I finally force myself to pull away, we are both breathing hard.
My mouth is stained with her blood. Her wrist is marked with my bite. She is still pressed close, caught between my body and where the chair used to be, and she shows no inclination to move. Between us, the bond hums with an awareness that was not there before.
She is looking at me with eyes that are dark and wanting and entirely unafraid.
"That was different," she says, voice breathless.
"Yes." I am still holding her wrist, and she is still pressed against me, close enough that I can feel every breath she takes. "Did I hurt you?"