Page 74 of Thrall
“You’re such a pain in the ass,” Lucy said softly. “Have I told you that yet?”
“In words, no.” Some of the tension eased out of Mila. Probably because she knew she’d won. “In little side glances that you think are subtle…”
Lucy treated her to one of those side glances, which were never intended to be subtle in the first place. But the crook of Mila’s arm caught her eye, and then her attention. She had a prominent vein there. Cool blue, like her sheets.
Lucy’s mouth parted. When she ran her tongue along her teeth, she felt the same two sharp points she’d felt that morning. She tried not to be afraid of them this time.
Mila had followed her gaze. And slowly she rotated her arm and extended it to Lucy. She had a little tattoo near the crook of her elbow. Orion the hunter. Of course.
“Right there?” Lucy whispered. The blood had a sound, when she was this close. A low and inviting hum.
“If it’s good enough for phlebotomists,” Mila said.
Lucy let out a short laugh. “I hope this isn’t what phlebotomists do.”
“Well. Maybe it’s less awkward if you think of yourself like one,” Mila said. “You’re not doing anything wrong. You’re just doing something necessary.”
But as Lucy drew closer, there was nothing rote about it. Mila’s pulse was loud enough to fill the room—it was in the cords of her neck, the tips of her fingers. It sounded as strong and assured as she was. It didn’t even sound all that fast until Lucy opened her mouth.
Hunger had been an uneasy thing, since the bite. The strangeness of it had been so quiet that she’d barely noticed it until now. Vanya had been breathing down her neck—there hadn’t been anything unusual about losing her appetite, or about choking down the rare meat she thought her body wanted. But holding Mila’s arm in her hand, she thought of the dry, sinewy mouthfuls of the dining hall steak. The queasy, gnawing allure of the raw steak in the Falls Quad Café: not the steak itself, she realized now, but the bloody butcher paper it lay on. It wasn’t that she didn’t have an appetite. It was that there was only one thing for her. And now, finally, she was close enough to taste it.
She lifted Mila’s arm to her mouth and pressed her lips against the waiting crook of her elbow. It should have felt unnatural. But the infection knew what to do. She just had to follow it.
She bit down. And gradually, the skin gave under her teeth, and Mila’s blood filled her mouth.
It didn’t taste like she thought it would. Though it wasn’t as if she had a frame of reference. She’d tried one of her mother’s iron gummies once, and it had tasted like fruit with a spike of metal, like biting into an apple and losing a tooth. Mila’s blood tasted like something deep and savory, garnished with a ribbon of honey. It was so hot, pouring down her throat. She hadn’t realized how cold she’d been until she felt how body temperature should taste.
She gasped, and it spread her mouth wider, her bite deeper. Instinctively, she jerked back, but Mila’s hand settled between her shoulder blades. “It’s okay,” she said.
Lucy would have questioned that, if she’d had the ability. But that ability was so far beyond her now. Every starving cell was blanketed with warmth, and suddenly she was alive. Her thoughts were connecting, her body was moving without the pain or fatigue that had clung to her these past few days, and she drank, deeply. She didn’t know the half of it before, when she’d wondered whether or not she could stop. She knew now, with a certainty as cold as she was, that she would live her whole life at the crook of Mila’s elbow if given the chance.
But Mila’s heartbeat was labored, her body quietly protesting under Lucy’s teeth. Her free arm spasmed, grasping at Lucy’s side for purchase, and the euphoria shifted. She could feel Mila’s nails through her shirt, little pinpricks against her ribs that jolted her with little snaps of electricity.
Lucy gasped again, and this time it dislodged her mouth from Mila’s skin. She wouldn’t have called herself starved for touch. She was busy, was all: She was graduating, then she was breaking up with her high school girlfriend, then she was on deathbed duty, and then she was a vampire’s thrall. It had been a while since she’d been so close to anyone. She’d been able to ignore it pretty well.
But hunger was hunger, she realized. You could starve without knowing it, if you didn’t know what starving felt like.
“I’m okay,” said Mila, misunderstanding her hesitance. “Keep going.”
But Mila’s pulse didn’t sound as okay as her voice did. And when Lucy hung back, she found it wasn’t hard to do so. The desperation of the first few mouthfuls was gone. It left her head a clear and lonely place: no red voice, no Vanya or Laurentius. And the movement of time had slowed to the pour of syrup. There was nothing for her to do right now. Nowhere to go. No rattling door to lock.
She bent to Mila’s arm again, and she drank down the blood pooling in the crook of her elbow. She ran her tongue across it until she exposed the skin underneath. The punctures seeped as she pulled back, but only a little. The bleeding had started to slow.
Lucy pressed her mouth to the wound. She didn’t drink this time. She just marveled at the warmth of it. And if it felt like a kiss? If itwasa kiss? Then good. What was there to be embarrassed about anymore? She’d already made herself clear.
She withdrew, and sat up. And as she locked eyes with Mila—then and only then did Mila’s pulse finally speed up.
Mila’s eyes were wide and dark in the low light. Lucy’s own eyes must have looked black in the shadows falling across the bed. When she wiped at her mouth, a smear of blood came away on her hand. But Mila didn’t look scared. She just watched her.
“You said that I always look good,” Lucy said.
Mila barely moved. “I said that.”
Lucy sat back to fully look at her. Mila’s swishy shoulder-length cut was disheveled. Her skin was paler, nearly white. She was rubbing the wound at her elbow with her thumb, but she was looking only at Lucy. She wasn’t something to eat or not eat. She was just Mila.
Lucy let that potential energy thrum between them. And when she got her fill of it, she said, “Are you going to do anything about that?”
Mila surged forward and took her into her arms, so forcefully that Lucy was lifted to her knees. And their lips finally met.
