Page 54 of Thirst
I made a half-hearted attempt to feed, but I was too out of it to puncture his skin. The effort drained me. I sagged against the solid wall of his chest. “Just…leave me alone.”
“I fucking wish I could,” he said under his breath.
He shifted me around, fumbling for something out of sight. Then his wrist pressed against my mouth again. This time, blood seeped through my lips, warm, salty. Life-giving.
I lapped at it greedily.
“Suck,” he urged, and I obeyed.
I managed to swallow a few mouthfuls before darkness took me under again. Five minutes later—or that’s how it seemed, anyway—the chopper touched down.
I raised my head, still weak and achy, but Cain’s blood had sent a shot of energy into me, thinning the fog in my brain enough to let me take in my surroundings. We’d landed in a courtyard, hemmed in by what had to be Castle Leclerc. Four black towers rose around us, their silhouettes carved against the moonlit sky like a threat carved in stone.
Cain stood, still cradling me, and dropped to the worn cobblestones.
I pushed at his chest. “I can walk,” I said above the thump-thump of the blades.
“Why don’t you just shut up,” he suggested and strode up the castle’s granite steps like I weighed nothing.
The wooden doors groaned open and a broad-shouldered man in a blue Maritime Syndicate uniform filled the threshold. He glanced at me, but his expression didn’t change, as if Cain carrying a woman into the castle was nothing remarkable.
“Good to have you back, sir.” He ushered us into the domed foyer.
I caught only flashes of the foyer as we stepped inside—a sweep of night sky painted overhead with swirling stars and a golden moon; faded tapestries sagging on the walls; sea-serpent sconces with glowing pearls of light clamped between their teeth; and a mosaic of a great white shark, jaws parted wide, beneath Cain’s feet.
“Impressive,” I muttered, and for a second, Cain’s gaze locked with mine, like he understood exactly how I felt.
Then he wrenched his gaze away and shifted me in his arms so that as little of our bodies touched as possible. Like I was a sack of hazardous waste, in fact.
“William,” he said, “could you let Brien and Talon know we’re back?”
“I already have. And the lady?” The big man’s gaze flicked to me. “Will she require a room?”
“No,” was the clipped reply. “We’ll be in my quarters. Have Brien and Talon meet us there, would you.”
“Of course, lieutenant.”
15
Cain
I carried Nyx down the flagstone steps. As I entered the lair’s winding tunnels, she glanced up at me. I braced for more of her excuses, maybe a demand to be put down. Something to justify the anger banding my chest. But she said nothing—her gaze just drifted past my face, dull and unfocused.
I turned toward my quarters. I should’ve taken her straight to the dungeon, but she was still feverish, the silver chewing its way through her system. She could barely stand on her own. And we needed her healthy, didn’t we?
I slapped a palm to the biorec pad beside my front door. Inside, I lowered Nyx onto the Eames couch, leaving the door ajar for Brien and Talon. She slumped against the chrome arm, legs on the gray leather. I reached for her boots, but she moved her feet so they hung off the couch.
“Let me keep them on,” she rasped. “Please?”
I shrugged and rose back up.
She stared up at me, smudges bruising the skin beneath her eyes, chest hitching in shallow, pained breaths.
My gut knotted. I wanted to fuck up whoever had done this to her, wanted to make them bleed for hurting her.
Too bad that someone was me.
“You need food,” I said gruffly. “And liquids. I’ll have the kitchen make you soup.” With red meat—she needed the iron.
