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She wasn't sure what sounded more terrible: the affliction itself, or the grim finality of its cure. "But the Agency is able to rehabilitate some?"
His mirthless chuckle didn't give her much hope. "For a long time, the Enforcement Agency has operated under the notion that there was reason to think so. Of course, the Agency is also in charge of the facilities that house these diseased members of the race all across Europe and the United States. Many empire builders within the Agency's upper tiers would try to convince you that the system does have its successes."
"You don't think so."
"Not that I've ever seen or heard. If you ask me, those facilities are nothing more than cold storage for a population of locusts just waiting for the chance to swarm and devour everything in their path."
Tavia shuddered at the horrific image he painted. "Nothing can stop a Rogue?"
"Only a bullet or blade forged of titanium. The metal acts like poison on a Rogue's diseased blood system. Failing that, a long, hot sunbath will also do the job."
She studied him, seeing the anguish written in the tense lines of his face. "It must've been awful, losing your brother to one of those monsters."
"Yeah. It was." He nodded grimly, his expression distant and pensive, a thousand miles away. It seemed to take a moment for his focus to return. "I hardly remember the days and nights that followed. I had so much rage and grief inside me ... it's all I knew for a long time afterward." Shadows filled his eyes as he spoke, and Tavia sensed that he was holding something back, a secret he wasn't ready to share with her. Maybe not with anyone. And it was clear that the things he'd done at that time still haunted him now, despite his claims that he'd left the memories behind.
"It was unthinkable that Quent could be taken down so suddenly. Elise was destroyed, of course. So was their son, Camden. The boy was barely a teen. He'd already been making plans to attend private, specially arranged night classes at Harvard, the same as Quentin and I both did, and our father before us. Cam had been so excited. The whole world was ahead of him." The photograph of Chase and Elise and the smiling boy came back to her in full detail. Even without her genetic gift of flawless memory, Tavia would have recalled the covetous look in Chase's eyes in that candid shot. "What happened to Elise and her son after your brother was killed?">With a primal-sounding snarl, he brought his hips down over hers and lowered himself until his thick shaft rested between her wet thighs. Without entering her, he began a slow melding of their bodies, his cock nestled in the cleft of her core. He moved against her, lifting his body weight, then easing it down again, teasing her with the hot, wet promise of penetration. She was already ripe with arousal; a few torturous strokes was all it took before she was catapulted into yet another shattering release.
"Christ, you are lovely like this, Tavia." He watched her come, his gaze searing and rapt, the amber glow of his eyes bathing her face and skin in delicious heat. His own desire flared in dark hues over the beautiful pattern of his dermaglyphs, a churning storm of color that painted his strong arms and torso in tempestuous burgundy, gold, and indigo. He shuddered with his next slow thrust, which set the head of his penis against the mouth of her womb. "Ah, fuck. I can't wait any longer. I have to be in you."
He pushed inside on a low growl, seating himself to the hilt.
With a hard grimace, he rocked into her, riding her hard. She couldn't stop the rising tide of sensation that washed over her with every deep thrust of his body. No more than she could stop the primal urge that made her rise up to take the hard bulk of his shoulder between her teeth. Release poured through her as she bit down on him, scoring his skin with her fangs.
He grunted through his teeth. His frenzied tempo became more fierce, more animal, with every stroke. She could feel him struggle against his own nature. She felt the ravenous thirst that lived inside him and the anguish it caused him to purposely deny it. He suffered in that denial, a brutal, soul-shredding ache.
In the hard, heavy drum of his pulse, she could sense the primal urge that compelled him to bite her in that moment - to drink from her and mark her as his own.
But he didn't do that.
Instead, he turned his head away from her, roaring with a mix of anger and relief as he plunged deep and came. His heat spilled into her, his big body shuddering, sheened in clean sweat. Tavia stroked his muscled back as he slowed above her. She studied his face, trying to understand what it was about him that made him seem so open and trustworthy yet so coolly remote. So haunted and detached. So shadowed and alone.
She felt somehow sad for him. Concerned for him. Right. Ridiculous. As if he seemed in need of her sympathy or worry.
But that didn't stop her from wanting to figure him out, even a little. When nothing in her life made sense anymore, being with Chase somehow did. It wasn't just the sex, incredible as that was. It was the fact that he was the first person to ever be honest with her, even if she hadn't been prepared to hear it. For better or worse, he was her only safe mooring in a world blown so fast and far off course from what she'd known before. What she'd told him at the clinic earlier tonight had been the truth: He was the only friend she had now. And it troubled her to know that he endured a private pain.
They made slow love again on the bed, indulging in each other's bodies for what seemed like hours. After they had lain there for a long while, Chase's body draped across her, their legs still joined in a pleasant tangle, Tavia asked the question that echoed in her mind with every hard thump of his heartbeat.
"Why don't you allow yourself to feed?" An uncomfortable tension crept through him in reply, palpable in the flicker of his pulse and the subtle stillness of his body against hers. "I don't mean just me," she said. "You don't let yourself drink from anyone. How long has it been?"
He shrugged. "A few days, I guess."
The way his voice sounded, so gravelly and raw, he might have said he'd been starving himself for a year. "How long can you go without?"
"Normally one of my generation can go a week on a single feeding. Sometimes longer."
"But that's not normal for you, is it?" She hardly had to ask; his pulse was still pounding through him in a hollow beat, an ache that she felt reverberating in her own veins. "I can sense your hunger, Chase. I'm not sure how, but I can feel it inside me like it's my own."
He rolled away from her and swore, low and angry, under his breath. "It's the bond." His expression was grave, mouth flattened in a hard line. He raked a rough hand over the top of his head and cursed again, darker this time. "You drank my blood, Tavia. It's bonded you to me. If you were human, it wouldn't matter. But you're not. You're not only Breed either. The part of you that's Breedmate is linked to me through my blood, which lives inside you now."
Astonished, she smoothed a hand over her chest, where the dull ache of his hunger now burned with the bitter tang of his regret.
He nodded, a grim acknowledgment. "That's right. If I feel something strongly enough, whether it's pain or pleasure or grief or joy, you'll feel it too. The blood bond will draw you to me. You'll feel it like an echo in your veins."
She held his troubled stare. "For how long?"
"Until one of us dies."
Tavia swallowed, her eyes widening as she attempted to absorb what it might mean to always feel his presence as a part of her own being. The dark throb of his emotions was a powerful force, intense, but not exactly pleasant.
