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Tears wrenched from my eyes and for a second we struggled as I tried and failed to pull my wrist from his mouth. It was a battle of wills and he had paranormal strength I’d never have. He lifted his gaze and met my own. For a second, I didn’t know what would happen. In that second, he realized there was something different about my blood. That feeling that happened with the other guys took place with him, too.
I could see it all over his face, almost as if I could hear his thoughts.
“It hurts her.” Tanner’s voice boomed in the room. “It hurts her. Drop her wrist.”
Ace didn’t move—not even at the sound of Tanner’s voice—but he stared into my eyes. I don’t know what he saw there, but he dropped my wrist, licking it once to close it. If he heard Tanner, he didn’t acknowledge him, and I couldn’t even turn my head to look in his direction.Are they all back or just Tanner?
I didn’t know.
“What was that?” Ace’s voice growled preternaturally low, different than earlier. I was already his prey, but if I made any sudden moves, it would be worse. Maybe that knowledge remained in the back of my brain somewhere from when a very distant ancestor used to run from wolves to get into her cave. I didn’t care how I knew it, though. I just did.
“We don’t know,” Griffin’s voice answered. “But I bet if you bite her somewhere other than her wrist, she’ll let you find out more about it, like the three of us have.”
Ace lifted one eyebrow; a move I’d never seen him make as a human. Was he always able to do that? Was my brain coming back online? Did it matter? Not at the moment, no.
“She’s a human. Taking what I need from her will kill her.”
I swallowed. “It won’t. Not if you stop before it does. And I think you can. They can. Even though you’re hurting so much. It’s pain like I didn’t know existed and I thought I understood just how bad it could be.”
He tilted his head in that vampire way that used to drive me crazy, but I started to realize it translated to mean confusion. They tipped their heads that way when I said something so very off to them, they couldn’t make sense of it. Maybe it was too human most of the time, but in this case, I suspected it was just too weird. I couldn’t make sense of it and I’d been living it.
“How could you possibly know anything about my pain?”
I swallowed, and I couldn’t help but notice his gaze fell to my neck—probably checking out my pulse. He hadn’t taken his mind off feeding from me, and I was pretty sure it was the best possible thing he could do right then. Loaded with discomfort, I still wanted Ace to feel better. I wanted to see who vampire Ace was when he wasn’t in a frenzy from needing to feed.
I missed him.
“She just does, and it turns out we know her pain, too, since all three of us were struck with it in the car. I was pretty sure she was dying, but now I see it’s just you.” Caesar had to be speaking through clenched teeth from the shortened way his consonants sounded as he spoke. “You can find it out, too. Like why Tanner is speaking. The things that have happened to Griffin and me. I can give you the whole speech about how this happened later, but at the moment, you can either let her down from that wall and behave like something other than an animal, or I’m going to put you down like you are one, history or not.”
Was that amusement that crossed Ace’s features?It was brief, just a second, so I really couldn’t tell for sure.
“As if you actually could.” He rubbed a hand over my wrist. “Who did this to you? Who made your wrist scar? Why do you taste the way you do? Why do I feel so… different?”
“Why did you feel so bad to begin with?” As I asked the question, he set me down on the floor. “If you bite my neck, we’ll both feel better, then we can talk, okay? We don’t have answers, but that’s nothing new for me since I met you. Knowing something was happening that I didn’t understand. If you’re all there with me, then welcome to the party. Please, bite my neck.”
He cupped my cheek. “They all bite you like you’re their paramour and you like it?”
“If there is some rule book that only paramours can be bit on their neck, I’ve yet to read it. They bite me there because I like it, but make no mistake, I’m no one’s paramour. I’ll never be one of those kept women. Never.”
He pressed his lips to my neck. “There you are.”
I didn’t get to ask him what he meant by that because he bit down and I closed my eyes.Yes, that’s so much better. Any other problems or concerns could be addressed after I’d soothed the ache inside of me—that had to be from him. And now it seemed the others could feel my pain. What was that about? We were all in some kind of codependent blood sharing relationship that none of us could understand but could no longer do without.
Right then, it was fine with me. I melted into Ace, letting him support my weight. My knees didn’t want to hold me as adrenaline crashed out as fast as it surged. Pain left with it and my head sagged while he fed.
I was just going to check out for a while, and that was perfectly fine with me.
Awareness trickled back. I was on the couch, lying on Ace, and my feet on Griffin’s lap where he rubbed them. Was he really doing that? Griffin didn’t seem like the foot rubbing type.
“She can’t possibly be feeding all of you and not be dead.”
Caesar sat on the floor in front of the couch. “She survived being fed from ten times a day by the elders. Somehow, she’s doing what isn’t possible. Why does she taste so good? Why can we feel things when it should be hundreds of years until we can feel? Why does her blood give Tanner back his voice? We have a million whys.”
I lifted my head. “You’re not fully fed.”
While I felt much better than earlier, my joints ached. Either one of the others had crashed into hunger or he wasn’t done.
He squeezed my shoulder and then seemed to stare at his hand, tilting his head. “I’m more fed. I wasn’t taking anything else from you. Despite your assurances about how you can handle it, I’m not going to drain you to death. I’m never full. I haven’t felt this fed since I first rose. I live in constant hunger. This is like a vacation from pain.”
