Chapter 62 Forever Taste
❀ Maeve ❀
Silence draped over us like dark clouds as Nikolai’s lips tightened, his jaw clenching.
“Do you know what you’d cost her? Never to see the sun again? Never to eat?” His voice boomed in the cave.
My body trembled, ire building. “She made her wishes clear to both of us. Her desire to turn is the whole reason she’s in this situation right now!”
Nikolai stood up, pacing. He ran rough fingers through his hair, face upturned to the ceiling. “And if she dies regardless? The transformation is not a cheat for death.”
“We have to try,” my voice broke. “It’s what she’s always wanted, you know that. She must’ve weighed the choice time and time again. She’d want to take the risk.”
Still he balked, looking down at Tammy like she was a difficult, daunting decision. The girl grew paler and paler by the fire, life seeping through her very pores.
“Nikolai, please…”
“She’d be tied to me, her sire. My death would equal her death.” He drew his shoulders back like the problem was obvious. “I have an unfulfilled duel with the wolf, not that I’d lose,” his eyes flashed. “But would you risk her like that?”
“Yes. Because I know you’re not going to die.”
His eyes softened, and I knew I’d made the right choice by not adding that I wouldn’t let Bastian die either.
This moment was about Tammy, not us.
Nikolai dropped to his knees opposite Tammy. He raised his face to give me another look, as if to warn me away from this decision.
“There’s a war brewing. I won’t be able to help her control her hunger or preserve her mind. She could go feral.”
At the mention of hunger, my gaze slid to Tammy again. My mouth watered.
What would it hurt to drink her first before she turned vampire?
My face flushed in horror at my thoughts.
I turned away from her.
“Just do it. We’ll figure it out.”
He gave a slow, strained nod.
I watched him pick up her wrist, brows drawn in concentration.
“Have you done this before?” I asked, curious.
He glared. “I haven’t. All the more reason why we shouldn’t do this. You can still back out.”
It won’t be that easy.
“No. I trust you,” I told him, my voice stern.
Nikolai sighed, then clenched his jaw.
He raised Tammy’s small, pale wrist and sank his claws in. His face scrunched immediately, as if drinking a bitter brew. He started to drink, his gaze on her face as if to gauge when to stop.
Light from the small fire played over the scene. Nefarious and beautiful all at once. Like a painting featuring a distressed damsel and a cold, dark vampire at her wrist.
Suddenly, he jerked his mouth off her skin and immediately bit his own wrist.
“Open her mouth for me,” he ordered, voice strained. He was sweating.
As I moved to pry open Tammy’s jaw, I realized Nikolai was nervous about this. He cared about Tammy and just didn’t want to burn her.
Guilt stung as I remembered forcing him, making him look selfish.
He stuck his wrist just above her open mouth, his blood dripping down like a mesmerizing cascade of blood diamonds.
My fangs shot down my gums, my vision going red.
“Nikolai?” My voice sounded slurred to my own ears.
“Yes,” he responded without looking at me, concentrating wholly on his task. Sweat beaded his lips, his face going a touch paler.
He hadn’t fed since the day we’d left IronWolf.
Panic surged in my chest. We’d be three hungry vampires trapped with each other in a cave network. Who would attack who first?
“Would you mind if I got some too?”
“What?” His eyes shifted to me, slitted with confusion.
A hand shot out and grabbed his arm.
Tammy snarled, her jaws viciously clamping onto Nikolai’s wrist.
“She’s taking,” his voice was strangled.
We watched Tammy suck desperately with her eyes still closed. Her cheeks remained sunken, her skin pallid, but she drank and drank.
I glanced at Nikolai to see his skin tone had reduced drastically from just seconds ago.
“That’s enough,” I said.
He nodded and pulled his arm away, holding down Tammy’s head to separate her mouth. I grabbed her hands and pulled her fingers off him, sorry for the bruises I left.
Tammy gradually went limp and fell back on the bedding.
Her weak heartbeat slowed even more to my sensitive ears.
“Why isn’t she getting better?”
“She’ll sleep through the worst of the turning, then wake up feral with hunger—if she survives.”
I gulped. Partly from anxiety, partly from hunger.
He carefully dropped her head back onto the bedding, scooting backward to rest his back on the cave wall.
A shot of jealousy thickened my throat, stoking my anger. Starving and roughened from this adventure, I wanted to be cradled and fed just like that.
I crawled around the fire, stopping to sit by his side. He raised an arm to drape it over my shoulder.
“Just going to rest for a bit,” he murmured.
My vampire had lost a lot of blood. I felt a stab of pity for him, especially for what I was about to do. But I couldn’t help it.
My stomach clenched and unclenched, veins feeling bottomless, empty. The red haze hadn’t cleared, but I reined in my baser instincts.
Snuggling against his side, I purred, “You said you’d do anything for me…”
His tired face turned to me, eyes glinting at the thought of pleasing me. “Anything, milaya.”
There was no hope of getting bloodmeal in the cave with him unable to trace. And the heightened hunger I’d gotten from whatever virus was in the fog of Queen Lyssa’s blood.
I just needed a little blood to counteract the effects.
Nikolai was weak, but I wouldn’t take much.
“I want to taste you, just to see…”
His eyes glittered in the firelight, calculation burning in his gaze. “The talisman burned you, and you’re craving blood.”
My heartbeat thudded in my head, the mere mention of the red treat lengthening my fangs.
“I’m anemic. Mother used to make me bloodmeal. I need very little,” I lied, my breath fanning his pale neck, pulse taunting me.
He swallowed, eyes on the fire.
“And your eyes are red,” he murmured.
I barely heard him over the soft pop of flesh beneath my fangs.
Blood burst in my mouth, drawing a groan from me.
With each suck, the thought of not taking too much faded.
Every swirl of my tongue to coax more blood sent sparks to my brain, until I sank into a sea of red, waves lapping back and forth.
I could suck him forever.
My claws dug deeper—