Fledgling(58)

I shrugged. “If I don’t like him, I’ll have to find someone else and soon.”

He looked at me sadly. “My little vampire.”

“Still,” I said.

He stepped over to me, picked me up with a hand under one arm, sat down, and sat me on his lap. I took his injured hand and looked at it, licked away the blood, saw that he hadn’t done himself much damage. It would heal overnight like a shallow bite.

“I could get a lot more pissed with you if you were bigger,” he said softly.

“I hope not,” I said.

He wrapped both arms around me, held me against him. “I don’t think I can do this, Shori. I can’t share you.”

I leaned back against him. “You can,” I said softly. “You will. It will be all right. Not now, perhaps, but eventually, it will be all right.”

“Just like that.” The bitterness and sorrow in his voice was terrible.

I turned on his lap, straddled him, and looked up at him.

After a moment, he said, “I want you for myself. It scares me how much I love you, Shori.”

I pulled his head down and kissed him, then rested my forehead against his chest, savoring his scent, his wonderful furry body, the beat of his heart. “Preston says our symbionts never know how much we treasure them,” I said.

“You treasure me?”

“You know I do.”

He held me away from him and looked at me. “You’ve taken over my life,” he said. “And now you want me to share you with another man.”

“I do,” I said. “Share me. Don’t fight with him. Don’t hurt the family by fighting with him. Accept him.”

He shook his head. “I can’t.”

“You can,” I repeated. “You will. He’s part of the family that we must form. He’s one of us.”

When I left him and went down to the kitchen, I found Joel sitting at the table drinking coffee with Brook and Celia.

“Hey,” he said when I came in. He had two large rolling suitcases parked near his chair.

“Hey,” I said reflexively. “Come talk to me.” I took his hand and led him to the other end of the house to what I had been told was the “family room.”

“Don’t you mean that you’re going to talk to me?” Joel asked as he sat down in one of the large leather-covered chairs. I sat on the arm of his chair.

“First things first,” I said and took the wrist he had offered earlier. He watched me raise it to my mouth and kiss it a second time, and he smiled. I bit him.

He was delicious. I had intended only to taste him and get a little of my venom into him, but he was such a treat that I took a little more that a taste. And I lingered over his wrist longer than was necessary.

Finally, I looked up at him and found him leaning back bonelessly in the chair. “God,” he said. “I hit the jackpot.”

“How have you managed to stay unattached?” I asked. “Didn’t anyone here want you?”

He smiled. “Everyone wanted me. Everyone except Preston and Hayden. They said I was too young to join with them. The others … they left me alone when I asked them to, but before that, they were all after me. And I didn’t want to join with a man. There’s too much sexual feeling involved when you guys feed. I wanted that from a woman. Preston said he would check with nearby female families after I finished college, and he’s taken me to see a couple of them, but I wasn’t interested. You are the only Ina I’ve ever been attracted to.”

“After seeing me only once?”

“Yeah. I didn’t even see you when you were here before … before your parents died. I had gone to San Francisco to spend time with some friends from college.” He shook his head. “I liked your looks when I saw the pictures the Gordons had of you and your sisters. When I saw you last night, I didn’t have a chance.”

I didn’t know what to make of that. “I’m only beginning to form my family,” I said. “You would probably have an easier life with anyone here or any of the female families you’ve seen. You know my memory only goes back a few weeks.”

“I heard.”

“And when I leave the Gordons, I’ll be alone.”

He nodded. “Then let me help you make a new family.”

I looked at him and saw that his expression had changed, had become more serious. Good. “I want you to be part of my new family,” I said. “More than that, I need you. But you and my first will have to accept each other. You will accept him. There will be peace between you. No fighting. No endangering the rest of us with destructive competitions.”

“All right. I doubt that your first and I will ever be anything like friends, but I know how it is. I suppose you told him the same thing.”

“Of course.” I paused. “He helped me, Joel. When I had no one else, when I had no idea who or what I was, he helped me.”

“I wish I had had the chance to do such a thing.” He reached up and touched my face. “Like I said, let me help you make a new family.”

A little later that morning, I put on my hooded jacket, sunglasses, and gloves and walked around to each of the houses of the community. I spotted the guards from outside, then went into the houses to do what I could to help them be less easily spotted. Being easily spotted by the kind of attackers my symbionts and I had faced would mean easily shot.