The Thief (Black Dagger Brotherhood #16)(42)

He was able to recognize the expression on her face, however: She was concerned and asking him what was wrong. Yes, her eyes were worried, and she was leaning in, and she was talking some more.

“—call the nurse? Should I?”

With the same abruptness that everything had gone out of phase, cognition came back online in his brain, her words making sense to him once again, his mind processing reality as it should.

“No,” he said. “No, please don’t call them. I just got…fuzzy for a moment.”

“Are you sure?” She took his hand and stroked it. “I can just—”

“You’re blond now.”

She reached up and touched her short hair. “I hate it. But it’s necessary, I don’t want to be identified—well, anyway. It’s a change.”

For a moment, he thought about the fact that she was on the run—and hated that she would not let him take care of her. Maybe that would change now, though. Maybe she would stay here with him after he recovered.

When he went to lift his hand to touch her, the binds on his wrists jerked his arm in place, and he tried to lower things back down discreetly so she couldn’t notice—he didn’t want to have to explain why he had needed to be strapped down. He didn’t want her to think he would ever hurt her.

But he remembered why he had to be restrained. He recalled feeling the maggots under his skin, the burning, churning, restless twist of all of them itching at him, biting at him. He had scratched at his skin to get them out, to shake them free…then he had bitten at his arms—

As echoes of the hallucinations became so vivid they threatened to take over, he willed himself to stay in the present with Marisol. To see her, scent her, hear her. To feel her not just as she touched him, but in his heart and in his soul.

His bonding for her was what had rewired his neurological damage. He knew without a doubt that Marisol’s presence was the reason why that which had failed to function was now approximating normalcy: Males of the species were so locked in with their females that they were capable of great feats of strength and power on their mate’s behalf.

And that included a return from madness, evidently.

Still, he hated for her to see him like this.

Marisol sat on the bed next to him and stroked her warm hand up and down his forearm. As she did, he frowned at his pin-thin limb, the muscle so withered the skin was loose.

“Ugly.”

“What?” she asked.

“I am…ugly.”

“Not to me.” She shook her head. “Never to me.”

When her eyes circled his head, he had some vague memory of Doc Jane coming in with a shaver. Why had they taken his hair—oh, right. He’d been ripping it out, convinced that it was worms inside his skull. He’d been so freaked out, he’d chewed his bindings free so he could claw and tear at the black lengths until he was bleeding from wounds.

Yes, that was why they had had to shave him. And afterward, they had shown him a mirror to prove to him there was nothing there—and he had calmed down when he had seen it had been removed.

That had been back when they had tried to reason with him in the psychosis.

“I am so sorry,” he said hoarsely. “I didn’t want you…to come back to this.”

“I’m here. That’s all that matters.”

“My brain…is sick.”

“We don’t have to talk about that now if it upsets you.”

“It’s sick.”

“Is that…where the cancer is?”

Assail frowned, wondering if he was having another out-of-phase moment. But then…

“What did Ehric tell you?”

“Not any more than that.” She shook her head. But I don’t need details if you don’t feel up to it.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again. Although this time, it was for the lie he would not correct.

How could he? He had just gotten her back. To explain that what had landed him here was intrinsic to him being a vampire was the last thing he wanted to confess. She would be properly horrified at what he was, and he would lose her again—and this time, nothing would ever return her unto him.

“I love you,” he said urgently. “I was trying to tell you that before. When I couldn’t speak.”

Her beautiful, dark stare widened with surprise and then glowed with happiness. “So that is what you were saying to me.”

“Yes.”

“I thought…well, I’m glad to hear the words.” She stroked his face. “They mean everything.”

Fates, her eyes were lovely, rimmed with lashes beneath the arches of her brows. And there was color on her cheeks, the flush of joy making her seem younger, freer…more alive than ever he had seen her.

As a wave of post-feeding exhaustion came unto him, Assail desperately wanted to continue talking, to be reassured she and her grandmother had been safe in Miami, to discover how the year had gone for them both.

“Did you bring your grandmother…” That tiredness rose up through his bones and began to drag him down in earnest. “Tell me…you brought Mrs. Carvalho.”

“I did, yup. She’s at your home now. With both of your cousins—and there was another man there? A young guy?”

“He is…family friend. Staying with us. You…can…trust….him…”