Revenge and the Wild(39)

Soon Westie’s tentative licks became greedy slurps. She knew she’d consumed more than the five drops necessary for a cure, but it was difficult to care about that when feeling the rush it gave her. She wrapped her legs around Costin’s waist to keep him from pulling away.

Costin let out a moan as she sucked at his vein. The taste was pleasant enough, but it was the feelings being dealt to her body that kept her mouth clamped to Costin’s skin like a deer tick. It was like waking up, like seeing everything beautiful in the world for the first time, and all at once. The blood was cold going down her throat, but it warmed every part of her until she was a puddle in his arms.

She felt her bodice give and his cool lips touch her chest. When Costin started to kiss her neck, she reluctantly pulled away from his wrist and grabbed him by the throat with her machine. The amount of pressure she used would’ve killed a human but only made Costin wince.

“I said no funny business.” While her mechanical hand squeezed his neck, her flesh hand caressed his cheek. Though she still had some of her wits, it was a losing battle. There was no telling how long she could keep resisting him. If she were to take a guess, she was at the end of the countdown.

He choked out a laugh, barely able to get words through her stranglehold. “You said to keep my hands to myself. You didn’t say anything about my lips.”

Her body quivered, knees shaking. When he offered his wrist to her once more, her breaths became urgent. “Just . . . behave.”

By the sound of his laughter, he knew the effect he was having on her. She let go of his neck and grabbed his wrist again, latching on.

She was enveloped, too submerged in bliss to notice his dark eyes drinking in her curves, her ripe, warm skin. His mouth parted, and a carnal growl escaped from deep in his chest.

He pulled his wrist away and she was finally able to fill her lungs. She sat up just in time to watch his mouth open and his fangs bury themselves deep into her inner thigh. She gasped in surprise at first, and then in pleasure.

The luxury of his bite was more than she could have imagined. Somewhere, deep within, she knew she should stop him. Not that she had the greatest reputation to begin with, but if anyone found out a vampire had drunk from her, she’d be ruined. In that same deep pit of thought, she knew she would regret giving herself to Costin, but right then none of that mattered.

Bursts of color popped in front of her eyes. Greed was royal blue with sparks of gold. Her machine clawed at the bed, shredding the sheets. She saw her desire in shades of rich, dark purple.

Forget whiskey, forget everything. She wanted to live beneath Costin’s teeth forever. She finally understood why the living dead girls gave their lives to the blood brothels.

The blood swirling in Westie’s stomach turned from cold to warm to blazing hot. Her pleasure was diluted with tendrils of pain. That was new. She’d liked it at first, before her pleasure thinned and only the pain showed through. Splashes of black smothered all other colors.

Westie’s stomach cramped. Pain raced through her, hooked its claws onto every nerve as it passed, and pulled her from her pleasure stupor. She wrapped her machine around her waist and groaned as the cramps dug deeper.

Costin sat up. Her blood dripped from his fangs onto his chin. “What is it?” he asked. His face showed more concern than she’d thought a vampire was capable of. “What’s wrong?”

She didn’t know. She couldn’t speak. It felt like a serrated blade had sliced through her abdomen. When she opened her mouth to speak, a scream came out instead. Her body slammed against the pillows, back arched off the bed as a new barb of pain cut through her consciousness, causing her muscles to stiffen. She could hear Costin’s voice and other voices around her, but the pain was too agonizing to care about her modesty.

“I don’t know what’s happening,” she heard Costin’s desperate voice say. “Find Alistair, tell him to fetch Nigel—and tell him it’s urgent.”

When everyone was gone, Costin appeared above her. His face went in and out of view, the lights flashing as she blinked.

His hands clutched the sides of her face. “Westie, my love, stay with me,” he begged her. His voice was a high tremor.

He was frightened. A frightened vampire—now there’s a first, she thought just before she blacked out.

Westie woke up in her own bed. Her cramps became straight razors cutting into her intestines. Each stab of pain was worse than the last, like fingers had reached inside to braid her guts. Her tongue felt stretched and heavy in her mouth. She went back and forth between blanket and cold rag as fever and chill battled for supremacy. If she’d known the pain vampire blood would inflict, she might have thought about the idea more thoroughly before seeking Costin’s help.

Her insides felt like they had liquefied and were coming out at all ends. Any hangover she’d ever had paled in comparison. Embarrassed by her lack of control over her body, she begged Alistair to leave her. He wouldn’t. Luckily, Bena insisted Alistair leave when it came time to change Westie’s bedpan and clean her. Still, the humiliation was complete.

Nigel gave her sugar-grass milk—which was anything but sweet—to help her body absorb the healing qualities of the vampire blood and flush out any toxins. She got devil’s claw root to ease her pain and fluids to keep her from dehydrating.

When the sun was high in the sky, her fever finally broke and the pain had turned from a savage flogging to a mere stab in the belly. Every muscle in her body was wound tighter than a banjo string, but she no longer wished for death, and the thought of whiskey sat worse than a bad smell. By nightfall she felt better than she had in years, and she was famished. Bena sent up a bloody steak the way she liked it and a fire-cooked potato with fresh-churned butter.