He looked down at her for a long time. He sighed. “I will heal my wounds as best I can and if you are willing, I gladly accept your offer of blood.”
“Of course I’m willing. We have to do this now, Andre.”
“I have sustained far worse wounds than these. His fist didn’t penetrate that far.”
He sounded as if he was running out of patience. And she was being as nice as possible under very horrendous and scary circumstances. She thought it best to point that out to him.
“Just so you know, I’m not my grandmother. I do not hunt vampires. In fact, I prefer to believe they are figments of the imagination. Or at least very bad nightmares. So if I’m not handling this situation to your satisfaction, I apologize.” She gave him another glare just to make certain he realized she was losing patience with him.
“I told you not to leave,” he said, and his voice went scary quiet. Soft. Scary soft.
If she didn’t have to press so hard into his bleeding chest with both hands she would have given an airy wave to dismiss his orders. As it was, she decided to be the bigger person. After all, he was bleeding to death right in front of her.
“Just because you’ve sustained worse wounds, doesn’t mean this one won’t kill you. Get on the bed, Andre. And I mean it.” She used her firmest I-mean-business voice.
9
Andre hissed at Teagan, a long, slow sound of sheer anger slipping out. His eyes turned glittery, and the temperature in the cave went up several degrees. He caught both her wrists and pulled them from his chest. Her sacrificial shirt dropped to the ground, bloody and ruined.
Teagan’s heart stuttered and she tried to take a step back from him. Distance would be a good thing. He was a big man and powerful. It didn’t matter that he was bleeding everywhere, he looked like an ancient warrior—one used to winning every battle.
“You’re scaring me, Andre.”
“The time to be afraid was when you left the safety of this cave against my wishes and dangled yourself as bait in front of a vampire.”
She moistened suddenly dry lips with the tip of her tongue. How could he even stand up? She couldn’t help herself. As much as she wanted to know everything about vampires and hunters and the strange things he could do, she wanted to heal him. The compulsion grew in her the longer she looked at the rake marks on his face and the blood flowing from his chest.
“I was afraid,” she conceded. “I was afraid I was losing my mind. Please, Andre, let me help you. I’m not as good a healer as you, but if you don’t let me help, you’re not going to make it. You can’t sustain this kind of blood loss.”
He turned and went to the bed, taking her with him. He sank down on the edge, his thighs apart, and he pulled her down in front of him, seating her with her back to his front. “Sit still.”
He made it an order, and she winced, but at least he was sitting on the bed instead of standing like some crazy macho man, bleeding out right in front of her.
“I will heal my wounds and then I will need your blood. I will be weak and I need you to sit still and not fight me.”
She turned her head to scowl at him over her shoulder. “I volunteered to give you blood, Andre. And just an FYI, I bashed that vampire over his head in order to save you. I may have wanted to run away, but I didn’t.” She knew she sounded snippy, but as if. She was the one who pointed out he needed a transfusion, and she’d told him she would donate if they were compatible.
Andre wrapped both of his arms around her waist and drew her close. She was instantly aware of her bare skin. She’d almost forgotten she was in her bra and nothing else. She’d just have to pretend she was wearing a bathing suit. It wasn’t like she could jump him when he was so seriously wounded.
She huffed out her breath and turned back around. It was far too daunting to look into his eyes. She couldn’t see pain there, but she felt it beating at her. Both the healer and the empath in her needed to help him—needed to heal him. She couldn’t bear for him to be wounded one more moment.
Still, she had the feeling that he wanted her to experience this with him. He was still angry. She felt that as well, a kind of repressed fury smoldering just below the surface, and she wasn’t altogether certain why, but she wasn’t going to ask. She just wanted him to get on with however he was going to heal himself.
Teagan felt him push into her mind. It wasn’t subtle, the move was a powerful force, a thrust, taking him past every natural barrier and merging them together in one swift takeover. He felt predatory. Invasive at first. Scary. He poured into her, filling her. Finding her. Seeing her.
The swift invasion was both uncomfortable and yet sensual at the same time. He would know her every secret. Every thought. Everything. She couldn’t hide from him. Still, she’d been lonely all of her life. She’d been different and never fit anywhere. He filled those empty spaces with—him. With his strength and courage. He gave himself to her, opening his mind to her.
She found herself moving into him. Not as decisively as he had her; she was delicate about it, not wanting to give him the feeling of a takeover. She discovered that where she’d felt alone in the midst of her family and friends, Andre had been alone. There was a huge difference.
He had no one. Not a single person of his own. She really was that person to him. She poured herself into those lonely places, just as he had done for her. She felt him still. His hands tightened, nearly cutting off her breath, but she didn’t move. He needed this. He needed her, and she gave herself to him.
Heal yourself now, Andre. I want to be with you when you do.
She might never be able to do what he could, but she could share it with him, just like this. Mind-to-mind. It was far more intimate than she could ever imagine. She couldn’t lie to him. Or hide from him. She saw him just as he saw her. He had killed to protect others. She saw that. She accepted it. Andre’s integrity shone through every other thing about him.
She actually felt him shed his body. It was almost a glorious thing to feel him lose his ego, his more human and predatory senses, all sense of self, to become nothing but a pure white healing light. She felt his heat like a laser, moving through his body to find the hole in his chest. He repaired veins and arteries, removing the venom from the places where the vampire had clawed through his flesh. She hadn’t even known vampires had venom in the nasty, razor-sharp talons they called fingernails.
He was meticulous, taking his time, and she realized it took a great deal of energy to stay out of one’s body and do the kind of work that he was doing. She was so deeply connected to his mind, moving with him through his body that she could actually feel the repairs and “see” them, although it was much more of an internal visualization.