"Bully for him. There's a dead guy here who needs our help."
"No one can die in the Akasha," the woman said, glancing behind her again.
"Well, someone has, and he needs a proper burial. Are there some sort of funeral-home people here?"
"No one dies in the Akasha," she repeated, stepping toward me a half-dozen feet. She peered over the edge of the boulder. "Oh, him. He's not dead. He's a Dark One. He simply has no blood left."
"He's a vampire?" I looked down at the man, aghast. "What's he doing here?"
"Nothing, unless someone feeds him, and no one is crazy enough to do that. Dark Ones are not to be messed with." She looked over her shoulder again, suddenly jetting off, throwing back at me, "And neither are wrath demons! If you know what's good for you, you'll get out of here!"
I looked in the direction she had pointed, but didn't see a sign of any movement. Still, if something scary was coming, it would be best to move along.
"I'm sorry," I told the comatose vampire. "It's nothing personal, but my brother-in-law aside, I haven't had good experiences with you guys."
I hurried off in the direction that the woman had taken, my feet slowing as I thought back about the brush of the vampire's hair against my fingers. It was long and silky, despite being coated with dirt. And the stubble on that sexy chin had felt soft, yet abrasive enough to make my fingertips tingle. Likewise the soft brown hairs of his chest when I had picked off the beetle. It struck me then that his flesh hadn't been deathly cold.... It was cool, below room temperature, but not the icy chill of death.
"Poor guy," I said again, turning back to look at the obscene rock. I couldn't believe I was feeling any sort of empathy for a bloodsucking fiend, but somehow, the shrunken, gray-skinned man who lay back there didn't seem at all to be the fiendish short. He was . . . needy.
"No one will feed you," I said, gnawing on my lower lip. The savvy part of my mind told me to run far, far away from the vampire. I knew how deadly they could be - I had almost nightly reminders of that. But the idiot part of my brain, the part that fell for con artists, and lost puppies, and kids who cried in stores because they couldn't have a toy, that part commanded my feet to take me back the way I'd just come.
"This is stupid," I told the man when I got back to him. "You're a vampire. You're nothing but trouble. I'm not going to feed you and have you go kill someone." I knelt next to him, wondering how one went about feeding a comatose vampire. It wasn't something that came up much at the office. I pried open his lips and smooshed my wrist up against his teeth, prodding him on the shoulder as I said, "Mister? Soup's on. So to speak. Oh, god, what am I doing? I can't believe I'm actually trying to save you. Only . . . if you're as powerful as I think you are, then you can get Diamond and me out of here. OK? Do we have a deal? I give you blood and you get us out of the Akasha? One bite for yes, two for no, all right?"
The vampire just lay there, his eyes closed, his hair begging to be stroked. How on earth did one resuscitate a vampire? Mouth-to-mouth? I removed my wrist from his mouth, eyeing his lips with concern. He wasn't dead, but it seemed somewhat creepy to just slap my mouth on his and breathe for him. What if there were beetles in his mouth?
"Urgh," I said, shivering. "Too icky. I'd better look before I try that."
If anyone told me that one day I'd be kneeling in limbo, prying open the mouth of an almost-dead vampire to see if insects had invaded him, I'd have laughed myself silly. It didn't strike me at all as funny as I angled the man's head first one way, and then another, trying to get enough light to see into his mouth. With a muttered apology, I wiped off my forefinger as best I could, and swept it around his mouth to make sure there were no lurking bugs.
His mouth was surprisingly warm, not moist the way a mouth should be, but slightly humid. I sat staring down at him, my index finger in his mouth, a sudden jolt of awareness hitting me that I was ashamed to admit was akin to arousal.
It got worse when he started sucking on my finger.
"Oh, my," I said, staring in amazement as his neck muscles worked. "Mercy. I think . . . oh, man. Mister? You there?"
I pried up one eyelid, but his eyes were rolled back. Still, he must have some sort of an awareness if his suckle reflex had been triggered.
"What could work on a finger can work for a wrist," I told him, gently removing my finger, letting it trail along his parched lower lip. I was going to edge my wrist between his teeth, but some urge deep inside me instead had me bending over him, holding my hair out of the way with one hand as I angled my neck down over his mouth. A strange awareness prickled along my skin as his dry, cool lips touched my neck. I waited a minute, but he did nothing. With a sigh, I scooted down until I was partially draped over his body, my hair spread over him like a screen as I shifted in tiny little movements until my nose was buried in the dusty silken coolness of his hair. I slid a hand under his neck, pressing his mouth to my flesh, my whole body tight and tense, as if I were waiting for a blow.
A soft exhalation of his breath warmed my skin for a moment, followed by a brief rasp of his tongue. "Go ahead," I told him, breathing in the scent from his hair, ignoring the musty smell of the dirt to revel in the woodsy, earthy scent that seemed to sink in through my pores.
Pain suddenly flared in my neck, pain that quickly turned to heat that rippled outward, flowing down through my veins. I moaned, clutching his head to me, the sensation of life flowing from me to him more arousing than anything I'd ever felt in my life. No wonder Jacintha didn't mind when Avery needed to feed from her - this was the most erotic sensation I'd ever felt, and that was with a comatose vampire. What would it be like when he was awake?
The impaired side of my mind cackled to itself that I could even contemplate feeding the vampire after he was on his feet again, but at that moment, I would have been willing to sign away all common sense in order to stay just as I was.
Two hands suddenly gripped my arms, the fingers biting into my flesh, holding me against him as he continued to feed, the sensation of his mouth making my breasts grow hot and heavy, and much more secret parts sit up and take notice.
Suddenly, I was on my back, the rocks beneath me digging painfully into my back, the vampire's body heavy on mine, but none of that mattered. It was his mouth that my entire awareness was focused on, his wonderfully hot mouth still on my neck as he drank deeply, and I had the oddest feeling that I could actually sense the blood flowing through his body, replenishing him, like water poured over parched earth. It soaked into every atom of his being, and with each passing moment, I felt myself soaring on a sort of high, a blissful awareness that I was fulfilling a need that had, until that moment, lain dormant in both of us.
My hands slipped from his head as I gave myself up to him, floating away on a fluffy cloud of euphoria, content with life at long last.
Alec couldn't believe what he was seeing. He had rolled over to find a woman in his arms. She lay on top of him now, her head limp against his neck, her heart slowly beating, yet at the same time he could swear he felt it beating within him, as well.
Someone had fed him. Someone, this woman lying across him, had, for an unknown reason, fed him.
"Who are you?" he asked, his voice harsh and rough from his coma.
She didn't answer; she just lay across his torso, her body warm on his. He closed his eyes for a moment at the pain that awareness brought with it.