He'd forgotten the vividness of this world. The brightness of the colors and sharpness of sounds and smells.
Erin slid off the bed and disappeared while he tried to sort through it. How could he be here where she could see him?
How could he bleed real blood?
It had to be the fact that his demigod essence had been drained out of him during his beating.
The only way to kill a god was to remove all powers from him, which was what the Skoti had been doing. Erin's mind must have found some way to bring him over the threshold in that last moment before he died.
He should be in Tartarus by now, paying for his crimes for the rest of eternity. But somehow she had saved him. Somehow she had brought him here. There was no other explanation.
The power of her mind and spirit was phenomenal.
Erin returned with a damp washcloth. Carefully she wiped the blood from his face and body.
V'Aidan trembled at the softness of her hand and the way the cloth felt gliding over his flesh. She was always so kind. Until her, he had never understood that concept. Never known what it was to help someone else.
Before he realized what he was doing, he captured her lips, then winced as pain swept along his swollen jaw.
"Ow," he said again, pulling back.
Erin slid her hands over his chest as she inspected his wounds. In dreams, her touch had been muted; now it possessed a tender heat unimaginable. It left him breathless and raw.
V'Aidan reached out and cupped her face so that he could study her beautiful features. "Why are you helping me?"
"Because you need it."
He couldn't fathom such an unselfish reason. Such things didn't exist in his realm.
"You need to rest."
"I need clothes," he said.
"I will have to buy you some."
"Buy?"
"Purchase. You don't just walk into a store and have them give you what you need."
V'Aidan listened to the patience in her voice. Patience he wasn't used to. He knew so little about her human world. He'd been relegated to viewing it through the distortions of dreams and nightmares.
The pain inside him, he did know. It was the only emotion left to his kind. It was why they invaded human sleep. There they could feel other things. Even muted emotions were better than none at all.
"Would you... please," he forced the foreign word out, "get me some clothes?"
"Yes."
Incredible. She was so willing to help him. He was baffled by it. Slowly, carefully, he left the bed and walked around her room.
Erin's entire body shook as she left him to fetch a tape measure. How could this be real?
Was she still dreaming? There was a surrealness to this that made it seem like fantasy, and yet...
She cursed as she stubbed her toe against the plant stand in her living room.
No, that pain was real.
This wasn't a dream. V'Aidan was really in her world, and if she had pulled him here, maybe, just maybe, she could keep him here.
Erin! What are you thinking? A man like V'Aidan doesn't belong here. He's not even human.
And yet he was more human, more man, than anyone else she'd ever known.
She didn't want him to leave. And that thought frightened her most of all.
V'Aidan looked up as Erin returned a few minutes later with a strange cloth coil. "What is that?" he asked as she approached him while unwinding it.
"It's a tape measure. I need to know your size to buy your pants."
She wrapped a portion of it around his waist, her hands raising chills on his body, her touch raising another part of him as well.
"Thirty-three waist," she said, her breath falling on his chest.
She sank to her knees before him.
V'Aidan shivered at the sight of her brown hair between his knees as she bent to place one edge of the tape on the floor by his foot. She ran it up the inside of his leg.
Erin swallowed at the strength of his body. And when she reached his groin, her heart pounded. He was rigid and hard, and when her hand lightly brushed his sac, he hissed sharply.
"Thirty-six," she said absently, her gaze catching his.
The heat there was intense, and for the first time, she was actually afraid of him. He was a living man now, one who could possess who knew what strengths and powers in this world.
And they were alone in her house.
V'Aidan took her hand in his and led it to his erection. "I need you