his wrist and palm, hoping it might help him relax if he saw she wasn’t about to tear into him like a rabid dog.
When she lifted his hand, she pressed it to her cheek. While it left his wrist frightfully close to her mouth, she kept her eyes on his, one hand held over his own, the other again resting against his jaw.
‘Trust me,’ she mouthed, the sincerity reflected in her eyes, even if she couldn’t speak the words aloud.
She turned into his wrist and sank her fangs in, doing what she could to keep the bite as quick and clean as she could.
At first it hurt. Christoph had been expecting that. Even in his flat-faced state, it wasn’t bad. Vampire fangs were obviously not meant to be the stabbing, shredding meat hooks that werewolf fangs were.
Despite what Ashi had said after John bit him, Christoph was completely unprepared for how good it felt after the initial shock faded. Agonizing pain would have been more welcome—at least it would have validated everything he’d ever been told about being bitten. It was supposed to burn like mad, as if you had liquid fire pouring into your veins. It was never supposed to feel like this.
Mouse didn’t take very much, nor did she stay latched to his wrist for very long.
Withdrawing, she carefully pulled away, only a few tiny beads of blood welling from the bite. She curled both her hands around Christoph’s palm, cradling it in her lap as she anxiously looked up at him, awaiting his reaction.
Christoph was a little woozy, but it was the adrenaline rush fading rather than from blood loss. It had ended a lot sooner than he thought it would. All in all it hadn’t been that bad. Unnerving, frightening—but not the end of the world. At least he hadn’t been cornered and bitten like Ashi had, or having a meltdown of epic proportions. It was the best possible outcome of the worst possible situation.
Seeing Mouse staring nervously at him helped to keep him from doing something drastically stupid, like screaming in horror.
“That was different.”
Mouse gave him a nervous, lop-sided smile, uncertain if that meant he really was okay or if he was trying to save her feelings. She loosened her grip on his hand so he could pull away if he wanted to.
She wasn’t too sure if he appreciated the physical contact after what she’d done. It was hard to tell what he wanted. To be comforted? Left alone? It didn’t seem right to ask, but seeing him so unnerved made her feel the same way.
Christoph dearly wanted to bolt, turn his bed into a den, and hide in it for the rest of his life—but he didn’t want to offend Mouse. What did you do after you were bitten? Sit there and chat? Have a cigarette? Watch a movie? Pass out?
There really needed to be a pamphlet on this or something.
Eventually, Mouse let go of his hand so she could put some space between them. Obviously, he wasn’t comfortable with what she’d done. To her mind, that meant he wasn’t comfortable with her, either.
Averting her eyes, she tried to think of something to write, some kind of distraction to use, anything other than just sitting there in awkward, strained silence. Her mind was totally blank. She was starting to feel worse than John; at least he’d left Ashi alone afterwards, not expecting anything else from him.
This was all kinds of bad. She shouldn’t have rushed him. She shouldn’t have asked to begin with. This was exactly the sort of thing that made her usually take months to groove in a new donor.
Thoroughly embarrassed and deeply regretting having ever brought up the subject, she finally wrote something down.
I’m really sorry. It won’t happen again.
Meaning, she’d never again ask him to let her bite him, and would probably avoid him for quite a while. Even if he said yes, she’d only think he was doing it out of some sense of obligation, not because he wanted to.
Christoph inspected his wrist. The bite mark was already closed, and the droplets of blood had dried.
Looking at it logically, there wasn’t anything truly abhorrent about what vampires did to willing donors. He could see why they’d want it. It felt good. Really good. Even now his wrist throbbed with pleasant aftershocks.
The donors here obviously weren’t downtrodden juice boxes, wasting away from blood loss. It couldn’t even be compared to eating meat—you killed the cow for that.
Even then, he wasn’t