I struggled to get out from between them, but my arms and legs weren't working yet. I did not want to lie here while their bodies cooled. I couldn't get up. I couldn't get Asher off of me. I couldn't make my body work. How much blood had I lost? Too much? How much?
I was dizzy, light-headed, and I couldn't tell if it was from the sex, or if Asher had truly taken too much blood. I tried to push him off of me, I should have been able to do that, and I couldn't. The first edge of nausea hit me, and I knew it was blood loss. I touched my neck and found that blood was still seeping from the puncture wounds. That shouldn't have been happening. Should it? I never donated blood voluntarily. I didn't know how long the wounds should bleed.
I tried to lift with my arms, like doing a push-up, and the world swam in streams of colors, dizziness threatened to engulf the world. I did the only thing I could think of-I screamed.
14
The door opened and it was Jason. I don't think I'd ever been so happy to see him. I managed to say, "Help me." My voice sounded weak and scared, and I hated it, but I also was feeling nauseous and dizzy, and that wasn't post-coital languor, it was blood loss.
Now that I could see again, I realized I was drenched in blood-and other things-but it was mainly the blood that was worrying me, because it was all mine.
Jason rolled Asher off of me. He moved with that boneless ease that only a truly dead body has. I don't know what the difference between sleep and death is, but you know instantly when you move even an arm whether it's death, or whether it's sleep.
Asher lay there on his back, his hair spilled around his face like a halo, crimson blood glittered on his chin, his neck, his upper chest. The scars didn't take away from the beauty of him nude. They weren't the first thing you noticed, or even the third. He lay, drenched in my blood, like some fallen god, come down to death at last.
Even sick from loss of blood, I could not find him anything but beautiful. What the fuck was wrong with me?
Jason had to help me slide off of Jean-Claude, catching me in his arms, holding me like you'd hold a child. I was nude, he'd just dragged me from a bed where I'd obviously had sex with two men, yet Jason hadn't made a single quip, or joke. When Jason had this much ammunition but didn't tease, things were bad.
I laid my head against Jason's shoulder, and that helped the dizziness, made the world a little less shaky. He started to turn me away from the bed, but I said, "Wait, not yet."
He stopped moving. "What?"
"I want to remember this."
"What?" he asked again.
"The way they look together." They both lay on their backs, but whereas Asher looked like some fallen death god, Jean-Claude looked like a god of a different kind. His thick black hair lay in a heavy mass around his head, carelessly arranged like a dark frame for that pale, pale face. His lips were half-parted, his lashes thick as lace upon his cheeks. He lay as if he had fallen asleep after some great passion, one hand across his stomach, the other at his side, one knee bent, so that he seemed almost displayed. Only Jean-Claude could die and look this pretty while he did it.
"Anita, Anita," I realized that Jason had been talking for awhile. "How much blood did they take?"
My voice came out hoarse, my mouth was dry. "Not they, only Asher."
He settled me closer in his arms, almost like he was hugging me. His leather jacket creaked as he moved. His bare chest was very warm against my naked skin. "He didn't just feed." Jason sounded disapproving, which you didn't hear much.
"He got caught up in the moment, I think."
He shifted me so that he could free up a hand to touch my forehead, which seemed silly since I was nude, but we often fall into habit when we're stressed. You check someone's temperature on their foreheads, even if they're naked.
"You don't feel feverish. If anything you feel a little cool."
That made me remember something, and the fact that I'd forgotten said I was feeling worse than I knew. "Is my neck still bleeding?"
"A little."
"Should it be?"
He carried me towards the bathroom. "Have you never been bitten this badly before?" He opened the door with his knee and one hand, and carried me through.
"Not without passing out afterwards, non." I frowned. "Did I just say, non, instead of no?"
"Yep," he said.
"Shit," I said.
"Yeah," he said. He sat on the edge of the huge black marble tub, balancing me in his lap while he turned on the water. The water spilled out of a silver swan's mouth, which I'd always thought was ostentatious, but hey, it wasn't my bathroom.
The nausea had passed, the dizziness was waning. "Down, put me down."