Feed, Ben.
Teeth stung across my skin for a moment, and I braced myself for his bite. With a profane snarl, he shoved himself back from me, stalking to the door, leaning his forehead on it as his shoulders heaved.
I stared at him first in surprise, then mortification. He didn’t want to drink my blood?
“I want to,” he said, his voice rough and tight. “Dear god, Fran, how can you believe I want anything but to Join with you once and for all? That’s all that’s filled my mind for the last five years. But I can’t. Not now. Not while . . .”
Hurt and confusion twisted around my heart. I looked at Ben, his head down as he faced the door, his body language reading anger and frustration. “Imogen told me once that if you fed from me, you wouldn’t be able to take blood from her or anyone else, that all blood but mine would be poisonous to you. You don’t want to drink from me because then you wouldn’t be able to feed from Naomi. Is that it, Ben? You’d rather feed from her than from me?”
His shoulders slumped. “I can honestly say that now that I’ve seen you again, I want you more than I’ve wanted anything in all the centuries of my life.” He turned around, his face showing a little of the agony that leached into the room from within him. “But I can’t feed from you. Not yet. Please try to understand.”
I looked at him, this man who I hadn’t wanted, who bossed me around, and drove me insane with both desire and an almost overwhelming urge to walk away once again from the pain he’d caused me. He had crushed my heart. He said he wanted me, but didn’t want to be with me. He craved my blood and the bond it would bring, but refused it nonetheless.
I should have told him I couldn’t trust someone who kept secrets from me.
I should have told him to hit the road.
I should have thrown him out of my life once and for all.
“What do you want me to do?” was all I asked.
“Trust me.” He stood there watching me with eyes that were now the color of mahogany, so handsome it almost hurt, everything I ever wanted in a man, everything I had ever dreamed about, as dark as sin, and twice as dangerous.
He didn’t love me. I had asked him, and bound to tell me the truth as he was, he hadn’t said he did. Could I trust him, given that we might have no future together? What if we simply ended up together, my chemical makeup reacting to his, two people who were physically meant to be together, but lacking the emotional bond that I knew I could not live without?
He had given me time when I needed it; surely I could return the favor. Hadn’t I gained enough insight into myself in the last twenty-four hours to grant him what he asked? I pulled up the blankets. “Good night, Ben.”
He said nothing, just gave me a look that left me tingling to the tips of my toes, and left.
I lay awake in the darkness for a long time after that, thinking about what he said, half asleep, rousing only for a few minutes when the low rumble of masculine voices outside the door woke me. I kept still and silent as the door was opened just a smidgen, allowing a thin finger of light to spill across the edge of the bed.
“Is the goddess—” I heard Isleif ask.
“Still a virgin,” Eirik answered in a satisfied tone, carefully closing the door. “She has not been touched by the Dark One.”
Was that a prophecy, or merely wishful thinking?
Chapter 8
I didn’t see Ben at all the following morning, but I didn’t expect to, given that sunlight was not his friend. Instead I spent a fruitless six hours with the Vikings as we searched the town of Brustwarze for signs of either Loki or the man the Vikings claimed was his son.
“You’re sure you saw him yesterday?” I asked them as we stopped for a quick lunch at an out-of-the-way café.
“I am sure it was Nori,” Eirik said with a stubborn set to his chin.
“But you didn’t see him later on, after I went back to the Faire?”
“No.” He scowled at the waiter who brought our food, the latter hurrying away quickly when Eirik fingered his (still thankfully ammo-less) Walther P38. “We searched most diligently until it was time for our rape.”
I blinked at the word, thinking I must have misheard. “Your what?”
“Our rape. We went to a rape last night.” Eirik’s expression lightened when the waiter hastily brought him another mammoth stein of beer. “The music was loud and horrible. There were bright lights and much ale. We enjoyed it greatly, did we not?”
“You went to a . . . Oh dear goddess, you mean a rave, not a rape.”
Eirik shrugged. “It was good, no matter what you call it. There were many women. Finnvid rutted with five of them.”