Skin Trade(172)

I stood there, caught between pain and pleasure, while my body tried to decide which box to put it in. Truth sat up, away from the wall, his hands so strong around my arm, his mouth feeding harder, his throat swallowing, swallowing me down.

I had to put a hand on the wall to keep me kneeling and not falling over, because my head had finally decided that it felt good. Good enough that I was getting weak-kneed.

It was Truth who stopped, pulling his mouth away from my wrist. He kept his hands on my arm and laid his forehead against my skin. I leaned into the cool concrete of the wall, heavier, fighting not to give into that weak-kneed feeling. I was wet, my body prepped for what usually came afterward. When was the last time I’d let a vampire take blood when sex wasn’t involved? I couldn’t remember. I didn’t donate blood outside sex. Shit.

Truth’s voice was still rough but not breathy, a little deeper. It wasn’t sickness or tiredness that deepened his voice. “You taste… your energy… You didn’t taste this way when you fed me last.”

“You were dying. You just don’t remember.”

He raised his face and looked at me. His eyes glowed flat silver-gray in the dimness. “A vampire doesn’t forget the taste of blood, Anita. Something has changed in you since we first met.” He licked the wound on my arm, one long, sensual movement. He closed those shining eyes and licked his lips, as if to catch every drop of blood. The wound was still bleeding, and would for a while, because of the anticoagulant in vampires’ saliva.

“Let go of my arm, Truth,” I said, and my voice was a little uncertain. He wasn’t acting like himself, and I didn’t like the idea that my blood tasted different. What did that mean?

He opened his eyes but didn’t move his hands. He stared up at me with his eyes gone blind with vampire powers. “I feel amazing, Anita. Your blood has more kick to it than a shapeshifter’s does.”

“Let go of me, Truth, now.” My voice was firmer this time.

He smiled and let me go.

I pushed away from him, using the wall to stand. I’d never seen Truth smile, not like that.

He just sat there against the wall, smiling up at me.

“Are you drunk?” I asked.

“Maybe.” He smiled happily.

I’d seen only one vampire react like that, and that one had taken a feeding from both Jason and me. Werewolf with a chaser of necromancer had made Jean-Claude giggling drunk.

“I need to go, Truth.”

“Go,” he said, his smile wide.

“I need to know you’re all right before I leave you.”

“Oh,” he said, and he stood, in one of those too-fast-to-see movements. One minute on the ground, the next standing. Vampires are quicker than human-normal, but for the standing trick, they have to use vampire mind powers to appear that fast. If I’d had a gun, I’d have tried to aim it, just out of habit.

I had moved back out of reach, but after that speed, I knew that it did me no good. “Shit,” I said.

“I didn’t mean to frighten you, but as you can see, I’m very all right.”

My heart was in my throat. “That wasn’t mind tricks,” I managed to say.

“You mean the speed?” he asked.

“Yeah, the speed.”

“No,” he said.

“I’ve never seen a vampire that could move quite like that.”

He gave a little bow from the neck. “High praise from you, but it was a trait of our bloodline.”

“You mean the speed without mind tricks, all of your bloodline could do it?”

“Yes.”

“No wonder you were the warrior elite. That’s faster than most lycanthropes.”

“Once, if the vampire council wanted shapeshifters killed, they sent our bloodline.”

“But now you and Wicked are the last, right?”

He nodded.

“I’ve seen you fight; you weren’t this fast.”

“I haven’t felt this good in a long time.” He stretched his arms skyward, making the muscles in his arm bunch and move. “I feel made new. I feel”-he looked at me, as his eyes drained from silver glow to normal-“like I did before we killed the head of our line.” He frowned. “You bound me to Jean-Claude with your blood and his power. What have you done, or what has been done to you, since that last feeding?”

“I don’t know what you mean by that,” I said.

He was frowning harder, thinking harder. “I mean, Anita, that I feel born again, as if our old master should walk down the street and greet us.” He moved toward me, and I moved back, keeping our distance. It made him stop. “Are you afraid of me?”

“I don’t know what just happened, so let’s just say I’m being cautious.”