Blood Stained Tranquility (35 page)

Him.

Then she’d kill that bitch.

Whoa, psycho. As if you’re not pathetic enough.

“You aren’t pathetic. Evesse.
Please
. At least let me get you cleaned up. Please, baby.”

She hadn’t even realized she’d spoken that last part out loud.

She jumped away from him when he went to grab her, and ended up four feet inside the wood and plaster of the walls.

“Please,” she pleaded, shaking her head and not looking at him. “Please don’t touch me. It hurts. I need you to not touch me.”

Chapter 25

His
R’ma
had begged him not to touch her. She sat curled into herself, had nearly buried herself in the wall just to get away from him, and was covered in blood. Her agony was a dark, ruthless presence in the air around him, suffocating him to the point that he could barely breathe.

The sound of her tears cut him open from the inside. Every wave of pain that went through her slammed through their connection and set off an answering wave inside him.

All he wanted to do was hold her. Apologize. Strip them both naked and take her, drink her, force her to drink him, and give her his entire body until the images in her head were erased by the basic fact of their reality.

He was hers. He was mated
to her
.

And she was begging him not to touch her.

Fuck his life. Fuck
him.
What had he done?

She was bleeding so badly that he could only scent her blood in the air. Nothing else. His incisors throbbed. His cock did too,
aching
in a way it never had. He thought he’d known hunger. Thought he’d known need. That she’d already pushed him past the points of starvation. But he’d been wrong.

He was wild, on the verge of losing himself to the instincts racking him.

They were demanding that he force himself on her. Cover her, take her, come inside her over and over, until she was marked completely and she understood that she owned him.

If he touched her he was going to hurt her. He knew this. He had seen Nylicia suffer through many, many episodes like this over the millennia. Because of that, he knew what Eve was going through.

What she was seeing in her head.

“You. You’re everything to me.” He moved closer, just an inch, slowly, watching her as she curled into herself, shaking her head. Her whimpers were killing him, hitting him with equal parts of misery and lust. “I belong to you.”

“Then why did you feel bad telling her about me?” Eve yelled, crawling away from him as fast as she could.

“It was a mistake. Evesse, stop. You need to stop.”

She wasn’t listening to him. She kept on going until she’d crawled into the corner next to the bathroom. Once there, she curled into herself, looking exactly like what she was—an injured animal destroyed by pure instinct.

He hadn’t meant to, but he’d done that to her.
Him.
She hated the fact that she belonged to him, and he had no one to blame but himself.

Do something, you fool. Do something.

What? What could he do? He couldn’t even care for her. If he touched her, she would spiral further into the symptoms attacking her. He knew that he couldn’t lay a hand on her until those symptoms began to ease.

It could take fucking days.

How the hell was he supposed to leave her like that for days? The sight of her and all that blood was destroying him. His heart was breaking.

Then do something, you worthless fuck. Help your female.

How? He didn’t have his Tranquility powers anymore, and they’d never really worked on Evesse. He’d used them many times over the years to help Nylicia, but without them, he couldn’t even try.

Yes, you can.

The thought went through his head, sounding a hell of a lot like his voice when Mavrak took over. Wait. Was Mavrak actually telling him to try to use his
Tranquility
powers?

We don’t have them anymore.

Use them on our female, you fucking moron! She aches.

This wasn’t going to work. He had never been more certain of anything in his existence. But the way Eve sat rocking and pulling on her hair, her little face pressed into her knees, had him ready to try anything.

Hell, he’d give his own existence if it meant that he could ease her and erase the pain she was in.

He slid closer, moving slower than a fucking snail, and watching for any reaction. She didn’t look at him. Her whimpers had died out some, but she was still sniffling, and when he inhaled hard, he smelled the salty tang of her tears mixed with her blood.

Focus. You need to be able to do this. You can’t leave her in pain like this.

He shifted until he was six inches away from her, careful to remain quiet. On his knees, he straightened his upper body, closed his eyes, and
begged
himself to find his center of calm. Without it, he wasn’t going to be able to call forth what he needed.

Despite his doubts, he pushed himself, taking deep breaths and forcing himself to ignore how Eve’s blood smelled.

How long he was at it, he had no clue. He didn’t care. The first few minutes were unbearable. Eve’s sniffles were almost impossible to ignore. Reckless impulses gnawed at him, demanding that he jump off his feet and hurl himself at her. The fact that he loved her and was unable to watch her suffer was the only thing that kept him in place, even during those few minutes where he was sure it wasn’t going to work.

The first spark inside him felt familiar, soothing. He almost doubted that it was happening. Then, the darkness blanketed his thoughts, sliding down his spine and encompassing the rest of his body.

Yes. Zeniel remembered this. Hadn’t felt it in over a month now, but the feeling was so familiar. He focused on it, ignoring the rush of elation that threatened. It would distract him, and he needed to keep himself centered. Connected to the darkness. As soon as he was sure he had a good hold on it, he began willing it out of himself, and aimed it toward Evesse.

Lost to the darkness, without any other choice, he kept at it, not knowing if it was working or not. The farther he allowed himself to sink into trance, the less he heard and sensed of the outside world. It was just him, the darkness, and the whispers of an ache that wouldn’t go away.

When he opened his eyes, relief almost made him fall flat on his face.

Evesse was unconscious, lying on the floor, her chest rising with each steady breath. There was a small furrow between her eyebrows. He knew that she was still feeling some of the pain—Gods help him, she was probably still seeing shit she shouldn’t be seeing—but it was a start. He could work with this. If she was sufficiently out, he could at least try to tend to her.

He needed to tend to her. Not doing so was the biggest injustice he’d ever experienced.

And he’d seen some seriously messed up crap in his life.

On that note, he flashed to her, too impatient to crawl the last six inches. Crouched, he extended a shaking hand, and ran his fingertips down her cheek. Her eyelids fluttered, but aside from that, there was no response.

Good. This was good. Even though his own body was jacked up and threatening to orgasm from that simple contact alone.

Panting, he eased his arms under her, and lifted her gently off the floor. Eve whimpered. He froze, waiting. When she didn’t wake, he exhaled with relief, and made his way into the bathroom, where he carefully laid her on the floor next to the tub.

Peeling the blood soaked shirt off her was its own special type of torture. Fury, need, and guilt pummeled at him with unadulterated glee. He’d known a mating could be some serious shit. He’d known for a long, long time.

Again, an image of Nylicia, bloody and weak, on the verge of dying, flashed through his mind. He’d known, but knowing the facts and experiencing them were two separate things entirely.

Eve’s breasts came into view, and, as if he hadn’t seen them before, Zeniel was debased into a slobbering, clumsy beast. He slammed a fist deep into the ground next to her, his body curling over hers. His cock punched at his jeans, pumping as hard as his chest was, and he swore he heard the zipper holding it back start to slide down on its own. Every rise and fall of her chest pushed those tight, pink nipples of hers up toward him. Tempting him.

Torturing him.

He couldn’t take her while she was out. He wouldn’t. He wanted her awake for what he was going to do to her. Wanted her to remember every moment, so that she and the fucking
R’mannev
got the damned point.

It was impossible to hate what bound them together, but if the mating had been a solid entity
outside
her body, he would have kicked its ass. Hard.

Zen willed the rest of Evesse’s clothes off, knowing that his fingers were too clumsy to get the job done. There was blood on her skin, too. Of course there would be, her clothes had been saturated in that shit. Her mating mark was red around the edges, swollen and raised. New lines extended from the bottom, curling around her collarbone. At the top of the mark, close to her chin, an angry gash had just begun to heal. Her skin had opened on its own, blood rushing out of there, as well.

Damn it, he’d never understood how vampires thought, or how they could sink into a bloodlust so extreme that drinking another being’s blood was the only way back out of the insanity.

He got it now. He got it so hard that he was bending over his female before he could stop himself, his tongue snaking out and licking a path up from her collarbone to the still open gash on her neck.

“Oh, fuck.”

It’s not like he’d forgotten how delicious she was to him. That one taste of her blood, however, abolished his common sense.

He needed more.

He latched onto the gash with his lips, taking a gentle pull and moaning when her blood hit his tongue again. He wanted to shove his cock between her folds, come all over her as he had last time, right before he slid into her.

She’s not awake. You sick fuck, she’s not aware.

He never thought to find himself back in that position. Cursing, he pulled away, cracking open his jaw as white-hot agony shot through his incisors, up into his gums, and kept on going until he felt like his head was going to split right down the middle.

He willed the shower on, near incoherent. Lifting Eve into his arms left him with a good, hot feel of all that naked skin.

Damn it, he trembled so hard that he almost dropped her, but once he had her under the water, a part of him eased. Carefully, he poured some of the liquid soap he’d materialized into his hand and began washing the blood off her. The hungry motherfucker inside him wasn’t happy at the sight of her blood running into the drain—it belonged inside him—but there was no denying that washing and caring for her went a long way to soothe the mess battling within him.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to her, materializing a bottle of shampoo and going to work on her hair. Eve’s lids fluttered, and he hoped that a part of her was hearing what he said. “I didn’t mean for this to happen, and it never will again. I will never let anyone hurt you again. Especially not me.”

Especially not Rhalira, either, but he didn’t say that out loud. She didn’t need to hear that.

He rinsed out her hair, his chest tight. When he eased her against the back of the tub and moved her black, wet hair away from her face, the urge to kiss her became too much. Gently, he leaned down and pressed his lips over hers, not caring that the water was hitting his head and soaking him.

“I’m never going to let this happen to you again. I’ll make this better for you. I vow it to you.”

The glow of his aura flaring around him lit up the bathroom. He had no idea how he was going to make her forget what she’d seen, but he would have to find a way now, wouldn’t he?

He licked his lips, before leaning in and pressing them against hers one more time. They were plump, soft. He couldn’t stop himself from sucking on her bottom one and running his tongue across it.

Man, he had to stop that shit. Tasting her wasn’t helping. Taking her then wasn’t an option.

Sighing, he pulled back, materialized some conditioner, and went back to work on her hair. Fuck, but it was beautiful. Long, thick and silky, and the conditioner he smoothed through it only made it softer. The way it ran through his fingers was purely artistic. It truly was.