“What?” Merrick growled, beginning to lose patience. “Just tell me what to do or where to go.”
Mother-Healer frowned. “The only cure for your agony is the female life-essence of the one you were wounded for. Only she whose punishment you took may heal your hurt.”
Merrick knew at once what she was talking about, and his heart sank. “No,” he said, shaking his head firmly. “No—not going to happen.”
“What’s not going to happen?” Elise demanded. “What—how can I help? What can I do?”
“Nothing,” Merrick growled, before the old woman could answer. “Not a fucking thing, baby, so don’t worry about it.”
“But…” Elise was clearly frustrated but that was too damn bad as far as Merrick was concerned.
Mother-Healer didn’t seem to care either way. “Very well,” she said shrugging. “Then you must prepare yourself for a year and a day of agony.” Rising, she pointed at the little pink leaves she’d stripped off his back. “Gather these and throw them to the winds. Then move yourself into the guest’s sleeping chamber at the far end of the hall. I’m tired of having you in the middle of my floor, taking up space.”
Merrick did as she asked, moving stiffly and trying not to let the pain he was feeling show in his eyes as he picked up the leaves. He had a year and a day of this burning agony to look forward to, so he might as well get used to it. Elise walked silently beside him, but he could feel her worry and frustration clearly through their link. And something else as well…hunger. It was like a roaring beast inside her, throwing itself at the bars of its cage, desperate to get out. But he saw none of the desperation he felt inside Elise on her face. Guess I’m not the only one who can lie with my eyes, he thought grimly.
They went outside together into the deep blue dusk and he noted that they were high in one of the grandfather trees. The broad road-sized limb they were on was mostly quiet with only a few women and children passing along it, but Merrick could hear more activity in the rustling branches above their heads. The Ancient Ones must have a whole city up here, situated in the branches of this one tree. How the hell had they gotten him up here while he was passed out? He would have been dead weight—and with his size and muscle mass, he wasn’t exactly the lightest male in the galaxy.
“It took four of their biggest guys to get you up here,” Elise said, answering his unspoken question. “I couldn’t see how they had gotten up the tree and I was scared to death they’d take you away and I’d never see you again.” She let go of a handful of the pale pink leaves and watched as they fluttered away on the wind. “Then a little boy named Tooy showed me how to climb up the vines on the side of the tree. The Ancients dumped you in Mother Healer’s house and that’s where we’ve been ever since. This is the first time I’ve been outside since we got here.” She took a deep breath, as though savoring the rich air of the indigo jungle.
“How many days was I out?” Merrick asked, as casually as he could, scattering his own double handful of leaves.
“Four.” Elise let go of the last of her pale pink leaves and then dusted her hands together. “Well, we’d better get back inside.”
She started to turn but Merrick grabbed her wrist. “Wait.”
“What?” She looked up at him wide-eyed.
“You’re hungry,” Merrick growled. “So fucking hungry you’re nearly starving. And no wonder—I’ve been out four days and you haven’t done a damn thing to feed yourself.”
“What was I supposed to do?” she snapped, yanking her wrist away. “Hump your leg while you were passed out? You were lying right in the middle of Mother-Healer’s floor and she already thinks I’m the Whore of Babylon because I was wearing my nice red underwear when we got here.”
“You could have done something to help yourself. To get skin-to-skin contact while I was out,” Merrick countered. “You knew I wouldn’t care.”
“I did,” she said defensively. “I helped change the dressing on your back. And, well…” She looked down at her feet. “I spent a lot of time stroking your cheek…watching you sleep.” She cleared her throat. “It wasn’t much but it was enough to keep me from going into, uh, withdrawal.”
Merrick had a sudden vision of her kneeling beside him on the grass mat and gently stroking his face as she guarded his slumber. Abruptly his anger left him, replaced with a surge of emotion so strong it nearly knocked him off the tree branch. Damn it, how could he be upset with her now?
“Ah, baby…” he sighed.
“Can we please go back inside now?” Elise’s cheeks were pink with embarrassment. “It’s getting dark fast and I don’t want to risk walking off the side of the branch because I can’t see past the end of my own nose.”
“Sure. Let’s go.” Merrick led the way back to the leaf hut. The hut had an empty feel and Mother-Healer was nowhere to be seen. Well, maybe she was down at the marketplace getting supplies. He fervently hoped that some of what she was getting was food. After four days without, he was starving. Yet, his physical hunger was nothing compared to the emotional hunger Elise was feeling. Merrick frowned—time to do something about that, right now. “Come on,” he told Elise. “Let’s go check out my new room.”
She shrugged, apparently thinking the subject of her hunger was dropped. “Okay.”
They went down the hallway and entered the room at the very end, just as the old woman had directed. Inside was a large, low sleeping platform covered in a quilt of yanyan leaves which had been stitched together with plant fibers.
Merrick lowered himself stiffly to the platform and felt the soft give as it took his weight. The mattress was probably stuffed with dweezle fluff—a soft, downy substance that grew on the edge of the Deep Blue. The Rageron natives gathered it too and the Ancient Ones never complained—it was almost directly between the regular jungle and the Deep Blue and there was always plenty to go around for both races.
Elise hovered uncertainly beside him, as though she wasn’t sure if she should stand or sit.
“Come here.” Merrick reached up and dragged her down into his lap. At once she began to struggle.
“Let me go!”
“No,” he said roughly. “Not until we feed your hunger.”
“No!” Elise insisted, pushing at his chest.
Merrick growled in frustration. “You’re starving! Why in the seven hells not?” he demanded, glaring at her.
Elise glared right back. “Because I refuse to let you help me until you let me help you.”
“Help me? Help me how?” He frowned.
Elise put a hand on her hip. “Don’t pretend like you don’t remember. Mother-Healer told you the only antidote to the venom in your back was my life-essence. So here.”
To his surprise, she shoved the inside of her wrist against his mouth and began pressing hard against his fangs.
“What the hell?” Gently but firmly he removed her wrist. “What do you think you’re doing, baby?”
“Giving you my essence,” she insisted. “My blood—isn’t that what she meant? Come on, Merrick—bite me. Take what you need.”
He shook his head and pushed her gently out of his lap. “No, baby, it isn’t your blood that I need. That’s not what Mother-Healer meant by your female life-essence.”
“Well, then what?” she demanded. “I don’t understand!”
“You don’t have to,” he growled. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll be fine.”
“Like hell you will!” Elise shouted at him. “I got you into this mess, Merrick and I can see you’re in pain. Why won’t you let me help you?”
“Because I don’t need your help. I feel fine.” He rose from the sleeping platform angrily but the gesture sent bolts of pain down his back and he groaned out loud before he could stop himself.
Elise narrowed her eyes. “Liar.”
“Liar yourself,” he countered. “Why were you acting like you weren’t hungry, pretending everything was fine when I woke up?”
“Because.” Elise’s voice suddenly
got low and she looked away. “Because sometimes if you pretend hard enough, things actually are fine.”
“That’s not true and deep down inside you know it.” He sank back down on the bed, cursing when the pain ran down his back again.
“Mother-Healer said you’d have that pain a year and a day if you didn’t get the antidote,” Elise said softly. “Tell me, Merrick, how long is a year on Rageron?”
He sighed. “The planet rotates on its axis every twenty-five hours, so our days last just a little longer than yours on Earth.”
She raised an eyebrow at him. “And the years?”
Merrick gritted his teeth. “Rageron makes a very slow orbit around its sun, so one of our years is about equal to ten Earth years. Satisfied?”
“Ten Earth years?” Elise looked horrified. “That’s awful! You can’t live with this pain for ten years!”
“I’ve lived with other, deeper pains for longer than that,” Merrick said stoically. “I’ll get used to this one, too.”
“But why?” Suddenly, Elise got down on her knees in front of him. Grasping his big hands between her small ones, she looked up into his eyes. “Why put up with it when I can help you? Please, Merrick, please…just let me help.”
“I can’t,” he said heavily. “Don’t ask me, baby—don’t ask me to ask you.”
“Ask me what? Please, Merrick, just tell me how I can help—how I can heal you?”
His back felt like it was on fire and his head throbbed. Finally his last thread of patience broke. “Look at me, Elise,” he demanded, raising her chin so they were eye to eye. “The reason I can’t ask for your help is that I don’t want to hurt or scare you. Because the only fucking way you can heal me is to spread your thighs and let me lap your sweet pussy.”
Elise looked shocked. “…what?” she whispered faintly, at last.
“That’s right.” Seeing the scared, shocked look on her face, Merrick felt a bolt of bitter satisfaction. He was right not to have asked her, right to assume she wouldn’t be able to give what he needed. “Your female life-essence isn’t your blood,” he told Elise roughly. “It’s your cunt honey. The sweet nectar your pussy makes when you’re hot, baby. Now do you get why I didn’t want to ask? If you can’t handle me fingering your sweet little cunt, how would you be able to stand me tasting it?”
Chapter Twenty-seven
“I don’t understand.” Elise shook her head, feeling hot and cold all over. “I don’t see how letting you do…that could heal you.”
Merrick sighed. “I don’t fully understand it either. I do know that the Ancient Ones have a symbiotic—almost telepathic—relationship with some of the sentient plants that grow in the deep blue. It could be that the plant’s venom reacted to the Ancient One’s wishes when he punished me.” He ran a hand over his hair—which was beginning to grow out a little—and winced. No doubt the movement had sent pain down his back. “They have a very black and white idea of right and wrong here,” he told Elise.
“An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” she murmured.
He frowned. “I’ve never heard that, but yeah, that about sums it up.”
Elise took a deep breath. “So that…letting you taste me really would heal you?”
He shrugged and winced. “Got no reason to believe otherwise, since that’s what Mother-Healer said.” He sighed. “But it doesn’t matter because I’m not going to do it.”
Elise bit her lip. “Why?”
Merrick gave her a sharp look. “Because you wouldn’t be able to stand it.” His voice dropped to a soft, sexual growl. “Don’t get me wrong, baby. There’s nothing I’d like more than to be between your legs, lapping your sweet little cunt. But you jump every time I touch you. There’s no way you could stand to let me do it.”
Elise looked down at her hands, which were trembling in her lap. “What if…what if I could? What if we just tried?”
“No,” Merrick said at once. “I told you, I don’t want to hurt or scare you. Don’t want to do anything that might bring back…bad memories.”
“That’s the thing,” Elise said slowly. “I don’t…think it will.” Like when he kissed me, I was fine with it. Because that wasn’t part of…of what’s buried in the vault. She closed her eyes and tried to think…tiptoed to the door of the vault and tried to feel inside without actually opening it. Had he ever done anything like that to her? Elise didn’t think so. It didn’t feel dangerously familiar as it had when Merrick had urged her to touch herself. She opened her eyes and looked at him. “I’m pretty sure it will be okay,” she said cautiously.
“Pretty sure?” He frowned. “I don’t know if that’s good enough for me.”
“Well, it’ll have to be good enough,” Elise snapped nervously. “Because that’s the best I can do without…without dredging everything up.”
“At least you admit there’s something to dredge up,” he remarked, looking at her speculatively.
Elise sighed. “I know I freaked out on you before. It’s just…I don’t want to talk about it. Don’t want to think about it. I just…I just want to pretend nothing ever happened.”
Merrick sighed. “All right baby, I understand.”
She looked at him hopefully. “You do?”
“Sure.” He nodded. “Didn’t I tell you that you’re not the only one with shit in their childhood? I have some memories I don’t want to dwell on either.”
She felt a swell of gratitude. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you for not making me talk about it.”
“Of course not.” He cupped her cheek tenderly. “I would never force you to remember pain you want to forget. Only…” He sighed.
“Only what?” Elise asked anxiously, looking up at him.
“This is the Deep Blue,” Merrick said. “Things happen here…secrets have a way coming out.”
“Maybe they would if we stayed here long enough, but we won’t, will we?” she asked hopefully. “I mean, now that you’re up and around…”
“We still have to get the skrillix,” he reminded her. “But hopefully since we’ve already taken the punishment for its theft, they’ll let us keep the branch you broke off. We’ll see.”
“I don’t want to talk about that now, anyway.” Rising, Elise sat beside him on the wide bed with its leaf coverlet. “I want to talk about helping you,” she said softly. “Healing you.”
He frowned down at her. “You really think you can handle it?”
Elise nodded, trying to feel confident. “I do. I really do.” She lowered her eyes. “I’ll probably be more embarrassed than anything else.”
“Embarrassed?” Merrick raised an eyebrow at her. “Why the hell would you be embarrassed?”
“Because you have to…you know, taste me, in order to get well and—"
"No, not have to," Merrick interrupted her. "I get to. Didn’t I tell you how much I wanted to taste your sweet pussy?”
“Well…yes,” Elise admitted. “But, I mean, isn’t that just something guys say?”
“Maybe human men,” Merrick growled. “But not Kindred—we’re different.”
Elise dared to look up at him. “Different how?”
“It’s like a need for us—the desire to taste our women.” His eyes were half-lidded with lust as he spoke. “A compulsion we couldn’t fight, even if we wanted to. Which I sure as hell don’t.”
“Really?” Elise asked.
“Really.” He nodded. “It’s like an ache inside me that’s been growing since I first found you in that damn stasis tube. I’ve been wanting to taste you, been wanting to spread your legs and get between your thighs, from the first minute I laid eyes on you.”
“Oh,” Elise whispered. The hungry way he looked at her made her feel like a thousand butterflies had just taken flight inside her stomach. “I…I didn’t know,” she said.
“Now you do.” To her surprise, Merrick moved to the center of the bed and then, slowly and carefully, lay back. “Come here.” He gestured with one hand.
> “Doesn’t it hurt your back to lay on it?” Elise asked.
“Not if I don’t move around too much. It’s all scarred over,” he reminded her. “Just hurts because of the venom now—nothing to do with whether I touch it or put pressure on it or not.”
“Okay.” Carefully, she crawled over to him, her heart pounding. “Um…how do you want to do this?”
“I don’t. Not yet.” He reached out an arm for her. “First I want to hold you. Will you let me do that, baby?”
This was what Elise had been wishing for, imagining, dreaming of all the long, lonely nights he was passed out from the pain. The feeling of his large, muscular arms around her, his scent filling her senses, the comfort of his touch. A wave of longing so deep she couldn’t even express it flowed over her. “Yes…” she whispered. “God, yes.”
“Then come here, baby,” he growled softly, obviously catching her desperate emotions through their bond. “Come take what you need.”
“I will. But first…” Feeling for the small fastening at her throat, Elise let the long indigo robe she’d been wearing slip from her shoulders and fall in a puddle around her waist. She’d long since gotten rid of the offensive (to the Ancient Ones, anyway) red underwear and she was bare beneath the light material. She felt a twinge of embarrassment about her nudity as she let the robe drift to the floor, but she couldn’t help herself—the hunger was too strong to deny. She needed Merrick’s touch and only the feel of her bare skin against his would alleviate that need.
Merrick made a soft growl of approval deep in his throat. “Beautiful,” he murmured, drinking her in—her high, firm breasts, small waist, full hips…and most of all, the neatly trimmed thatch of dark curls between her thighs.
“Thank you,” Elise murmured, blushing. “I…uh….”
“I wanna feel you against me.” He motioned for her to come to him. “Don’t make me wait any longer.”
Pursued Page 29