The Vampire's Favorite

by V. R. Cumming

  Donald twisted around in the seat. “Trillium’s probably already woken everyone in the house. I’ll send some pets out to help the two of you.”

  “Thanks.” I yawned into a fist. “Any way you can get a doctor here?”

  “We have one on staff.” Donald tapped a fingertip to his temple. “Trillium.”

  I grunted. Yeah, I could see where they’d need a doctor around all the time. “Blood?”

  “As soon as you’re inside.”

  An interior door opened, spilling artificial light into the garage, and two men stepped out, one a burly twenty-something, the other a silver-haired, slender man.

  “Eh,” Donald said. “I never get used to the way pets always seem to know what’s going on.”

  “They probably felt Kyle collapse. Or maybe Trillium told them we’d kidnapped you, too.”

  He shot a quick grin over his shoulder. “That’s a distinct possibility.”

  The burly young man took Eric from me while Donald and the older man got Kyle out, then disappeared into the house. A few minutes later, the burly guy came back and carried me into a cool, nearly sterile kitchen. Now that we were relatively safe, I needed answers. Why had Oriana broken protocol and detained us? Why had we had to wait so long for a rescue?

  But those could wait for basic necessities, food, blood, and a bath, for God’s sake. Eric was covered in grime and dried blood, and I wasn’t much better. But where we were was a helluva lot better than where we’d been. For that, I thanked God and whatever stars had aligned to get us out of that harpy bitch’s clutches.

  The burly pet introduced himself as Bonaventure in a soft-spoken, accentless voice. He propped me upright against pillows on one side of a king-sized bed next to Eric, in a back bedroom decorated in early modern bland. The carpet was a nondescript tan half a dozen shades lighter than the empty, beige walls. The windows were blacked out, covered by layers of shades and off-white curtains that perfectly matched the bedspread we were lying on. The bed had no headboard or footboard. Other than it and a wooden nightstand, the room was barren and still carried the chemical twang of a new home.

  Bon went around the end of the bed and sat down on Eric’s other side. He bit into his wrist, then held it to Eric’s mouth. “How long has he been without?”

  “Pretty much since we landed.”

  Bon’s deep blue eyes jerked up, meeting mine. They glowed sharply in the room’s shadows, and I was tempted to peek into his head. Delving into other people’s minds wasn’t my forte, but I could capture images easily enough. And I was curious.

  “How has he lasted this long?” Bon asked.

  I shrugged. “He’s strong.”

  “He’s young.” Bon rubbed his bloodied wrist across Eric’s lips and frowned. “Why isn’t he drinking?”

  “I don’t know.” I stroked a hand over Eric’s matted, greasy hair and jangled the tenuous bond connecting me and him. “Come on, baby. Take the blood.”

  A petulant whimper echoed through our bond. Hurt.

  Then take the blood. I glanced up at Bon. “Try wedging a finger into his mouth and letting blood drip onto his tongue. If that doesn’t work, smear it over a cut.”

  “Are you serious? Nobody can get enough blood that way.”

  I closed my eyes against the questions vibrating out of him. “Trust me. He’s not an ordinary kinda pet.”

  Understatement. Of. The. Year.

  Bon shook his head, but he wedged a finger into Eric’s mouth. Every drop of his blood onto Eric’s tongue sent a shockwave through him into me, pounding at the dull ache already pinching the base of my skull. I winced and peeped through one barely slit eyelid.

  Eric inhaled a sharp breath through his nose and his eyes popped open. They were completely black, obscuring his hazel irises, and the skin covering his cheekbones thinned.

  Uh-oh.

  His hands flew up, holding Bon’s wrist in place, and Bon yelped.

  “Calm down,” I said softly. “It’s just his beast, making sure he gets what he needs.”

  Bon’s eyelids slid shut and he paled. “Don’t let him drain me.”

  “He won’t.” I hoped. “Can we get an I.V. in here for him? Otherwise, he’s gonna tackle you in a minute and try to have sex with you.”

  “Doc’s on the way.” Bon gasped and his hand flexed, pumping the muscles of his forearm. “Oh, my God. That’s so good.”

  I tamped down a sharp stab of envy. Eric hadn’t turned his mojo on me since before… Well, before, when we were a nice, almost normal family sharing blood and our bodies day in and day out. My hand curled into a fist against my thigh. Couldn’t do that anymore, thanks to Selena’s field day at Gianna’s parents’ house. Couldn’t use my legs, couldn’t feel my dick. Couldn’t have sex with my lover.

  Jesus Christ, I was getting downright maudlin. Get me off my feed for a few days and look what happened.

  I shook the morose thoughts off and concentrated on helping Eric regain control over the cold man. Normally, sex would keep his vampiric beast at bay, but since I knew for a fact that his dick had gone through hell during our not-so-pleasant stay at Oriana’s, sex was out. So he’d just have to put on his big boy undies and control the bloodlust without it.

  Not exactly as easy as it sounded. Sex and blood were so intertwined among the Vampyr, they were nearly inseparable. Eric was learning how to control them, but it was exactly as Bon had said. Eric was still young. He wasn’t even a full-blown vampire yet, wouldn’t be for a while, God willing, but he was strong, so strong he’d finagled an alliance out of the queen herself barely a few weeks after the cold man’s appearance.

  A wave of fondness bordering on adoration welled up in me, and Eric cut his dark eyes toward me, barely visible through swollen, bruised eyelids. Slowly, the black faded into beautiful hazel and his cheeks flushed pink. He shoved Bon’s arm away and licked the blood off his lips.

  “Better?” I asked.

  “Jase.” His breath panted out of his lungs once, twice, and his hands flopped onto the mattress. “Where are we?”

  “Kyle rescued us. We’re at his mistress’ house in a vampire wilderness outside of St. Paul.”

  His fingers curled into the bedspread. “I need…”

  “I know, baby. We’re getting you more blood.”

  He shook his head and his eyes closed. “Bath, both of us. We stink.”

  I laughed. “Christ, Eric. I was really worried about you.”

  “Not out of the woods yet. The cold man…” He shuddered. “Bon’s blood. So rich.”

  “Bon, get the goddamn doctor in here,” I said as mildly as I could manage. Bon scrambled off the bed and out of the room, and I focused on my husband. “Eric, baby, hang on a little longer. They’re bringing an I.V. for you.”

  “You, too. You’re low.”

  His eyes rolled back in his head and his body stiffened and arched off the bed. I prodded our bond, searching for a cause. Bon’s blood was starting to work, healing Eric’s worst injuries. That was all. He wasn’t relapsing or sinking into the cold man or falling into any one of the half dozen nightmare scenarios my brain was conjuring. I sagged against the wall and waited for more blood to be brought in while Eric waged an internal battle between his vampiric beast and his sweet, rational self.

  Chapter Six

  Bon returned, followed by the silver-haired pet into the room, and sat down beside me. “Cook’s making you some breakfast.”

  “Thanks.”

  My gaze drifted to Eric’s thin face. He’d passed out again, probably for the best. His battered face was so bruised and swollen, it was a wonder he’d been able to open his eyes and speak.

  The older pet cleaned the back of Eric’s hand and pulled a packaged, sterilized I.V. needle out of the bag he’d brought with him, and I glanced away. Blood was not a problem. Needles? No, thanks.

  Bon held up his wrist, the one Eric hadn’t fed from, and I shook my head. Yeah, I needed blood, but there I was limited. I couldn’t have s
ex, and without sex, I couldn’t control the bloodlust on my own. Eric helped me out when I needed to feed, and I was slowly learning how to channel my control by helping others achieve release.

  Which I was only too happy to do. The next best thing to having the Big O? Watching somebody else come because of what I’d done to them.

  I eyed Bon. He was handsome enough, in a Midwestern farm boy kinda way. Broad face, a patrician nose set between sharp cheekbones, piercing blue eyes shades deeper than mine, and a pouty, suckable lower lip. Thick, shaggy blond hair fell over a high forehead. Wide shoulders stretched his plain, gray t-shirt tight. Muscled forearms, long legs, and a sizable lump behind the fly of his cargo shorts.

  Oh, yeah. I could do him.

  Besides, Eric was being taken care of. He was getting the blood he needed, he was healing. While he was out, I could get some food in me, scrub some of the stink off, and be ready to help when he eventually woke up.

  “How long ‘til breakfast?” I asked.

  Bon shrugged. “Maybe half an hour.”

  “Can you help me get a bath?”

  “Sure. Ah.” Pink tinged the tanned skin along his cheeks. “Maybe we should wait for Doc.”

  “You’re fine. If you can get me into the bathroom and work the faucets, I can mostly bathe myself.”

  And having him there would get him used to being around me naked. I wasn’t ready to try feeding without Eric around as a backup, just in case my control broke, but chances were good Bon would be the pet donating blood when that time rolled around.

  He went into the bathroom and ran water in the tub, and I wrestled my t-shirt off. It was stiff, sweat-stained, and smelled like the inside of a locker room that had never been cleaned. I wadded it up on the bed beside me and banged the back of my head against the wall. Fuck. Oriana had all our luggage. We had nothing, no clean clothes, no debit cards, no cash set aside to get us across the state in a sight-seeing extravaganza. I didn’t even have my wallet on me. It dug into my ass, not good when said ass was mostly numb. I’d stuck it in my carryon during the flight. No telling what Fen had done with it.

  Our original plan had been to spend the night in St. Paul, then work our way across Minnesota over a week or so. Eric had never been, so when Elizabet had told us we needed a break from watching over Gianna, Eric and I had settled on spending time with my folks with a couple of stopovers along the way. We could’ve gone straight from Atlanta to Fargo and skipped the tourist shit. Next time, we by God would.

  Bon came back in, helped me wiggle out of my clothes, and carried me naked into the bathroom. He turned his back while I relieved myself, then settled me into the tub.

  The water slid over my skin, warming me to the bone, and I sighed. Christ, that was good. Anybody that said baths were a luxury was crazy. Being clean was a basic right, necessary for healthy skin and peace of mind.

  Bon stripped his shirt off and held me upright while I scrubbed a soaped up washcloth across every inch of skin I could reach, twice for good measure. He washed my lower legs and hair for me, drained the tub, and dried me off. He even helped me brush my teeth, and that was the deciding factor. Soon as Eric was better, and he was going to get better or else, I was going to take Bon up on his offer of blood and show him how sex was supposed to be done.

  Eric was still out when Bon carried me back into the bedroom wrapped in a dry towel. He settled me on the bed propped against the wall, then slipped quietly out of the room. I studied the slowly closing wounds on Eric’s nude body, the fading bruises, the receding swollen areas. The silver-haired pet, Trillium’s doctor, I assumed, had finished hooking an I.V. up to Eric. It was connected to a half-empty bag of blood hanging from a stand next to the head of the bed.

  The pet glanced up and his gently lined face crinkled into a friendly smile. “He’s healing very well, for the amount of damage Oriana inflicted.”

  “Fen did most of it.” I shifted against the wall. “Any idea when he’ll wake up?”

  “You can probably tell that better than I could. I’m Lewis, by the way. Trillium’s physician. Most folks call me Doc.”

  “Jason.” I rested the tips of my fingers against the top of Eric’s shoulder. “My master, Eric.”

  “Kyle told us.”

  “How is he?”

  “Irritated, but healing. A day or two should see him well again, and then perhaps we can get the two of you straightened out.”

  “Oriana confiscated all our luggage, our money, our phones. She even took our wedding rings.” And I was plenty pissed about that. Nothing I could do about it right then, but that harpy bitch would damn well give us our rings back. I thumped the back of my head into the wall and blew out a sigh. There was so much we needed to do. Me, really. I was Eric’s favorite, so replacing our credit cards, cash, and clothes was my responsibility. “Is there any way I can borrow a phone?”

  “Once you’ve eaten and Kyle’s had a chance to talk to you.” The bag of blood emptied. Lewis fiddled with the I.V. and switched the bag out for a fresh one. “This is your master’s third bag. After he goes through this one, I’ll take the I.V. out and let him feed from a pet.”

  I grunted. Bagged blood was ok in an emergency, like now when Eric was so low on blood and his body was using what little he had left trying to heal. Fresh blood was better, especially taken directly from the source. Blood from a favorite or a full-blown vampire was top of the line, but I couldn’t see either Kyle or Trillium donating any time soon.

  We’d make do with what we could get, though, and be damn happy for it.

  Bon entered carrying a lap tray crowded with food. “Breakfast, if you’re hungry.”

  The scent of freshly cooked bacon drifted to me and my stomach growled. I patted my numb, towel-covered thigh. “Starving. Thanks for getting it.”

  He set it on my lap and stepped away from the bed. “Cook said if you need more to let him know. He made plenty.”

  “You eating?”

  “I ate a couple of hours ago.”

  The vampire’s last meal before retiring. I nudged silverware around on the tray. “You should go on to bed.”

  “I’m used to being up during the day.” He nodded toward the tray. “Eat.”

  I picked up the fork and dug in, one eye on my food, the other on Eric’s progress.

  He stirred halfway through my last slice of bacon and scrubbed a shaky hand over his closed, nearly healed eyelids. “Why do I smell bacon?”

  “Breakfast,” I said.

  Lewis grinned. “So that’s what it takes to bring him around.”

  Him and every other pet I’d ever met. A high metabolism was a side-effect of feeding off of a vampire’s blood, for men, anyway. Women reacted in a completely different way.

  Eric groaned. “I feel like the dog in that commercial chasing after bacon.”

  Bon picked the tray up off my lap. “I’ll bring you a plate.”

  “Thanks.” Eric tried to sit up and got about six inches off the bed. “How many semis ran over me?”

  Lewis placed a hand on Eric’s shoulder and pushed him gently back down. “Just Fen and his band of miscreants.”

  “That explains it. Any way I can have a shower?”

  “When this bag of blood is gone and you’ve eaten, and not a minute sooner.”

  Eric twisted around on the bed and met my gaze. “You’re clean.”

  “Bon helped me get a bath while you were out of it,” I said.

  “Good.”

  His hand fumbled across the bed and grazed the side of my leg, and for fraction of a moment, I felt everything, his smooth, warm skin, the cool air blowing into the room through the vent, the crisp linen under my leg. His hand fell away and the sensation was gone, lost to whatever was paralyzing the lower half of my body.

  My bond with Eric twinged and vibrated. We need to talk.

  Yeah, we probably did, now that we were out from under Oriana’s prying mind and could steal some privacy in a relatively safe haven. Later, ok?

>   He nodded and closed his eyes, and his mind drifted away from mine as he fell into a deep, healing sleep.

  Chapter Seven

  We didn’t get to talk that day. Eric roused when Bon brought in a tray, and ate the food Cook had made with better manners than I’d tackled mine with. He grabbed a shower, then crawled into bed beside me, and we slept, him curled up next to me.

  The bed shifted on my other side, waking me. I groped a hand toward the disturbance and encountered a nude, muscled thigh. “Hello?”

  “It’s me,” Kyle said softly. “How is he?”

  “Better.” I risked opening one eye. The room was pitch black except for a thin stream of light splashed across the carpet through the crack between the bottom of the door and the floor. “Time is it?”

  “A little after midnight. Hungry?”

  I did a quick internal check. “Yeah. Any chance we can borrow some clothes?”

  “We’ll find something.” Kyle’s hand covered mine and squeezed. “Bon said you refused to feed.”

  “I’ll take care of it later.”

  “Don’t wait too long.”

  “I won’t.” A faint, possessive ripple nudged my mind. “Can you give me a minute?”

  “Sure. I’ll go find some clothes for you.”

  “Thanks, man.” The bed shifted again, the door opened and closed. I waited another beat, giving Kyle time to get out of hearing range, then said, “Eric?”

  He stretched and skimmed one foot down the side of my leg, awakening every dead nerve in that limb. “Alone at last.”

  I huffed out a laugh. “I only asked him to leave so you wouldn’t go all cold man on me.”

  “I don’t like sharing you, and Kyle has lust on his mind.” He rolled over and circled his palm over my lower abs. “Something about you giving him a blow job.”

  “I’m saving those for you. Speaking of, let me take care of you.”