I lift a hand and rub at the tender spot above my clavicle where his teeth dug in a little too firmly. Didn’t break the skin, but I’m going to have a bruise. And it won’t look anything like a hickey, either.
“Do you remember that evening?” I ask, trying to frame my problem. I hurry on before he gets a chance to answer, rushing my words when I feel him shift and draw a breath. “I don’t recall much. Except before and . . . standing outside your building, after. One thing I do remember, though, is looking at my hand in the fluorescent lights. Thinking I needed to take a break for a bit, because my veins were standing out. My skin—” I cut off abruptly, feeling uncertain.
How much should I really tell him? How much does he already know, being what he is? “Anyways, just now was . . . different.” Understatement. “I mean, I recall everything.” There’s a flood of heat crawling up my neck, headed inexorably for my face. Damn it, I haven’t blushed in forever. What’s wrong with me? The words stumble from my lips in a headlong rush, tripping over each other. “When, uh, lyche tap me, the experience is usually a blur. A vague memory, with snippets of clarity at best. And any other time, given the past week and how . . . deep you went.” Blush in full force now. My ears feel like they’re on fire. I duck my head, and a veil of black hair slides between me and him, shrouding my face from view. I squeeze my eyes shut and force myself to take a slow breath. “I should be showing some side effects. And I’m not.”
“Sounds like you’re worrying about nothing.”
I frown and glance up at him, brushing my hair behind my ears impatiently. “Yes, that’s exactly it.”
His brows arch up his forehead. “You’re serious.” He steps closer and eases onto the edge of the coffee table, facing me. “Do you mind explaining to me why, precisely, you’re stressed over the fact that I was gentler and more considerate than johns you pick up on the street?”
He’s too close. I sit back into the couch and fold my arms. Even knowing it’s a defensive stance doesn’t dissuade me. “How about because you weren’t that way the first time?” Staring him in the eye, full bore. “How about because I’ve never walked away from that deep a feeding without some side effects? And usually they lay me flat on my back for at least a week.
“Look, Leonard.” Something changes in his expression, a subtle shift at the sound of his name. I plow on, not willing to process the feedback until some other time. “There’s a great deal you don’t know about me. But I’m acutely aware of the fact that there’s even more I don’t know about you and your kind. All lyche tend to be close-mouthed. That’s fine. Whatever. Except when you decide to change the rules of the game. You’ve managed to pull the rug out from under me completely. I’ve no way to discover what they are except by trial and error.
“At this point, my only recourse is to go through Dragulhaven, lyche by lyche,” and pardon me if I slur the moniker and make it sound derogatory or slanderous, “and offer to fuck every one of them while they tap me. Until I get an idea of what the norm actually is.”
The yellow hue of his eyes darkens as his body tenses. His gaze drops down and away, flickering over the carpet at his feet as if the easy answer lies tangled underneath the edge of the couch.
“Don’t you dare.” Leonard’s whisper is more of a growl. Triggers memories of him crouching over me, fist buried knuckles-deep in my hair. It’s obvious I’ve pushed him far enough.
I clear my throat and start backpedaling really fucking fast. “Well then. Tell me what you did. Then or now, take your pick. It wasn’t me. I did nothing I haven’t done a hundred times or so before.” Was that a twitch or a flinch I just saw flit over his body, contort his face? I’ve tried to have this conversation with him before, without success.
My skin tingles, flares hot like a backdraft. Clenching my hands into fists suppresses the full-bodied shudder. Once again, a heartbeat later, it’s gone and I feel like a dead lump of ice. Leonard clasps his hands between his knees, bracing on his forearms, and slowly runs his gaze over my body. His eyes narrow, but I’m not willing to dismiss the possibility that he’s seeing something he either doesn’t like or doesn’t approve of.
“I don’t know what happened.” He chafes his palms, shifts his weight back and forth in a subtle rocking motion. “You’re the first non-feline I’ve tapped in . . .” He pauses, hangs his head to scrape his hands through his hair. “Centuries. It’s possible I did something wrong.” His admission trails off into a hoarse whisper that almost escapes my hearing. Almost, but not quite.
The felines. Right. That hadn’t occurred to me. I mean, yeah, a lyche with a herd of cats suddenly feeding on a human struck me as strange from the outset. It never occurred to me that he might not have the skill set to do a tap properly under different circumstances. “I thought it was instinctive. Like a predator’s reaction to the smell of blood. The way a cat chases the prey that runs from it.”
Leonard cradles his elbows in his hands and hangs his head, gives a slight shake of denial. “No.”
“And you never learned how to do this? No one ever tutored you through the proper method of feeding?”
“Not that way. I have always followed Modere teachings and philosophies. Thus the . . . cat thing.”
Finally, I can ask the question plaguing me since the night he picked me up. “Why, then? Was it really just to catch the chi-thieves? How were we such a threat that it was worth breaking your lifelong vows and beliefs to do it? Not to mention, Jhez was barely fifty feet down the street. Closer than I was.” If it had just been about hunting down rogue mutts, he would’ve felt her first. Nabbed her instead of me.
He stares off over my shoulder, brows furrowing. The deep crease in his flesh is reminiscent of his earlier physical state.
“I don’t know what I was thinking. I recall be frustrated by the lack of leads from the team I assigned to track down the source of the chi-thefts. A team of ten lyche and not a single lead. So I went out cruising the boulevards in the Blue District. I don’t know why I thought—” He stops, his lips tensing shut in a thin line. I wait, watching the play of emotions over his features, in his eyes. Confusion. Frustration. Emptiness. I wonder if I’m reading him right. My skin flushes hot again and I wait for it to pass. But it doesn’t; the heat fades to a throb of warmth, but refuses to bleed from my body entirely.
The drugs are wearing off. And in the aftermath, it seems to be leaving me in a state of heightened sensitivity to the connection between us. Having his aura so close to mine is distracting, like a persistent state of static electricity.
He shudders and chafes his hands over his biceps. “I remember seeing you. I didn’t notice anyone else on the street that night. I just saw you.” He inhales slowly, nostrils flaring. “I don’t know what I was thinking.” He looks at me then, gaze raking quickly up and down the length of me before he tears his eyes away and goes back to staring off into space. “I just wanted—” He growls. “I don’t know what I wanted.”
He looks . . . lost. I have no idea what to say. I’m speechless. Never did I think, when I asked that question, that I would discover the prospect of a lyche as . . . far removed from the norm as this. Is he like a nun or something? Did he live in a cloister? How else would he be able to minimize human contact?
“How do you survive, looking so young, without feeding your energy by tapping others for it?” To say this confuses me is an understatement. He shouldn’t be alive after all these years, given what I know of lyche. The number of felines he’d need to draw from is . . . phenomenal. I can’t even begin to calculate it.
He glances at me and offers a faint smile. It’s reassuring, but what makes the heat charge through my body again is the glint in his eyes. If he wants to laugh at me, that’s more than fine in my opinion. I might be ignorant of a great deal, but at least I don’t have cats for dinner.
“The only time lyche need energy from others is if they expend more chi than they generate alone.”
“I thought that was how you manage to s
tay young and—in your prime. I figured that explained why the older ones, like you, were in greater need of feeding more frequently: the regenerative effort demanding more energy than you have on your own.”
His gaze sharpens, eyes narrowing. “Older ones. You’ve noticed such a trend?”
I shrug my shoulders, rolling them uncomfortably. “As long as I’ve been on the streets, it’s not difficult. More often than not, they send a lackey vamp to feed for them, but I’ve learned to recognize the signatures of the older ones.” They use their underlings like water buckets. Rechargeable batteries. Or something.
He pushes up from the coffee table and stalks off across the study, red-tinged energy bleeding from his aura and brushing against me in his wake. A shudder runs through my body. As if I somehow make a sound he can hear, he stills mid-stride and studies me over his shoulder.
“Your friend’s pharmaceuticals wearing off finally?”
“Starting to.” What purpose, denying it? He can feel it, too. “Is that food coming anytime in the next week, perhaps?” My stomach punctuates the question with another very insistent rumble. A perfunctory rap on the door is my answer.
“Oh, thank Gaia,” I breathe, unfolding from the couch. It might be his office, but it’s my stomach.
A member of the Monsieur’s staff wheels the small meal cart into the room with visible effort. It’s crammed with food, practically overflowing.
“Were you planning on having someone join us? The entire Upper East Side, perhaps?” I glance at Garthelle and push the door shut. When the middle-aged woman pauses and looks back at me for direction, I find a polite smile somewhere. “There, by the coffee table, if you would.” Aromas of steamed vegetables, fresh cut fruit, and cooked rice assault my senses, and the hunger hits me full force, makes me feel lightheaded. His servant exits soundlessly, save for the click of the door latch.
“No, I’m not expecting anyone to join us. Does it not meet with your approval? ”
“It’s fine.” Slightly excessive, but far from unacceptable. I unload a few dishes onto the coffee table and flop down onto the couch. “Our conversation isn’t finished.” I point at the couch across from me. There’s no way I want him in close proximity to me while Blue’s concoction finishes running its course. A bit of space makes the fluctuations easier to cope with.
I sit back into the couch and cross my arms in a blatant refusal to eat. I want some answers first. Staring at him won’t work. He has his back to me, hands in his pockets again. That graceful poise of a thinly leashed predator.
“So you came out that night, not looking to feed. Hunting for something completely different. What happened?”
The lyche turns his head a fraction. Not to glare at me directly, but I can feel him watching me in his peripheral vision. The profile of his face reminds me of a photography book my mother had when I was young. Full of candid snapshots of random people. Real people in raw moments, when they don’t know the camera is trained on them. Beauty not in carefully posed glory, but glowing through from wherever it happens to hide in those startling moments of untamed emotion.
He’s suddenly foreign as I study the profile of his nose and mouth, line of jaw and neck, features and posture soft and unguarded, thinking I can’t see or won’t notice. Strange, how the same face from a slightly altered angle can look so different. Earth-shatteringly so. My pulse pounds uncomfortably in my neck and I rub at it as I turn back to the feast before me.
Garthelle may feign detachment, but I don’t see a single shred of meat anywhere in the food. He wasn’t at our flat but once when we were eating. Can’t recall now if he saw the remnants of our meal or not. Must have; how else would he know of Jhez’s obsession with avoiding meat?
I fix a plate and grab a fork, perch on the edge of the couch. The fork is halfway to my mouth when he finally answers.
“You happened.” He turns to face me, and I stare at him. Not certain whether disbelief or misunderstanding is overruling my ability to move, to speak, to respond. He holds my gaze calmly, his relaxed demeanor unchanged. But the charge hanging in the air between us suddenly feels like someone cranked up the voltage.
Way up. It’s like I’m sitting too close to a bonfire, the way my skin suddenly flushes with heat. I clear my throat and stare at my fork, laden with food and hovering halfway between my mouth and the plate.
My brain finally kicks back into gear. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“That makes two of us.”
Arching a brow, I glance at him. He sighs and moves to sit down on the couch across from me. The task of eating requires a monumental effort, but I manage. It smells wonderful and probably tastes equally exquisite, but I don’t notice.
“I can’t explain my actions. I would if I could, but I don’t understand my motivation. And I haven’t the first clue as to what went wrong that evening when I tapped you.”
Great. Of all the johns, I get the virgin vampire. I find it difficult to believe he’s never tapped a human. And that isn’t what he said, either. He said it’s been a while. A very long while. Frankly, I thought it would be like riding a bike, or sex. You don’t forget how, right?
That makes a weak argument at best. Just because you go through the motions of sex doesn’t mean you know how to do it right. Yes, there’s a wrong way. There’s lots of wrong ways, in fact. I’d bet every last credit chit I have on it. Though judging from our make-out session earlier, he has no lack of recent experience in that regard.
“So if you screwed up the first time, how is it that you managed to tap me just a bit ago without any difficulty?” I slide another forkful into my mouth.
“Orgasm.”
My entire body spasms, and I choke on my food. He did not just say that. Coughing, eyes watering, I search for something to drink. No glasses of water on the cart.
Leonard appears at my shoulder, his image blurred and watery in my vision, and offers me a glass of wine. Snatching it, I take a long swig.
“Thanks,” I gasp, finally able to breathe.
He sits back down, drinking deeply from his own glass. “I truly didn’t think you would shock so easily, Black.”
Impulsively, I roll my eyes. “You didn’t shock me,” I croak. I lean forward and have another last coughing fit to clear the bits of food from my airway, then take another drink. From the smell and color, the wine is a heavy merlot, but all my taste buds are able to register is that it’s wet and alcoholic. “You just caught me off guard.” I pause to clear my throat so I don’t sound like some ancient bullfrog. “I don’t quite grasp the parallel between tapping and orgasm.”
His eyes slide shut for a long moment. I wait. “This is not a conversation I intended to have with you.”
My eyes widen as I stare at him. That wounds, for some reason I can’t quite explain or identify. “And? Why would that be? Did you intend to dispose of me instead? Do you still?”
“No.” His gaze flashes with anger, but it ebbs away into the ether, no real heat. “Because it’s taboo for us to speak of it.”
“What, it’s perfectly acceptable for you to dry-hump me on the couch in your office, but you would rather not talk about sex with me?” I sound biting, scathing, resentful. But Garthelle is being every bit as crass and inconsiderate, without even trying. I think it hurts more that he does it so inadvertently. If it were intentional, it would be much easier to defend myself without appearing as if I cared. Without, in fact, caring a whit.
“Stop twisting my words, Black. That’s not what I said, and it’s certainly not what I meant.”
I lean back into the couch and drain my wine, then stare at him. I know, I know, that lyche are all a heartless, uncaring lot. Why I let myself forget, let myself secretly hope he was different, I don’t know. He’s not. He’s not different, because that would apparently mean breaking all the rules and going against the grain of his nature.
Gaia forbid.
“Tell me what you meant, then. Please.”
He can feel my sh
ifts in emotion, and through them, something of my thought processes, just as I can his. Maybe more—I’m more emotional than he, and his nature makes him more sensitive to the fluctuations. His flare of anger is real this time, and it doesn’t bleed away. Good. I can handle angry. I know how to confront hatred and rage. It’s just par for the course. I wonder how long it will take me to walk home?
Which home, Black?
The voice in the back of my head needs to just shut the fuck up. Seriously. Besieged from all directions at once is a tad bit unfair. Damn Garthelle to the third level of hell and back again, anyways.
“I have every intention of telling you. And you’re going to sit there and listen to me, too. You will hear me out without—” He cuts off when I roll my eyes and cross my arms. Yes, I’m being petulant and childish. But so what? This is how he expects me to behave, so I’ll give it to him full-bore. “Damn it, Black,” he snarls, slamming his wineglass down on the coffee table. He buries his face in his hands, elbows braced on his legs, and silence descends on the room yet again.
I’m not a prostitute. I’ve gone out of my way to avoid that stigma, in fact, thus far in my life. He had no right to have such expectations of me. Surely he wasn’t so ignorant as to believe Nightwalker and streetwalker are one and the same?
Do they all see us that way?
Maybe the two are the same and it’s just a point of contention, a delineation we create for ourselves so we can look down on one another. Humanity is rather adept at doing that. History bears the proof.
Bullies, all of us. Every one.
Because if we’re the same in the eyes of the lyche, well . . . then obviously there’s no difference. They’re the ruling class in this remade world, after all.
I push up off the couch and consider throwing the wineglass against the far wall before setting it on the edge of the coffee table. And then I head for the door.
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