Elias was across the room, sitting on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands, the muscles of his shoulders in a permanent flex. As if he was trying to get himself under control. “By the door,” he said tightly. “There’s a bag.”
Dragging her attention off Elias was almost impossible, but she crossed to the black backpack, zipping it open to find a gun, several makeshift stakes and…another bottle of Baikal.
He’d packed her a fight bag.
And it made her knees weaker than any bouquet of roses would.
“Thank you.”
Silence resulted.
Roksana had no choice but to pass Elias to collect her clothes and boots. She dressed as quickly as possible, still staunchly fighting the urge to get back on the bed and make the admissions he needed. God knew they would feel good…and they would satisfy him. Would a minute pass for the rest of her life where she didn’t wonder what it would be like to quench Elias’s thirst?
I can’t stand this. I thought if I fed, the worst of my cravings for you would stop…but they persist in the fucking extreme.
A hot shiver shot down her spine and Elias must have sensed it, because his head finally came up and he pinned her with a look that was possessive and promissory. “Your taste will stay in my mouth for the rest of my life.” He stood, his height making Roksana tip her head back. “The hunger for more will never stop. Not for a single second.”
Her knees almost gave out.
She wished they would.
Wished to be back in his arms, cared for and…not judged.
Instead, made to feel strong. Clever. Worthy. Invincible.
All those things she never truly got while slaying.
The fervency of her need to stay with Elias alarmed her into backing away. “I, um…” She reached the door and shouldered the backpack. “I don’t know when I’ll see you again, so keep it real, I guess—”
He turned and braced rough hands on the window frame, leaving his rippling back exposed. Open. She was almost insulted that he would give a slayer such a blatant opening, especially when she held a bag full of weapons in her hands. He resembled a man waiting for a whip to fall…
Was he doing it on purpose?
Giving her a chance to slay him?
Roksana choked a sound, her hand fumbling on the doorknob.
“You will see me,” she heard him say, just before she closed the door.
Her heart was frantic in her chest as she ran down the hallway, down the stairs and out into the night. She couldn’t think of the vampire who’d nursed her back to health. Couldn’t think of his mouth, his words, the behavior so at odds with what she knew about him. She had to put it out of her mind until later. After all, there was a poker game to play and a marriage decree for a madwoman to win.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Moscow, 2018
Eternal life was a curse.
Elias stared down at a crack in the concrete floor of his prison, wishing it would widen and swallow him whole. Then maybe he’d be in hell where creatures like him belonged. He’d spent the day fighting, as he’d spent every other day of his life for the last…
How long had he been there?
Did it matter? It wasn’t as though he had any idea where to go after his year as Inessa’s punching bag was over. He couldn’t go back to Los Angeles and show up at the department like nothing ever happened. His livelihood there no longer existed for him. Those friendships he’d only been on the verge of solidifying with his teammates were a thing of the past. His daylight allergy would make it impossible to operate with any sense of normalcy anywhere. There was also the slight problem of him never aging.
Putting roots down or settling in was henceforth a thing of the past.
He rolled over onto his back and tried to concentrate on a roach scuttling along the far wall. From ten feet away, he could count the tiny legs, watch the toggle of the antennae. Anything to take his mind off the thirst. The never-abating thirst.
After that nightmarish evening in Vegas, after he’d been left alone among the carnage in the chapel, no choice but to speed out the back door or risk feeding on Roksana, he’d gone back to his hotel room, no idea what else to do. He’d knelt on the floor trying to abate the hunger with breathing exercises to no avail. Inessa had shown up eventually and tossed him a plastic bag of blood and he still burned with shame, remembering how he’d dove on it like a salivating beggar, ripping into it like a savage.
She’d brought him back to Moscow on a plane that allowed no sunlight, transferring him to a stone cage with no sunlight and there he remained, in the bowels of some manner of slayer training facility where everyone spoke Russian. He held no delusions that Inessa would actually hold up her end of the bargain and let him out after a single year. She’d already proven herself to be a lying sociopath and anyway…Roksana was here. So leaving hadn’t crossed his mind.