“Your what?” He seemed to be getting through to her, Need thought. Some of the unreasoning fear had leaked out of her eyes to be replaced by a cautious kind of hope.
“My essence. It’s a pale blue liquid secreted by my fangs,” Need explained. “It binds a Kindred’s mate to him when he injects it into her bloodstream. But it can also be used to heal small injuries and wounds. Look…”
Reaching into his mouth, he stroked one long fang with his index finger, milking a small drop of essence from it. He held his finger out to the girl, letting her see the pale blue droplet on its tip.
She eyed it uncertainly but at least by now she’d completely stopped crying.
“Your…essence?” she asked, looking up at him.
“Yes, that’s my essence.” Need nodded. “I’m going to use it to heal you—but not by biting you,” he explained quickly, before she could get the wrong idea again. “I’m just going to get some on my fingers and rub it into the sore places, where that damned stick thing tore you.”
The memory made him want to growl in anger but he held back, not wanting the girl to think he was mad at her.
“And…and that’s all you want to do?” she asked, raising her eyebrows. “Not bite me and not drink my blood or drain me dry and kill me?”
“If I wanted to do all that, do you think I would have paid forty thousand credits for you?” Need pointed out dryly. “If I had to pay that much every time I wanted a meal, I’d have starved to death by now.”
“Well…” He could see the realization dawning in her eyes. “Yes, I guess that’s true.”
“Of course it’s true,” Need said firmly. “Now dry your eyes and take a deep breath. Everything is going to be all right and I’m not going to hurt you—I swear it by the Goddess.”
Though Gods knew he had little enough to do with the Mother of All Life, he thought grimly. Still, her name was good enough to swear by.
“All…all right.” She drew in a deep, trembling breath just as he’d instructed. “I’m sorry I accused you of such awful things, my Lord. I thought it was…was my time to die,” she whispered, looking up at him. “I should have died already, you know. And I thought that death was catching up with me.”
“Well it didn’t and it won’t—not as long as you’re under my protection,” Need told her, though he wondered what she meant by saying she should have died already. It seemed a fatalistic point of view in one so young. Still, he didn’t have time to get into it now—he needed to heal her and then go set the course for their next destination. “Do you feel calmer now?” he asked the girl.
She nodded, her long, curly hair swirling around her flushed cheeks with the motion. Gods, she really was distractingly lovely, he thought. He really wished she wasn’t—all of this would be so much easier if his stupid body hadn’t suddenly chosen to wake up and react sexually again. His fangs getting so long was a case in point—they’d nearly scared the poor girl to death and even now they throbbed in time with his shaft.
But no matter what his body was saying, he was determined to heal her without hurting or scaring or abusing her.
“I’m going to heal you now,” he told the girl. “Or you can heal yourself. Would you rather gather my essence with your fingers and put it where you’re hurt or do you want me to do it?”
Either way it had to happen—he couldn’t have her limping around the ship in her current injured condition.
The girl—Lan’ara, she’d said her name was—caught her lush lower lip between her small white teeth and seemed to consider the question. Her eyes flicked up to his for a moment as though she was trying to read him—to find out what he wanted her to say.
“Either way is fine with me,” Need told her. “I won’t be angry if you don’t want me touching you there.” He nodded to the area between her thighs, which was still visible since the towel she was wearing was pulled up.
Her dark eyes flickered over his face, then down to his hands, the up again and lingered on the points of his fangs—which really had grown extremely long and sharp, Need thought, exasperated all over again with his stupid body for suddenly betraying him like this.
“Well?” he asked again when she still didn’t answer.
“You do it, my Lord,” she said at last. “If…if you don’t mind, that is.”
“I don’t,” Need assured her. “And I swear I’ll be gentle, all right?”
“All…all right.” She nodded and looked up at him from under her long lashes. “I…I trust you, my Lord.”