“There’s nothing wrong with them—those are his fangs,” he told Lexi. “I have them too—see?” He bared his teeth for her briefly and she saw that, sure enough, he also had a double set of razor-sharp fangs where his canine teeth should be.
“Oh,” she said at last, remembering something else she’d heard about Kindred. “So you’re Blood Kindred, right? I’ve heard of your kind.”
“We are Blood Kindred but we are also Twin Kindred,” Gaze told her. “And we are also Pitch-Blood Kindred. I guess you could call us Pitch-Blood Twins.”
Lexi gave him a guarded look.
“What does all that mean?”
Gaze looked at her for a long moment. Then he glanced up at the ceiling of the hovercoach and she could have sworn she heard him murmuring a nearly-silent prayer. Then he looked back at her again.
“It means we need blood to drink,” he told her heavily.
“What? Blood to drink!” Lexi felt her stomach clench in a knot of fear. Had she stupidly locked herself into a coach with a couple of blood sucking monsters?
Gaze seemed to see her fear because he put out both of his large, well-shaped hands in a gesture of appeal.
“Yes, blood,” he said. “Not much—just a few swallows every now and then. But if we don’t get it, we could die. That’s what’s wrong with my brother—the slavers who captured us blew a hole in his side and he lost a lot of blood. Normally our bodies heal very quickly as you can see…”
He indicated the ragged hole in the side and back of Bound’s dark blue shirt. Looking through it, Lexi could see that that skin was pink and new-looking, unlike the deep tan a few shades lighter than her own skin tones, that predominated everywhere else on the Kindred’s big body.
“But healing himself took all his reserves and we were both already running dry—that’s what we call it when we haven’t been to a donor for a long time and we need a few swallows of blood,” Gaze continued to explain. “So now he’s basically dying and if he doesn’t get to drink from a donor soon, I’ll lose him.”
He looked at her appealingly and though he didn’t outright ask, Lexi could see what he wanted her to do.
“You want me to let your brother drink my blood?” she asked, raising her eyebrows incredulously. “Seriously?”
“He’ll die, otherwise,” Gaze said simply. “Unless you know of a willing female donor we can pay to let us bite her and drink from her,” he added. “We cannot drink from other males or I would have tried to give him some of my own blood—though I have little to spare.”
“A female willing to let a strange male sink his fangs into her on Yonnie Six where males are considered lower than dirt? I doubt it,” Lexi snorted.
“I didn’t think so,” Gaze said, shaking his head. “We were headed home to our own planet of Tranq Prime to get a crimson drink when the slavers caught us. Even if you take us back to our ship—which might still be in the space port where we left it—we won’t get home in time.” He looked down at his hands. “I’m going to lose my brother.”
At his words, Lexi felt a strange determination come over her. She had saved these males—she had paid a million credits for them put together and she had beaten that nasty Mistress Crueltongue at her own game. How the other woman would laugh if she could see the predicament Lexi was in now—that she was about to lose one of the males she’d bargained so fiercely for!
No, she couldn’t have it—she wouldn’t have it, Lexi decided.
“You’re not going to lose him,” she heard herself saying. “I didn’t save you from the Death Mines just to let you die in my hovercoach,” she added, a touch defiantly because what she was about to do was definitely not something a good citizen of Zetta Prime would ever consider. Still, she hadn’t paid a million credits for the two of them to let them die now. And besides, their combined scent was still filling the confines of the coach, making her feel slightly reckless.
Taking a deep breath, she pushed up the sleeve of her plain blue dress and pressed her wrist to the big Kindred’s mouth.
“Drink,” she told him.
NINE
At first it seemed that Bound hadn’t heard her. His eyes had fluttered closed again and his dark lashes lay like fans against his high cheekbones. But when she pressed the underside of her wrist to his lips, the big Kindred began to stir. Slowly, he reached up and caught Lexi’s hand in his own, much larger one. Then his lips parted and she could feel the sharp prick of his fangs against the sensitive skin of her wrist, though he hadn’t pierced her flesh yet.