In truth, fairness was the last thing on his mind. He was just flailing around for any argument that would get her to agree to feed from him. Vampires had been designed by the Scribe Virgin to require the blood of the opposite sex to maintain optimal health. Feeding was not an every-night kind of thing, but it had to be done on a regular basis, and going by her obvious exhaustion, it had been a very long time for her. Also, he was worried about her lack of resources and contacts. Her parents were gone. That nurse who had been her mentor, too. She was all alone.
So if not him, who? Although… when he even hypothetically considered her at another male’s vein, that strange side of him, the one that had come to the fore when he’d been determined to rescue her, lit up with aggression.
To the point where he needed to get a hold of himself.
“Look, I would give you money,” he said grimly, “but I have none myself. I would ask you to stay with me, but I have no home. I have no clothes, no shoes, to offer you. The only thing I can present to you is what you yourself gave me—and please, don’t argue that you’re not my responsibility. That’s not the point.”
At least not from the way she saw things.
As she fell silent, he studied her, and when her scars and her baldness registered, he thought of how much he wasn’t aware of either. It wasn’t that he didn’t see her disfiguration and hated what it represented. It was that he saw through the damage.
Attraction was physical. Connection was soul to soul.
“I don’t like to rely on others,” she said softly. “I don’t like to be in debt.”
He frowned, wondering if there was something else she was worried about. And then he thought… well, of course: “It won’t be sexual. I promise you.”
She laughed in a short burst. “Oh, that I know. I would never think you’d… well, anyway.”
“I mean, you can trust me.”
“I’ve never doubted that either.” After a beat of quiet, she lowered the bundle of clothes she’d held against her heart. “It has been forty years.”
Kane blinked in confusion. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“I haven’t fed since I was hurt.”
Shaking his head, he leaned forward. “But that isn’t possible.”
“It’s the truth. I’m very careful to conserve my energy, and besides, with my leg, I can’t move very well. Ever since the acid attack, I’ve been kind of suspended, neither living nor dead. A ghost that wanders among the living, I guess. So it makes sense that I wouldn’t require feeding.”
“You’re not a ghost.” He roughly yanked up the sleeve of the shirt he’d taken off that guard at the camp. “Come over here. Use me and help my conscience—be my salve, by taking my vein, so that I know, as we go our separate ways, you’re as strong as you can be.”
He laid his forearm along his thigh and just stared at her.
Forever passed in the silence between them.
And then she slowly approached and put her clothes down on the opposite side of the couch. “I’ll leave when it’s dark enough.”
Is that a “yes”?he wondered.
Except how was he going to leave her? They had spent so much time together back in her clinic, his suffering stretching the moments and minutes into years and decades. The idea that he would not see her after this, that she would go off, on her own, and he would never know how her life went, made him ache all over.
As Nadya sat down, he knew she was shaking, and he told himself to stay in the present.
This is a “yes,”he thought.
“I am just so tired,” she whispered.
“I can help.” He moved his bare forearm closer to her. “Take from me. It’ll make you feel better, I promise.”
The blanket shifted as she lowered her head, and he hated how frail she was, how thin her shoulders were, how hollow her collarbones.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said. “I promise.”
What the hell was coming out of his mouth, he wondered as he extended his arm so that it was in her lap.
But she didn’t bite him.