To the contrary, she felt a gentle cupping of her head. When he should have been telling her to disengage, he was urging her to his wrist, even though there was no way to be closer to it.
For some reason, him wanting her to keep at it just made her even more hungry, and not only for the nutrients. Indeed, heat was kindling in her belly and traveling to her extremities, the waves warming her arms and legs, her hands and feet. It was such a contrast to how she normally felt, making her realize how cold she usually was. How frigid. How frozen—
A moan escaped her, vibrating up her windpipe even through the drinking. As good as this was, though, she really had to stop. She had to pull back. She had to…
The thoughts disintegrated as her starvation took over again, nothing but the feeding mattering, not even Kane’s life. She was a servant to her biology, to her decades of denying her needs, to the reality that she had been near death for the entire time she had been in the prison camp.
For as long as she had been wounded.
The heat was extraordinary, awakening her from the inside out, filling her with a vitality that was so great, she wasn’t sure she could contain the energy within her body. The sensation was as if she were swelling within her skin, growing larger, filling out. Every part of her, each cell, down to her very molecules, was starting to vibrate with life long dampened by—
The trembling came upon her from out of the blue, and at first, she thought it was just a shiver, a shake, that would pass. Instead, it was an entire storm of shivering and shaking, so violent that her lips began to slip against the puncture wounds.
And then she lost contact altogether.
Desperate as she was, she lurched forward to reestablish the bite. But suddenly, she couldn’t control her body. As much as she wanted to lean in, she couldn’t—
With a sudden spasm, her spine arched on its own, her torso curving back with such force, she fell away from him. As her vision swung up to the ceiling, her arms extended out from her shoulders on their own and her legs pushed stick straight from her hips.
Her next awareness was of being on the carpet at Kane’s feet. The seizure owned her in the same way the hunger for his blood had, her body not under her own control, her vision jerking about so that she couldn’t focus on anything, her reflexes going haywire as she flopped around, a fish on the bottom of a boat. As she continued to spasm, speaking wasn’t an option, her molars clapping together,her mouth both lax and gritted as it alternated between the two extremes—
Kane’s face appeared above her, but she couldn’t communicate with him, and though his mouth was moving, she had no idea what he was saying.
Grabbing on to the front of his shirt, she tried to—
A scream curdled out of her. And then another.
“Nadya.”
Something about the way he said her name made her come to a sort of attention. Through chattering teeth, she attempted to speak.
“Nadya…”
“I don’t know…”
“Nadya. Drink this.”
Is he insane, she thought. She had already taken so much from his vein. With more determination than actual follow-through, she fought whatever he sought to put to her lips, her sloppy hands batting away—
“It’s water,” he said roughly. “Drink it. It’s too much of a shock, the blood—I should have limited how much you had. Dearest Virgin Scribe…”
He forced her to take some of the water, but the little she managed to get past her lips did nothing. The inferno inside her body continued to rise, doubling and then redoubling again, no longer warming, now consuming. She was burning, incinerating, eaten alive by the power of his blood.
The blanket was ripped from her, and as her scrambling hands tried to pull it back over her nakedness, he shoved the wool weight out of her reach.
“N-n-n-n-nooo—”
“Nadya, I’ve got you. Here. Come here.”
She felt his arms go around her, and then she had a sensation of being lifted. He was carrying her somewhere—outside? To the colder air? Was it dark? She didn’t know, she couldn’t think, she wasn’t…
The scent of the Dial soap broke through the seizure. She was in the bathroom?
The sound of rushing water answered that.
“This is going to hurt,” he said in a loud voice, as if he were yelling at her in hopes of getting through to her, “but we have to get you cooled. No—don’t fight me—don’t—Nadya. Stop it.”
He got into the shower with her.