Hunger (5 page)

Eve looked down at the robe she clutched, shame spreading through her. At times like this, she was almost glad she was a vampire and couldn’t blush. It wasn’t the thought of changing in front of Tor that would have had her cheeks heating. It was how pathetic she had been back at the airport.

She had lost it.

It was all coming back to her now in startling colour and detail. She had fallen apart while Tor had been the picture of calm and efficiency, his reactions incredible as he had swept her up against his hard, powerful body and sheltered her from the blast. If he hadn’t been there, she would have been toast.

Then, he had carried her like some knight in shining armour into the safety of the darkness and had tended to her, and all the while she had mumbled stupid stuff like a damsel in distress. She groaned internally at the way she had presented herself. When piled on top of how she had been when Tor had swept into the club and quickly dispatched her attackers for her, it made her want to bury her head in the robe and never come out again.

No doubt Tor thought she was one of those women who needed constant protection, a man on hand to do her battles for her and keep her safe.

She had kept herself safe for twenty-five years without the help of a man.

Death had torn apart the woman she had been, stripping away her strength, throwing her into turmoil. She had become the sort of weak and pathetic woman that had annoyed her when she had been a hunter.

Eve resisted sagging onto the bed and burrowing into the white robe.

She really had to man up.

Tor had offered her the shot at revenge she wanted and she was going to take it.

She was going to pull herself together and show him that she was a hunter born and bred, just as he was.

Eve turned her back on him, set the towel down on the double bed in front of her, and stripped off her jacket. When she pulled her t-shirt up, revealing her back, Tor uttered something in his foreign tongue. She shivered as his gaze ran down her spine, heating her skin, and frowned as his eyes left her. A chivalrous man? She hadn’t figured him for that type.

His boots shuffled on the taupe carpet and she continued to remove her wet things. She kicked her own boots off, struggled to get her jeans down her legs, and even pulled off her socks. She left her underwear on. A flimsy piece of protection she couldn’t quite bring herself to shed, not even when she was certain that he had turned his back to give her some privacy.

Eve donned the white robe, tied the belt around her waist and moved to face Tor.

He had turned his back. He stood facing the bathroom and her gaze immediately catalogued all the cuts in his black t-shirt. She walked forwards, her bare feet silent on the carpet, and reached towards a short gash on his right arm.

Tor tensed the moment her fingers made contact, his muscles flexing in response to her touch. She bravely ventured onwards, running her fingers down the line of the cut, one on either side of the angry wound.

“How many have metal in them?” she said and scanned his back for the worst. It was hard to tell with his t-shirt concealing them. “You’re going to have to let me take a look.”

He didn’t argue or hesitate. He grabbed his t-shirt and pulled it off, dropping it on the floor at their feet.

Eve sucked in a sharp breath at the sight of his muscular back, and not because of all the places where pieces of the jet had struck him. There were so many scars.

She absently raised a hand and ghosted it over the thick ragged scar on his right shoulder. It cut down from the delicious dip in his muscles beside his deltoid, as wide as two of her fingers together, and tapered to a point just beneath his shoulder blade, close to his armpit.

“The hunter did this?” She didn’t need to ask to know, but it felt too intimate standing like this with him, touching him in silence.

He nodded.

Eve moved a step back and assessed the new wounds, shutting out all the scars that littered his back, even the thick circular ones that sickened her. Someone had made him acquainted with holy wood and more than once. She counted at least five points where he had been stabbed with stakes and burned by them.

She shut them out, not wanting to wonder whether the same hunter who had attempted to take his arm and his life had done this grim work on him.

“You’re going to bleed when I pull these fragments out.” Eve touched one and expected him to hiss as she felt the metal buried in his flesh beneath his skin.

He didn’t make a sound. He didn’t even tense.

“You do not need to. My body will reject them.” He stepped away from her and pinned her with his cold blue eyes, no flicker of emotion in them.

“In days maybe… why live with them for days?” She searched his pale eyes but they didn’t answer her and neither did he.

Tor turned away from her and she wasn’t having any of it. She grabbed his wrist and he paused and looked down at her hand on him. His pale blond eyebrows drew down, narrowing his eyes. She wasn’t going to release him so his veiled threat was pointless.

“Why?” She wouldn’t ask him again. He had to have a reason. No hunter, no matter how hardened they were to pain, lived with something they could easily fix with another’s assistance. It was madness. The metal had every chance of burrowing deeper before his body began to heal, pushing it out. The process would be painful and drawn out over days.

Tor lifted his icy gaze to meet hers. “It’s not your place.”

He tugged his arm free of her grip and walked into the bathroom. If he thought they were done on the subject, he was sorely mistaken.

Eve followed him into the white tiled room, avoiding the huge mirror hanging above the vanity unit in front of her. She turned to her left, towards Tor, and her eyes widened as he shoved his black jeans down, shamelessly revealing his bare backside.

Eve swiftly spun on her heel, giving him her back.

She searched for something to say and her eyes fell on the small, rather atrocious, bathroom supplies offered by the hotel. Nothing more than some shampoo and shower gel. No vanity pack. She went back into the bedroom, unzipped her bag, and pulled out her small shiny red satin bag that contained her scant pieces of make-up and other beauty items. She took out her tweezers, dumped her stuff on the bed and went back to the bathroom door.

Tor growled something dark and grunted.

Eve steeled herself, preparing for the sight of him, and then stepped inside. She frowned at him. He stood with one hand braced on the vanity and the other reaching under that arm, fingers digging in a wound on his back. Blood smeared around the wound and rolled down his fingers, dripping on the floor, leaving a stark crimson splatter on the white tiles.

“God almighty… will you stop? You’re making it worse.” She grabbed his hand and shoved it away.

He snarled at her and her heart leaped into her throat.

“I thought you were just going to let your body push the fragments out?” she snapped and ignored his answering growl. She felt the warning in that one. Her vampire instincts knew he had threatened her and meant to keep her away from him.

Eve didn’t give a damn.

She didn’t care that it wasn’t her place to help him, whatever that crap meant.

All she cared about was getting the pieces of metal out of his flesh in the least painful way and seeing he healed.

She shoved him in the shoulder. “Face forwards and shut up.”

Surprisingly, he did as ordered. Eve went to work on his back, feeling each wound and then using the tweezers to remove the metal if there was any embedded in it. She dropped each shard into a glass on the counter beside her and had filled the bottom of it before she had covered half of his back.

She couldn’t believe he had been willing to live with so many sharp pieces of metal in his skin.

“Tor?” she whispered as she carefully tugged another sliver free of his flesh and dropped it into the glass. “What did you mean by it isn’t my place? I get that you work alone… I understand what it’s like… but why refuse help?”

He lowered his head and braced his hands against the counter in front of him.

Eve worked lower and her gaze dropped to his bare backside and the twin delicious dimples above it. She dragged her eyes back up, trying to get control of herself. He had been kind enough to give her some privacy when she had been changing. It was rude of her to ogle him when he was accepting her help. She felt as if she was taking advantage of him somehow.

“You shouldn’t touch me.”

She frowned at those low spoken words. “Why not?”

He turned his head slightly towards her, enough that she could see he had his eyes closed, his eyebrows drawn down above them. His shoulders tensed as she pulled a long shard out of his side and she mumbled an apology.

“Because it isn’t right,” he said and she wished he would tell her straight and stop dancing around the reason.

She pulled another piece of metal out, her actions rougher this time, her irritation getting the better of her. He hissed as he sucked in a breath and blood trickled down his back.

“Sorry,” Eve said, immediately regretting what she had done. Guilt swept through her and on its heels came an instinct she fought hard to deny.

She would not lick the blood or seal the wound for him.

She grabbed some tissue and pressed it to the wound instead, and closed her eyes, shutting out the sight of all the blood on his back. She struggled against her instincts, desperate to shut out the voice that tempted her into running her tongue over Tor’s back, capturing every stray drop of his strong blood. She wanted it. She needed it.

She had to take it.

Tor wouldn’t argue.

He wouldn’t deny her. He would let her crawl up his magnificent body and sink her fangs into his throat, drinking deep of his blood. He would enjoy it.

Welcome it.

Eve turned away and shoved her palms against the cool wall tiles as her head spun, the sudden onslaught of dizziness threatening to sweep the ground out from under her and take her down to her knees.

Tor’s strong hand caught her upper arm. “Eve?”

The sound of her name in his deep accented voice sent heat rolling through her and caused her trembling to increase. Her knees turned to jelly, too weak to support her weight. His other hand clamped down on her side and he lifted her. The spinning in her head worsened and she gasped as her backside hit something hard beneath her.

“Eve?” Tor’s hands grasped her shoulders and he held her steady, and she wished she could find her voice to thank him for it. She clutched his biceps, holding herself upright on the counter of the vanity unit. “Eve?”

She nodded to let him know that she was beginning to feel better. The hunger was passing. She was winning.

She sucked in a deep breath and held it in her lungs, trying to shatter the final threads of the hunger’s hold on her.

“You need blood.” He released her arms.

Eve tightened her grip on him, fear bringing her claws out. She pressed them into his flesh, desperate for him to stay, unwilling to let him move. She couldn’t let him go for blood. She couldn’t. He wouldn’t understand.

“I’m fine.” She pushed the words out, trying to sound normal, sure that he hadn’t heard the wobble in her voice. “I think this whole evening has taken its toll on me.”

Eve risked opening her eyes and meeting his.

The ice glittering in them said he wanted to call her on her lie, that he knew she needed blood and hadn’t fed recently.

He stepped back instead and Eve quickly averted her gaze when his actions gave her a dazzling reminder that he was naked.

He raised his hand towards her face and she cursed him for it, knowing he had deliberately chosen the one he had bloodied when trying to remove a piece of shrapnel by himself. The room brightened, the sudden sharpness hurting her eyes as they changed to their true vampiric state, blazing crimson, the colour of her bloodline. Her stomach turned as her fangs dropped.

“You might be able to fool Oneiric with your lies… but you’re not fooling me. The next opportunity we get, you’re feeding.”

He turned away from her and the shower switched on, the water beating down on the plastic tray, filling the thick silence. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t feed. The very thought made her stomach rebel and bile rise, scalding her throat. She forced her fangs away and faced Tor.

“I haven’t finished yet.” She looked at all the marks on his back, each red slash calling to her, making her fangs itch to drop again and her mouth water.

“You’re done. I shouldn’t have let you touch me.” He stepped into the shower and grimaced as water sluiced over his skin. The lower half of the glass was obscured, hiding detail from her hungry eyes.

She dragged them up and settled them on his back. He carefully scrubbed the soot from his skin, taking his time around the wounds on his arms.

“Why can’t I touch you?” She threw her voice behind that question, wanting to be sure he heard it over the running water.

He paused with his hands in his blond hair, the wet strands tangled over his long fingers, filling her head with images of her hands like that. She pushed that vision out of her head. He obviously didn’t want her in that way. His eyes altered at times when he was looking at her, banked heat breaking through the ice for a heartbeat, but he had been naked around her and hadn’t shown a flicker of interest then, and something told her it was because he had drawn a line between them at some point. Since that point, his eyes hadn’t shown even a glimmer of heat.

Since the explosion and her admission that she had been betrayed and wanted revenge.

“I’m not worthy of it. You’re to be our Chosen Daughter.” He went back to washing his hair, those beautiful fingers working the shampoo into a lather, distracting her from what he had said.

Eve frowned. “A rank I don’t want.”

She knew what a Chosen Daughter was. She wanted no part of her bloodline and definitely didn’t want to help run the wretched thing.

“A rank you have, nonetheless.” Tor ducked his head under the water and turned around, facing towards her. He rinsed his hair, his eyes closed. The honed muscles of his torso shifted in a sensual symphony, luring and tempting her. He was beautiful like that. She could easily fool herself that he was human. Just a normal man. Not a killer.