Page 77 of The Cruelty of Thorns

Close call

IT TOOK SEVERAL minutes to get my lust under control. The fact that I hadn’t fed from Myra was cause for celebration.

When I was confident I wasn’t going to answer the compulsion thrumming through my veins, I rolled over onto my back to catch my breath. Beside me, Myra was doing the same, her erratic pulse hammering against my senses. I shifted to my side and propped up on my elbow, watching the emotions play over her face. She turned to me and offered a satisfied smile.

“That was…”

“Intense,” I finished.

She laughed. “I guess I understand now why everyone is so obsessed with sex.”

I traced a finger up her chest and over her chin, running it across her lower lip before bending over to replace it with a light kiss. “Well, it’s not always like that. You bring out the beast in me.”

“The beast? Yeah, I can see that.”

The room was growing chilly, now that the heat of our coupling had cooled. I hadn’t lit a fire in the room because the cold wasn’t that big of a concern for me, but I noticed goosebumps pebbling her flesh. “Come on,” I said, sitting up. “Let’s get you dressed before you catch pneumonia in this drafty house.”

She rubbed her arms and nodded. “It is a little chilly.”

I walked over to retrieve her clothes off the floor, handing them to her and turning away so she could get dressed with some sense of privacy since she seemed to have grown shy again. I picked up my suit and draped it over the chair in the corner then pulled a pair of jeans, a tee shirt, and a hoodie out of the wardrobe. When we were both dressed, I led her back downstairs.

“I’m taking you to get something to eat,” I insisted. When she opened her mouth to protest, I wrapped my hands around her arms and pulled her close to me. “I don’t want to hear any excuses. I can’t have you passing out on our way back to your dorm. I know of a small diner where they serve breakfast twenty-four hours a day.”

She smiled up at me and nodded. “Okay. It gives me an excuse to spend more time with you.”

That’s the part that worried me. I hadn’t fed yet, and my control was already teetering on the edge. I should have taken her back to her room immediately and gone in search of sustenance, but the episode earlier in the sitting room had me worried about her. It was obvious she didn’t pay enough attention to her own well-being.

I led her out of the house and back down the street toward the main road out of town. The diner I had mentioned was about a half mile in the opposite direction of the college. I stopped there occasionally for a cup of coffee after hunting. Food didn’t always agree with me, but I still enjoyed the ritual of drinking something besides blood, especially wine, tea, and in recent years, coffee.

There were only a scattering of patrons when we arrived at the diner, and the waitress behind the counter told us to sit anywhere. We found a booth in the back and I plucked up a menu from the stand on the table and handed it to Myra, entreating her to make her choice.

The waitress sauntered over to us with a pot of coffee. I pushed my cup toward her but Myra shook her head. “It’s too late in the day for me. Can I have orange juice instead?”

“Order whatever you like,” I told her.

She looked up at the waitress. “I’ll have a short stack and a small orange juice.”

“Just coffee for me,” I added.

The waitress wrote the order on her pad then nodded to us. “I’ll get that right out to you.”

After she was gone Myra folded her hands in front of her and leaned over the table. “You say you come here a lot?”

I shrugged. “Now and then on my way home after being out at night.”

She grinned at me. “So what do you do when you go out at night? Do you get drunk, pick up strange girls, get in bar fights?”

“None of the above.” I wasn’t about to tell her what I really did when I prowled the nighttime streets. I didn’t know if I’d ever be comfortable revealing my true nature to her, but this was definitely not that time. Still, she was waiting for a better answer than what I had given her. “I have the occasional glass of wine, maybe a little conversation.”

I almost laughed to myself. The only conversation I had with my victims was convincing them they were dreaming while I was seducing them. I didn’t think she would find that as amusing as I did.

“Sounds lonely,” she replied. “Do you have any friends?”

“Not really.”

She nodded. “I guess I can sympathize with that. I’m kind of a loner myself.”

“Maybe that’s why we fit so well together.”

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