Page 13 of Blood Moon Heat

Draining the bourbon from my glass, I strode to the door on the other side of my office and took the private hall, then down the stairs to my basement apartment. Opening the door at the bottom, I kept walking. Mina’s room was only a few doors down, but I refused to let base instinct take over. Instead of going to her, I used my key and entered The Vault through my private access, rounded the faux wall in the darkened corner, and strode into the feeding club.

The scent of sex and blood filled my senses instantly, heavy and rich, and for the first time since I opened this club, the smell actually turned my stomach. Ignoring the churning inside me and the fawning donors watching me as I strode across the floor, I took my place at my usual table.

Pretender appeared at my side a moment later with another glass of bourbon, then stayed there to stop anyone who might think to approach me.

“Did she eat today?” I asked him. My stubborn bonded hadn’t eaten in three days, not since I told her what I wanted from her.

Pretender shook his head under his hooded sweatshirt. “She’s still refusing.”

“Did she say why?”

He didn’t meet my eyes, but I could see his glittering. “She said she’d rather starve to death than live in a prison.”

My ward was concerned. I knew that look on his face well.

“You believe her?”

He shrugged a shoulder. “I believe she believes it. I don’t think she’ll hold out forever, but I could hear her stomach growling.”

I sipped my drink. “She’ll give in soon enough.”

Pretender nodded, but the way he was unable to stay still told me there was something more he wanted to say.

“What is it?” I said.

He looked uncomfortable. “I’m of course not telling you I know best. I know nothing about these matters, but I do know young vampires like her, new to feeding from the vein and newly bonded, need to feed much more often. She’ll waste a lot faster than, for example, I would.” His gaze came to me. “You may have forgotten what it’s like to be truly hungry.”

He was right. I had. Until Mina, I hadn’t been hungry in longer than I could remember. I knew when I needed to feed, and I fed, but there’d been no pleasure in it. No urgency. “You think she’s wasting already?”

He shrugged. “She looked thinner than the first time I saw her. I don’t think it’s developed beyond that, but I can see the affects her refusal to eat or feed is having on her.”

Stubborn little fool.

I should have thought of it, of course. It was her age, her new situation. “I told her to tell you if she needed to feed.”

Pretender chewed his lip. “I don’t think her pride will allow it.”

I curled my fingers tighter around my glass. Her behavior was illogical. Death was far worse than living in the comfortable room I’d provided for her. I’d painstakingly recreated it. It had taken years to get it just right, to make it a perfect replica, and she would rather die than be in it?

A strange sensation burned in the center of my chest.

I stood abruptly, then strode back through the room, leaving the club through my private access and back out into the hall.

For centuries, there’d been nothing that I wanted or needed. Nothing drew my eye or held my attention. Nothing made me feel.

Until my little doll.

I’d visited her room every night since I’d brought her here, and besides that one night, she’d lain still, silent like I’d asked, while I watched her, while I basked in what only she could give me. The pain she caused in me, the hunger, had awoken something inside me that I thought I’d lost forever. I would not lose that, not now.

Mina would not give up and waste away. I wouldn’t let her do that to me.

I would not let her take this from me.

Removing the key from my pocket, I unlocked her door and walked into her room. She wasn’t in her bed and, for a moment before I saw her on the other side of the room, a strange and sharp feeling stabbed through my gut.

She sat in the chair by the window. The city lights that had managed to reach her through the window made the side of her face look pale and her blond hair impossibly glossy. She was wearing one of the dresses from her closet, not the gown she’d been wearing at the ceremony but a different one.

They were all pink and lacy, modest. I liked seeing her like that, untainted by the outside world—innocent, safe. She had her arms wrapped around her drawn-up knees, the fabric of her gown hanging almost to the floor. Her head was slightly turned, staring out at nothing.

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