Page 75 of Taste of Forever
Amy and Tavia?Those names sounded familiar, but my brain couldn’t quite connect them to anyone yet.
“Our food is probably so strange to you,” I remarked.
“It is strange. And overly complicated.”
He brought a spoonful to my mouth. Truthfully, I wasn’t sure if I could feed myself without making a mess, so I was grateful to be babied. No one had ever fussed over me when I wasn’t feeling well, so this was quite the silver lining to almost dying in the street.
And when that soup hit my tongue in an explosion of rich, hearty flavors, I closed my eyes and let out an audible,“Mmmm,” that bordered on sexual. “Holy shit, that is the best chicken noodle I’ve ever tasted.”
Laith paused in his stirring of a second spoonful for me. “Are you being serious?”
“Yes! More, please.” I couldn’t remember the last time I had eaten anything and was probably starving, but I had meant every word. “It tastes homemade, like something a grandma would make from scratch for the people she loved.”
“You mean that? Like, actually?”
“Hurry up and feed me some more.” I actually managed to laugh through the ache in my throat. The water, the soup, just Laith being here, all of it was making me better in a matter of minutes.
Laith fed me spoonful after spoonful until the silverware clattered in an empty bowl and my belly felt delightfully full.
“There’s more if you want some,” he said. “I made a pretty big batch.”
I stared at him, not fully comprehending the words. “Youmade the soup?”
He shrugged. “I had help.”
“You made it forme?”
He nodded. “I was told it would make you feel better, so it was a no-brainer. And you definitely look better than when you first woke up.”
This vampire, who probably barely knew what a noodle was, had made me soup. Really good soup. And then fed it to me.
The kindness of that entire gesture felt like too much to face at the moment. So I deflected with some good old-fashioned self-deprecation.
“Oh yeah? I went from day-old garbage to slightly fresher garbage?” I glanced down at my cut-up, bandaged hands again, feeling self-conscious in front of Laith for the first time sincewaking up. Fuck, I probably looked just as road-killish as I felt. He still looked gorgeous, despite the messy hair and fatigue.
“No,” he said softly. “From a survivor to a fighter.”
My eyelids drooped and I stifled a yawn. “Well, I’m about to go from fighter to sleeper.”
“Good. Rest. You still need plenty of it.”
He gathered up the dishes while I scooted down in the bed, pulling the covers up to my chest. The sheets smelled faintly of him. Was this his bed? His house?
My thoughts trailed off into the emptiness of sleep before Laith even closed the bedroom door behind him.
Wakingup the second time was much easier and far less traumatic. I stretched out stiff, sore limbs and let my eyelids flutter open. The aches and pains were still deep and ever present, but I definitely had more energy than before.
I would kill for a hot shower right now.Nothing sounded better than scrubbing myself clean from what had happened in the alley, at least physically.
But first I had to find my way to a bathroom. The room was completely dark except for a small, plug-in night light in an outlet. It illuminated a dark shape on the floor I couldn’t make out. My best guess was a pile of laundry.
After letting my eyes adjust, I saw an outline of a lamp on the bedside table and fumbled for a switch. The light that clicked on was so soft, I hardly needed to blink. What came into focus next to the lamp, however, shocked me into blinking several times.
A vase full of lilies greeted me with their bright, beautiful colors, long stamens, and curling petals. Red and orange tigerlilies filled most of the vase, with a few pink and white varieties adding their own pops of color.
The sound of rustling tore my attention away from the flowers and a jolt of fear had me scrambling across the bed, curling up and looking for a place to hide.
“Hey, you’re awake,” said the laundry pile on the floor, which turned out to be Laith on a messy pile of blankets and pillows. “How are you feeling?” he asked with a yawn.
