He took her by the chin, lifting her face, and peered into her eyes. Karina pulled back. He leaned closer. She tried to scramble away, but he grasped her shoulder, keeping her still. His lips touched her forehead. “Fever.” Lucas grimaced. “Your eyes are still bloodshot.”

His presence pressed on her like a physical burden. Karina closed her eyes. She sat there, world shut out, and pretended that everything would be okay even if every instinct assured her it wouldn’t. She had to survive and adapt. She had to do whatever was necessary to get her daughter back.

When she opened her eyelids, he waited for her with a synthetic cord in his hands. She hadn’t heard him move.

“To keep you still.” He moved toward her, uncoiling the cord.

No. Lying there tied up and completely helpless while he drank her blood would be too much. “That’s okay,” she said quickly. “I won’t change my mind.”

Lucas kept coming.

“I won’t change my mind.” Desperation put steel into her voice. “I’ve agreed to this to save my daughter. They’ll let me see her after you feed. I won’t run or fight.”

He halted.

“Arthur said I would stay here for as long as I live. That means you have to feed frequently. Might as well start it right.”

Lucas gripped the rope. His biceps bulged. He snapped the rope apart. Karina winced. “If you’re trying to intimidate me, it’s too late. I’m already as scared as I’m going to get.”

“I’m not trying to scare you.” He rolled the section of the rope into a tight wad, wrapped the end about it several times, tied it, and dropped it in her lap. “To bite down. In case it gets too rough.”

She picked it up.

Lucas sat next to her. “Arthur isn’t in charge of your daughter. I am. I guaranteed her safety. Both of you belong to me.”

Lucas leaned to look into her face. She expected rage, hunger, some violent emotion, but instead she saw only steady calm.

“I promise you that no matter what happens between you and me, your daughter will be safe. I will never use her against you. Everyone is afraid of me, and she will never be bullied or mistreated.”

Karina stared at him in surprise.

“You wanted to start this right,” he said. “We can do that. Let’s be honest. The bitch in the hotel poisoned you. Technically she infected you with a virus that secretes a toxin into your bloodstream. To counteract the virus, you need my venom. I’ve already bitten you once but it will take several feedings before you’re in the clear.”

“You’ve bitten me?”

“Left thigh,” he said. “I was in the attack variant at the time, and biting you anywhere else would’ve caused too much damage.”

She grabbed at her leg, trying to feel the wound through the fabric of the jeans.

“It was a very quick bite,” he said. “To keep you from dying. This will be worse.”

He was serious. The thought of him feeding on her, chewing on her, was almost too much to contemplate. “Can we do a blood transfusion instead?”

“No. We’ve tried in the past and failed. There is some sort of relationship between your blood, my venom, and my saliva that we don’t understand. I have to feed on you. You need me to survive and I need you to . . .” He paused. “To counteract my venom.”

He was holding something back, she could feel it.

Lucas’s eyes held no mercy. “I’m a predator and my body knows that you’re my prey. Your fear is exciting. Try not to be so scared. Don’t struggle. The more you flail about and whimper, the more excited I’ll get. If you get me excited enough, I’ll chew up your veins and end up fucking you in a puddle of blood. I take it you don’t want that.”

“No.”

“Then stay calm.” He nodded at the cord in her lap. “You sure you don’t want to be tied?”

“Yes.”

Lucas stretched out on the bed, took her by the waist, and pulled her down, flush against him. They lay together, her butt pressed against his groin, her back tight against his chest. Like two lovers. Jonathan and she used to lie like this after sex. The perversity of it made her shiver.

“Lie still.” His arms pulled her tighter to him. The hard shaft of his erection dug into her butt. She tried to edge away from it.

“Don’t worry. I can’t help it, but I won’t molest you. Unless you start moaning and rubbing your ass against me.”

She stopped moving. The odor of hot copper was overpowering now. Karina cleared her throat. “I feel light-headed.”

“You’re breathing in my scent. Your body’s reacting. It will speed things up.”

That explained the shirt coming off. He wanted no fabric barriers between her and that smell, so it could roll off his skin and take her under. “Do I need to do anything?”

“Just lie there and endure. Your body needs my venom. As I said, I’ve bitten you already to kill the poison, but you got just enough to keep you alive. This will take some time.”

She brushed her hair from her neck, exposing skin. No point in drawing this out.

A low laugh answered her. He spoke into her ear, his breath a warm touch on her skin. “You ever watch hockey?”

“No.”

“The Buffalo Sabres had a goalie—Clint Malarchuk. Steve Tuttle, a guy on another team, was trying to score a goal, and as he charged at the crease, a defenseman grabbed him from behind and swung him up. Tuttle’s skate caught Malarchuk’s neck. A shallow cut, only severed the exterior jugular. Blood sprayed like water from a hose. Covered the whole crease in seconds.”

For some reason she couldn’t understand, his quiet voice steadied her nerves. “Did he survive?”

“He did. Had the skate cut a bit deeper, he would’ve been dead in about two minutes.” He gathered her even tighter against himself. “The neck nuzzling is fun, but the pressure within the jugular would expel your blood so quickly, it would kill you.” His finger traced an outline on the vein on her neck, sending electric shivers along her skin. She wished he hadn’t done that.

“If not the neck, then where?”

“The arm works well.”

“Can you . . . get on with it?”

“Not yet. The longer we wait, the less painful it will be for you.”

His body was hot against hers, his heat seeping into her. His scent enveloped her completely now. Her head spun.

“That’s it,” he prompted. “Go limp. Don’t strain.”

“I’m scared,” she told him.

“I’m sorry.” The undercurrent of violence that permeated everything he said muted slightly.

“What will happen after you feed?”

“You’ll pass out. It’s like giving blood except messier. Your body will go into shock from my venom. If you survive, you’ll get used to the feedings.”

“I might die?”

“Yes.”

“This just gets better and better.”

“Life’s a bitch.”

The room crawled. “I’m not dreaming, am I?”

“If this is your dream, you’re seriously fucked up.”

“Who are you . . . all of you?”

“You ask too many questions.”

He pulled away from her, turned her arm to him, and bit into the soft flesh just above the elbow. Pain lanced through her. Her body tensed in response, but his arms clamped her down and she could barely breathe.

It hurt. It hurt and hurt, but worse than the pain was the awful sensation of his gnawing teeth and the prickly heat squirming its way up her arm. It spread into her shoulder and fanned out, claiming her body. She wanted to break free, to get away, but Lucas held her tight.

“Promise me you will make sure my daughter is safe if I die.”

He didn’t answer.

“Promise me.”

“I promise,” he said.

Karina let herself sink into the pain. Gradually it eased into a steady ache. Her limbs relaxed. She tried to think of something else, anything else, of Emily, of their safe little apartment, of being far away in a different place. But the reality refused to recede. And so she lay there and waited it out, her entire body humming with a distinct unusual pain, until her dizziness blotted out the world and she slipped under.

Lucas nuzzled her thin neck. Feverish. Not too bad. She was healthy. And clean. The blood work from the main house had shown no abnormalities aside from the poison. That was what donors were. Resilient; resistant to most disease.

And grounded. She didn’t seem like she would snap, but he’d seen enough people break under the weight of the transition to let his guard slip. And then there was her daughter. Children complicated things.

She just lay there and let him feed.

His first donor, Robert Milder, had to be sedated for the feedings. After him, there was Galatea. He had to tie her up. Every time. She had resented her role, loathed being restrained, despised him, and yet pulled him into her bed; and when they fucked, she drained him so completely, he felt blissfully empty, as if he had poured not only his seed, but his pain into her. She took it all and reveled in it, enjoying the power she wielded over him. He wasn’t a fool. He knew she was driven by revenge, but he came back to her again and again, an idiot thirsty for a poisoned spring.

And now he had Karina.

A soothing cold spread through his veins, melting the needles of pain that always prickled him in the aftermath of his transformation from the attack variant. Funny. He had survived for six years on injections, shooting himself up every couple of days, but the synthetic hormones failed to soothe the ache. They managed to dull the pain, yet it had still gnawed at him, until he became convinced it would grind him down to nothing. Karina’s body had barely had a chance to respond to his poison, yet even this tiny dose of the hormones brought relief to him. He had forgotten what it was like not to hurt.

Lucas breathed in her scent. The memory of the chase through the motel danced through his mind. He wanted to chase her again. He felt drunk.