Stakes & Stilettos - Michelle Rowen [11]
George came to my side and held my hand. He stroked back the hair that had fallen across my forehead.
“Just hold on, Sarah,” he said. “Think happy thoughts. Really, it’s no big deal.”
George had been staked before, and I’d been there to witness his reaction to having the stake removed. Therefore I knew it was a big deal and he was a big fat liar.
“Just g-get it out of me,” I said through clenched teeth.
Thierry’s hands were shaking slightly as he gripped the end of the stake.
“Be brave, my love.” And then he pulled the stake from my chest.
I screamed. I tended to do that when my insides felt as though they were being torn from my body and set on fire. The stake clattered to the ground, and Thierry pressed his palms against the wound to stop the bleeding.
“Knife,” he growled at George.
George disengaged his probably broken hand from my crushing grip and hurried to Thierry’s desk to grab the knife he kept in the top drawer. He brought it over and handed it to Thierry.
“Compress the wound,” Thierry said, and George, who was very good at following orders in tense situations, did as requested.
Then Thierry drew the knife across his left forearm to draw his own blood and held it against my mouth.
Master vampire blood. Filled with power and strength—like a well-aged liquor that made a regular vamp’s blood seem as potent as Kool-Aid. This was the reason Josh wanted me to sire him. Because the strength of Thierry’s blood, of Nicolai’s, was inside me.
No. It didn’t make any sense. I didn’t feel any different. He’d been wrong. He’d made a horrible mistake and then that bastard had staked me.
Hell, maybe I should have said yes. Instead of dealing with a stake wound I’d have two grand in my pocket.
I shut off my racing thoughts and drank.
Blood. Yeah, it was disgusting—at least in theory. As a human I thought that the very idea of drinking blood was completely and utterly nasty, not to mention unhygienic. In reality it was not so black or white or right or wrong.
I was all about the shades of gray now. And Thierry, even in a horrific situation like this, tasted really, really good to me. I knew doing this would help me to heal faster and even help to lessen the pain. My eyes locked onto his and he stared down at me, his eyes still fully black and filled with something that looked a whole lot like lust. With his free hand he stroked the hair off my face.
“Sarah…” he said softly. “That should be enough.”
“Okay,” I managed, finally and reluctantly letting go of Thierry’s arm.
“I need a drink!” George exhaled shakily. “And it’s not just because I’ve been clutching your breasts for five minutes.”
“Don’t get any ideas, Georgie.” I laughed a little at that and it hurt. “Ow.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’re still not my gender preference.”
Thierry stood up from the side of the sofa and rolled down his shirt sleeve but not before I’d caught a glimpse of the knife wound that had already begun to heal. “Sarah, George will help to clean you up. I have an extra shirt you can wear on a hanger behind the door.”
“Me?” George pointed at his chest. “You want me to clean—”
Thierry turned his still-black gaze away from me and walked quickly out of the room.
George looked down at me. “Feel like a sponge bath, you sexy little thing?”
After George cleaned and patched me up, I fell asleep and had one of those prophetic dreams. At least I think it was one now that I was paying more attention to that sort of thing.
The man with the black scarf wrapped around his face walked toward me. Other than the scarf obliterating his features, he wore a very nice black tuxedo. The background flickered as though changing channels on the television from day, to night, to the inside of a gray factory, to a wall of flames.
“Red Devil?” I said out loud. “What does that even mean? Do you have another name? Should I just call you Red, maybe?”
“Yes, Red as blood.