The Reluctant Vampire - Lynsay Sands [116]
Harper frowned as he recalled that he hadn’t experienced that passion with Jenny. He’d been putting it down to the fact that she’d kept him at arm’s length, and still believed that. If she’d even allowed him to kiss her, they both would have been overwhelmed by it, he was sure. Just as he and Drina were constantly bedeviled by it.
Finally, he said solemnly, “She was my life mate, Susan. I couldn’t read her.”
Susan snorted. “Jenny figured that was the brain tumor.”
Harper stilled, his heart seeming to stop in his chest at the words. It was Drina who growled, “Brain tumor?”
Eyes locked on Harper, Susan flashed an unpleasant smile that suggested she was enjoying his shock and dismay. “She was having headaches, and her vision would blur at times. She was also having trouble concentrating, and her memory was suffering. It turned out she had a tumor. They’d started chemo to try to shrink it before they operated, but then Jenny met you and decided she didn’t need any more treatment at all. She’d just let you turn her and live forever.”
“Harper?” Drina said quietly. “A brain tumor could prevent you reading her.”
“She was my life mate, Dree,” he said quietly. “I was eating. My appetites had been reawakened.”
“We can always eat,” she pointed out gently. “We just get tired of it and stop because it’s a bother, not because we can’t.” She paused a moment to let that sink in, then asked, “Did the food taste as good then as it does now?”
Harper automatically opened his mouth to say yes, but caught himself and really thought about it. In truth, he realized, it hadn’t. It had been okay, some of it tasty even, but he’d only eaten when the others had, and hadn’t found himself stuffing himself until his stomach ached, or constantly wanting it as he did now.
“And you didn’t have the shared dreams,” she pointed out quietly.
Harper nodded silently, thinking that it wasn’t just the lack of shared dreams but the lack of passion. He’d been eager to experience it with Jenny, but not eager enough to try to change her mind when she’d insisted they wait until after the turn. Harper had just let it go, thinking everything would be fine after he turned her. He certainly hadn’t been obsessed with it as he had been since Drina had arrived here in Port Henry, his mind constantly undressing her and doing things to her that left him half-erect when she wasn’t even in the damned room.
By the time Harper had actually kissed Drina outside that restaurant in Toronto, he’d already undressed and made love to her in his mind a hundred times. During their shopping expedition, he’d fantasized about her in every pair of pretty panties and bras she’d bought, and the black dress had been no better.
Harper had assured himself that it was just the appetites Jenny had reawakened, that they were making themselves known again now that some of his depression was easing, but those damned boots had kept him under a cold shower for nearly an hour as he’d got ready for their trip to the city, and it hadn’t eased any in Toronto. As she’d spoken of Egypt, he’d imagined her dressed up like Cleopatra and mentally stripped away her clothes and laid her on a bed of pillows to sink his body into hers. As she’d told him about her time as a gladiator, his fantasy had switched to ravishing her in the middle of an arena with the crowds cheering him on.
It had been the same with each revelation of her life. In his mind, Harper had made love to Drina as a concubine, a duchess,