"You don't have to make anything right. Honest. "
Turning away, he went to the door, and before he stepped out, he glanced over his shoulder. She was staring at her entwined hands, that hooded head of hers bowed.
Leaving her with what little peace she had, he took his grumbling stomach to his room and disarmed. He was righteously starved, his appetite for food carving a bottomless pit out of his lower torso - and though he would have preferred to ignore the demand, he didn't have a choice. Ordering up a tray from Fritz, he thought of No'One, and told the doggen to make sure she got some eats as well.
Then it was shower time. After he turned on the water, he undressed and left the clothes on the marble floor where they landed. He was in the process of stepping over the mess when he saw himself in the long mirror over the sinks.
Even to his uncaring eye, it was obvious his body had rebounded, the muscles tightening under his skin, his shoulders back where they should be instead of down around his diaphragm.
Too bad he didn't feel better about the recovery.
Getting into the glass-enclosed space, he stood under the jets, braced his arms out, and let the water run off his flesh.
When he closed his eyes, he found himself back in the pantry, at No'One's throat, working her vein. He should have taken her wrist, not her throat - matter of fact, why hadn't he -
Abruptly, the memory went full-bore on him, the tastes and scents and feel of that female against him shutting his mind down and cranking up his senses.
God, she had been. . . a sunrise.
Opening his eyes, he stared down at the erection that had made itself known at the first image. His cock was in proportion to the rest of him - which meant it was long, thick, and heavy. And capable of going for hours.
As it strained in a demand for attention, he feared the arousal was like the hunger in his gut: going nowhere until he did something about it.
Yeah, whatever on that. He was not some posttrans with a perma-boner and a hairy palm. He could choose whether or not he jerked off, for fuck's sake - and that would be a big NO.
Snagging the bar of soap, he sudsed up his legs, and wished he was V - no, not with the black candles and shit. But at least if he had that vampire's mind, he could think of, like, the molecular makeup of plastic, or the chemical composition of fluoride toothpaste, or. . . how gasoline powered cars.
Or he supposed he could think of dudes - which, given that he wasn't attracted to them, might well lead to a merciful deflation.
The problem was, he was just Tohrment, son of Hharm. . . so he was stuck trying to remember how to make Toll House cookies: He didn't know shit from Shinola about science, he didn't give a crap about sports, and he hadn't read a newspaper or watched the TV news in years.
Plus those were the only goddamn anything he knew how to make. . . what did you put in them? Butter? Crisco? Spackle?
As nothing came to him, he began to worry that his Food Network channel was not only incompetent, but wasn't going to do shit for his dumb handle.
He gave it another shot. And could only remember how to open the goddamn bag of chips.
Stalled, stiff at the hips, and despaired, he closed his eyes. . . and thought of his Wellsie, naked and in their bed. Of how she tasted and felt, of all the ways they'd been together, of all the days spent interlocked and panting.
Gripping himself, he pinned the pictures of his mate to the forefront of his mind, plastering them over anything that had to do with No'One. He didn't want that other female in this space; he might have to take care of business, which he didn't want to do, but he could damn well set boundaries.
He sure as hell couldn't pick his fate, but his fantasies were totally up for grabs.
Stroking his shaft, he tried to remember everything about his red-haired beauty: the way her hair had looked across his chest, the gleam of her bare sex, how her breasts had peaked when she was on her back.
It was just part of a history book, though, and the illustrations had faded - as if his mind had lifted the ink from the pages.
His concentration lost, he popped open his lids and got a hi-how're-ya of his hand wrapped around that stupid-ass arousal, trying to pump off something, anything.
It was like milking a Coke machine - getting him nowhere. Well, except for a vague sting where the skin got pinched at the head.
"Goddamn it. "
Dropping the whole bad idea, he got busy with the soap, running the bar over his chest and under his armpits.
"Sire?" Fritz called out from the other room. "Would you require aught else?"
He was not asking the doggen for porn. That was blech on so many levels. "Ah, no, thanks, my man. "