Slowly, some of the tension left the arm beneath her grip. He held his gaze on Clara's pale face another second before he turned his attention back to Lex. "I want her to leave," he said.
"She's my friend. She wants to be sure I'm okay, and safe."
"I will protect you."
"Yeah, that's definitely the impression I just got. You can't control what's in you," Clara retorted. "She just told me Dark One blood is hard to contain. How do you know for sure you won't hurt her? What's stopping you?"
"Clara," Alexis said sharply. "Don't." Goddess, why was Clara goading him?
"This." He tapped the steel on his neck with a short, jerky movement. "A collar to contain the beast's madness, until she decides I am useless and they kill me. That is why her motives are important to me."
"Please look at me, then. Let me answer you." Alexis held her breath until he stared down into her face. Those eyes could laser right through her flesh, open her up, but she held his gaze. "You have a right to live here, not to be trapped in a Dark One world. The collar is for your protection."
"I need no protection," he snarled, and Clara jumped. "I need nothing. I got here--"
"Because I risked my life to pull you through," she shot back. "Because I believe you have a right to live. Why isn't that enough of a reason for you?"
"Because no one risks their life like that. No one."
"You did. For your mother."
He went still then, his body turning into a rigid statue. In contrast, the energy building around him eased off enough that Lex dared to look at Clara. "I'm all right," she said calmly. "I'll call you tomorrow if I can. Okay?"
Please don't argue, she thought, not sure if she could talk Dante down from that ledge when he was still standing so close to it. "Okay," her friend responded after a tense pause. "But I'm close by if you need me."
"I know." Alexis sent her a distracted smile. She held her focus on Dante as Clara left the room, and they heard the door close.
"You know nothing of that," he said.
"Yes, I do. I felt it, when you spoke of her, when you said you killed her. Feelings are a map, Dante. Even though yours are pretty tangled, a few of them come through so strong they practically come with pictures. They chained her, you said. She kept you alive by letting you feed on her. They tortured her, used her. And one day, despite the fact you knew you would be punished for it, you couldn't bear it any longer. Her mind was gone, broken, and so you ended her life. They hurt you badly for it, but they didn't kill you, though you wished they had, for a while. You had nothing to gain for yourself by taking her life."
"You are wrong. I did not like the way her pain made me feel. So I killed her, and felt better." But Dante shifted his glance back to the stuffed animals. Toys. Things given to children and even adults for amusement, comfort. Earlier, he'd heard Lex's thoughts, wondering how to teach him about emotions he'd never experienced. Some of them were apparently imprinted on the soul at birth, because coming in contact with them now was like the return of sensation in extremities long ago frozen, burned or even amputated. The thawing of this memory brought sharp agony, almost worse than physical torment.
He hadn't wanted to remember the reasons he took his mother's life. He'd blocked out everything but the actual deed, that savage thrust into his mother's heart with the blackwood stake he'd sharpened. He'd hacked off her head as well, using his fangs as needed, so there was no way they could revive her. They'd likely eaten her, but he never knew. They were removing her chains when he was first beaten to unconsciousness, the last escape he experienced from pain for a long time after that.
She hadn't been lucid in months, his mother. The last time she'd spoken to him, recognized him as her son and not one of the Dark Ones, she'd said little. Simply shuddered with pain and repeated the name he'd chosen for himself, over and over. He'd curled up at her feet, laying his head against her bare thigh. She never minded him staying close, though most times the Dark Ones drove him away from her. They only let him feed off her blood while they violated her, and they made sure he was so ravenous he couldn't refuse his own hunger. He'd had to shut his ears to her cries of pain as he was drinking, the grunting of the Dark One and rapid flap of leathery wings. She would speak in his mind, the one thing they couldn't take from them, and tell him it was all right, to take his fill, even though her thoughts were broken into halting pieces by her own agony.
Why had she never given him a name herself? Or had she, and she just refused to tell him, not wanting to give him something else they could take away?
"Dante."
Somehow he'd gone back to the stuffed animals. Alexis was kneeling next to him. He gripped one of the toys, the yellow bear with a red shirt and a bewildered expression.
"I'm hungry," he said without inflection. It was the only certain thing.
Taking the bear from him with gentle hands, she rose to her feet and drew him with her. Sitting down on the bed, she moved her lustrous fall of brown hair over her right shoulder, baring the left to him as she pulled her shirt off of it.
Instead of accepting that offer, he put a knee on the bed and took her to her back. He curved a hand over her throat, holding her down and feeling the pulse of her life beneath his palm as she stared up at him. She didn't know what he was going to do, and that worried her a little, but she was choosing to trust him, a decision that angered and aroused him at once.
"Lift your skirt so I can see your cunt," he said crudely. Her flush, the way she moistened her lips, goaded him further.
"I like your touch," she whispered against his hold.
"Do as I say."
Gathering up the hem of her skirt, she worked it up until he saw the swatch of panties covering the plump line of her sex. As he watched, a drop of moisture bloomed on the silken crotch.
It inflamed him, her trust, her desire. He bent, increasing his grip at her throat as he closed his mouth over the filmy cloth, tasting her through it. Emitting one of those gasps that rippled through him, hardened his cock, she arched up into his face. He rubbed his cheek along the tender flesh of her inner thigh, pressed the points of his canines into softness, hearing the rush of the femoral artery.
Spread your legs wider for me.
She trembled, but complied. Savage monsters rose from the darkness of his subconscious, but they didn't intend to harm or kill. They simply wanted, with an avarice concentrated on this moment only, this room. They wanted to drain not only her blood, but the life energy that swirled through her, warming him, confusing him.
Lack of control made him vulnerable to attack from any direction; his wildness blinded him, so he'd learned never to give full rein to his desires. Until he'd mastered such iron control, there were times he'd gone mad trying to hold the reins on himself that tightly. For days he might caper around the Dark One world like a rabid creature, half remembering everything he did or experienced. The Dark Ones had found that amusing, taunting him but doing less damage than when he was self-possessed.
She'd spread herself wide for him, her arms out to her sides, fingers clutched into the coverlet. "Will this hurt?"
"Yes," he said, "But only for a moment."
He bit, and she sucked a cry in through her teeth as he found the bloodsource he wanted. The heat of her sex was throbbing against his face as he suckled and licked, his head moving in slow, rhythmic motions that rubbed his temple over her swollen clit behind the tight, damp fabric. She moaned each time he did it, lifted and dropped.
When he was done, he pressed his mouth upon the puncture, laving it with his tongue until he'd stopped the blood flow, then he turned his mouth to other hungers. She almost came off the bed as he sealed the wet heat of his mouth over her, marking the fabric with her blood as he flicked his tongue over the soaked panel, inhaled her deep through flared nostrils. She quivered, hard and deep in her belly. She was so close, he could see it in the spiraling, chaotic tumble of thoughts, images and sensations. It overwhelmed him.