Page 35 of Taste of Forever (Vampires of Sanguine #3)

Heather

I never realized how much my entire body could hurt until I started waking up right then. It hurt to breathe, hurt to move my eyelids. It hurt to moan in pain because my throat and mouth were so dried out and sore.

“Hey,” a soft male voice said. “Welcome back. Take it slow. I’ve got water here when you’re ready.”

It didn’t sound like Justin. A doctor, maybe? Was I in a hospital? It sure felt like I’d been hit by a semi truck.

There was something about the warmth in that voice that soothed me.

“Where…” That one word was all I could croak out. I still didn’t have the strength to lift my eyelids yet.

“You’re safe, Science Barbie. That’s all that matters.”

That nickname sparked connections in my mind, a verbal trigger waking up memories, feelings, and lighting up the threads between all of them.

“…Laith?”

“No need to sound so disappointed.”

I didn’t have the strength to laugh, but a rush of joy and relief coursed through me at the dry wit in his voice. My instincts knew this person was safe, even if my head was still a little fuzzy at connecting the dots.

“Can you sit up just a little? You must be thirsty and I don’t want to waterboard you.”

“Give me…a sec.”

“Yup. Go as slow as you need.”

It took an agonizingly long time to lift my head and my eyelids still weighed a million pounds each.

“Here, how about I do this?”

A large hand gently cradled the back of my skull, prompting my head to tilt forward. Moments later I felt a glass rim against my cracked lips, and then the cool, sweet kiss of water.

“Easy. Not too fast.”

I took a few eager sips. The angle of the glass made the water flow slowly and didn’t allow for me to take big gulps. Probably to keep me from choking, which was a sound idea.

“There we go. Good job.”

The glass pulled away, and the hand gently slid from the back of my head. I missed the contact of that hand before it was fully gone. I couldn’t be sure, but it felt like fingers trailed through my hair as it pulled away. An intimate, loving touch.

Everything about this was intimate, I realized. The soft way he spoke to me and the way he’d been waiting for me to wake up, water at the ready.

Those tiny sips of water were everything. I already felt stronger, despite still feeling like a piece of flattened hamburger meat.

“Gonna try sitting up again.” My voice sounded clearer, which spurred me on even more.

“Go for it. I’m right here. And so is the bed beneath you in case you fall, like, six inches.”

I braced my arms at my sides. “Hell of a drop that would be.”

“Yeah, but you’ve got this.”

It took a few false starts, but I managed to press myself up at the same time I finally opened my eyes. Laith sat on the bed next to me, his magenta eyes exhausted and full of concern. His blond hair was mussed and not in that sexy-on-purpose way. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days.

Our eyes met and he cocked his head with a smirk. “I knew you could do it, Science Barbie.”

I was only upright for a few seconds before everything came back to me in a rush. Fighting with Justin. The break up and leaving the apartment. Watching the sunrise in my car before deciding to come to Sanguine. The strange man in the square, and then…

“Fuck, fuck! Oh my God—” The room and comfy bed were gone and I was back in that filthy alley with the cold ground underneath me. Hot blood poured over my skin, my blood, from jagged wounds left by sawing fangs.

“Hey, Heather. Look at me. You’re okay. Shhh, it’s over. We got you out of there.”

I blinked and saw red eyes, not yellow ones. I felt the weight of two hands holding the sides of my face, the same hands that had brought my head up to drink water.

Thumbs stroked my cheekbones while I hyperventilated. My shaking hands flew up to my neck, where I now felt a large bandage over my ragged wounds. More bandages covered my hands and arms. I held my hands out in front of me and saw scraped palms and broken fingernails.

“What…happened?”

Laith made a groaning noise like he didn’t really want to tell me.

“A draitrium junkie got you. They’re vampires addicted to a drug that lets them walk in the daylight.

They get so obsessed with feeling the sun that they forget to feed.

It was probably weeks since he’d last had blood.

” His hand lowered, resting lightly on top of mine.

“You never could have known, but Sanguine isn’t safe during the day because of the likes of him.

I didn’t get your voicemail until I woke up at dusk.

But if I’d known you were coming right after you called, I would have told you to stay in your world until the sun went down. ”

“How…” I swallowed and coughed, which prompted Laith to hand me my water glass. I took a few large gulps this time and tried again. “How long until you found me?”

He closed his eyes and gave a sad little shake of his head. “Too long. I just…I’m glad we weren’t too late.”

I tried to set the water glass aside and he took it from me, placing it on a nightstand next to a steaming bowl that smelled absolutely incredible.

“You hungry?” he asked.

My stomach was still knotted from the lingering terror of being in that alley, but food would probably go a long way towards regaining strength. So I nodded and sat up a little straighter. “What is it?”

“Chicken noodle soup.”

“Oh my God, that sounds amazing.”

“Really?” Laith laughed as he stirred the soup. “Tavia, Amy, and Rebecca from the blood bank all said the same thing, but I can’t wrap my head around it.”

Amy and Tavia? Those names sounded familiar, but my brain couldn’t quite connect them to anyone yet.

“Our food is probably so strange to you,” I remarked.

“It is strange. And overly complicated.”

He brought a spoonful to my mouth. Truthfully, I wasn’t sure if I could feed myself without making a mess, so I was grateful to be babied. No one had ever fussed over me when I wasn’t feeling well, so this was quite the silver lining to almost dying in the street.

And when that soup hit my tongue in an explosion of rich, hearty flavors, I closed my eyes and let out an audible, “Mmmm,” that bordered on sexual. “Holy shit, that is the best chicken noodle I’ve ever tasted.”

Laith paused in his stirring of a second spoonful for me. “Are you being serious?”

“Yes! More, please.” I couldn’t remember the last time I had eaten anything and was probably starving, but I had meant every word. “It tastes homemade, like something a grandma would make from scratch for the people she loved.”

“You mean that? Like, actually?”

“Hurry up and feed me some more.” I actually managed to laugh through the ache in my throat. The water, the soup, just Laith being here, all of it was making me better in a matter of minutes.

Laith fed me spoonful after spoonful until the silverware clattered in an empty bowl and my belly felt delightfully full.

“There’s more if you want some,” he said. “I made a pretty big batch.”

I stared at him, not fully comprehending the words. “ You made the soup?”

He shrugged. “I had help.”

“You made it for me ?”

He nodded. “I was told it would make you feel better, so it was a no-brainer. And you definitely look better than when you first woke up.”

This vampire, who probably barely knew what a noodle was, had made me soup. Really good soup. And then fed it to me.

The kindness of that entire gesture felt like too much to face at the moment. So I deflected with some good old-fashioned self-deprecation.

“Oh yeah? I went from day-old garbage to slightly fresher garbage?” I glanced down at my cut-up, bandaged hands again, feeling self-conscious in front of Laith for the first time since waking up.

Fuck, I probably looked just as road-killish as I felt.

He still looked gorgeous, despite the messy hair and fatigue.

“No,” he said softly. “From a survivor to a fighter.”

My eyelids drooped and I stifled a yawn. “Well, I’m about to go from fighter to sleeper.”

“Good. Rest. You still need plenty of it.”

He gathered up the dishes while I scooted down in the bed, pulling the covers up to my chest. The sheets smelled faintly of him. Was this his bed? His house?

My thoughts trailed off into the emptiness of sleep before Laith even closed the bedroom door behind him.

Waking up the second time was much easier and far less traumatic. I stretched out stiff, sore limbs and let my eyelids flutter open. The aches and pains were still deep and ever present, but I definitely had more energy than before.

I would kill for a hot shower right now. Nothing sounded better than scrubbing myself clean from what had happened in the alley, at least physically.

But first I had to find my way to a bathroom. The room was completely dark except for a small, plug-in night light in an outlet. It illuminated a dark shape on the floor I couldn’t make out. My best guess was a pile of laundry.

After letting my eyes adjust, I saw an outline of a lamp on the bedside table and fumbled for a switch. The light that clicked on was so soft, I hardly needed to blink. What came into focus next to the lamp, however, shocked me into blinking several times.

A vase full of lilies greeted me with their bright, beautiful colors, long stamens, and curling petals. Red and orange tiger lilies filled most of the vase, with a few pink and white varieties adding their own pops of color.

The sound of rustling tore my attention away from the flowers and a jolt of fear had me scrambling across the bed, curling up and looking for a place to hide.

“Hey, you’re awake,” said the laundry pile on the floor, which turned out to be Laith on a messy pile of blankets and pillows. “How are you feeling?” he asked with a yawn.

“Um, better.” I settled back against the headboard, willing my racing heart to calm down.

After a moment of thought, I slid further down the bed, feeling a little faint. My body was stiff and aching from lack of movement, and I was probably still dangerously low on blood.