Which was, of course, so conducive to calming things down in order to dematerialize.

She might as well have air-horned her own face—

As her body dissolved into molecules, she flew upward in a scatter, skating back into the open-air level. Re-forming by the fallen fighter, she had a thought she should check his pockets for ID.

Yeah, sure. ’Cuz he went around with his “I Am the Reverend” card in his wallet for just this sort of thing.

And crap, to save him only for her purposes struck her as inhumane. Invampiric. Whatever.

“Goddamn it,” she muttered as she dropped her purse by his head and got onto her knees.

The huge male was sprawled on his back, one arm thrown out to the side, the other flopped across his heavy pecs. The pool of blood under him was three times the size it had been when she’d left only moments before, and she could swear that there was a pulsing to the flow leaving the open vein at the side of his throat—although that was the good news. It meant he still had a heartbeat. Not for long, though. His coloring was bad and getting worse, his face as gray as the concrete he was lying on, and that bony hand tattooed on his torso wasn’t moving much—which meant he wasn’t breathing much.

“Sorry,” she said as she shoved her arm under his head and lifted him up. “Holy—good God, you’re heavy.”

With a grunt, she pulled him into her lap—or tried to. It was like moving a house, so she had to scoot under him. And oh, jeez, the blood. It was warm, it was slippery, it—

He smelled really good.

“You’re thinking that about a dying man,” she muttered. “Classy.”

When Mae had him at least slightly elevated, she pushed her hair over her shoulder, even though it was still pulled back in a ponytail, and focused on that wound. It was like someone had taken a garden hoe to the side of his throat, and for a moment, she got woozy staring at the ruined anatomy. But like her passing out was going to help either of them?

“Sorry, I know this is a little . . .” Forward? What, like they were at a dinner party and she was reaching across his plate for the saltshaker? “It’s just, um . . .”

Shut up, Mae.

Swallowing hard, she took a deep breath. And then she lowered her lips to the wound. There was only one way she could help him, and it was a long shot. But vampires had to feed from veins, and when they were done, they had to seal up the puncture marks.

With a gentleness that seemed like a waste of discretion, given the situation and the power in his body, she put her mouth to the slice—

The taste of him ricocheted through her on a tantalizing shock wave: That dark wine merely touching her tongue was the kind of thing she felt down to her marrow, and as a trembling hunger overtook her—

No, no, no, this is not a feeding, she told herself. Totally and completely not the point.

He was half drained already, for godsakes. And if he was the Reverend and she killed him because she couldn’t control herself? That wasn’t good for anybody.

Still, some sucking was inevitable, and therefore, so was some swallowing. But even though it caused her to break out in a sweat, she did not take a draw against that clean-cut vein. Instead she sealed it up. It took her some time, her lips and her tongue running up and over the deep wound and all its damage again and again—and she had a feeling things weren’t going to heal right, at least not for a while. Like that mattered?

If he was the Reverend, she needed him to live. He was necessary.

When she decided to call it done, because she was just getting echoes of his taste in her mouth, she lifted her head—and studiously ignored the way her tongue swiped over her lips and not just to clean up. She savored his taste—and as she did, she stared down into his face properly. His hair had been cut with a buzzer down close to his skull, but she could tell it was dark, maybe black. His lashes were thick and rather beautiful, and that seemed like a frivolous thing to notice—so she moved right on to his mouth.

Bad idea if she were looking to keep things on the level.

Because it was . . . really pretty amazing—

She didn’t meant to. It wasn’t a conscious thing . . . but she stroked his face.

“Don’t die on me,” she begged in a voice that cracked. “I need you.”

For some stupid reason, she expected him to stir at that. Maybe have those lashes open so he could peg her with his obsidian gaze.

At which point, her prince/Reverend would come around and be captivated by her makeup-less face, her messy ponytail, and her utterly unsexy clothes—and vow to give her what she had come here for.

Yeah, right, because real life was always scripted by Disney.

But come on, she’d saved him.

“Hello?” she said. “Um . . . hello?”

No, really. She’d saved him. Right?

His coloring was still bad, his breathing hadn’t improved, and just because the blood puddle—or rather, pond—beneath them both wasn’t getting any bigger, didn’t mean he was out of the woods.

Like that wound closing was going to go far enough, though? He required proper medical attention.

“I need you to live through this,” she muttered as she dragged her sleeve up.

Scoring her own wrist with her fangs, she waited for her blood to well and then she extended her lower arm out over his mouth. The first drop to hit his lips did nothing but give her a really bad comparison between his pasty skin and what a living person’s was like. The second did nothing. The third—

The gasp that came out of him was so loud, so abrupt, so violent, that she jumped and nearly dropped his head off her lap. And then those eyes opened, but not in the dreamy way she’d fantasized.

That hostile glare was right out of his playbook, however.

And then he slapped a hold on her wrist.

As her bones were crushed in his grip, pure fear had her jerking back—or trying to. There was no freedom to be had, not until he chose to give it to her.

The male sat up, his torso curving, the musculature bulking as his chest contracted to lift the weight of his shoulders. And then his head ripped toward the open vein at her wrist.

The growl that came out of him was that of an animal.

Now that tattooed bony hand was reaching for her. Claiming her. Dragging her into the hell he kept in his black soul—

“No,” she commanded. “You may not take more than you need. You may not hurt me.”

As the words left her, strong and steady, Mae had no idea where the conviction came from. But she wasn’t going to argue with it.

She needed to be alive for her brother.

That was just the way it had to be.

• • •

As Sahvage’s brain came back online, his first awareness was the smell of the female’s blood. Even with so much of his own all around them, as well as on her hands, her sweatshirt . . . her mouth . . . her scent managed to overpower everything. She was a fresh meadow, on a starry night, just after a warm spring rain.

Captivating. Nurturing. Clean.

And he needed more of her in his nose—

With a frown, he focused on her pale and frightened face. She was beautiful, he thought, in a non-flashy kind of way, her even features un-slathered with makeup, her eyes naturally lashed, her hair pulled back in a simple way. And her lips were moving. She was talking to him. Probably telling him to let go. Not to hurt her. Maybe she was begging—