Taming the Heart (Creatures of the Night Book 2) (19 page)

She was in the middle of that thought when the smell hit her. Bacon. It almost knocked her over backwards as the hunger demon clawed up her spine and took over her brain. She stood up easily and went to where he had put the bags he’d set on the counter. He was standing there waiting for the plug in skillet to heat up when her presence startled him.

“Your legs-” he began as she snatched the bags and went to the little table in the corner oblivious to his hungry eyes watching her departing naked form. She ripped open the bread he’d bought and began stuffing it in her mouth as she sat down. She opened the tub of butter he’d bought. She didn’t even bother to open the plastic silverware he’d bought. She dug the butter out with her hand and put it on the bread in large gobs as she folded the bread over and shoved them into her mouth.

She had taken the lid off the gallon of Orange Juice and had downed half of it before she looked over to see him standing there watching her with a stunned expression. The hunger hit her again and she reached over for the jar of peanut butter. 

“What?” she asked before she took the lid off, scooped out a huge amount, and put it in her mouth.

“Uhhh… did you want to put some clothes on?” She was polishing off the jar of peanut butter and opening a bag of lunch meat as she shook her head.

“Later. Right now, I need bacon,” she said as she stuffed nearly a whole tomato in her mouth.

*

Something was wrong. He had seen her eat before and this definitely was not normal. She let juice slide off her chin. When she opened the carton of eggs and began sliding them into her mouth whole he went over and re-appropriated the food.

“Maybe I should just-” He quickly discovered it was a mistake to try to take it from her. She snarled at him and bore her fangs. He slowly set the bag back down and backed away. She opened up the block of cheese and ate it like it was nothing more than a light snack and she popped apples in between.

He went to the small electric skillet, plated the bacon, and brought it over to her. He barely placed it before her before it was gone. She drank the last of the orange juice before she sat back from the table, empty bags and food cartons spread before her. She was breathing hard and gripping the table. Her stomach growled and he shook his head again. This was not right.

He went to the fridge and pulled out a bag of blood. He went to the cabinet, pulled out two tumblers, and poured some into each glass. He approached the table and held it out to her. She eyed it suspiciously.

“What is that?” she asked as she continued to grip the table.

“Try it.”

She watched him with wary eyes before she took the glass from him. He downed his first and then waited. He thought she might just sniff it or take a tiny nip, but she downed it as he had done. He waited. Slowly she released the table. She eased back in her chair and her legs went limp again. As they did she looked at the empty food wrappers guiltily then used a napkin to wipe her chin… and then her bare chest. How completely embarrassing.

“How long was I asleep?” she asked in astonishment.

“Three days,” he replied as he leaned against the counter and crossed his arms over his chest.

“No food for three days… Even so this seems a little extreme.”

“Do you feel satisfied now?” he asked as he watched her.

She shook her head. “No. I feel like I could eat again.”

“And the… drink. Did it make you feel better or worse?”

“It felt no different than drinking the orange juice. How am I supposed to feel?”

“When we drink blood it is like… like a drug. It makes us feel a little… sedated I guess you would say. Like you ate a really big turkey dinner. Bagged blood is like drinking warm milk that is a little close to its expiration date. It has the same calming effect but to a lesser extent.”

“It was just like drinking a glass of anything else,” she said with a shake of her head.

“Well. I suppose I will have to find us a place with a bigger refrigerator if you are to be eating this way all the time.”

She shook her head again. “It’s probably just the after effects of having healed and then slept for so long. I should be all right now. Where are we by the way?”

“We are in a small hotel in upstate New York. I have a place off in the woods but I don’t want to take you there until I am entirely certain that the day walkers have been nowhere near it.”

“Aren’t we endangering humans by being here?”

“The wolves to the North are being handled by Alaric right now. The South is being handled by Alicia. We have at least a week before they get to where we are. We can get on the move once we are sure that our home is secure.”

“On the move?”

He exhaled and shook his head. He never wanted to be settled into his house for a long rest more than he wanted that right now, but time wouldn’t stand still, not even for someone that seemed to have an endless supply of it.

“We still have a job to do.”

“Even with everything that is going on? Can’t someone else-”

“No. There is no one else. It is us. I would like to simply take care of-” he almost said ‘you’ but changed his mind at the last minute, “this situation, but people still need us. Alicia needs to stay in her territory and Alaric needs to stay in his. If they come here, after a few days I would have to go after them. That is just the way of it.”

He watched as she began to rub a hand across her stomach. It seemed to be a bit distended, but that was to be expected after eating so much. She was lucky her stomach did not explode.

“So… I brought you some clothes. They are in the closet.”

She looked over at the closet and then down at her legs. A blush began to creep up her neck as realization must have dawned on her that she had eaten her entire meal and sat there talking to him just now in the nude. He wouldn’t have cared if she walked around nude all day but he didn’t think she’d want to hear that.

“My chair-”

“Oh,” he said as he strode over to the closet, upset he hadn’t thought to give it to her sooner. He supposed her naked breakfast had scrambled his brains a bit. His brains had been slightly scrambled since he’d met her so he should be used to it by now. Still. It wasn’t every day he conversed with a gorgeous naked little pixie sitting at his table.

He pulled out a hot pink wheel chair, unfolded it, and brought it over to her. Tears laced her eyes as she looked it over. “Sorry. They didn’t have pastel pink so I-”

He stopped talking as her tiny fingers closed around his much larger ones. She looked up at him with gratitude shinning deep in her dark blue eyes. It was all he could do not to scoop her up into his arms and kiss those tears away.

“Thank you,” she said as she released him and pulled herself over into the chair. He watched as she wheeled over to the closet, pulled out the bags he’d bought for her, and then made her way to the bathroom.

His heart raced as he sat down and looked at the closed door for a long time. It was hard to describe to himself why she affected him this way. He just knew that if anything ever happened to her, he would wither up and die. This was very very bad and it was starting to scare the hell out of him. He had felt things when making love to her this morning that he couldn’t even begin to relate.

What if she had seen it in his eyes? He didn’t want to scare her away from him. She only allowed him access to her because she was in need. That first time they had both been so wound up, but this time… This time he had been in complete control of himself and the instant he had seen her awake, those pretty blue eyes looking up at him… he couldn’t help himself.

He had used her need against her and she had wrapped her pretty little legs around him leaving herself bare and exposed to him. She was so vulnerable. He let his head fall into his hand. He was such a bastard. Why had he ever taken advantage of her? He should have walked away from her that first time, but he couldn’t seem to help himself.

“Braden,” he heard her call to him and his head snapped up quickly. He ran into the bathroom to find the tub about to over flow as she knelt beside the toilet, retching up the breakfast she had just eaten.

He rushed over and turned off the water as he held her hair back. What the hell was going on? Hunters did not get sick.

*                            *                            *

Miranda took her time to dress and looked at herself in the mirror. Braden had picked out clothes that she defiantly would have never picked but that she found she kind of liked. He had picked a black thermal to go underneath a grey t-shirt that said I love football in hot pink lettering. The kaki pants were nice but they had so many pockets on them that they were almost military issue. She never picked out pants with an over abundance of pockets for fear that her legs would look like satchels that were only around to be stuffed with random junk.

Her legs were useless enough without turning them into traveling suitcases. At least there was a bit of frill at the edge of the pockets to indicate that these pants were actually made for a woman and not a man. Overall not bad. She just wished that the dark colors on the shirt didn’t reveal just how frail she looked. She looked frighteningly pale and her eyes were sunken in slightly. Braden had been adamant that she was not supposed to be sick. She turned from the mirror and rolled herself out to find him pacing with his phone stuck to his ear.

He roared in frustration as the phone went sailing across the room to smash into the wall. She just watched him and waited. He seemed to go inside himself for a moment as he waited for calm to return. She had never seen him so angry before. He was always like a sea of calmness and she seemed to be the one going off on hysterical frenzies.

“I suppose you still can’t reach Bateman?”

His eyes were lavender when he opened them to look at her telling her of the internal storm this was causing him.

“He is still… unavailable, and now all the other mentors are preoccupied with the explosions. Saul isn’t even answering his phone at the moment.”

He sat down and looked towards the window. He had drawn the curtain back to let some sunlight inside. He had never appeared so old until this very moment. She could believe he was a thousand years old by the look in his eyes.

“Um…”

He looked at her with a questioning look. “I know you’re upset right now but didn’t we kind of need that phone?”

He looked in the direction of the phone and waved it off. “What good will it do if we can’t reach anyone and no one is calling us back?” he said through clenched teeth.

She wheeled over to look him in the eye. “Listen. You have to get control of yourself. A hunter who is out of control is a liability and must be destroyed for the sake of the innocent. Don’t make me feed you to the wolves Braden.”

She saw one corner of his mouth lift as he tried to contain a smile. She let her smile shine full force and he rolled his eyes. “At least someone is listening.”

“Damn right I am. Now come one. We need a new phone and I need more groceries. Maybe a few burgers, some fries, a few shakes.”

“You’re still hungry?” he asked incredulous.

“You act like you didn’t see me puke a boot this morning. I need more food.”

“Fine. But this time you will eat slower,” he reprimanded. She put her hands up and made an innocent face.

*

From the time they got from the burger place to the grocery store, seven empty burger, six empty fry, and three empty milk shake cartons littered the floor board of the truck. As he pulled into the parking lot of the grocery store her eyes turned purple.

“What does it feel like?”

She turned on him with a feral look. “What does what feel like?” she snapped.

He would have put a calming hand on her arm but he didn’t feel like growing a new one. “This, what is happening to you right now. You look… frightening.”

She looked as if she might burst out of the windshield and go sprinting towards the grocery store. He would stop her if he must but it would be dangerous for the innocents nearby. There was no clean up crew and he only had so much of the serum on hand. She clutched the dash board as she looked at the grocery store.

“There is something… gnawing at the inside of me, hungry.”

He thought about that. “I sometimes feel the creature in me clawing its way to the surface. Do you think it’s like that?”

“No,” she growled and her voice sounded strange in her throat. “This is not part of me.”

He took a deep breath. This was strange. She was not herself and the way she was looking at the grocery store… anybody between her and it would be in extreme danger. “Okay. Your hungry, you were nauseous this morning, what else?”

“Tired. Pale,” she threw in from between clenched teeth. She closed her eyes as the steal in the dash board began to bend. He still didn’t chance touching her. The truck could be replaced.

“Is there a human sickness like that? Could you have caught a human illness?”

“Not like this. The only thing I can think of like this is…” She turned frightened eyes on him. Her eyes went from deep purple to cobalt blue as horror erupted on her face.

“What? Is it bad?” he asked.