“I’m not feeding from you,” Nikita said, turning away, head hanging down between his shoulders. Hands bloodless where he gripped the sink. Wet hair flopping back over his forehead. He looked at the verge of something – smelled like it, too. Tense, and frantic, and sweating.
“Nikita, you need–”
“I said no!”
Sasha reeled back. The words, the tone, hit him like a slap. “Why not?”
Nikita breathed raggedly, the sound bouncing off the porcelain below.
“Why not?” Sasha repeated, and the back of his neck prickled, hackles raising. His wolf pressed up close to his skin, riled. “The drugs are gone. I won’t make you sick. You already are sick,” he said, voice hardening. Anger bled through his despair, and he latched onto it, glad of its strength. “You’ll end up biting that poor woman, and it’ll be my fault because–”
Nikita’s head whipped around, pale eyes narrow, blazing, teeth bared. “Because I can’t control myself?”
“You can barely stand!”
As if to prove otherwise, Nikita straightened his arms, and drew himself upright. He held onto the sink, though. Bared his teeth in a grimace. “I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not. And you’ll be furious with yourself if you hurt an innocent mortal. Here.” He shrugged off his jacket, and laid it over the neighboring sink. Tipped his head to the side, exposing his throat. “Have a drink, and–”
“I will not use you!” Nikita shouted, a growl punching out of him that rattled the mirrors on the wall. It echoed through the cold, empty room. As did the silence that followed.
Sasha finally sucked in a breath when his lungs started to hurt, staring at his friend’s face, the pain etched into it, his elongated fangs.
It hurt to breathe, and his voice came out small. “Is that what you think? Really? After all this time? That you’re using me?”
Two hectic spots of color bloomed along Nik’s sharp cheekbones, and he turned away, hanging his head again, ashamed. “I drink your blood,” he growled, rough and low. “I take your life into my body. There’s not another word for it but use.”
“Nik.” Sasha ached. “I’m a wolf. I was meant to give you blood.”
Nikita shook his head.
Sasha stepped in closer, hand hovering, afraid to touch – it broke his heart, that fear, but he didn’t push through it, not now, not when he felt as if they were poised on a precipice. “I am. This is what we are. We take care of each other.” We need each other, he meant, but didn’t say. “You came to get me, in Virginia, when–” His voice caught. “Why won’t you let me help you? Why do you keep pushing me away?”
Silence stretched. So long that Sasha wilted back, hand falling to his side. Why couldn’t they get past this? Why were they stuck in this terrible limbo? Nikita had always felt such guilt, but he’d at least let Sasha try and soothe it; let him be close; would let him sit in his lap, and stroke his hair, and allow their bond to ease the tension in his limbs.
But since Virginia it had only been distance. And coldness. And this ever-widening chasm that Sasha didn’t know how to span.
“Nik,” he said again, helpless.
Nikita shook his head, water droplets flying off the ends of his hair, and finally stepped back from the sink, smoothing his hair back with both hands. He trembled all over. Exhaled. “If you want to fuck that woman, she’s probably still outside.”
The crudeness of the statement sent Sasha back a step. “Is that…is that what you want?”
Nik looked at him, gaze gone flat, disinterested. “Did you not mean to share her?”
Another step back. Sasha felt like he was being goaded. This wasn’t Nik, not at all. He hated this. But he wanted to help his friend. If this was the way to do it…to span some of that distance…
“Whatever you want,” he said. “But you must feed first.” On that he was firm.
Nikita drew breath to respond–
And the bathroom door swung open. The woman poked her head inside, expression caught between invitation and question. They’d left her waiting a long time, and she was starting to wonder.
“You guys about ready to go?” she asked, smile widening, affected.
Nikita turned to look at her. “Yeah. Coming.”
Sasha could admit that she was pleasant. And beautiful. And that she’d been perfectly polite, and that he had been the one to initiate all of this; that she was merely accepting an invitation. And on some level, Sasha found her alluring. In a way.
But when Nikita looked at her, Sasha saw red.
And finally, finally, he placed the emotion that had been hounding him all night: jealousy. He was wildly, furiously jealous when he thought of Nikita having sex with this woman.
A tiny explosion unfolded in his brain. An avalanche of years’ worth of realizations, tackling him all at once. He’d always wanted Nikita; he’d never shied from his own urges and emotions. But he’d never let that steer him before; had never actively felt hostile toward anyone on the receiving end of Nikita’s attraction.
Virginia had brought some things into focus for both of them, it seemed.
But if Nik wanted this…
A phone trilled.
After a moment, it became clear that it was Nikita’s.
“Shit,” he muttered, fishing it out, and Sasha didn’t miss the way he swayed, off-balance, weak and in need of blood and food. “It’s Trina,” he said, reading the screen.
Sasha could have kissed her. “Maybe some other time,” he told the woman with an apologetic smile.
~*~
When a man’s intended hook-up was interrupted by business, one probably wasn’t supposed to feel relief. But Nikita did.
They walked from the club to the hospital in silence. He felt Sasha’s eyes on him, darted glances; felt the wolf’s emotional upheaval, the taint of stress and anger on the air, and something even sourer, like grief, almost.
Nikita was tangled, too. Relieved, mostly, because though the woman was pretty, and he might have, on another night, taken up her ready offer on his own, the idea of sharing Sasha with her left him sicker than he already was. Most of his energy went toward keeping upright, keeping steady, not keeling over. His pulse beat high and thready in his ears, and the edges of his vision flickered; if he didn’t eat, and soon, he’d do a header on the sidewalk.
But the thought of Sasha in ecstasy with someone else…
“We’re here,” Sasha said, and touched his arm, and Nikita realized he’d almost run right into the brick wall of the building.
“Oh. Right.”
Sasha pulled his hand away, and it was a loss.
They went around the back, through the dark loading dock where there always seemed to be puddles, no matter the weather, and pressed the buzzer at the heavy steel door beneath the one flickering security light.
“Yeah?” Dr. Harvey’s voice came through scratchy, uncertain.
“Nikita and Sasha,” Nikita said, and a moment later the buzzer sounded and the door unlocked.
Harvey waited for them in the hall, outside the morgue proper, arms folded, head tipped against the wall in a way that spoke of fatigue. She straightened, though, as they approached, and Nikita recognized the way her shoulders pushed back and her hands tightened into fists; she might trust Trina, and believe her, and even value their opinions, but she still wasn’t entirely comfortable with the idea of having two preternaturally strong immortals across from her.