Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 101280 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 506(@200wpm)___ 405(@250wpm)___ 338(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101280 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 506(@200wpm)___ 405(@250wpm)___ 338(@300wpm)
He put some of the steaming healing wraps over my scraped knees, pressing them gently into place to make sure they stuck. When he was sure they were fixed in place, he sat back on his heels with a grunt of satisfaction.
“There. You’ll be healed up in no time now.”
“Why…why are you doing this for me?” I asked him hesitantly. “I mean, you’re the richest guy on this planet and I’m nothing but a Blood Whore. Why do you care if I’m hurt or not?”
He looked up at me, his blue eyes glowing in the firelight and reflecting the dancing yellow and orange flames. For a long moment, he seemed to be considering my question and the time pulled between us like taffy.
“I don’t fucking know,” he said at last, shaking his head so that the firelight glinted off his horns. “Maybe it’s just because it pisses me off to see what all those thoughtless bastards did to you.” He nodded down at my arms. “Naggians are fucking ruthless when it comes to getting the blood they want—they don’t give a damn if it hurts the female they’re drinking from or not.”
“Well, I mean…how can it not hurt?” I asked reasonably. “It’s basically like you’re jamming two sharp needles into someone else’s vein—there’s no way that can’t be painful.”
To my surprise, Vik’tor shook his head.
“No true. It doesn’t have to hurt,” he told me. “In fact, it can be a pleasurable sensation—if the one who’s doing the biting gives a fuck.”
“I’ll take your word for that,” I said dryly. “I don’t care how ‘gently’ you bite someone—you’re still biting them—you know?”
“Doesn’t have anything to do with trying to ‘bite gently,’” he countered. “It has to do with if the male biting you uses his pleasure venom or not.”
“His what?” I asked, frowning. “I’ve never heard of anything like that from the other Blood Whores.”
“Because it’s something Naggian males reserve for when they bite their wives,” he told me. “It’s a natural chemical made in the fangs that causes pleasure—or at least a less painful bite—when it’s injected into a female. The thing is, it takes some time to build up so no male is going to ‘waste’ it on a female he’s only paying for a quick bite.”
“Oh…” I nodded my head slowly. “I see,” I murmured, though to be honest, I still didn’t think I believed him.
“No, you don’t, but you would if you’d had even one single decent male who cared about you bite you,” he growled.
At that exact moment, as though on cue, the first cloth he had wrapped around my arm fell off. I say “fell off” but that’s really not accurate—it didn’t unwind itself from around my arm or anything. What actually happened was that it started to disintegrate. It looked like a paper turning to ash in the fire, only there was no fire—it was just falling to pieces and those pieces were floating away like little whips of ash that got smaller and smaller until they disappeared completely.
“Oh!” I whispered.
I was so enchanted, watching the strangely graceful dance of the healing cloth floating away from my arm that I forgot to look at the arm itself. But when I finally focused on it, I was even more surprised by what I saw.
“Hey—I’m healed!” I exclaimed, turning my arm this way and that. “Completely healed—there aren’t even any scars left!”
It was true. All the puffy black and blue bruises and the bite marks and even the white scars were totally gone. It was like someone had taken an eraser to my arm and gotten rid of all the bad stuff. My skin was smooth and brown and unblemished—to look at it, you would never guess I had been living the miserable life of a Blood Whore and letting twenty men a day bite me for the past six months.
And then the healing wraps on the other arm disintegrated too, and I saw that my left arm was as good as my right. I looked like my old self again!
“Look at that—told you it would work.” Vik’tor grinned at me and I found I was grinning back.
On impulse, I leaned forward and hugged him, wrapping my newly healed arms around his neck. This was made much easier since he was still kneeling in front of me and I was sitting. If we’d both been standing, I would have had to stand on my tiptoes to reach him.
“Thank you,” I whispered in his ear. “You don’t know what this means to me—thank you so much!”
“You’re welcome, baby—more than welcome,” he murmured and there was a soft, deep note in his voice that sent a shiver down my spine. I also found myself noticing how warm his big body was and how good he smelled. What was that spicy cologne he was wearing?