A low rumble - a growl emanating from his own throat - rolled through the stillness of the place.
The female stirred under him.
Her eyelids flipped open, startled, then went wider. "Nikolai."
At first the name hardly registered to him. The fog in his mind was so thick, his thirst so total, he knew nothing else but the urge to feed. It was more than an urge - it was insatiable compulsion. Certain damnation.
Bloodlust.
The word traveled through his hunger-swamped mind like a phantom. He heard it, knew instinctively to fear it. But before he could fully grasp what the word meant, it was ghosting away from him, back to the shadows.
"Nikolai," the woman said again. "How long have you been awake?"
Her voice was familiar to him somehow, a peculiar comfort to him, but he couldn't quite place her. Nothing seemed to make sense to him. All that made sense was that tempting thud of her carotid and the deep hunger that compelled him to reach out and take what he needed.
"You're safe here," she told him. "We're in the back of the supply truck I took from the containment facility. I had to stop and rest for a while, but I'm good to go now. It's going to be dark soon. We should keep moving before we're spotted." As she spoke, images flashed through his memory. The containment facility. Pain. Torture. Questions. A Breed male called Fabien. A male he wanted to kill. And this brave woman...she was there too. Incredibly, she had helped him to escape. Renata.
Yes. He knew her name after all. He didn't know why she had come for him, or why she would try to save him. Didn't matter.
She was too late.
"They forced me," he croaked, his voice sounding detached from his body, rough as gravel. "Too much blood. They forced me to drink it..."
She stared at him. "What do you mean, they forced you?"
"Tried to...to push me into overdose. Addiction."
"Blood addiction?"
He gave a vague nod and coughed, pain racking his chest. "Too much blood...it brings on Bloodlust. They asked me questions...wanted me to betray the Order. I refused, so they...punished me."
"Lex said they would kill you," she murmured. "Nikolai, I'm sorry."
She lifted her hand as though she might touch him.
"Don't," he growled, snatching her by the wrist.
She gasped, tried to pull free. He didn't let her go. Her warm skin seared his fingertips and palm, everywhere he touched her. He could feel the movement of her bones and lean muscles, the racing of her blood as it coursed through the veins of her arm. It would be so easy to bring that tender wrist up to his mouth.
So tempting to pin her beneath him and drink himself straight into damnation.
He knew the precise moment that she went from surprise to apprehension. Her pulse kicked. Her skin tightened in his grasp.
"Let go of me, Nikolai."
He held on, the beast in him wondering whether to start on her wrist or her neck. His mouth watered, fangs aching to pierce her tender flesh. And he hungered for her in another way too. There was no hiding his rigid need. He knew it was the Bloodlust driving him, but that didn't make him any less dangerous.
"Let go," she said again, and when he finally released her, she scooted back, putting some distance between them. There wasn't far for her to go. Stacked boxes hemmed her in from behind, beyond that the wall of the truck's interior. The way she moved, halting and careful, made the predator in him sense weakness.
Was she in some kind of pain? If so, her eyes didn't reflect it. Their pale color seemed steely as she stared at him, defiant. He glanced down and his feral eyes lit on the gleaming barrel of a pistol.
"Do it," he murmured.
She shook her head. "I don't want to hurt you. I need your help, Nikolai."
Too late for that, he thought. She had pulled him out of purgatory at the hands of his captors, but he'd already gotten a taste of hell. The only way out was to starve the addiction, deny it from taking full hold. He didn't know if he was strong enough to fight his thirst.
He wouldn't be, so long as Renata was near him.