“Were you in my house before the night you abducted me?” she rasped.
She saw the truth in his eyes before he said, “Yes.”
Disappointment stole through her. She’d actually considered doing this for him. He almost had her convinced and believing he was a decent man.
“I want to go home.”
“You promised you’d stay—”
“That was before I knew what you did! Do you have any idea how violated I feel?”
“Yes, I do. I feel your fury, shame, and distrust as clearly as if it were my own. But I can’t undo what’s been done and I want to be honest with you.”
She laughed without humor. “Honest about following me home, breaking into my apartment, and violating me in my sleep?”
“Anna, please listen.” He sat up and she held out a hand.
“Stay back. I don’t want you anywhere near me.”
“If you’d just let me explain. Your blood slows my mortality. Since the dreams started, I’ve been dying a little more each day. The little I took sustained my strength. Other blood won’t work anymore. Only yours.”
“This is why I’ve been so weak. It makes perfect sense now. Here I am, thinking something’s wrong with me and it’s been your fault all along.”
“I wouldn’t let any harm come to you.”
“No, of course not. Unless you’re the danger.” She scoffed. “You go on and on about protecting me, but the truth is my life was a million times safer before we met.”
He flinched, her words hitting their mark. But she wasn’t finished.
“You find me, spew all this nonsense about trust, take me away from my home, and you’ve been doing terrible, creepy shit to me all along! You want me to trust you, but you don’t trust me! That’s why you brought me here. I can’t run away here. You didn’t trust me to hear you out in my territory. You wanted a homecourt advantage and got it.”
“I brought you here because there’s too much distraction where you’re from. I needed your full attention in order for you to truly comprehend what I was asking of you.”
“Ha! When you asked.” She shook her head. “Why start requesting my permission now? You have me here. Hell, I haven’t even been given shoes. We’ve established you’re stronger, faster, and superior in ways I can’t even fathom. Oh, and we happen to be trapped in the Seventh Circle of chauvinistic Hell!”
“You’re hysterical.”
“I have every right to be!” she shrilled. “What the fucking fuck, Adam! Who are you and why are you doing this to my life? Why me?”
His face tightened and his eyes shimmered. “I’m sorry.”
Her head lowered. Keeping her eyes and voice low, she confessed, “The worst part is, I believe you. You don’t deserve my forgiveness for any of this, but I believe you’re sorry and for some reason I can’t stay mad at you. But...” She swallowed and glanced up at him, pressing her hand over her heart. “It hurts. Your secrecy and your actions, they hurt, Adam.”
He rose from the bed and pulled her into his arms. Her fists bunched at his chest, separating them and pushing him back, but he was stronger.
“I’m so incredibly sorry, Annalise. I never meant to hurt or disappoint you. My intentions were only to give you more time. We needed more time.”
His weakness, stronger than before, beat into her. Her fists unlocked and she wrapped her arms around him so they could hold each other up.
“You’re ready to fall over,” she said, her own knees trembling under the pressure of his faintness.
“I’m fine. I could hold you a hundred days like this, so long as it kept you from walking out that door.”
She shut her eyes and sighed. “I don’t know what to do, Adam. I don’t know how to make sense of any of this. But right now, this anemia or whatever you have, it’s crushing me. If my blood helps lesson the symptoms, let’s find a syringe and I’ll give you some. I’m offering it freely this time. It’s that easy.”
He let go of her, head down, and backed away. “It’s not that easy.”
So help her God, she couldn’t take much more. Through gritted teeth, she asked, “Why?”
He looked at her, regret reflecting in his eyes, and her heart twisted before he even spoke. This wasn’t going to be good.
“I have to drink the blood.”
Chapter Thirty
Her fingers rushed to her mouth and her wooziness hit him like a flash flood. Her mouth moved with thick saliva. “What?”
He always knew this would be difficult to explain to her, but he hadn’t anticipated this level of revulsion. “When I mentioned our diet—”
“Don’t.” Her hand cupped over her mouth. “I’ll throw up.”
His gaze lowered to the carpet beneath her feet. Perhaps it was a mistake confessing so much. He only hoped to help her understand.
His grandfather and the Elders convinced him the time to have these conversations had passed and he feared he’d lose the ability to speak rationally to her soon if he didn’t have her blood again. He’d told her the truth. It was the only thing that quelled the beast inside, but each day it grew louder and stronger.