Mine, Bitten

Chapter Thirty-Nine

            She managed a feeble nod, though within a raging fire comparable to the infernal sun charred her insides. She clenched her eyes against the ebb and flow of Jackson's blood, coursing steadily through his prominent veins, the sound of it like a grating to her senses and the smell potent on her nose. Everything seemed to have a pulse, even the unbearable lights suspended above her.

            Her stomach clench agonizingly with a ravenous, unforgiving hunger unlike anything she'd felt.

            It was debilitating.

            She moaned, her head growing heavier upon her shoulders as the weight of her body grew languid.

            Her ears strained against the protesting of denim and the whisper of Jackson's cotton shirt as he kneeled next to her.

            She tensed instantaneously and scrambled out of his reach, putting as much of a safe distance her padded cell allotted.

            "Are you mad?" she raged, warding him off with a shaky hand, "Stay away from me, Jack."

            He stared at her almost dumbfounded, no trace of her biased, overbearing boss, but a man of worries.

            His large, round eyes peered imploringly back at her, "Lily, you're dying."

            She closed her eyes and dropped her hand, the weight of it too much for her to withstand, "What are you suggesting?" she rasped.

            He was silent a moment as the obvious stretched between them. When she opened her eyes again she noticed the pallor of his skin beneath the lighting.

            He swallowed, the constricting of his throat drawing her ravenous gaze, "If we're going to get out of this hell, than you're going to need to feed."

            Her heart jolted as her eyes drew towards the adamant pulse that throbbed at the base of his throat, "You don't know what you're asking."

            He nodded, "I do and it's our only option."

            Her eyes widened with a nagging fear, "What if I can't stop?"

            His eyes rounded briefly with a fleeting fear and than quickly composing his expression he replied, "I trust you."

            She managed a grin, "You trust a newly-turned vampire?"

            He shrugged his shoulders causally in a carefree ease though she could smell the hint of his fear, "I trust my ex-employee."

            Lily arched a brow, his attempt a humor prompting a small smile from her, "I'm fired?"

            He nodded, "Most definitely, I can't have you waiting tables and thirsting after my customers." He teased but taking note of her weakened state, added with an edge of severity, "I nearly got you killed, let this be my apology, k?"
            She closed her eyes, the hunger in her magnifying tenfold at the thought of sinking her newly-obtained fangs into the pulse that beat wildly at his throat.

            He didn't know what he offered and neither did she.

            It could mean his death.

            The thought of drinking blood not only repulsed but excited her. Surely it was the fiendish part of her that delighted at the idea of drinking human blood? Strange how the word human fell so foreign-like to her musings, considering she was no longer of the human race, but than again, according to Varian and her father, she never truly was human?