"Should I sit down?"
"Stand."
"I might lose my balance."
"I'll hold you up."
"You're twisting my arm," she complained, just as his lips grazed her bleeding palm. Bonnie felt the breeze of Kai's sigh like ice on her open wound.
"I'm just hungry."
She blanched, "Don't say it like that. Say you're thirsty at least. Hungry makes me feel like a piece of meat."
"Aren't you?" he smirked.
She jerked her arm out of his hands. "Be nice, or I'll walk out that door and you'll never get fresh blood again for the rest of your pathetic eternity here."
"Fine. Sorry?"
"Just get it over with."
She held her arm out again and he wrapped his hands around her elbow and wrist. He lowered his mouth. She winced and grasped for another way to stall him. "Don't you think I should have some orange juice or something? It's pretty standard at blood drives. And I'm tipsy. My blood is thinner, I should have something."
He rolled his eyes. She was content to annoy him but inwardly she chided herself. She'd bled before. She'd sliced her own palm for magic more times than she could count. And she was no stranger to vampire assault. So why was relinquishing an agreed amount of blood to Kai so nerve-wracking?
A minute later, she held a glass of orange juice he had poured her from the bar gun, and he was watching her gulp it down, his mouth open in want. He pried it from her hands mid-sip. "You should save the rest for after," he said as he set the glass on the bar and resumed.
"Ow," she snapped at him.
"I haven't even bitten you yet," he said, exasperated.
"Well stop twisting my arm."
"You know, if you're finding it difficult to get comfortable, there is a better place I could eat…drink…from."
"No."
"Just no?"
"No. You're not touching my neck, no way."
"I was imagining your deep femoral artery, but carotid would be…nice. Too. And quicker. Than this." He returned her hand limply to her lap, apparently glad to be rid of it.
"No."
He glanced longingly at her neck. "Can I please just…" He supplemented his starving loss for words with a flustered grunt. "Just a nip?"
"No."
"Can I just lick it?"
"Ew. No. My hand is prepped. I don't want another wound."
"I'll heal you," he said, looking too sincerely into her eyes. "You'd probably rather not watch this anyway, right?" He took a half-step closer to her and she felt her nerves unraveling. The proximity had her skin in a nearly numbing tingle. Just for the slightest relief, she shuffled backward an inch. He continued in a softer voice, "I mean, carotid or femoral, I'll be in and out. It'll take seven seconds, tops. Maybe fifteen. Not sure now that I try to break it down, I never really got a chance to feed on the outside. …So what do you think? Carotid? Femoral? Ultimately your pick, I can't say which one I'd really prefer without being…"
"Stop!"
"Yes?"
"Fine."
"What?"
"You can…you know," she motioned to her neck. "Whatever just makes you stop talking."
"Can I bite your femoral if I stop singing?"
"What?"
He broke suddenly into an overconfident rendition of Pearl Jam's "Even Flow." It didn't last much longer than three seconds before Bonnie shrugged. "Ok, deal's off," she said.
"Oh, Bon, please," he begged with what Bonnie noticed to be a very impressive set of puppy eyes. "Carotid is good, I'm just excited, ok? We can save femoral for a rainy day."
She gave him a pinched smile. "You do that," she said, knowing perfectly well there never would be a rainy day. He mirrored her smile and shifted his body closer. Time for pain was nearing and she tensed. He picked up on this.
"Bonnie, it's gonna be fine." He placed one hand on her shoulder and tilted her head with the other. "You're doing a good thing. Just stay still for a minute."
The closer he leaned his head into the crook of her neck and the longer her nerves drew the seconds out, the less she thought it was a good thing she was doing. Why help the guy who had done so much harm? For his company? How could it be worth that much to her? How could her loneliness drive her to this level of desperation? She felt his teeth brush her skin and a throb of guilt followed. Was she letting herself go? Was she giving up on standards, or was reconciliation possible?
After 1994, she learned to trust herself above anyone else, and if feeding Kai was her choice then it must not be such a bad one. It occurred to her only then when she let her neck be tilted and gave willingly in to the destructively selfless act of feeding a monster: they were more alike than they chose to acknowledge. They were both set aside in their respective circles. They were both in a way left behind by family. They were both currently friendless. They were both bound in the same summery void, doomed to eternal solitude.
Kai ran the tip of his nose slowly along her neck in anticipation, inhaling the scent of lavender soap on her skin and the sweet blood dashing back and forth beneath it. He exhaled shakily and afforded her a disclaimer, "About hurting you…" and trailed off dangerously.
"I'm not an idiot," she compromised, equally shaky. "Just keep it within reason."
For a split second, she allowed the vampire effect, being the romantic this-might-kill-you-but-doesn't-it-feel-nice seduction type thing that psycho Kai Parker oddly wasn't excused from, pacify her. And she closed her eyes. Then she wondered, "Will you be able to stop?"
She felt his lips on her neck pull into a devilish grin, but he didn't let her question interrupt him this time.
A shrill gasp escaped her when his fangs broke the skin. On instinct, she tried to break away from him. On his instinct, he wrapped vampire strong arms in a hold around her and sank his bottom set in clear across her throat. He had both arteries tapped in his wide mouth and began to suck mercilessly.
She understood it was a desperate reaction. He was so thirsty. She felt his tongue thrush wet and warm against the plate of skin between his teeth, lapping as much of her essence as he could, though some did escape the corner of his stretched lips to flee wastefully down her clavicles. Mere seconds passed before his body and the heat and the hum that came with it aligned with hers and every inch of Bonnie was enveloped in him. She noticed his heart start to beat rapidly, breaths through his nose quicken, his grip tighten. He was losing himself.
His name dangled on her lips as she tried to speak, but in her pain she could only manage a high-pitched "Ha." His fangs burrowing so close to her vocal cords really affected her ability to speak. He showed no sign of having heard her peep. She raised a hand to give his shoulder a few warning slaps, which he also seemed not to register. She put both her hands one either side of his face in attempt to pry him loose and to this he did loosen his hold on her, but only to grab one of her wrists and pin it around her back. Violently, he hounded her against the bar, bending her back in a way that offered to snap her in half, slamming his other hand in a passion to the counter, busting the glass of orange juice. The lamps above began flickering, lightbulbs giving up and bursting one by one. Bonnie's pain ebbed away and back again in ferocious turns, and somewhere in between them she noticed she was feeling his hips pressing an unquestionable erection against her dress. It seemed to beg into the thin fabric between it and her pubic bone, sending an altogether different (though currently unimportant) message to Bonnie's brain.
Whatever that meant, he was killing her. It was time to resort to purposeful magic. She felt a defensive spell welling so strongly inside her she needn't utter a word to propel it. Briefly, Kai paused to breathe a pained grunt into her. The hand he kept on her wrist burned her skin and she felt the spell evaporate. He took it from her.
Now she was without magic, and she was weak. She hated herself for agreeing to this fatally foolish exchange.
"Kai," she garbled, her larynx bobbing in his mouth. She placed her hand on the back of his head, wanting to crush his skull but in her drained state all she could muster was a gentle grasp on him. His hair was soft between her fingers; she wondered if it would be the last thing she'd appreciate.
Suddenly she felt the long fangs ease out from her.
He released her and stepped away, keeping his head bowed and his back to her, slowly and tensely. Without his hold on her, her knees buckled.
Bonnie steadied herself against a bar stool, breathing, breathing, breathing. Two of each of her surroundings began unhurriedly blending into one. A familiar euphoria descended upon her. She knew better than to accept it, and shook her head. Kai wasn't saying anything, for once. But he wasn't thanking her and she hated that. And she would've hated being thanked, too, because he took her so close to the edge. He took her gift and ran with it, her life attached. Irritated, she looked over at him.
"You piece of shit," she rasped. The only movement he made in reaction was placing his hands over the back of his head. He was trying to ignore her.
"Hey," she snarled.
She saw her own blood drip onto the bar and mingle with shards of glass and orange juice. She didn't know why she was still there. Probably the fact that she needed help was a glaring given. When she considered standing and storming the hell out of there, darkness threatened the corners of her vision. So she waited. But there was something concerning about the way he hunched and breathed. Full of her blood and substantially invigorated, his aura cast a goading tide against her. Did he care what it cost her?
"Kai?" She looked to him helplessly. When he turned around, her heart dropped.
Veins of terrible hunger wormed down from his eyes that locked onto her predatorily.
He wasn't finished.
Lowly, he said, "You should run."
Adrenaline afforded her a lucky second wind. She loped as far as the park bench outside before the world turned sideways and her body acclimated. The ground didn't hurt when it slammed against her. What hurt more was her own blood, less in volume, screaming in her ears. The last thing she saw was a dreamy swirl of the stars above. Blackness soon swallowed.