Free Nightbred by Lynn Viehl Page B

he didn’t believe her. “I’ve been assigned to you, my lord, and I’m trained to take care of your needs. If you want the blood, I’ll go get a glass.”
    Jamys kept his eyes on hers as he slowly lifted her injured hand to his mouth. His
dents acérées
flashed for a moment before he sank them into heel of his own hand.
    Chris caught her breath as he raised his head. Two drops of blood beaded in the small puncture wounds that were already beginning to close. “What are you doing?”
    “Healing you.” Jamys guided one of her hurt fingers to his palm, and gently pressed the cut into the blood. Chris caught her breath as she felt the cool mingling of his blood with hers, and then her cut went numb. He repeated the act again with her other finger, and then used a tissue to blot the blood away.
    Chris saw both of her cuts had closed, just as fast as the punctures in his palm. “Why did you bother?”
    “You are not my food, Christian, or my servant. You are my friend, and I do not want you hurt.” He put his hand to the back of her head, holding it as he pressed a kiss to her brow. “Do you understand?”
    “Sure. Friendship works for me.” No, it didn’t, but he wasn’t asking for someone else. At least he still liked her. “Your eyes are doing the cat thing, though, and I know that means you haven’t fed for a while. Or you want to have wild monkey sex. Or both.” Had she actually said that out loud? God, she had. “I’ll, um, go make a glass of bloodwine for you.”
    “I do not want sex with a wild monkey.” Jamys removed the long comb holding her hair back and placed it on the counter. As the twist slumped against her nape, he worked his hand through it, releasing the wavy mass. “Your hair was scarlet when I saw you last.”
    “Mud brown is what I was born with.” She knew with it down she looked about sixteen, too. “I stopped dyeing it after you left.”
    His fingers stilled as he found the one hairpin she wore to keep her silver streak out of sight.
    “That’s not dyed, either,” she admitted. “I started going gray like an old lady back in high school.”
    “Do not hide it.” He spread the strands out. “It does not make you seem older. It is beautiful.”
    “I don’t think any woman under the age of ninety would agree with you.” As he brought the silvery lock to his lips, Chris forgot to breathe. “You’re kissing my hair.”
    “It feels like gossamer.” He smoothed it back and looked all over her face. “Your piercings, what happened to them?”
    “No one takes you seriously when you wear rings in your eyebrow, so I let them close up.” Absently she touched a tiny scar on the curve of her lip, and then she understood why he hadn’t recognized her at first. “You were expecting me to look the way I did three years ago?”
    “That is how I remember you.” He touched each place where she had been pierced, and when he reached her lip he ran his thumb back and forth over the small dimple. “You seem so different now.”
    “I’m not the same girl I was. I grew up.” She ignored the way the cross under her blouse seemed suddenly to weigh as much as an anchor. “Everyone does, even if they’re Kyn and they don’t age. You’ve changed, too.” She eyed the black hair spilling over his shoulders. She often envied the Kyn their hair, which like their fingernails sometimes grew several inches longer overnight, usually right after it was cut. The Kyn never had to suffer a bad hair day more than one day. “You’ve nailed the ponytail look, I think, but how did you get all this new muscle?”
    Suddenly he looked tired and unhappy. “I have also been training.”
    What was wrong with him? Was she being too much of a pest? Was he sick of her already? “Is there anything else I can do for you?”
    He turned his head as a three-tone chime sounded. “What is that?”
    “Someone’s at the door. Probably Burke.” Chris sighed. “He worries.”
    She didn’t find Burke waiting