forcing a
smile. “It’s ok Braith, I’m ok.”
He kissed her nose softly, pulling her
against his side as he rolled off of her, cradling her tightly.
“There are some other things I need to tell you Arianna. I don’t
want you to be hurt again; I don’t want you to be surprised by
anything you hear about me.”
She frowned, lifting her head to look
at him. He looked troubled, his eyes were distant, haunted. “What
is it?” she asked softly.
His fingers stroked through her hair,
running it lightly through his grasp. “Before you, I never had a
blood slave.”
“I know.”
“After you…” his voice trailed off for
a moment, his fingers tightened briefly in her hair. “There were
many.”
Aria stared at him in surprise, and
then hurt curled through her. She had thought that she was special.
No, she was special to him. She couldn’t start thinking like that,
couldn’t let herself start to doubt that. It would ruin this small
bit of bliss they had managed to find together. She was special to
him, he did care about her. She just had to keep believing that it
was true. He wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t. “Why?” she choked
out.
His gaze was hard upon hers; there was
a defensive air about him. “I wanted to forget.”
“Forget what?”
“You.”
Her eyes widened, she bit hard on her
bottom lip. She knew how that felt, the driving need not to think
about anything, not to feel anything anymore. “Did it
work?”
“That’s why I’m here.” She managed to
smile wanly at him, but she couldn’t shake the lingering hurt that
clung to her. “I never gave them my blood Arianna; I’ve never done
that with anyone else.”
She managed a small nod, trying not to
show how upset she was. She knew that she was failing. “It’s
ok.”
“Arianna, I thought… I don’t know what
I thought. That’s the problem, I didn’t want to think.”
“I know Braith, I know how you felt,
how it hurt to think, to breathe even. I know because I didn’t want
to think or feel anymore either. It’s ok, I don’t like it, but it’s
ok. It’s… It’s what you had to do.”
She could barely speak by the time she
was done, hurt clogged her throat, but she couldn’t find any anger.
She couldn’t be angry now. She hadn’t been there for him, she had
thought that he had lied to her, and he had thought that she’d
betrayed him. She couldn’t be angry now when he was looking at her
with such a hopeful, needy expression. He may not have given them
his blood, but she was sure that he had done other things with
them. Things that they had not done together. Aria quickly shut the
thought down. It had no place here, this was their one night, he
wanted to be honest, and she could not fault him for that. But she
was not going to ruin this night, she couldn’t.
“And what did you do to stop from
thinking?” he asked softly though she heard the tight tension in
his voice.
He had buried himself in women, and
blood. She had buried herself in the woods, in the wild, in the
solitude. “Went fishing.”
He lifted an eyebrow in surprise, his
head tilted slightly to the side. “You went fishing?”
“Yes, I’d go to the lake almost every
day and go fishing. It was quiet, peaceful; I could lose myself in
the nature and serenity of it. Even when Max…”
“Max?” the name was almost growled at
her.
She frowned at him. She had taken his
shocking news relatively well; he owed her the same respect. “Yes,
Max. He is my friend. He was also a blood slave, though his
experience was far worse than mine. He needed the solitude, the
peace, the company of someone who understood at least a little of
what he had gone through. He would join me most days, and we would
just sit silently together.”
“I think Max wants to be more than a
friend,” his voice was low, gravelly. She heard the displeasure in
his tone.
“Braith…” She didn’t know what to say,
what to do. But he was being honest and she should too. “Yes,