Chapter 12
He gave her a look that suggested she had said something genuinely stupid. “Do I look like an addict to you?”
That made her actually look at him.
Every previous time had been a glance, and she’d registered two things: the unusual green, and skin so pale it looked bloodless.
Up close she understood that the pallor was simply how he was colored. It wasn’t illness and it wasn’t anything he’d done to himself.
There was none of the wasting. None of the gray slackness around the mouth, none of the sunkenness.
His eyes were clear. His skin was fine-grained and healthy.
No. He didn’t.
“Then what are you doing?”
She kept her arm where it was.
“Running some tests. Confirming you’re healthy.”
“My patience is limited today. We’ll do the necessary parts.”
He gestured for her arm on the bench.
She had assumed clean meant washed. It meant her medical status — whether she was carrying anything he might catch.
Looking at equipment that belonged in a hospital, and smelling the antiseptic that never quite left him, she started to put it together.
Was he a doctor?
No. Nothing about him was a working doctor. Doctors have hours, and colleagues, and the particular tiredness of people who deal with the public.
Someone with a fanatical, obsessive relationship to medicine, more likely.
That fit him better. An obsessive with a pathological need for things to be clean.
Which, oddly, let her breathe a little.
At least nobody was putting anything strange into her.
She laid her arm on the bench, and kept her eyes on his hands the whole time.
He put on a pair of disposable gloves before he touched anything, and she tracked every movement of it.
You could see the money in him. Somebody had taught him how to move at an age when it sets — even pulling on a medical glove looked unhurried and correct.
His fingers were long. His nails were cut short and clean, with nothing under them and nothing wrong with them.
If you could set aside what he was, the whole picture would have been worth looking at.
Lily couldn’t.
However good he was to look at, she knew exactly what was sitting across the bench from her.
The draw went quickly.
He was practiced with it, and he was quick, and it didn’t hurt at all. Whatever else he was, his hands knew the work.
Afterward he walked her to another door. “The results take a while. You can wait in here.”
He pushed it open.
It looked like a home theater.
There was at least furniture in it, and Lily’s chest loosened slightly — she had genuinely been afraid of what might be behind that door.
The palette hadn’t changed. White sofa, white floor, white walls.
The only color in the room came from the screen that took up an entire wall.
“Would you like to watch something?” he asked from the doorway.
“No.” She was in no state for it.
“All right. Make yourself comfortable.” And he closed the door for her, considerately.
The moment the door shut, Lily had her phone out of her pocket.
There was a message waiting from Jenny.
[Well? You okay?]
Ten minutes ago.
She answered immediately.
[I’m fine. Might be late. Don’t worry.]
Jenny was probably busy. Nothing came back.
Lily put the phone away and sat down on the sofa.
The enormous screen opposite made relaxing impossible, and the longer she sat, the tighter she got about what was coming.
About an hour later the door opened.
Her head came up. Ethan was in the doorway, and he was pleased.
“They’re back. You’re very healthy.”
Lily had never been worried about the results. She had been careful with her health her entire life, because being ill in her position was not something she could afford.
What she was worried about was the other thing entirely.
How, exactly, was he planning to bite her? With what, and where, and how hard?
Surely not the way a person eats—
While she was still turning that over, he came in and sat down in the armchair across from her, and gestured.
“Come here.”
Whatever was coming was coming, and standing still wasn’t going to stop it arriving.
Lily breathed in, stood up, and made legs that felt packed with sand carry her over to him.
Ethan pointed at the space between his knees. “Stand here.”
Then he added, “You’ve made your choice. Accept it. All this squirming isn’t interesting to watch.”
Lily paused.
He was right.
She’d already come this far. Hesitating only made it last longer.
Get it over with. Get out.
She stepped in between his knees.
She shut her eyes and leaned forward, delivering herself to him. “Do it.”
Ethan looked at the person standing between his legs.
She was smaller than the monitors had suggested — even with him seated and her standing, their eyes were nearly level.
The face offered up to him was full, flushed with anger and shame, a fine sweat at the tip of her nose.
Ethan decided he needed a different comparison.
Like this she wasn’t a cupcake. She was more like a red apple with the water still beaded on it.
Cupcake or apple, it made no difference. Both invited the same thing.
He could imagine precisely how the skin would resist the tooth, and at what temperature.
His tongue moved across his lower lip. He put an arm around her waist and pulled her in.
“How am I supposed to reach you from there.”
He was stronger than she’d allowed for. She lost her feet and went into him.
Her hands landed on his shoulders to catch herself.
She looked up straight into the green.
There was something playing in it. “What, do you want to bite me too? You’re clean enough. I wouldn’t object.”
Lily swore at him internally and out loud said, “If you’re going to do it, do it.”
His eyes went to her mouth while she was speaking, to the way it opened and closed.
Three months of waiting, and here it was.
He lowered his head toward the full curve of her lip with the focus of something that hunts, as though the next motion would put teeth through it.
