Twice she added light for the close work, suturing for hours. So many stitches inside and out, and when his chest was done she still wasn’t finished. All his other cuts had to be washed and closed. The smallest laceration took a single stitch, the largest forty-two. It went on and on as the night closed them in. Her fingers were nearly numb, and her eyes ached with strain. Stoically she went on cutting away dead flesh, forcing herself to use soil and her saliva, though it went against everything she had ever been taught in medical school.

Exhausted, hardly knowing what she was doing, she pulled off her mask and gloves and surveyed her work. He needed blood. His eyes were nearly mad with pain. “You need a transfusion,” she said tiredly. She indicated the blood transfusion apparatus with her chin. The black eyes stared at her relentlessly. Shea shrugged, too exhausted to fight him. “Fine, no needles. I’ll put it in a glass for you, and you can drink it.”

His gaze never left her face as she wheeled the table to the bed and, with his help, shifted him into the comfort of clean, soft bedding. She stumbled twice, so exhausted that she was half asleep as she went for the blood. “Please cooperate, wild man. You need it, and I’m just too tired to fight with you anymore.” She left the glass on the night table inches from his fingers.

Like an automaton she cleaned up, sterilizing instruments, washing down the gurney and tables, bagging the remains of the coffin, the rotted rags, and the blood-soaked towels for burial at the first opportunity. By the time Shea was finished, dawn was only two hours away.

The shutters were closed tightly to block out the approaching sun. She bolted the door and dragged two guns from the closet. Propping them up near her only comfortable chair, she tossed a blanket and pillow onto the cushion, prepared to defend her patient with her life. She knew she needed sleep, but no one was going to harm this man further.

In the shower she allowed the hot water to pour over her, rinsing blood, sweat, dirt, and grime from her body. Shea fell asleep standing up. Minutes later a strange sensation in her mind, almost like the brush of butterfly wings, jerked her awake. She wrapped her long hair in a towel, pulled on her mint-green robe, and stumbled out to check on her patient. Switching off the generator, she made her way to the bed. The glass was still sitting on the nightstand. Full. Shea sighed. Very gently she touched his hair. “Please do what I ask and drink the blood. I can’t go to sleep until you do, and I’m so tired. Just this once, please listen to me.”

His fingertips traced the delicate bones of her face as if memorizing her shape, the satin softness of her lips. His palm spanned her throat, fingers curling around her neck. He pulled her toward him slowly, relentlessly.

“No.” The single word was more moan than protest. He increased the pressure almost tenderly until he had pulled her small form onto the bed beside him. His thumb found the pulse beating frantically in her neck. Shea knew she should struggle, but she was beyond caring, lying helplessly in his arms. She felt his mouth move over her bare skin, a whisper of movement, an enticement. His tongue stroked gently. She closed her eyes against the waves beating in her head. He was there. In her mind. Feeling her emotions, sharing her thoughts. Heat coiled in her as his mouth moved over her pulse again. His teeth scraped, nipped; his tongue caressed. The sensation was curiously erotic. Searing pain gave way to warmth and drowsiness. Shea relaxed against him, gave herself up to him. He could decide life or death. She was simply too tired to care.

Reluctantly he lifted his head, sweeping his tongue carefully to close the wound. He savored the taste of her—hot, exotic, the promise of passion. There was something terribly wrong with him; he understood that. Part of him was locked away so that he had no past. Fragments of memory seemed like shards of glass piercing his skull, so he tried not to allow them in. She was his world. Somehow he knew she was his only sanity, his only path out of his dark prison of pain and madness.

Why hadn’t she come to him right away, when he had first called her? He had been so aware of her presence in the world. He had bent his will and commanded her obedience, but she had waited. Jacques had had every intention of punishing her for forcing him to endure madness and pain. Now, none of it made any sense. She had suffered much for him. Had there been some reason she had resisted his call? Perhaps the betrayer or the assassins had been following her. Whatever the reason, she had suffered greatly at his hands already. It didn’t make sense that she had deserted him deliberately, prolonged his agony. He could read compassion in her. He felt her willingness to trade her own life for his. When he touched her mind, he felt only light and goodness. It did not add up to the cruel, treacherous woman he had perceived her to be.

Jacques was weak, vulnerable in his present state, unable to protect either of them. Shea was small and fragile. He had been so alone. Without light or color. He had spent an eternity alone, and he would never go back to that ugly, dark world. He slashed a wound in his chest, cradled her head to him, and commanded her to drink. Binding her to him was as natural as breathing. He could not bear to let her out of his sight. Shea belonged to him, and right at this moment she needed blood every bit as much as he did. The blood exchange had been made. Their mental bond was strong. When his body was healed he would complete the ritual, and she would be irrevocably bound to him for all eternity. It was instinct as old as time itself. He knew what to do and that he must do it.

As small as she was, Shea felt right in his arms, a part of his insides. None of it made sense, but in his narrow world, it didn’t matter. Even as she fed, her mouth soft and sensuous against his torn flesh, he lifted the glass and carelessly emptied the contents down his throat. When he had sensed her sleeping as she bathed, he had awakened her, fearful of the separation. Now she would sleep beside him where she belonged, where he might have a chance of protecting her should the assassins find them. He might not be at full strength, but the monster in him was strong and lethal. No one would harm her.

The one bit of his memory that remained, forever etched into his mind, was the scent of the two humans and of the betrayer who had lured him to his living hell. He would recognize the voices of the tormentors and their smell. Demons. God, how they’d made him suffer, how they’d enjoyed his suffering. Laughing, taunting, torturing him until madness reigned. And it still reigned. He knew he was struggling for his sanity.

He would never forget the hunger as they bled him dry. Hunger had burned holes in him, crawled through him, eaten at him from the inside out. To survive he had slept, heart and lungs ceasing so that what little blood his body retained, he kept. He woke only when food was near. Always alone, unable to move, in agony. He had learned hatred. He had learned rage. He had learned there was a place where there was nothing, only stark, ugly emptiness and the burning desire for revenge.

Had these same animals attempted to hunt Shea? The thought of her in their hands sickened him. He fit her close to him so he could feel her reassuring presence. Was she being hunted? Were they close on her trail? If he had unfairly punished her failure to aid him, he would never forgive himself. He had wanted to kill her, had almost done so. Something inside him had been unable to do it. And then she had ceased to straggle, offering her blood, her life for him. He had thought himself hard, impossible to touch, yet something in him had melted at her offering. And the way her fingertips had brushed his hair had sent his heart pounding.