Chapter 4

“I have it.”

Heidi adjusted her grip on the keg and headed for the bar. Wren blocked her path.

“I said, ‘sun’s goin’ down.’ Ain’t you gonna check the crawl?”

She set the keg down and considered the man. Wren had checked on her throughout the day, all jangly nerves and side-long glances. But as the afternoon progressed and she worked her shift with a smile, his mood bent toward determined. “Do you think that is a good idea?”

“Better’n he’s got.”

He took the keg easily, strolling behind the bar as if it weighed nothing at all. “Best be quick. Critter’s like to lock the door behind him.”

Then he paused and considered. “Do you think it’s a good idea?”

“I am a bartender,”

she said with a smile. “Half of my job is good ideas.”

A scrabble underneath their feet had both Heidi and Wren looking at the floor.

“Sounds like he’s makin’ a run for it.”

Wren withdrew a set of keys from his pocket and tossed them at Heidi. “Use the red key, and don’t—”

A door slammed behind the bar, and they both flinched. “Don’t bother asking permission to enter, just do,”

he continued. “That mojo only works on him.”

“Alright.”

Heidi left the bar before she could think twice about what she was doing and how Wren’s cryptic words had only confirmed her suspicions.

The studio apartment was a small, square building with clean white siding, a newly shingled roof, and a charming red door. Flowers bloomed in boxes hung beneath the windows, and every curtain was drawn tight. Silently as she could, Heidi slid the key into the lock, opened the door, and stepped into the gloom, closing the door behind her. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dark, and in the meantime, she listened.

Silence.

Not a breath, not a shuffle of shoes against the carpet. Empty silence.

She squinted, scanning the room as she stepped out of her shoes. A kitchenette and dining area to the right, a sleeping area to the left, and the boxy silhouette of an armchair aimed at the black square of a flatscreen television on the wall. As her eyes adjusted, the room lightened to a mess of grays, blacks, and dark blues. More shapes made themselves known: a coffee pot, a refrigerator, and a closed door leading to, she assumed, a bathroom. Pillows on the bed, and there, less than a whisper in the back of her mind, a sound.

Hungry.

“Hallo?”

A coil in the armchair creaked. Heidi dropped the keys on the table and approached the chair, peering over the back and pulling her lips between her teeth as Cam came into view. Shirtless, he hunched over his knees with his head in his hands. The faint scent of wet earth wafted from his broad back, and in the low light, she thought she saw his shoulders tremble.

“Please, leave,”

he rasped, voice hoarse and dry.

“Not until you tell me what you need.”

“I can’t, blue eyes.”

He shook his head, hunching tighter. “I need you to leave.”

Hungry.

She rounded the chair and stood directly in front of Cam, her knees brushing his. He hissed and sat up, pressing back into the chair and gripping the armrests.

“Please, Heidi.”

“Tell me what you need,”

she said. “I am your bartender. Tell me, and I will serve it to you, and then I will leave.”

“I can’t,”

he rasped. “I need … a bottle. From the fridge.”

A finger twitched in that direction. Heidi did not move.

“More tomato juice?”

she asked. He nodded weakly, and she scoffed. “I opened a bottle after you left, and do you know what I found instead of tomato juice?”

Cam swallowed. Upholstery popped beneath his nails. “Blood.”

“Heidi—”

“Pigs blood,”

she continued. “And I only knew that because Wren’s mother came by with a crate of it, asking why he never brought his blutwurst to the restaurant.”

She propped her foot on the chair between his legs, bringing the scab on her knee into his eyeline. Though it was dark, she knew he could see it. His posture tightened, and in the quiet, she heard a sweet little gasp escape as his lips parted. “My father is a Metzger.”

She bent forward and picked at the scab. “A butcher,”

she translated, “in my hometown.”

“Oberammergau,”

Cam said. His fingers flexed, the muscles in his forearms bouncing, and his eyes never left her knee. “I saw it on your papers.”

“Genau,”

she confirmed, hissing as she peeled away a deep part of the scab. A low groan rose in his chest, and Cam raised his eyes. Deep, flat pools of black met her gaze, and the whisper in the back of her mind rose to a shout.

HUNGRY.

“Then eat.”

His hands clasped her calf, Cam halfway to the blood beading on her wound before he stopped himself. An unearthly stillness overtook his body, and he stared at her knee, her blood, as though it were both his salvation and a curse.

“Heidi, please.”

“You drink, but nothing we have on tap. You could not cross the hotel’s threshold, and you saved me from being flattened by that truck. Pig’s blood in the refrigerator, black-out curtains drawn tight”—she bent close and lowered her voice to a teasing whisper—“and unless I am mistaken, you have been sleeping in the dirt beneath my feet.”

His answer was a cool crash of breath against her leg. He licked his lips, and a shudder overtook his body. “You don’t know what you’re asking me to do.”

“I am asking my employer to feed himself.”

She straightened and tossed her head back, blonde hair falling around her shoulders. “This is not a selfless act, Cam. I need a job.”

She wiggled her toes and worked her foot deeper on the cushion. Cam pressed his legs together, trapping her ankle as his grip on her calf tightened. “You need someone to work the day shift. Now eat.”

“I won’t stop.”

“Yes, you will.”

Heidi braced one hand against his forearm and cupped his cheek with the other. He was cold as moon-kissed stone, his jaw firm and skin supple and smooth. Cam leaned into her touch, dark eyes drifting closed. “I trust you.”

He laughed, bitter and sharp. “You shouldn’t.”

But he did not move, did not raise his cheek from her hand. If anything, he pressed harder into her touch, lightly tugging her leg closer.

“I do,”

she said. “You have given me no reason not to.”

Scared.

The word danced across her mind, straightening Heidi’s back and filling her with awareness. Of Cam, his size and his strength. How easily he’d swept her from the path of that truck and pressed her into the grass. How deftly he’d solved her problems, gotten her a visa, given her the space to run the bar.

And in a way she had solved his problems: running the bar during daylight hours so he could sleep, offering her blood to him so he could eat. So what was he?—

I won’t stop .

“Oh.”

Just some stubborn critter gone and got itself fixated.

“From the moment I saw you,”

Cam murmured, turning his head to whisper the words into her palm. A thrill shot up her arm, and to her utter shock, he pressed a soft kiss at the center of her hand. “Then you went and kicked that door.”

And another, this one with the briefest, lightest nibble. “Told John to fuck himself.”

A chuckle, real this time, rolled from his lips.

She gripped his arm tighter, her leg beginning to shake as heat built in her belly. “Can you hear me?”

“Sometimes,”

he admitted, turning his head to trap her in his gaze. “When your thoughts are exceptionally loud. If—”

Cam swallowed. Licked his lips. “If I do this, they say I’ll be able to hear more.”

“They?”

“The ones who helped me out.”

Almost as an afterthought, he added, “in the beginning.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

He slid a hand up her thigh, stopping just shy of her hip. “No, there’s only one thing I want right now.”

A growl entered his words, hungry and needy. “I won’t be able to stop, Heidi. Wren was right: I’m fixated, and I don’t think … I don’t think a taste will be enough.”

“I am your bartender; it is my job to serve?—”

“You’re not hearing me, blue eyes.”

He hauled Heidi forward, bringing her knee a breath away from his mouth. She caught herself against his shoulders, perching her other knee on the armrest. A deep, satisfied purr unfurled in her mind, rumbling down her spine.

Lovely.

“I’ll want more than just a taste. I’ll want you every night. Your blood, your body.”

His tongue flicked out, cold against her skin, followed by the faintest scrape of his teeth. “You.”

So lovely.

“Cam …”

All the air left her lungs as he teased around her wound, hand wandering from her hip to her rear, all the while that whisper repeated in her mind until Heidi was no longer certain if the thought was his or hers.

Lovely, lovely, so lovely.

“Please, blue eyes,”

he murmured. A shiver built within her, a withheld gasp unable to crest. “Please let me taste you.”

“More than a taste,”

she panted, sliding her hands around his head and forcing his mouth to her knee.

Cam gripped her rear, her leg, eyes flying wide in surprise. His body tensed. The flat of his tongue pressed against the wound, and then every ounce of strain fled from his face and his shoulders as Cam melted into her knee. His eyes fluttered closed, and that low purr built, vibrating against her leg and straight into her core. All the while, he lapped at her knee, cleaning away the blood and snagging the scab with his teeth.

A sharp prick of pain there and gone in an instant had Heidi gasping in shock. Her nails scraped his scalp, thick strands of hair caught in her fingers. She tugged, a silent demand, and his lips closed over the new wound, sucking blood to the surface. Heat coursed through her body, rushing from her head, her arms, straight down into her belly to puddle between her hips and set off a dangerous, decadent throb.

“Mein Gott,”

she moaned, hips rocking indecently. Cam sucked, and her pussy throbbed. He flicked his tongue, and pleasure sparked at her clit. Again and again, every draw from that tiny, minuscule wound driving Heidi mad with desire. With need. With?—

Want. I want. Him. Now. This. I need him.

“I hear you, blue eyes.”

Cam gazed up at her, shallow eyes heated and hungry. “Loud and clear.”

He ran his tongue over his teeth, a sharp smirk dimpling his cheek right before he swept his tongue over her knee, grabbed her waist, and adjusted her to sit on his lap. She gasped at the hard press of his erection against her, sitting up straight, and the sudden posture brought her chest to Cam’s mouth.

His grin widened. “Been dreaming about these for a damn week.”