He felt a protective surge, however. He couldn’t help it.
With the pants off, Rio groaned as she sat up higher on the pillows—and then she was rinsing the washcloth out herself and moving it down her thighs, her knees, her calves. Pivoting around, he gave her his back.
For what that human man had done—or almost done—he felt the need for some kind of atonement even past death. In spite of the fact that chivalry had been the last thing he had ever worried about before.
“I think I’m finished.”
He glanced over his shoulder. Rio had laid herself back down on the pillows and pulled the sheet over her. With her eyes closed, he guessed she was falling asleep and didn’t blame her— “You went to Mickie’s because you couldn’t find me?” she said with surprising strength.
When her lids popped back open, her eyes were sharp even though there was exhaustion in her face.
“Yeah.” He sat on the floor by the bed. “I thought maybe you would be there.”
“You were looking for me?” she repeated.
“We had a date, remember.”
For a long moment, he felt her study his face—and he wondered what she saw of him, in him. Then decided he probably wasn’t going to like the answer to that.
“How did you know the address,” she asked.
He shrugged. “I just did.”
“Had you done business there with Mickie before?”
“Worried you’re going to get cut out?”
As his words seemed to sink in on her, she frowned at him. “You don’t know, do you.”
“I know lots of things.” He crossed his arms over his chest and felt the sweatshirt he’d pulled on stretch tight over his pecs and his biceps. “What subject are we on?”
“Mickie’s dead.”
Now, the way she looked at him—like she was measuring his reaction in case he’d killed the guy and was keeping it from her—made him feel as tired as she looked. But like he needed to care about some woman in the business and what she thought of him?
“You want me to be shocked?” he murmured. “Seems like that’s what you’re waiting for—you think I killed him?”
“Did you?”
“No, but I know what you’re thinking. You’re wondering why I would admit to it. Especially as you work for Mozart. Most dealers take it personally if you put their people under the ground. Gets ’em cranky.”
“And you know this how?”
“I’d take it personally if I were your boss.”
“Principles, huh.”
“Practicality when you’re trying to move product. And on the subject of principles, I got you out of a shit situation, didn’t I. A couple of times. And I didn’t have to.”
“But maybe you needed to keep me alive so you could get your deal done. If Mickie was dead, and you have no other contacts to get to Mozart with, you’re stuck. Where are you going to sell your supply. Did he make you angry or something?”
Lucan looked away from the bed. After a moment, he got back on his feet and took the towel from her hand. Putting the cold cloth in the porcelain bowl, he pushed the rolling table forward.
“I’m going to take off,” he said. “I’ll be back at nightfall—”
“To return me to Caldwell?”
He kept going down the row of beds, until he stopped and looked back at her. “Can I be honest right now?”
“That’s your choice, not mine.”
Lucan glanced away. Shook his head. Refocused on her. “I don’t know you from a hole in the wall, and yeah, I’m aware I’m a fucking drug dealer. But so are you. You might want to rethink the holier-than-thou routine, at least while you’re here. You need me, and I don’t appreciate being slapped with the asshole label after I saved you how many times?”
“Three,” she murmured. “You saved me three times. And I didn’t mean to insult you.”
“Is that an apology?” He put up his palm. “Wait, that’s my choice how I take it, not yours again, right? Well, I wouldn’t push me too hard, if I were you. I’ve been told I can be a terror to deal with when I’m pissed off.”
“Like I said, I didn’t mean to piss you off. Just asking questions.”
“People in our business don’t ask questions. Maybe you should remember that golden rule.”
As he started walking away again, she said stridently, “I do need you. I do need your help. And thank you, for getting me out of that apartment in one piece. I’m not making sense, and I should probably just go to sleep—but, yeah. I didn’t mean to get on you.”
It took Lucan a moment to realize two things: One, he’d stopped moving. And two, he’d looked over his shoulder at her again.
As the human woman stared up at him, from that bed, she seemed so much smaller than he knew her to be when she was talking or on her feet. But then time wasn’t the only thing that was relative. Power was, too.
And she had some kind of power over him.
Of course, he didn’t like to admit this, just like she didn’t like the reminder that he had saved her. They were a pair, weren’t they. At least for the next twenty-four hours, take it or leave it.
“I shouldn’t have brought you here,” he muttered as he continued to the exit.
Funny, he wasn’t sure who he was talking to on that one.
The thing about knowing all kinds of shit about how vampire body systems worked . . . was that with the nitty-gritty details stuck in your head, the mystery was gone. You were aware of exactly what was happening when you were hungry. Tired. Had a twitch in your eyebrow, a tickle up your ass, a grumble in your stomach, an ache at your shoulder. There was a marching band of medical terminology inside your brain that had a song for every symptom and for every function both normal and abnormal.
So it was really fucking hard to just exist. Even if all the other pressing, incidental, and middle-of-the-road issues in your life receded in your mind, even if you closed your eyes, put noise-canceling headphones on, and floated in a tub of water calibrated to your precise body temperature . . . you still had the idle hum of your corpuscles to think about.
Sometimes, though, even the most rigorously logical of minds put down the gauntlet of thought, and went offline.