Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 66405 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 332(@200wpm)___ 266(@250wpm)___ 221(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66405 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 332(@200wpm)___ 266(@250wpm)___ 221(@300wpm)
“Good girl,” he rumbled, running his big, warm hands up and down the tops of her thighs. “Just relax and let me look, baby. It shouldn’t take long.”
Addie felt herself melting again when he called her "baby." She wondered if he realized he was doing it or if the nickname had just slipped out. Either way, it soothed her and made her feel close to the big Kindred.
“All right,” she whispered. Laying back on the bed, she lifted her skirt and let her thighs drift apart, baring herself for him completely.
Drago leaned forward, looking intently at the bite on her inner thigh.
“Hmm…” he rumbled noncommittally. But Addie thought his voice sounded worried.
“What? What is it?” she demanded, looking down at him anxiously. “I’ve got blood poisoning, don’t I?”
“Well…I do see a bite. And it does have some streaks radiating out from it,” Drago admitted.
"Oh my God!" Addie started to panic and sat bolt upright on the bed. "What am I going to do? I don't want to die like poor old Mr. Dumphry!"
“Like who?” Drago asked.
“This old man—he lived in my neighborhood when I was little and he was bitten by a Brown Recluse spider on his toe. Only he had diabetic neuropathy and he couldn’t feel it. So then his foot turned black and swelled up and the poison got into his blood and he died!”
It all came out in a rush and then she covered her face with her hands and started to sob.
She wasn’t normally the kind to break down into tears, but she’d been young when Mr. Dumphry had died—too young to see what had happened to him. But her mother had dragged her along to the hospital to visit him anyway, no doubt trying to be neighborly.
Addie could still remember the smell of the hospital—the reek of industrial cleaner, bland food, and the horrible stench of rot and impending death coming from Mr. Dumphry. She had stared in horror at the black and swollen leg and foot and the dying face of the old man. It had gone purple and bloated and his eyes were sunken into his skull.
She had always liked Mr. Dumphry before—he gave out the best candy at Halloween and he called her “pretty girl.” But he hadn’t even looked like himself anymore.
He looked like a monster.
Addie had nightmares about it for years afterward—dreams that Mr. Dumphry was chasing her through the dark streets of their neighborhood, holding a bucket of Halloween candy and dragging his rotten leg behind him. He was calling, "Come here, pretty girl! Come here and get some candy. Sweet treats for a sweet girl!" And no matter how fast she ran, she couldn't get away from him.
Addie always woke up screaming and crying after these terrible, dark dreams and she couldn’t go to sleep again unless one of her parents came in to soothe her. They eventually bought her a nightlight, even though her mother said she was too old to need one.
Her father had been extremely angry with her mother for taking her to the hospital in the first place—Addie suspected later that it had figured in their divorce, though of course there were other issues as well.
At any rate, the spider bite just brought all of that back—all the bad dreams and the horrible sight of Mr. Dumphry dying in the hospital. And the thought that his fate might happen to her was too awful to imagine!
"I'd rather be dead! I mean it—I'll shoot myself before I let the poison eat me up!" she cried.
“What are you talking about? You’re not going to shoot yourself!” Drago rose to sit beside her on the bed.
“Yes, I will!” Addie said vehemently. “I’m not going to go like old Mr. Dumphry—I’m not!”
“The man who got bitten by an arachnid and died from it?” he asked.
Addie nodded.
“He…his leg turned black and swelled up and his face…his face was almost purple! He looked awful. And then I had dreams about him…about him chasing m-me for years…”
She was starting to cry again—not that she had ever really stopped. The memory was old but still so strong.
“Hey, now baby—don’t cry. I won’t let that happen to you, I swear I won’t.” Drago gathered her into his arms and held her close to his broad, bare chest. He rubbed her back soothingly, his big, warm hands caressing her shaking shoulders.
Addie breathed him in—breathed in his warm, spicy scent, and eventually her sobs tapered off.
“How can you stop it, though?” she asked, looking up at him with wet eyes. “You…you said there were already some streaks radiating out from the…from the bite?”
“There are,” he said. “But I think I can heal you.”
“What? But how? You’re not a doctor—are you?” she asked uncertainly.
He shook his head.
“No, but my kind of Drake Kindred is able to heal his Fated Mate.”