Chapter 189: Pick a Spot, Sweetheart

Blair looked past his hand at the tank.

"Pick a spot," Jasper said.

She thought about not picking. He would only choose for her.

She held out her left hand, one finger lifted. He took it in both of his, turned it palm up and ran his thumb over her fingertip, where a week ago there had been a bite.

"Gone already," he said. "You heal fast too." He let the finger drop. "And fingers are boring. Try again."

He waited, smiling, her hand still loose in his.

Blair pushed her sleeve up to the elbow.

He ran his thumbs down the inside of her arm, slowly, and stopped on her wrist.

"Better."

He lifted her wrist to his mouth. His breath was cool. He kissed it first, once, right on the pulse, and her pulse jumped against his lips. He felt it. She knew because he smiled.

Then his teeth.

It was quick, a bright, hard sting, and she sucked in a breath. His tongue followed, flat and cold, and he closed his mouth over the cut and drew on it.

Blair stared at the city lights over his shoulder.

His scales came up along his throat, row after row, blue and silver and pink. His fingers tightened on her forearm. He made a low sound in his chest, the sound of someone taking the first bite of something so good.

It went on longer than last time.

She counted. Eight. Nine. Heat crept from his mouth up the inside of her arm, and she wanted very badly for it to stop at her elbow. It didn’t. Twelve.

"Jasper."

He let go.

He sat back on the arm of the couch and licked his lower lip clean. His scales were still up. His eyes stayed on her wrist, where a thin red line was beading again.

"Waste," he said, and took her wrist back and licked that too.

Then he let her go for good.

Blair pulled the sleeve down over it and held the cuff in her fist.

"You owe me," she said.

"I do." He seemed delighted she’d said it first. "Sit."

She sat on the far end of the white couch. He let her get settled. Then he slid off the arm into the space beside her, close enough that his knee pressed against hers, and took her wrist back into his lap.

"I’m not done looking at it," he said.

He pushed the cuff up again with one finger. He threaded his fingers through hers one at a time and turned her hand in the light, as if he were deciding whether to buy it. His thumb found the bite and circled it. She kept her eyes on the low table in front of them.

"The lobby," Jasper said. "You remember the part where I pushed you."

"Yes."

"And the part where they all turned around."

Her free hand was knotted in her lap. "Yes."

"What else?"

"Screaming. Hands."

"Mm. That’s where your memory stops." He leaned in until his shoulder touched hers. "Here’s where mine keeps going."

He waited until she looked up.

"You stopped screaming," Jasper said. "All at once. Like someone switched you off." He tipped his head. "Then you laughed."

Blair didn’t move.

"Not a nervous laugh. Not a crying one. I know those." His smile widened. "A real one. Like they were the funniest thing you’d ever seen."

Something low in her stomach went very still.

She tried to picture it. Her own mouth open, laughing, in a lobby full of beastmen who wanted to rape her. She couldn’t.

"That isn’t..." She stopped. She didn’t know what it wasn’t.

"I know. You don’t remember." He sounded almost sorry for her. "It was the best thing I’ve witnessed in years."

"What happened then?"

"Next Friday."

"That was one sentence."

"Two," Jasper said. "Very good ones."

He raised her wrist and kissed the bite, once, the way he had kissed it before he opened it.

The glass boomed behind him.

Caleb yelped. Cards skidded across the table and onto the floor.

Mari was back at the glass, and this time she wasn’t drifting. Her whole length was pressed flat to it, ribs showing under dull gray skin, needle teeth bared. She drew back and struck the glass with her head, hard enough that the water shivered all the way to the ceiling.

Under Blair’s sleeve, the bite throbbed.

Jasper’s smile went away. He dropped her hand and stood.

"Excuse me," he said, and crossed the room.

He put both palms flat on the glass. Mari hit it once more, right between his hands, then hung there with her mouth working. Jasper leaned his forehead to the glass and said something too low to hear.

His back was to the room.

Blair got up, slowly. She went to the table and began picking up the scattered cards, and when she bent for the one under Caleb’s chair, she put her mouth beside his ear.

"Ivy Marsh."

Caleb went white.

He didn’t look at her. He looked at Jasper’s back.

"Where did they take her?" Blair whispered.

She laid the card she’d picked up on the table in front of him. The queen of hearts.

Caleb stared at it. His lips moved without a sound.

The old line.

"What’s the—"

One tiny shake of his head. He picked up the queen and laid it on a black king.

"Under the trees," he breathed. "Don’t ask me again. Please."

Across the room, Jasper took his hands off the glass.

Blair straightened with the rest of the deck and squared it into a neat pile beside Caleb’s elbow.

"What are you two whispering about?" Jasper asked, without turning around.

"Solitaire," Caleb said.

Jasper turned. He looked at Caleb, then at Blair. She looked at the cards.

Behind him, Mari had sunk back into the dark. Only the blue light moved.

Jasper came back across the room and stopped in front of her. He took her left hand again, not roughly, and pushed the sleeve up with one finger. The bite had stopped bleeding. He looked at it for a long moment.

Then he looked over his shoulder at the tank.

"She’s never done that," he said.