Chapter 8 “First Draw,”

࿐ྂ༻꒦꒷𓇊꒷꒦༺࿐ྂ

“Chapter 7: First Draw,”

────── ꕥ ⋅ IVORY ⋅ ꕥ ──────

He told me it would be Thursday.

Three days after moving in.

Seven-thirty in the evening.

He said it the way you'd schedule a dentist appointment, calm, specific, completely unbothered, and I nodded like I was also unbothered, and then I went back to my studio and did not think about it for approximately four minutes before thinking about nothing else.

Thursday. The very first feeding.

I painted through Monday. Painted through Tuesday. Painted through most of Wednesday, until the light got bad and my hands started doing that shaky thing that meant I needed to eat an actual meal and sleep an actual night.

I lay in the dark Wednesday night and stared at the ceiling and took stock of my situation.

I had signed a contract to let a vampire drink my blood.

A vampire who was also, apparently, something else. Something older. Something with amber eyes that appeared without warning and a pull in the air around him that I had no scientific explanation for and a sitting room that smelled like old books and whatever he was underneath the tailored suits.

All forms of the party of the first part.

I had folded that page corner down. I kept unfolding it and folding it back.

It's just business. I told myself.

The ceiling didn't confirm this.

Though, Thursday came anyway.

At seven twenty-five, I was sitting in the studio pretending to read when I heard his footsteps on the stone path. I'd started recognizing them without meaning to, the particular even rhythm of someone who moved through the world like nothing in it could surprise him.

The knock came at seven-thirty exactly.

"Come in," I said.

He looked the same as he always looked. Dark clothes, that face, those blue eyes. Put-together in a way that felt almost aggressive under the circumstances.

"You're nervous," he said.

"I'm fine."

"Your heart rate says otherwise."

I looked at him. "You can hear my heart rate."

"From the path."

"That's - " I stopped. "Okay. Yes. I'm nervous. That seems like a reasonable response to the situation."

He came inside and closed the door. The studio felt smaller when he was in it, which I was choosing to attribute to his height and not to anything else.

"Sit down," he said. Not unkindly. Just certain. "I'll explain what happens first."

I sat. He pulled the other chair close and sat across from me, near enough that I could see the details of him properly, the faint lines at the corners of his eyes that shouldn't have been there on someone who didn't age, the way his hands rested loose on his knees, the careful stillness he wore like armor.

"It won't hurt the way you're imagining it," he said.

"How do you know what I'm imagining?"

"Because everyone imagines the same thing." Something moved at the corner of his mouth. "Hollywood has a lot to answer for."

"So it won't be - " I gestured vaguely at my neck.

"Your wrist," he said. "It's cleaner. More controlled." He paused. "The initial moment is sharp. After that - most people describe it as something else entirely."

"Something else like what?"

He looked at me for a moment. Choosing words carefully.

"Warm," he said. "Most people say warm."

I looked down at my wrist. The pale skin there, the faint blue trace of a vein underneath.

"Okay," I said. "Okay. How does this – do we just–"

"Give me your hand."

I held it out.

He took it.

His hands were cold. I knew they would be and it still caught me off guard - not unpleasantly, just surprising the way stepping into a cool room is surprising when you've been warm. His fingers wrapped around mine and he turned my wrist up, unhurried, and looked at it the way I look at a canvas before I start - reading it, assessing, finding the right place.

My pulse was doing something embarrassing under his thumb.

"Breathe," he said.

"I am breathing."

"More than that."

I breathed more than that.

He didn't rush it. That was the thing I hadn't expected - the patience of it. He held my wrist and waited until my pulse had settled slightly, until I'd stopped holding my shoulders up around my ears, until the room had gone quiet enough that I could hear the wind in the old trees outside and my own heartbeat and nothing else.

Then he lowered his head.

The moment his mouth touched my wrist I made a sound I immediately wished I hadn't.

Not pain. That was the thing. That was the thing nobody had prepared me for.

It was sharp for exactly one second - a bright, clean sting, there and gone before I could react to it - and then it became something completely different. Something that started at my wrist and moved up my arm and settled in my chest like stepping into sunlight. Warm and spreading and entirely, disastrously not what I'd steeled myself for.

My free hand gripped the arm of the chair.

Okay. I thought. Okay. That's - that is a thing that is happening.

I don't know how long it lasted.

Time did something strange. The studio was very quiet and very warm and my whole body had decided, without consulting me, to simply relax - like every muscle that had been braced for something terrible had received a memo that the threat had been reclassified.

I was watching his face.

I hadn't planned to. I'd planned to stare at the wall or close my eyes or focus on literally anything else. But he was right there and I was already looking and then I was just - looking.

His eyes were closed. The careful controlled stillness he always wore had loosened, just fractionally. He looked - I searched for the word and landed on one I hadn't expected.

Present. More present than I'd seen him. Like the careful distance he kept from everything had briefly, partially lifted.

And then his eyes opened.

Right at me.

Blue - and then, between one breath and the next, not blue.

Amber.

Full and warm and burning, not the flicker I'd caught before but the real thing, the color of firelight and old forests and something that had existed long before the city outside these windows. His eyes on mine were absolutely direct and absolutely unguarded in a way that sent heat straight through my chest.

One second.

Two.

He pulled back.

Not fast - controlled, deliberate, his lips pressing briefly to the inside of my wrist before he lifted his head. The amber was gone before he was fully upright, blue sliding back like a door closing, the careful distance reassembling itself piece by piece.

He pressed two fingers to my wrist where his mouth had been.

The marks were already closing. I watched it happen, which was maybe something I should have looked away from and didn't.

Neither of us said anything.

The studio was very quiet.

My wrist was warm where his fingers still rested, and the warmth was working its way up my arm and settling somewhere in my chest and not showing any particular interest in leaving.

"How do you feel?" he asked.

His voice was - not different exactly. But there was something in it that hadn't been there before. Quieter. More careful.

"Fine," I said. Then, more honestly, "Strange. Not bad, strange. Just-" I looked at my wrist. "Strange."

He nodded. Removed his fingers slowly, like he was checking that I was stable before he let go. Which I was. Mostly.

"You'll be tired tonight," he said. "It'll be less noticeable after the first few times."

"That's what people say about a lot of things that don't actually get less noticeable."

Something crossed his face. There and gone.

He started to stand.

"Your eyes changed," I said.

He went still.

"When you were - during the feeding." I kept my voice even. Matter-of-fact. Like I was just making a factual observation and my heart wasn't hammering. "They went amber. Not just a flash this time. The full thing, for a couple of seconds."

He said nothing.

"I've seen it before," I said. "At the auction. In the car after. I wasn't imagining it."

"No," he said. "You weren't."

"So."

The word sat between us.

He looked at me for a long moment with those eyes that were perfectly blue and perfectly controlled and giving me nothing, and I looked back and waited, and the studio held its breath.

"Not tonight," he said.

"You keep saying that."

"And I'll keep meaning it." He stood fully. Adjusted his jacket. "Drink water before you sleep. Eat something. You didn't eat enough today."

"You can tell that too?"

"Yes."

"That's genuinely unsettling," I said.

"I know." He moved to the door. Paused with his hand on the frame in that way he had - that particular pause that felt like punctuation, like he was deciding whether to add something.

He didn't add anything.

The door closed behind him.

I sat in the studio for a long time after.

My wrist had two small marks on it that didn't hurt. The warmth in my chest was still there. Outside, the night was doing its usual thing - old trees, dark garden, the distant sounds of the city going about its business without any idea that any of this was happening.

I pressed my hand flat over my sternum.

The warmth pressed back.

That's the blood bond. I told myself. That's what it feels like. That's all that is.

I looked at the painting on the easel. The one I'd been working on since Tuesday - dark reds and golds, a figure in the middle of something I still couldn't fully name.

I picked up a brush.

Added gold to the center of it. Warm and burning and amber, exactly the color of his eyes when the distance went away.

I stared at what I'd painted.

Put the brush down.

Business. I thought. This is just business.

I was the worst liar I knew.

────── ꕥ ⋅ ꕥ ──────