Dog with a Bone by Hailey Edwards

managed.
    “I know.” His thumbs swept across my cheekbones. “Come on, Thierry, focus for me.”
    My eyes watered. Shaw’s touch centered me, anchored me while I pushed the strange new magic swirling in my system toward my injuries. Power fused the broken bones. Muscles snapped back into place. The burst of agony as my body mended sent shock waves rippling up my leg and shivering through my torso. It jarred my heart and zoomed up my neck to my head. Faint sparks danced on the ends of my hair.
    “I need to...” I pushed upright, slurring drunkenly as I rotated my ankle. “Hey, I thought that was broken.”
    The smile touching Shaw’s lips didn’t reach his eyes. “I have to take you down a few notches.”
    I laughed, giddy from the high of surviving, the rush of feeding, the sweet ache of being so close to him. Throwing my arms around his neck, I tugged him over me as I flopped down to the plush bed of grass.
    He surrendered with a pained groan, as though the flurry of jade sparkles in my hair had ignited the beast in him, reaching deep inside, past his defenses, drawing his monster out to play with mine.
    Skin already pale faded. Razor claws elongated, thickening, curving to spear into the ground beside my head where he braced himself over me. Even his canines elongated at the corners of his mouth in a savage way that sent anticipation trembling through my lower stomach. My hand rested on his shoulder. It was so easy sliding it down his chest, over the buckle of his belt.
    “Don’t,” he begged me. “Not like this.”
    “I don’t think I can stop,” I confessed on a ditzy laugh. “I need you.” His touch was my anchor, his skin and his scent the only things able to stop me from shattering into a million sun-drenched pieces.
    “I know.” He pressed a lingering kiss to my forehead. “But not in that way.”
    Before I could argue, he captured my wrist, joined his right hand with my left one and threaded our fingers together. I jerked against his iron grip as the grim set of his mouth penetrated the cottony haze stuffing my head.
    “This is going to hurt,” he said.
    I caught lightning in my palm. That’s how it felt as he bled the excess magic from me into himself. My gut burned and my heart stuttered as I weakened. His need was nothing gentle, nothing caring. It was endless and miserable, mindless and reckless. At that moment I was all that existed in his bleak world, all he craved, the best thing he had ever tasted and the one meal he wanted to savor forever.
    His stream of consciousness seared my brain for days, or maybe it was seconds, before my mind shorted out and the world spluttered from full color to a static flicker. Soon even that twinkle faded to an icy-cold black.

Chapter Fourteen
    W aking in a small room in a wet puddle left me more confused than the half-baked dreams I left behind. Faint light spilled from my hand, illuminating a water pump and a pressure tank near my leg. Humming from a motor droned in my ears, a not-so-nice counterpoint to the ringing already there.
    Muck squished under my hand when I pushed upright. “What’s that smell?”
    “Manure,” a rough voice answered from the darkness opposite me.
    I angled toward the sound, blinking while my eyes adjusted. “Where are we?”
    “The pump house,” Shaw answered.
    Mentally I tallied our position. “Halfway between the start of the driveway and the rental car.”
    “Mmm-hmm.” Metal jingled. Keys dangled from the ring looped around his middle finger. Shaw stared through a crack in the door, gaze sweeping from side to side.
    Rotating my ankle, I winced. “That’s not a subtle way of asking me to wait in the car, is it?”
    His hand closed and the rattling ceased. “I didn’t say anything.”
    “That makes it easier to forgive and forget what you implied.” I settled some weight on my foot. “Forgiving is tough. Forgetting is easier.” I hissed as I stood. “That might be brain damage talking.”
    He cracked a