New Blood by Gail Dayton

carried his finger to her mouth, he didn’t jerk away, though he watched anxiously. She put out her tongue and touched just the pointed tip of it to the blister. It was the most erotic thing Jax had seen in—in as long as he couldn’t remember, past the holes in his ruined mind. He was as certain of that as he was of the stirring in his long-dormant body, stirring he fought to stifle. She might feel it with him, and know he hadn’t been precisely truthful about everything.
    Yvaine hadn’t quite rendered him eunuch. She hadn’t minded his arousal. But it had been so long since anything had tempted Jax to such a state . . .
    â€œNo.” Miss Whitcomb’s voice broke into his thoughts, went shuddering through him. “My tongue doesn’t feel affected either.”
    Jax slammed his eyes shut and squeezed them tight as she closed her mouth over the tip of his finger.She’d done his thumb the same way last night when reclaiming her blood, but it had been different in the dark. Worse. And better. Being able to see her made it different. More arousing. Much more. Hugely, tremendously more.
    â€œAm I hurting you?”
    â€œNo.” Jax choked the word out, easing his damp finger from her grip. “On the contrary. It feels much better.”
    He opened his eyes to examine his injury. The blister looked the same size, but older. Almost ready to slough off the dead skin. He rubbed the dampness across his lips, easing the burn there. “Thank you.”
    â€œWhy didn’t it burn me?” she asked, turning on the cot to face him more fully, folding one foot beneath her.
    â€œI don’t know. You said the thing made you queasy?”
    She nodded, looking thoughtful. “The outlaws seemed to handle it without it affecting them at all. But it did. The thing sucked at their life . . .” She frowned, an adorable crease forming between her brows. “No. That sounds as if it fed on their life energy and it didn’t. It . . . ate away their life. Killed them by inches, like—like floodwaters on a riverbank, cutting the earth away. But a river carries the earth downstream to deposit elsewhere. That thing . . . destroyed what it touched. More like fire consumes. But slowly.”
    She looked up at Jax. “Does that make any sense at all to you?”
    â€œThe burn felt more like ice than fire.” He couldn’t think what else to say. “You should let Yvaine speak. I don’t remember things.” And it frustrated him.
    â€œNo. Not here.” Miss Whitcomb was thinking again, chewing on her lower lip as she frowned. “It’s too dangerous to have you out of commission. The thing was . . . anti-life. And anti-magic as well. The opposite of magic. But . . .
I’m
the sorceress, aren’t I? I’m the one with the magic.”
    â€œYou’re the one with the power,” Jax said, beginning to make a bit more sense of it. “I’m little more than a bag of bones tied together with magical strings. Your strings. It’s your power in the magic that binds me.”
    â€œSo it was . . . trying to burn the magic out of you?” She gave him a worried look. “I agree that we want to—to clip your strings, but I don’t think this is the proper way to do it.”
    â€œNor I.”
    â€œOi!” A shout came from outside the tent in the language Miss Whitcomb said was Romanian, a rush of irritated words.
    â€œMaybe you need to learn a little patience, Nicu,” she shouted back, rolling her eyes at Jax, sharing her opinion. “I’ll be there when I’m ready.”
    More words followed, along with raucous and probably lewd laughter. Jax could understand the intent, if not the words. He wanted to go out and pound a few heads. But there were many more heads than a few out there, and if he got pounded back, or knifed, or shot, he couldn’t look out for Miss