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stay here and it will take a few days for me to
recover enough to do that again."
    Aly
thrust her wrist at him, suddenly eager for him to proceed.
    "Take
it, however much you need. I'll give you my cellphone number. You can
call me whenever you're ready and we'll meet you anywhere in the
country."
    Geoffrey
nodded hesitantly, not sure why he was agreeing to tangle his life up
further with theirs, but unable to deny her obvious need, not when it
was paired with such a willingness to pay whatever price was
required.
    Positioning
his mouth carefully to avoid damaging any tendons or nerves, Geoffrey
bit down on the pale skin of her arm and had to fight off a tremor of
relief at the first taste of her blood. Geoffrey had fed dozens of
times that he remembered and hundreds, maybe even thousands of times
in the section of his life that had been stolen from him by his
amnesia, but he couldn't remember any other feeding like this.
    Her
blood wasn't just sweet, it tingled with power and energy.
Geoffrey could practically feel his reserves of energy filling back
up in time with the slow pulse of her heart.
    Ever
since he'd left New York, Geoffrey had refused to give into the
darker aspects of his nature. He hadn't killed anyone, but more
importantly, he hadn't taken from anyone without giving something
back in return.
    Back
in New York he'd traded money for blood, albeit with unwitting
victims who had no idea what they were agreeing to. He no longer had
any method of replenishing his funds, not with the way he was forced
to constantly move from place to place, but he'd still found ways to
provide value in return for what he took from his victims.
    Many
of the homeless people he'd encountered had been suffering from
different kinds of psychosis and he'd cured them, or at least
lessened their symptoms, before drinking from them. This however was
different. Geoffrey always felt an odd sense of connection to those
he was feeding from when doing so wasn't just a kind of predation,
but this was something more than that.
    Aly
seemed to hum with energy and he established a link to her mind
without even meaning to. Geoffrey had never experienced both sides of
a feeding before, but that was what he was feeling in that moment.
    He
could feel her warm blood trickling down his throat, feel the
strength pouring into his limbs and mind, feel the hallucinations and
the blood hunger being chased back to a distant corner of his being,
but at the same time he could feel the warmth of his mouth on her
wrist. He could feel a tingle that masked the pain of his bite, feel
the heat spreading up her arm and a sense of euphoria that was only
partially dulled by the weakness slowly stealing through her body.
    Always
before, even with Melody, it had been hard to tear himself away from
a blood donor. He'd loved Melody. He'd tried to tell himself at the
time that it was some kind of obsession, that she would be better off
without him, but even if that had all been true it hadn't changed the
fact that he'd loved her. Even when he'd fed from her he hadn't been
able to release her this easily.
    Geoffrey
pulled his mouth away from Aly's arm and then pulled a square of
gauze from his pocket and taped it to her arm to stop the bleeding.
    "Are
you okay?"
    She
nodded wordlessly, almost seeming as though she were in shock. After
nearly a minute she managed to speak again.
    "Is
it always like that?"
    "No,
that was a first for me."
    "I
could feel you inside of my mind. I could see some of what you did to
try and help Keith. I wanted to believe so badly, but I couldn't
quite bring myself to. Now I know though, I know that you are
everything you said you were, that you did everything you said you'd
do."
    "If
you didn't really believe me, then why did you agree to let me feed
on you?"
    Geoffrey
already knew the answer, at least most of it, but the question
tumbled out of his mouth regardless, not seeming to care that it was
unasked for.
    "I
did it because there isn't anything I