It was the tightest hold he’d ever experienced. He always dealt with women with experience. He was too afraid to be any woman’s first and he wouldn’t do it anyway. He was brought up to believe that if you bedded a virgin you stole from her future husband. No, back then you married the woman you deflowered and that rule stuck with him even to this day.
He had to stop when he came across the evidence of her virginity. Once he broke through she was his. That wasn’t what stopped him though. Once he broke through her maidenhood there would be pain and blood.
Madison’s blood.
He didn’t know how he would react once her blood hit the air. Why hadn't he thought about this before? All he thought about since the day on the side of the road was burying himself to the hilt in her body. Of course he would start to think clearly once he was inside of her, he thought dryly.
“Ephraim is something wrong?” her voice was pained.
“I can’t do this,” he said, pulling back from her.
“Ephraim?” Her voice shook. “Did I do something wrong? Is it me?”
Oh god, she was breaking his heart. “No, baby, you didn’t do anything.” He pulled out of her body. It was the most difficult thing he’d ever done in his life. He turned his back on her and sat on the edge of the bed.
His hands clenched into fists in his lap. He dropped his head and tried to calm down. His body shook with need for her.
“Ephraim?” She moved across the bed until she was hugging him. Pressing her br**sts against his back.
He shook his head in agony. “Baby, please stop you’re killing me.”
“Stop what?”
“Touching me.”
She pulled back. “You don’t want me to touch you?” her voice broke.
“I want you to touch me so much, baby. It’s all I think about, but we forgot something.”
“Condoms?”
He chuckled harshly. “No, I don’t need them. Disease can’t live in my body.”
“Then what?”
“Blood, baby, you’re going to bleed when I take away your virginity and I’m afraid of my reaction to your blood. I don’t trust myself not to give into bloodlust.”
“Have you ever slept with a woman when she was bleeding?” she asked curiously.
He cringed. “I don’t want to talk about other women, Madison. I haven’t been with a woman in a very long time. They didn’t mean anything to me then and they mean less now.” He heard her breath catch.
“You’re the only one I’ve ever cared about. Believe me if I didn’t I would have taken your virginity just now without a second thought. I can’t hurt you.” He dropped his face into his hands.
“Answer the question. Have you slept with a woman while she had her period?”
He sighed, “Yes.” It used to be one of his favorite times to be with a woman. He loved tasting blood mixed with a woman’s juices.
“Did you ever have a problem with bloodlust then?”
“No, I was always in control.”
“So, you never bit any of them?”
He ran his hands through his hair in frustration. “I never said that.”
Madison moved away from him. She sat in the middle of the bed and brought her legs up, hugging them. “If you bit them then why would it be a problem if I bled a little bit?”
His hands dropped back into his lap. “I bit them for pleasure and hunger. It was a way to get what I wanted and give them something in return.”
“Something in return?” She was confused.
“A bite during sex makes the orgasm more intense. It also makes a woman’s blood rush faster so I can feed faster without the woman realizing that she’d just been my midnight snack.”
“But you never killed any of them,” she guessed.
“No.”
“So, then we should be safe.”
He laughed without humor. “No, we would not be safe. Do you remember the day we met?”
“Yes, at the car.”
“Do you remember what happened at the car?” He looked over his shoulder to watch her.
“Yes, Jill hit on you. Joshua took ten years off my life with that question about sluts and you were very rude.”
He nodded. “Yes, I was, but you’re forgetting the most important thing.”
“What?”
“You cut yourself.”
“So?”
“So, it was only because the two children were there to make me pause and think, step back and focus. The only thing I could think about was getting the hell away from you so I went inside. The further I walked away from you the clearer I thought. I had to fight the urge to go back. I remembered what I had at stake and what would happen if I took you. Madison, you have no idea how bad it was.”
“No idea about what? What did you have to stop yourself from doing?”
He only looked at her. “What, Ephraim, tell me what the big deal was?”
“I would have jumped over that car and ripped your throat out with my teeth and there would not have been anything in this world that would have torn me off you until I had the very last drop of your blood on my tongue.”
“Oh, I guess that explains it,” Madison said wryly, trying to lighten the mood after that confession.
“I tried to explain it to you, Madison.”
“Yes, you did.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I don’t know what else to say. I can’t take any chances with you. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“And if I bled you would lose control?” she asked.
He nodded. “If you cut yourself right now you would have to run to get your gun and pray to god that I could hold myself back long enough for you to put a bullet between my eyes.”
She winced. “If you bled while I was inside you, while I’m already out control I would probably f**k you until you were drained properly.”
“Thanks so much for the gentle words,” she mumbled.
“I’m not going to sugar coat it for you, Madison. You need to understand the dangers of being with me. You of all people need to know.”
“I still don’t understand that. Why me? What’s so different about me?”
He looked away from her. “I don’t know. I’ve never heard of this happening to anyone else before.”
“So everyone’s blood tastes the same?”
“No, everyone’s is different.”
“How so?”
“Baby, can we do this at another time?”
“Are you okay?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I can’t think of anything but you right now. I need to leave the room before I do something stupid.”
“Oh, can you just answer that question?” She noticed for the first time that his body was trembling.
She heard his quick intake of breath. “Some people taste bad, really bad. It could be because of disease, age, there are a number of things that could go wrong in the human body and they all show up in the blood.”
“Makes sense,” she agreed.
“Let’s say a person indulges in sweets then their blood will be sweet. The same could be said about alcohol or drugs I would taste that. Others…well, think of all the things that you do during the day, what you eat, what you drink, the air you breathe, the people who surround you. All of that influences your blood. It makes each person’s blood unique.”