Reborn Yesterday

by Tessa Bailey

  Craving even more proof, of the physical variety, she trailed a hand down his naked chest, encountering his hard shaft where it swelled free of his sweatpants waistband, straining against his stomach. Through the soft material, she molded him in her hand. His hips thrust in response, throwing her hard against the door and knocking the wind out of her. And for the first time, she took seriously the threat of his physical strength having the ability to injure her.

  “Christ,” he said thickly, releasing her mouth, but still undulating his lower body toward her touch, as if compelled. “Did I hurt you?”

  “No.” She shook her head while pushing the sweatpants down his hips, her body in pain without him as close as possible. As close as possible. “No, but we should probably slow down,” she said in a gasping rush of tangled words.

  “You’re saying one thing and encouraging another,” he muttered, boosting her up against the door, leaving her feet several inches above the ground. He dropped his mouth to her breasts, licking a path between her nipples before sucking on each one deeply, his cheeks hollowing in a way that turned her instantly wet. Ready. Needy.

  Her thighs wrapped around his hips automatically, her toes digging into his taut backside. No choice but to cling, squeeze him between her legs. Her core was so sensitive, so exposed. “Jonas, Jonas, Jonas.”

  “You don’t want to make love, Ginny.” His teeth raked over her nipple, tonguing the sting while he made blistering eye contact. “You want to fuck, don’t you?”

  That word coming from his perfect lips blew lusty sparks at her already overwhelming hunger. “I think so. Yes?”

  “You’re a little furious at me, is that why?” He worked his hard sex against the damp juncture of her thighs, his jaw slackening over the friction. She knew, because she felt the incredible slide and grind of it, too. “You want to send me off knowing you’re angry, so I’ll try harder to come back and make up.”

  Moisture rushed to her eyes. “Maybe.”

  His nod was resigned, but his eyes remained molten. “I’m incapable of denying you anything. Anything.” He reached down and fisted his thickness, notching the smooth head inside of her—and ramming himself home to the tune of Ginny’s strangled cry. For a moment, Jonas said nothing, his mouth open against her ear. Then, “You’re even tighter when you’re pissed.”

  A tickle roared downward in her belly, her thighs jerking violently as the orgasm whipping through her. “Oh my God.” She squirmed, desperate for an anchor, a branch to grab onto while being shot down the raging rapids. “Oh my God.”

  “Tell me you love my mouth,” he said through his teeth, moving his hips in a slow circle beneath her. “The filth I say to you. Tell me you love my cock. Your body is already confessing.”

  “I love it!” She screamed in her throat, alarmed, delighted, overcome by how long she was being pitched uncontrollably in the throes of pleasure. “It feels too good. I can’t. I can’t.”

  “Do you know the effort it’s taking to leash the monster inside me, Ginny? If the leash snaps, I’ll fuck you clear through this door, so help me God.”

  So help her God, she almost encouraged him. Told him to do it. To give her his worst. Because she hated any part of Jonas being held hostage, kept away from her. She wanted every single piece, every facet of this man she loved. But he would never forgive himself if she was hurt and that—surprisingly not self-preservation—had Ginny kissing him softly. “Calm, Jonas.” She stroked the side of his face. “Calm.”

  “Goddammit. Too late,” he rasped, shaking his head and starting to drive himself inside of her, sliding her up and down the door at a jarring pace. “Too late.”

  Ginny tried to speak and couldn’t. Not with her back teeth clacking together and the pressure of his size filling her over and over again, her ankles shaking from the impact where they dangled helplessly on either side of his hips. His hands were bruising on her bottom, holding her in place for his powerful pumps. Behind her, the door protested the continual abuse of its hinges, the handle rattling loudly.

  “I don’t mean to make it hurt, love. I don’t mean it. I don’t mean it.”

  She was pulled back from the precipice of alarm when her body started to respond to the wicked pace and intensity of Jonas inside her, chasing his release in a frenzy. Her own monster woke up where it had been dormant inside of her and she closed her eyes, listening to the repetitive slapslapslap of their sexes meeting. She thrilled to the grip of his hands, the possessiveness of his fingers digging into her flesh. Exhilaration danced down her spine at the hungry grunts he made into her neck, the sound of his fangs slicing out.

  “I hold my entire world in these hands,” he said hoarsely, licking the pulse at the base of her neck. “I drink from you with gratitude and worship every beat of your heart.”

  And when he sank his fangs into her neck, growling brokenly, the culmination of her derived pleasures collided and she was overcome. For long, rapturous moments, she couldn’t move. Could only listen to him feed from her neck and derive strength, his body pulsing with renewed life right in front of her eyes. Her erogenous zones tightened and shivered and sparked, his feasting mouth weaving an emotional sense of completion inside of her, especially when he eased his fangs free, healed her with a lick and regarded her like some kind of angel.

  She wasn’t one. Not now.

  Her fingernails of one hand scored his shoulders, the other tearing at his hair and she started to ride, as much as she could with limited movement, his body pressing her so tightly to the door, the rolls of her hips were almost futile, but they were something. They were something and she needed to move. To get over the edge of the cliff looming closer, closer.

  “Come with me,” she urged, whimpering when his rough drives resumed, their bodies moving like a sensual machine. “I love you, I love you, stay with me. Don’t take yourself from me.”

  He slammed his mouth down on top of hers, kissing her with the passionate brutality she was starving for, the door rebounding hard off the frame behind her. Bambambambambam. “I’m sorry, my love,” he said hoarsely. “My fucking life.”

  Ginny pitched over the edge so fast and so hard, her climax was almost painful. Her thighs shook around Jonas’s hips, her body arching off the door, her scream echoing off the bathroom walls. He pressed his forehead to hers, looking her in the eye as he followed her off the cliff, hips jerking wildly, Ginny on his lips. Behind him, the bathroom bulbs shot sparks and went out, leaving them in the barest light where it crept in from beneath the door.

  “Send me with your love, not your anger,” he said once the most tremendous wave of passion had passed, his fingers brushing back her hair. “Tell me you’ll marry me when and if I return to you. Give my heart a reason to keep beating. Please.”

  “Make me like you and I’ll marry you now,” she said in a pleading voice, willing to beg with everything she had to keep him alive. “Now. Today.”

  Agony bled from his every pore, but his words were threaded with steel. “I won’t do it.”

  The need to throw her arms around Jonas was fierce. To tell him she loved him and would forgive him even the worst transgressions. But the fear in the dead center of her chest wouldn’t let her lie. And anyway, he would have known by her pulse if she wasn’t truthful. Her voice trembled as she answered. “I send you with both my love and my anger.”

  Jonas’s eyes burned into her, rife with misery, but she held firm.

  After what felt like an eternity, he stooped down and collected her robe, wrapping and belting her inside of it, along with the weighted silence. Once his pants were back in place, he stared hard at nothing, seeing what? She didn’t know. Words remaining unspoken created a terrible pressure in her throat, but she didn’t say them out loud. Her anger prevented her. How dare he reject the only solution that would keep them together? How dare he make decisions for her?

  Tears burned her eyes as she stepped away from the bathroom door and opened it, allowing him to pass through. The prospect of
his permanent absence turned her legs to jelly and she dropped to the floor, clutching the robe around her, tears scalding her cheeks. She listened to him open the hotel room door and leave with her heart occupying so much of her throat, she could barely breathe.

  “Wait,” she whispered. “Wait.”

  Once again the door opened and she scrambled to her feet, intending to take back all of her anger. To send him with love. What had she been thinking? He was going to face the firing squad and she’d have him secure in how she felt, not devastated over their fight. But when she rushed into the room, it was Elias that greeted her from the shadows, not Jonas.

  “We can save him, you know,” said Elias.

  Hope surged, alleviating some of the awful weight in her stomach. “We can?”

  “He’ll hate me for it. But I can’t let him play the sacrifice.”

  “I don’t want that, either.”

  “Good.” Elias took one step in her direction, and another, raising goosebumps on her arms, for the first time revealing the angry scar that bisected his mouth. “Then we give them you instead.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Jonas

  Every inch Jonas drove in the opposite direction of Ginny was a new nail being driven into his chest. Hands strangling the steering wheel of the car he’d borrowed from Tucker, he took deep breaths, limiting how often he swallowed so he wouldn’t lose the taste of her too soon and go mad.

  She had every right to hate him.

  He’d turned her into a servant. Couldn’t even make love to her without piercing her perfect fucking skin and sucking out the substance keeping her alive. And what they’d done in the hotel bathroom tonight hadn’t been making love. He’d been too rough. God, what if she was sore? What if she needed him?

  It took every ounce of his self-control not to whip the car into a U-turn on the two-lane highway, but somehow he stayed the course, already breaking his own rule and swallowing greedily. He would never make it back to Staten Island before sunrise, anyway. His only option was to keep the gas pedal to the floorboard and reach New Hampshire before dawn broke the horizon.

  Though wouldn’t it solve everything if he just lay down in a field somewhere and let himself burn? If he ceased to exist on this earth, Ginny wouldn’t be forced to act as his perpetual meal. She’d walk down the street without fear of violence from monsters he’d brought into her life, simply by being her mate.

  Her mate in two lifetimes.

  He could hardly fathom it, but on another level, he couldn’t believe it took him so long to realize she was his first love reincarnated. When he’d sat up on the embalming table and spied her across the room, he’d felt the deep sense of recognition. But that call from the past had quickly been drowned out by the present. His overpowering infatuation with Ginny—and trying like hell not to act on it—had required his full concentration. That initial recognition had fallen by the wayside, even though he’d continued to experience it at every turn without fully acknowledging it.

  Jonas’s heart thunked fast and heavy in his chest. The off-pace tempo of the newly awakened organ hammered out its distress in Morse code. Go back, I miss her, go back, I need her. Why why why? Why were they speeding away from their reason for living? From the woman whose extraordinary essence had woven from one century to another and fallen right into his lap again? If that wasn’t a decree from fate that they had a connection that could not be severed by place or time or circumstance, nothing was.

  And because he loved Ginny, he would put himself between her and harm.

  He’d been too green the first time to save her from falling off a cliff, but he wouldn’t fail her this time. She would be left safe, if it was his final act on this earth. There was no doubt her face would be the last image imprinted on his brain and he was glad of it. His heart would still be clamoring, begging to return to her side, but his mind would be at rest, knowing he’d removed the threat of harm from her life.

  Currently, his mind was far from peaceful, however. It continued to replay a grainy horror film in which Ginny fell from the Verazzano Bridge while screaming his name and he was still back at the on-ramp, a quarter of a mile from the center of the bridge where she dropped. That fear of not being able to reach her in time would never go away, never fade, just like his love for her.

  The image changed and now she toppled from a cliff, while he was none the wiser, wondering where she’d gone. Giving up his exhaustive search and mourning her while serving at the right hand of the man who had potentially killed her.

  He wouldn’t be blind this time.

  Not with Ginny.

  Jonas forced his grip to lessen on the steering wheel, lest he rip it off.

  I love you. Please forgive me for leaving.

  There was a chance she wouldn’t forgive him and he’d factored that into his decision. It seemed like the only option. Do anything to keep her breathing. But now, as he approached the exit that would bring him to the High Order dwelling, a yawning pit opened in his stomach. All the progress they’d made on compromise, wiped out in one swipe of his hand across the board. Would every second of their relationship forever be soured in her memory by his highhandedness?

  The exit he took was narrow and closed for repair, as it had been for decades, and he wove the vehicle through traffic cones and roadblocks, before turning left onto a road densely wooded on either side. He drove for ten minutes, muscle memory making him slow the car at the thirteenth bend and pull over. He crossed the road to pull a series of tree branches to the side, revealing an overgrown path, just large enough for a car to fit. After driving through the opening, he got back out and replaced the branches before continuing on his way. Several bumpy minutes later, he arrived at an abbreviated turnoff leading to nothing but a shoddy hut.

  Jonas remained in the car staring at the decaying shack, memories rushing back of the first time he entered through its rusted door. A young man steeped in grief and confusion over the disappearance of his mate. Needing an anchor, anything to keep him from being peeled off the earth into the atmosphere.

  Back then, he’d trusted his sire, the vampire within—and he wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  His instinct urged him to rip down the surrounding trees, bring them down on the hut and smash it to pieces. To go below and wreak havoc on everyone who resided with the High Order. As far as he was concerned, they were all complicit in trying to hurt his love. His life.

  Go back.

  Go back and apologize and compromise.

  If you survive this, you’ve lost her.

  Jonas’s hand flew to his chest where his heart remained half-beating in protest at being apart from Ginny. He slammed a fist there to start it pumping correctly again, his body slumping in relief when it sputtered and functioned once more, if dully.

  He closed his eyes and thought of her before climbing out of the car. Of the excitement on her beautiful face when someone bid on her white, silk dress. Her bravery climbing onto his lap and offering her neck while he rattled the silver chains like a beast. Her peacefulness when she slept, her voice reciting words from a movie along with Maureen O’Hara. The way her palms felt on his face, in his hair, on his shoulders.

  With a miserable sound, he propelled himself from the car and approached the hut, staring up at the overhead, pinhole-sized camera until he heard the click. He opened the door and crossed to another, passing through and traveling down a set of stairs that led to steel elevator doors.

  Floor after floor ticked by while he worked to keep his burning ire under control. Oddly, he felt no apprehension over seeing his sire again after so long, like he’d always imagined he would. He was no longer a misguided youth. He’d been out in the world cleaning up the havoc wreaked by malevolent leadership and every ounce of hero worship he’d once had for the king was now extinguished. All that remained was a demand for answers and the urgent motivation to keep Ginny safe.

  The elevator doors separated, revealing a suited vampire, hands folded at his wais
t. His eyes might as well have been made of glass for all they gave away. He simply inclined his head at Jonas, turned on a wing tip and strode away through the high-ceilinged foyer. Jonas followed, unintimidated by the lack of greeting. After all, he knew the process well. Anyone requiring an audience with the king was first made to understand they were insignificant, no matter how old or young. A lot like he treated his public.

  The sound of their footsteps was muffled by the royal blue carpeting. Lights flickered on the wall and cast shadows that shifted as they walked. Stone staircases crisscrossed overhead, leading to drawing rooms and sleeping quarters. Somewhere a single violin played a haunting melody and Jonas rolled his eyes because it was all so goddamn dramatic.

  One of his less important reasons for leaving the High Order was their refusal to update their antiquated existence. The members of the union and their groupies haunted this place like specters, their robes dragging behind them while they drank blood from gold chalices and the like. Frankly the gold chalices were the most embarrassing part. Show him the rule that said vampires weren’t allowed to shop at Bed Bath & Beyond.

  For all their showboating, however, the High Order was dangerous. Each and every one of them possessed superhuman strength and knowledge that was only earned by centuries of living. He might find them and their frippery somewhat ridiculous, but he wouldn’t let down his guard or underestimate them.

  Only a fool would do so.

  The suited man led Jonas down the far right corridor and down a set of stairs that expanded toward the bottom, emptying into the Great Hall.

  And there they were, right where he’d left them, four of earth’s oldest vampires sitting in high-back, velvet inlaid thrones lining the far back wall. Jonas was surprised to find the chair beside the king—his chair—still remained empty, but he showed no outward reaction.