Romance with a Bite

by Tamsin Baker

  It was the longest speech Xander had given and there was power behind those words. I felt them. They resonated with my soul and called to it on a level I never knew existed.

  All I had to do was touch it and let myself feel it. Acknowledge it. I deeply inhaled a ragged breath but no answer came to mind.

  I didn’t know if I could. I still didn’t understand. I liked them. I’d shared my body with them, and by God it had been the best experience I’d ever had in my life.

  But to believe that the bond was more than love? People took years to meet someone, get to know them and fall in love. Even then, it was no guarantee things would work out. That mere strangers could commit themselves to each other until the end of time.

  Did I trust them? Could I surrender to something that might be a total fable? Could I agree and throw away the rest of my life if things turned sour? This bond seemed a one-way proposition. Did I have faith in a higher power that might bestow something so tantalizing as never-ending love?

  I didn’t know. I just didn’t know.

  Chapter Thirty Six

  They waited for me as my mind pin wheeled, grappling with some sort of logical argument to sort out the tangle of my mind.

  They were Vampires. Stronger. Faster. Apparently my fated mates. Beings that could cure a human with a simple bite. Cursed by a witch who happened to be my distant relative.

  They’d been coerced into curing a man with whom they had no connection. Their gift was astounding. They’d cured me. Saved me. They’d freely offered their blood. Wanted to help me.

  More.

  They’d give anything for me.

  And if they wanted to do that…

  They could also help Mom.

  My brain stuttered, thoughts crashing and coalescing into one big, shocking, unbelievable, answer-to-my-prayers realization. “You can…” I swallowed.

  Hard.

  I knew what I needed to ask of them. I knew what it would cost them. I knew the leverage would be a lie. I wasn’t their savior – their mate. Xander’s words were too unbelievable to be true

  But they thought I was. They thought those words were true.

  My stomach twisted in on itself. Cramping and wringing like a damp dishcloth.

  I was about to use it against them.

  If it was being asked of me, I don’t know how I would answer a request of this magnitude. If I’d have that capacity in my heart to agree.

  They weren’t only cursed, they’d been imprisoned. Their lives reduced to feeding off unfortunate stray animals that wandered into their perimeter. The times when no animals came, they would have starved.

  Their lives had stopped while generations had been born and died. The world had changed so, so much.

  How had they remained sane?

  Despite knowing everything they had gone through. Everything they’d endured. The wrong that ultimately been done to them. Despite all that, I still had to ask.

  The question was born of desperation because I was desperate.

  Because I could take Mom to another city in another corner of the world, and she still may never be cured. Because they offered certainty. Because one sacrifice was worth another.

  The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on me. What I was about to ask. It was…too much. I couldn’t possibly but…

  I glanced at Xander. He looked…resigned. He knew what I was going to say. What I was going to ask. I knew I shouldn’t. Asking to do the same thing that had cursed them for centuries, but the way I saw it…

  The way I saw it they asked just as much of me.

  The silence around me was weighted when I spoke, “I will stay with you. Be your mate. Freely offer my blood…if you cure my mother.”

  And it was a lie, lie, LIE.

  I would use them and then I would leave them.

  I wanted to be straight up and tell them I wasn’t their mate, that another woman would eventually come to free them but it wasn’t me.

  Instead, I was going to lie to them. I needed them to do something that had ultimately damned them to a horrible carbon copy of a life. A ragged semblance of living.

  I would use them as Ginevra had used them. And I would curse them all over again, because I had to do it. Had to ask. Had to…blackmail.

  I was no better than my distant relative. In three hundred years, some things hadn’t changed at all.

  Long moments stretched and I saw the reality of my words as they fell down around all of us. I wished I didn’t need to ask this way, didn’t need to leverage something they wanted so much against something I wanted so much, but that was the way of the world.

  I was desperate.

  I’d live with the consequences later. Because the one thing I did know, was that life was filled with consequences and most of them were bad. I just had to deal with that later and hope the fall-out wasn’t too cruel. I would beg and pray that God would bring them their true mate one day. That they would soon be released from me when Fate understood it had made a mistake. I couldn’t help but feel that I was reinforcing something horrible my distant relative had started.

  Xander inclined his head, heaviness resting on his shoulders. “I made a promise to you. It would be my honor to help your mother.”

  They were the words I wanted to hear, but they didn’t feel victorious at all.

  They felt bad and tainted and rotten and dark, and I hated I’d forced him to say them. I shivered, but it wasn’t from the cold room. A lump of ice had formed in the center of my chest, freezing me from the inside out.

  They’d saved me, yes, but that had been an offering of their choice. But here, now, I’d blackmailed them just as Ginevra had done. Only with me, it was worse, because they’d treated me with kindness. Thoughtfulness. Caring.

  Opened their hearts and told me their deepest wish. Their sincere hopes. Their private beliefs.

  And that pulsing, connecting, magical thread that bound our hearts told me something I didn’t want to feel. Or know. Or understand.

  Because that thread was filled with hope. And longing. Tenderness and…oh, God, it was love.

  The more I concentrated on it, something shifted within me and the more I knew.

  I knew.

  It was mind-numbing. Life-altering.

  Impossible.

  The reality of it stole my breath. Arrested my heart and left me swimming in an ocean of uncertainty. It was more than the words they’d just spoken.

  I knew.

  I knew, I knew, I knew.

  I didn’t know what to do with the knowledge. My heart and my head were two different things. They loved me. God, did they love me.

  I cursed Fate to put me in this appalling situation but it didn’t change a thing. I was still here. They were still Vampires and I was still going to use them terribly.

  “Come. You are cold and injured. Will you let us take you back upstairs where it is warm?” Cassius asked.

  I stared at his offered hand for a long moments. Nodded. What else could I do? There was no other path to follow.

  So I let Cassius bundle me up and hold me to his chest. Let them take me up the stairs and back to my room and wrap my ankle. Let them place me in bed, where they sat next to me and soothed me while I used the blankets and their bodies to warm me. Let my mind go blank and let the pain of my reality engulf me.

  They loved me. The knowledge of it was undeniable. It was illogical. Unfounded.

  Unfortunate.

  It was the one thing I thought I would never acquire in my life. A one-in-a-million chance at finding the unachievable.

  And I was going to use them for it.

  The agony of it. A terrible chasm that ripped through my chest. The knowledge I was deceiving them was more than any pain my body had suffered, more than the sum total of abuse at the hands of the townspeople, more than Gary’s exploitation and mistreatment…

  I didn’t know if I could return it.

  Chapter Thirty Seven

  Inexplicably, I must have slept. Maybe i
t was the shock of it all.

  It probably was the shock of it all.

  Taking three lovers was one thing, but learning they were Vampires was another. That I was their mate. And as for being a witch – if that was the case, I would have done something about Conway, the Holy Trinity and my entire life long, long ago.

  And the deception I was going to orchestrate.

  I don’t know how I opened my eyes against the heaviness of my heart, but when I did it was to find a calm, quiet room. Davon was sprawled out next to me. We’d found each other in sleep. One arm was thrown over my waist, the other was curled beneath me. My head rested on his shoulder. The weight was…astonishingly comforting and…welcome. I had to remember in was only the bond making me seek him, even in sleep.

  My leg was thrown over his thigh, the sheets twisted around us. My front crushed against him. Locked against him like two halves of a perfect whole.

  I was still naked – it seemed to be a perpetual state around them – while he was only shirtless. It still gave me a tantalizing view of bunched muscles, smooth skin and a powerful body.

  His lashes created a fan over his cheeks, hiding the unique color of his gorgeous eyes His head was tilted slightly my way, emphasizing the line of his cheek, the cut of his jaw.

  I wanted to reach out and run my fingertip down his face but I had to hold myself back. I didn’t have the right to touch him. Didn’t have the right to take that action. I was the one rejecting them. They’d only done everything for the greatest of my good.

  I turned my head to see Xander and Cassius, each having taken up the two chairs in front of the fire, also asleep. Their profiles were outlined in a flickering, golden glow.

  The fire crackled as high and bright as it ever did. I knew the answer to my question now. It wasn’t a gas fire, or a fake, electrical look-a-like. There was no wood. They didn’t need to tend it because they didn’t have to. It was a magical fire. One that would go on and on and on. Just like they would.

  There was a loud crack. A log broke in half, the fire shifted, and for a moment I was drawn back to my dream. The flames eating a half-burnt corpse flitted through my mind. A hysterical laugh echoed in the back of my mind. Ginevra. It had to be. She had to have been broken-hearted about her husband. He’d been very sick and had died. She’d obviously loved him beyond measure. But to stoop to blackmail and curse three men to this life was abominable. Bordering on insanity.

  It wasn’t their fault. Not in any way at all.

  And yet she’d still cursed them to this life with her dying breath. Nothing about her actions made it right. They weren’t the cold-hearted Vampires that kept children up at night, wide-awake and scared for their lives in their beds. The reality was quite, quite different.

  If I listened closely, just in the right way, I felt the connection. Had felt it when I’d made the decision to make love to all of them. It was warm and welcoming, and everything I’d ever wanted in my life. Someone to accept me and love me and build a life with me.

  It was the purest form of torture.

  I hated that I’d even come here. Hated that Gary was the cause of me driving out on that night and running to hide the Grimoire. Hated the fact I even had the Grimoire, and that Ginevra had damned these men for centuries because of pure, insane hatred. Hated that I could unbind them with a simple blood-letting. Hated that I doubted.

  How exactly that worked, I didn’t know. Xander hadn’t gone into that detail, but if it was anything like the bites he’d given me – it would be pure bliss.

  If only I could give in and let them bond to me. The thought was foreign, and yet not. It was as though I’d always known something like this to be possible. Something underlying that had yet to fully surface. But that could also be imagination. Longing to change the unchangeable.

  But what if I did bind them and I wasn’t their true mate? What if I bound them to me and it turned out to be false? I’d be cursing them to centuries more torture than they’d already suffered.

  If I did that, I’d also be keeping them from their true mate, if she so happened to come along one day. A ragged jolt stabbed through my heart. Something harsh and uncomfortable. Jealousy? I didn’t have any right to be jealous, of all things.

  Longing for love and the best sex of my life didn’t mean the future they described. It just meant I longed for love and had experienced the best sex of my life. Sex and love and doing the right thing were far different things.

  And if we bonded and their true mate did come along – they’d hate me for the rest of their lives. That much, I knew.

  I felt a heaviness in me and glanced back to Davon to see him looking at me. “Good morning.” He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to my forehead. He smiled and I caught a glimpse of his long, white teeth.

  Before I knew what I did, I lifted a finger and touched the tip to the elongated tooth. He shuddered and I gasped, removing my finger. He caught my hand, with super-human speed. “It’s okay. It’s just sensitive, but in a good way. You can explore.”

  He opened his mouth and so very slowly brought my finger back to the tooth. I rested it there for a moment and a faint throb pulsed through it. It was quite elegant. Not as thick as a normal canine. It was pure white, a lethal weapon settled amongst otherwise normal teeth.

  I pressed my fingertip right at the end. I didn’t even feel any pain, didn’t even apply much pressure, but the tooth cut through my skin. A drop of blood welled. I sucked in a quick breath and quickly withdrew my finger before it could fall against his tongue.

  Davon’s fingers remained curled around my wrist. He folded my arm over his chest, where I felt his steady heartbeat. Vampires having no hearts must be another fallacy. I’d found nothing about these guys that fables had led me to believe. “Relax, Ella. A drop will do nothing.”

  I had to wonder how much blood they had to take to bind us. Wondered how all of us had ended up here. Them, a vampire. Me, a supposed witch without power. “How did you…become a vampire?”

  “Ah, a history question is a good question to ask.” Davon smiled his handsome smile at me, the action easing tension from my shoulders I didn’t know was there. I sighed, and breathed in his scent. I should make the most of this, being close like this with him. It would be my last time.

  “So you don’t mind?”

  “That you asked? Or that I was Changed?” Davon asked.

  He sent me such a charming expression, I blushed. I ducked my head, a little embarrassed at my reaction, which was disturbingly more like a lover than anything else. I had to set aside the feeling that I was. “Both.”

  Davon chuckled, the deep sound deliciously reverberating in his chest. “You can ask anything of me, Ella, and I won’t mind.”

  I think he would mind if I asked him to forget about me and wait for their true mate, but I didn’t think he meant that. I nestled against him, content to hear his story.

  I had to have something more to remember them by.

  Chapter Thirty Eight

  “I was Moroccan born and raised. We were poor, but happy. I had five brothers and two sisters.”

  “A big family.” I had no siblings. Dad had run off when I was a baby and I think Mom lost faith in anything male after that. She’d never had another relationship. I didn’t blame her, with Conway being led by the sexist ruling of the Trinity. She always said I was enough for her, but I wanted something more for her as well. She deserved the love of a good man.

  “Yes, a very big, loud, rambunctious family. My father was a soldier. A general, in fact. We traveled the world over with him and reached the shores of Massachusetts when I was fifteen.

  “We loved the life here. It was wild. Filled with potential. Uncivilized. It appealed to my father’s sense of wildness. He was through with the strictness of the army and sought another, freer life. It just happened to involve us. But I loved it. When I turned eighteen, I decided to start out on my own.”

  “Eighteen. That was so young!” I said.

  “Y
ou have to remember this was three and a half centuries ago. At eighteen, I was considered a man, and being a man, I wanted my own life. It was good for a while. I hunted, sold furs, built a good name in the trade and was able to return money to my parents. When I was thirty, I decided I needed to explore further afield. Seek more exotic animals. I wanted to higher prices rare furs would bring. That was my downfall.

  “I made a stupid mistake. I should have known better. I was too confident. I set a trap that wasn’t strong enough and I should have known better. In the end I was taken on by a bear. In the end, the bear won.”

  I sucked in a breath. I’d once seen a body after a bear attack. I’d had nightmares for weeks afterwards.

  People did die in bear attacks. It was only on the rare occasion anyone survived. Over the years, the reports of hunters coming into the region and being attacked through stupidity or accident were numerous. It was just never advertised. I hated to think that Davon had been attacked. Hated to think he’d been hurt that much.

  His arm tightened around me, his fingertips swirling. A soothing feeling rushed into me, calming the tears that threatened to spill. “Hey, it’s all right, Ella. Xander, Cassius and Michael found me. Michael, our sire, changed me so that I could survive. I joined their coven.”

  That was a name I hadn’t heard before. “Michael?”

  “Our Sire. Our vampire Father. He gave life to all of us,” Cassius said.

  But, there were only the three of them now. I’d never seen a fourth. Oh, hell, what if there was a fourth and they were going to tell me he was also my mate? Davon must have felt me tense because his hand spread on my shoulder, keeping me locked against him.

  “Michael is dead. He sacrificed himself so that we could go free,” Xander said.

  “We could have fought harder than we did. Surely there was something more we could have done,” Casisus said, his voice filled with a bitterness that I could taste myself.