“Do you want to continue?” he asked. “Because if you—”
“Yes.” I jumped up and wrapped my arms around his neck, my legs around his waist. “I want to.”
David laughed, and as he threw me down on the bed, landing between my legs, I caught a flash of his gorgeous grin, all sharp and sexy with those pure white fangs. I knew he couldn’t read my mind anymore, but as I angled my head to lengthen my neck, he read my body language—knew I wanted those teeth in me. He’d never break the skin, but as he bit down, my nerves raced around like a wild wind, making my lower spine tingle.
“God, it’s been so long since I’ve done that—to anyone,” he whispered.
“Bite harder,” I insisted, shutting my eyes and closing out the rest of the world.
David moved his hands from under my back then and slipped himself inside of me, taking both my wrists above my head and pinning them there. My insides tightened around him, calling him deeper, a feeling so intense I didn’t notice the flesh at my shoulder pop open until I smelled blood. My eyes widened with tension, but David didn’t even flinch. He rolled his body against mine, drinking my blood down as it gushed from my flesh, so I let myself go. I shut my eyes again and held onto him, moving my hips to take him as deep as my body desired.
I could feel my blood making him harder, coursing through his veins and altering things inside of him, even making him warmer.
“What will that do to you?” I whispered.
“What?” He leaned back a bit, his mouth and chin washed with red.
“My blood.”
When he smiled, red lines showed in his otherwise perfect white teeth. “It doesn’t have much power, really. I might feel a bit stronger and more energetic, if anything.”
“What if I drink yours?”
“It’ll burn,” he said, as if I should already know that. And I did. But he was once a vampire. It was possible for him to retain some of his supernatural abilities, so maybe the blood wouldn’t be so bad. He must have caught on then, because his expression changed. “And I don’t heal, remember? If you cut me to drink from me, I’ll be nursing a wound for weeks.”
Damn it. He had a point. “Then I guess I’ll just have to settle for sex—until we can get you turned back.”
“Turned back?” He relaxed his body against mine, readjusting his arms where they were obviously getting tired holding him up. “Are you saying you actually want that?”
I nodded, shifting my leg where his skin pulled mine a bit. “Sooner rather than later. You’re twenty-two in a few days. I’m still nineteen, technically—”
He laughed, cutting me off, dropping his head down so his hair tickled my brow. “Really? You’d really rather me vampire than human?”
I winced. I know his Ara always wanted to see him human, and a part of me wanted to wait until I had all my memories back before we turned him so I could relate to that desire, but soft and sweet and funny as he was in human form, I needed the vampire. It was great drinking from Cal, but it did feel weird. He was a friend, and when I placed my mouth on his skin, I felt more for him—as David had warned—the feeling slipping away the second I stopped drinking.
It wasn’t that I didn’t trust myself, but I just didn’t want to feel that way. In fact, I did, but I wanted to feel that way with David. “I think we should turn you back after Elora’s wedding next week.”
His warm breath moved across my nose from beneath his smile. He brought his arm up and rested it on the pillow just above my head, and I could smell the subtle mix of sweat and spicy cologne, feel his chest just inches away from my lips until he folded down, so his lips came to mine.
“Then we best enjoy each other now. This could be one of the last times we make love while I’m a human.”
I wrapped my legs up over his hips, paying close attention to how he felt inside of me, and to the fact that he was actually inside of me, deep and full and hard.
“After this,” he said breathily, moving again, “you should probably sleep at your own house for a few days, just until after the wedding.”
“Why?”
“Because I won’t be able to hide this from anyone. I know you want to take things slowly, and if I’m to respect that, I need some space from you.”
“Why?” I made him stop, my hands pressed to his waist.
“Because I won’t be able to keep my hands off you. We’ve opened a door here, Ar,” he said, and I wasn’t sure he’d ever called me ‘Ar’. “Not just making love, but…” He glanced back to where we’d been sitting when we spoke. “It’s taken a lot of discipline not to show my affection for you, and now that the door’s open, I won’t be able to keep myself in check.”
I’m overjoyed, he said in his mind—something I knew he didn’t mean for me to hear. How can I be anything but a perfectly happy man after this?
“You think everyone will notice?”
He laughed. “How can they not?”
“Okay then.” I used my hands to make his hips move again. “I’ll go home tonight then. But I have to stay over the night before your birthday.”
“Why?”
“Duh!” I widened my eyes at him. “Because it’s your birthday the next day!”
He laughed, nodding. “Agreed.”
* * *
Mike plonked down like a weighted sack on the couch beside me and turned his head so I could see his mischievous grin. “So?” he said.
“So what?” I focused on my book, trying to ignore him. But it was pretty clear at this point that he heard what David and I did in bed this morning.
“So when are you telling the kids?”
“Telling the kids what?”
“That you’re back together.”
“We’re not.”
“Not what?” The air changed, went colder.
“Not telling them.”
“But you are, though, right? Back together, I mean?”
I looked up from the words on my page to his caramel eyes, and smiled. He smiled too.
“It needs to stay between us, okay? Just in case he turns evil again and I’m forced to leave him.”
He frowned. “You think he’ll hurt you again?”
“I think I’m smart to be careful,” I said. “Just until I’m sure. Because he’s lovely right now, but I’ve seen him put on an act in the past.”
“And you think this is an act?”
“I just don’t know. I mean, I don’t know him well enough to know exactly what he’s capable of, especially when it comes to his wife.” Which wasn’t entirely true. I was just afraid because it was all so perfect, and it just felt like nothing perfect ever lasted. I wasn’t ready to fall one-hundred percent and be left in tatters if he fell out of love with me.
“Got it.” He put both hands up. “I won’t say a word to anyone.”
“Will Emily?”
“She doesn’t know.” He tapped his ear. “She’s human, remember. No immortal ears.”
“Oh.” I nodded, relieved.
“I only heard it because I popped upstairs to get my phone,” he added with a laugh. “So what about Falcon, does he know?”
“No, it’s all pretty new still,” I said, shutting my book. “We didn’t really mean for that to happen, and I’m not sure it will again.”
“Why wouldn’t it?” He sat back, his arm along the couch behind me.
“Things moved along too fast. I don’t regret what happened, but I feel like…”
“You need to take a step back?”
I nodded. “I just need time and space to process, is all. So I’m gonna spend a few days at home—”
He just grinned again, as if he knew everything and I had no idea. “How does David feel about that?”
“He suggested it.”
Mike raised one brow at me. “I find that hard to believe.”
I shrugged. It was what it was.
The mood changed then, and Mike slid a bit closer, talking in a much quieter voice. “So he told you, huh?”
> “Told me what?”
“I’m one of only three people that know the full extent of the damage on his body,” he said. “If you two got down-and-dirty, then you must have seen the scars.”
“So what if I did?”
“Well, if you saw them, there’s no way you didn’t ask about them.”
I set my mouth hard. “If he hasn’t told you, then I—”
“I’m not asking for the juice, Ar,” he said, softly whacking my knee with the back of his hand. “I just wanted to know he’s okay—that he’s got someone to talk to now.”
I softened. “Yeah. He’s okay.”
Mike nodded, looking out the glass doors to the courtyard. “Can I ask one thing?”
“Mm?”
“Did he tell you about the runes?” He pointed to his ribs.
“Yes.”
He nodded, looking out at the courtyard again, tense, as if a question was weighing on him. And I caught on. If he knew the extent of the damage, he must have known what those words said.
“You don’t believe that, do you?” I said, laying my book aside.
“Believe what?” He turned to face me, his brows lowering when he caught on. “I don’t want to, but he went through a pretty rough stage, went really dark, you might say—”
“Really?” I sat forward. “You really think he’s capable of rape?”
“Look, I love David. He’s like… well, maybe more than a brother to me. He always will be. And that means I love him for both the bad and the good. If he raped Morgana, Ara, then you need to tell me—”
“Why?” I started getting defensive. “You know about the runes, so you either believe it or you don’t—”
“I don’t, okay.” He shook his head, insulted. “But he’s been like a vault ever since. He hasn’t uttered a word of what happened in those tombs, and if he did rape Morgana, and that’s why she tortured you both, then the blame he’s gotta be carrying would be immense—”
“She thinks he ordered it,” I said. “She was raped in the cell, and she thinks that either David did it or that he ordered someone else to do it.”
Mike sat back, running both hands over his face. “Shit.”
The pale face of a dark-haired beauty flashed through Mike’s mind then—I saw it like a thought in my own head—and I gathered that it was Morgana. But the scene was all wrong. He was smiling with her, holding her hand. He’d had feelings for her once.
“I didn’t know she was raped. She never…” He swallowed hard.
“You feel bad?”
“Responsible, I guess.”
I studied the poised tears in his eyes. “Why?”
“Before that… Morg and I were close. Very close. I only ended things with her because she put that hex on David.”
“Well, don’t feel too bad.” I sat back, folding my arms and looking outside. “She got revenge. And David’s not a rapist, okay? So don’t ask him about it.”
“I won’t.” He sat quietly for a minute or two then, but I could hear the cogs in his brain turning. “Did he say what happened to you? In the tombs?”
My mouth tried to lie but my face said it all. Mike just nodded again, cupping my knee in a show of support.
“You don’t have to tell me. I’m not here to interrogate you, Ar. I was just hoping he was all right. And that you’re all right.”
“We’re both all right.” I offered a smile. “We’re in this together now. Even if I don’t remember any of it.”
He smiled back. “Okay then. Well”—he hopped up, pressing on my leg for a push—“if either of you need a third party to lend an ear, you know where to find me.”
“Thanks, Mike,” I said, picking up my book as he left the room. But I didn’t read another word of it. My thoughts were miles away in a tomb under a place I once called home.
48
David
I should’ve been walking over there to punch him. Or kill him. She’d kept to her word, and nothing had happened between them since she started feeding on him, but I wanted Cal out of her life like I wanted her in mine, and yet, for some reason, I hadn’t followed through on my heinous plans.
Instead, I found myself heading to his house to check on him. At the rate he turned, I was certain some major developments were to be seen shortly, and what concerned me most was how he’d cope with them. As much as I might deny it, at some point in my days as a high school student, I had come to see Cal as a friend.
His front door opened, and a hard-faced woman glared at me. “You must be David.”
“Nice to meet you.” I offered my friendliest, most childlike smile and my hand to shake.
“Oh.” The woman blushed. “A teenager with manners. You go right on up then, and maybe rub some of that off on my son.”
I laughed. I’d rather not rub anything on her son. I headed up the stairs to Cal’s domain, stopping halfway when I heard Ara’s voice. I didn’t realize she was here.
“So did you paint these?” she asked.
“No. They’re from my dad’s old office.”
“They’re old.”
Cal laughed. “They’re my ancestors. Remember how I told you they were all lawyers,” he said.
“So they had their portrait done if they made it into the family business?”
“Something like that. And now they’re all stuffed in a corner like none of it ever mattered,” he spat. “Which is because of me, I guess.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I broke the chain. I’m the first one to reject the family business, and I suppose, after fighting with me about it for so long, Dad just realized it didn’t matter all that much—any of it.”
“So he’s being nice to you then?”
“Funny you should say that, but sometimes, yeah, he is.”
“Maybe he can sense the predator in you.”
“Ha! I would hope so.”
“But you wouldn’t ever kill him, would you?” she asked, and I heard the springs on his bed squeak—my cue to enter.
“Knock knock,” I announced loudly as I stepped up into the bright, airy room, half expecting to see them jump apart on the bed. I hated that I even imagined that, but rising above all expectations, Ara wasn’t anywhere near Cal.
“David.” Her face lit up when she saw me. “What are you doing here?”
“Came to check in.”
She walked over and gently wrapped her arms around my waist. “Why?”
“No reason,” I said, but my face betrayed me, and Ara knew it was a lie.
“Let me guess”—she stepped back, folding her arms—“you thought we were having sex.”
I laughed. “Actually, no. I didn’t even know you were here.”
“Oh.” The arms unfolded and she glanced back at Cal.
“Here to have your portrait done then?” Cal joked, holding up the paintbrush he was using. And in that split second, as he laughed and shook his head, he reminded me so much of my brother that the cold truth hit me. That was why I couldn’t find the will to have him arrested and locked away for life: I connected with him because he reminded me of Jason.
“Ah, actually,” I fumbled, “I wanted to make sure you hadn’t developed any dangerous powers in the last few days.”
He practically snorted out his derision. “I wish. And since Ric said I’d be powerful, I’ve been waiting, but”—he shrugged—“nothing.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. His powers would obviously take time to surface, as they did for every vampire. “They will come. In time.”
“Then, in the meantime, I’ll just have to enjoy all the other cool perks.”
“Cool perks?” I quirked a brow at him, crossing the room and slumping down on the bed. “Like what?”
“Speed. Agility. Colors.” His tone changed, eyes going back to the canvas he was painting. “I see things so differently now—like details. I don’t just see an image anymore. I see what makes it up.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Like, when I’d paint a fir tree, I’d use my fan brush and just press it to the canvas with a mix of green and maybe ochre, but now it’s like there’s a magnifying glass over it and I can’t do that anymore. My eye won’t see it as a tree now. I have to get down with a fine-tip and paint every needle—all the details, even bugs that you don’t see. But look.” He grasped the canvas in both hands and lifted it off the easel, turning it to show me.
My jaw dropped. I’d paid no mind to it as I entered, but as my eyes brushed past every minute detail right down to the fawn foraging in the far background behind twenty-odd trees, I was speechless. I swallowed it down—the praise, the disbelief, the need to tell him he had a skill just as developed as my brother, who’d been painting for over a hundred years—and nodded casually instead. “Yeah,” I said, “not bad.”
Cal knew better though. We’d only been friends for a short time, but even he could see what I truly wanted to say. “Yeah, my dad said pretty much the same thing.” He put the canvas back on the easel, hiding his smile behind it.
“You should paint Elora,” Ara suggested, “as a wedding present.”
“Yeah.” Cal nodded. “I’d love to. And maybe I could do one of the new princess when she’s born. They’re bringing her to the wedding, right?”
“She won’t be born when they arrive,” I said, wondering, by the way he spoke so casually about the royal family, if he’d been speaking with my brother, “Lily isn’t due until the end of the month.”
“Just a few weeks before Em, right?” Ara said, coming to sit beside me.
“That’s right.”
“That’s funny,” she added, staring down at her watch. “I had a really strange dream last night that Lily had the baby, and when I looked at the calendar, it said November second.”
“A dream?” My eyes lit up. I’d have to call Jason. If Ara had a dream, there was a very strong chance that it wasn’t a dream at all, but a vision.
“Yeah.” She shrugged. “They had a girl.”
“Cool,” Cal said. “Well, it’s not November second there until our tomorrow, so I’ll tell him about it when I call him tonight.”
Call him? My head boiled. This kid was slowly inserting himself into my family with a little bit too much ease. Who is he to call my brother and deliver that kind of news? He doesn’t even know him. Hasn’t even met him!
Bound by Secrets Page 43
