Page 34 of Blood Bonds

“Until it no longer works, alright?!”

I heard his sigh, prompting me to do the same. I tried to view this from his side, knowing I would be far worse had our roles been reversed. I also knew that his patience would only last so long. Meaning that my hopes to ease her into the new life we would soon force her into inevitably came with a time limit.

“We can talk about this when I get there,” I stated, making him grumble.

“Fine, but I am telling you now, brother, this plan of yours has a fucking expiry date.”

He then ended the call and left me with nothing to do but release another frustrated sigh, because half of me was tempted to have the car turned around and do as my brother wished. To give into the impulse of taking what was ours and damning the consequences. But then how could I do that when the stakes were so high?

The highest they had ever been.

As soon as I returned back to the penthouse, it turned out that the only way to calm my brother was to give him a play-by-play account of my evening with her. Of course, even in the short journey back he had done his research, discovering as much ashe could about her now that he knew her name. To the point that the second I walked inside, I found him sitting at the kitchen island with his laptop open in front of him and a half-finished bottle of Mastiha.

Great, I was in for a long night.

Mastiha was a drink from our homeland, the Greek island, Chios. It just so happened to also be one of the only drinks that affected Vampires as old as we were. Hence why Talon had chosen it, familiarity be damned at this point.

Clearly, his mood had soured further, unlike the flavor of the drink. Its hints of semi-sweet fennel, anise, and mint weren’t to everyone’s taste, but we had been drinking it for as long as we could remember.

In fact, the Mastic the drink was made from had been harvested for at least 2,500 years since Greek antiquity. The first mention of actual mastic 'tears' was by Hippocrates, also known as liquid gold. A highly aromatic resin that was cultivated from the mastic tree. One extracted according to a centuries-old practice involving a sharp tool called a kentitiri that was used to slice into bark and make it bleed. Although that wasn’t all they were useful for… I contained my deadly smirk as I thought back to more brutal times.

“She is fucking broke and look at this, three years ago it seems as if she was an obsessive gambler and then two years ago, it all stopped as her money ran dry,” my brother said without even looking up from the screen, instead knocking back another swig straight from the bottle.

I frowned at this information, shrugging out of my suit jacket and tossing it over the back of one of the bar stools as I approached. Then I grabbed the bottle and swallowed down the clear liquid that most would have believed to be vodka.

“That doesn’t seem likely,” I admitted, and despite knowing very little about her, I felt like I had seen enough of herpersonality tonight to say that having a gambling addiction didn’t seem like her at all.

“Well, you would know more than I,” my brother said bitterly, making me slap him on the back and say,

“Patience is a virtue.”

“Beware the fury of a patient man,” he replied with a grit of teeth, making me smirk as I reached the cabinets and grabbed a glass so as I wasn’t swigging from the bottle like a drunk. Then once I filled my glass, I walked toward the seating area knowing my brother would follow.

“So, come on, tell me… what did you think of her?” he asked, bringing the bottle with him and unlike me, forgoing the formalities of a glass. I looked at my drink, the clear liquid clinging to the edge of the glass as I swirled it round.

“Perfection,” I replied grinning.

“Yeah, just wait until you taste her.”

“Which part?” I asked with a smirk, making him groan.

“Don’t put that in my head, for fuck sake, I thought I was going to yank my cock clean off in the shower.”

I laughed and couldn’t help but ask, “Did it help?”

“Fuck no, but at least my balls are no longer blue and it sated the urge to go hunt her down.”

I shrugged at that. But then my mind went back to the evening.

“She is… fuck me, Talon, she is…everything,”I admitted, scrubbing a hand over my head as her sweet face still haunted me.

“Yes, well I would appreciate you telling me all about ‘our everything’, as I didn’t exactly have much chance at conversation when I was with her.” The bitterness in his tone was easy to detect.

“No, but you got to taste her,” I pointed out, making him tip the neck of the bottle my way.

“Then we both have gained as much as we have suffered,” he replied, before drinking back more of the Mastiha.

He was right. We each had experienced a different side to her and despite craving her blood the way I did, I also knew that after this time spent with her…I had gained far more than Tal had.So, I told him,

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