Page 38 of Blood Bonds

“Get in the car, Nessa,” he told me and again, it was like a switch had been flipped, making me instantly do as I was told. I jumped when the car door slammed shut and I realized that I had just completely wasted the day by convincing myself out of this date.

A date I was now being forced to go on.

Making me ask, “Where are you taking me?”

“Where do you think?” he said, pausing long enough to have me raising my own brow in question. However, his answer was the very last one I would have expected as he told me,

“To get you some ice cream, of course.”

Chapter 15

The Not Date

“Relax,” he suggested, making me frown before tearing my eyes from the window to look at him.

“You know this is kidnapping, right?”

He laughed and said, “No, this is me taking you on the date you agreed to, where we will be surrounded by people as we share a meal together. This isn’t me chaining you to my wall and gifting myself with something beautiful to look at.”

I started choking on a cough as the imagine he just painted entered my brain with the power of a herd of stampeding horny elephants. Of course, I also lingered on the fact he just called me beautiful, although I tried to hide this fact with my response.

“Wow, okay, good to know what your interpretation of kidnapping is.”

He grinned at me and asked, “And what is yours?”

“I don’t know, duct tape and a ransom note,” I replied.

His first response was to pluck my hand from my lap and bring it to his lips like he had done last night.

“Oh, trust me, sweetheart, if I were to kidnap you, there wouldn’t be a ransom note.”

Jesus, my heart was not going to survive this man much longer. It felt like it wanted to just open my ribcage like a door and wish me well before it fucked off on vacation.

“A phone call to the cops, then?” I asked, making his lips twitch against my hand after he had kissed it.

“Funny girl,”he muttered as if to himself, and the tingles it gave me were through the roof. To the point that I couldn’t look at him, instead focusing back on the window. Something easier to do now he had taken to holding my hand instead of kissing it.

“Oh wait, we just passed the ice cream place,” I informed him, hoping he had been lying about the meal.

“I will get you ice cream later,” he said, making my whole body tense.

“Later?” I practically squeaked out.

“After dinner,” he stated, as if this was absolute.

“But I am not dressed for dinner,” I told him, hoping this would get me out of it.

“Nor do you need to be,” he said, making me frown down at myself. My usual denim blue jeans, long-sleeved light-gray, knitted sweater and khaki winter jacket didn’t exactly match his sexy black suit. He was wearing a deep red shirt beneath it, and a silk black tie folded with perfect precision at his neck. His hair, like last night, was pushed back from his handsome face, half of which was tied with what looked like a thin length of leather.

The rough hairstyle, along with his trimmed dark beard, was a complete contrast to the smart, expensive cut of his suit, telling me he wasn’t a man that liked to follow convention. I even wondered if there would be the sight of a tattoo adorning his muscular body when he was naked. Even with the layers, there was no chance of masking a body like that.

“Why? Are you taking me to the drive thru?” I asked, knowing there was no way I was walking into some fancy placewith him looking like that, and me looking like some charity case he just found on the sidewalk.

However, he scoffed at this and told me, “Not happening.”

Before I had chance to argue further, we were pulling up to my current worse nightmare.

A fancy restaurant.

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