Page 59 of Blood Bonds

Last night, I had been surprised as much as I hadn’t when Victor struggled to fight his blood lust. Normally my brother was the one to show restraint, but not last night. No, last nightIhad been the one to take care and good job at that, for any more blood loss and we would have been calling a doctor.

A fact I knew my brother felt like shit about. Meaning I didn’t need to be the asshole who punished him further for it by voicing my annoyance. He had been beating himself up about it enough for the both of us and we had both come to the conclusion that we needed to take it slow with her. At least until we were used to her limits as well as our own. One inhale of her blood beneath her skin was all it took for us to want to gorge ourselves on her. With time, we both hoped it would become easier but first, we needed to find our little escape artist once and for all.

“Fuck, at this rate I will be locking her in our fucking vault,” I snapped as we left the room, one that had been fitted with extra locks that had done fuck all. Gods, but what was she, a safe cracker in her spare time?

“At least we know her name this time,” Vic commented dryly, making me grumble.

“Asshole.”

He ignored the jib, instead grabbing my jacket and slapping it to my chest. A jacket that now smelled of our little peach.

“Come on, let’s go get her.”

“And?”

“Show her exactly what happens when she tries to run from us in our own city,” Victor said, his dark tone promising punishment of the sweetest kind.

I wondered if he was doing as I did now, remembering not only the taste of her blood but the sweet taste of her lips. Gods, but that fucking kiss was unlike anything I had ever experienced in my whole life, and I was fucking old.

She was utter perfection.

Like some fucking wet dream, I kept having to remind myself at the time that it was actually happening. That there was no way I was going to just wake up and find her gone…No, that reality was the next day, I thought bitterly.

Of course, I knew I couldn’t blame her too much for wanting to run. We were scary fuckers and, after all, we had kidnapped her. Last I heard about the dating scene, that sort of thing was kind of frowned upon. Although for a Vampire King, we usually took what we wanted regardless, so for us, kidnapping wasn’t that unusual. But now, well, we had someone’s else’s feelings to take into consideration and that was new territory for us to navigate through… So was dealing with her friend and not just wrapping my hand around her slim neck and squeezing until she told me where my girl was. No, I had been left to dick around, and use my charm, while Victor had taken her phone and dealt with our girl.

“So, you live around here, sweetness?” I asked, making her blush, her big glasses sliding down her nose, forcing her to push them up before they reached the tip. She was cute and at one time I might have fancied a bit of Goth for dinner. But after little Peach, no one else appealed. No one else would even get fucking close! Because she had spoiled me for all others, and I was perfectly fucking happy with that.

“Something like that,” she replied in a cagey way that impressed me because there weren’t many that could deny me.

“You gonna tell me what it is you want with my best-friend?” she asked, at the same time stamping something into a pile of books, an action well practiced enough that she didn’t even have to look at what she was doing.

“Let me guess, you’re the protective best friend type?” I said, already liking this girl if she had my girl’s best interests at heart. Something she confirmed when she told me,

“When it comes to Nessa, I am.”

My look must have prompted her to say more because her shoulders slumped, and she lost that haughty, unimpressed look.

“She’s been through a lot, okay?”

“With her ex?” I guessed, hoping she would think Peaches had told me about it and therefore felt comfortable telling me more. I had wanted to roar fucking murder when my brother had mentioned an ex, I even thought of tracking the fucker down and killing him for simply the offense of living.

“Try everyone that has ever supposed to care about her.”

“Everyone?” I asked, my shock not an act this time.

“Look, all I am saying is that she had been hurt by every single person that comes into her life and well… she is still paying for it.”

I tensed at that, desperate to get to the root of it all and make all the fuckers pay.

“All except you… you’ve been a good friend,” I replied, knowing this to be true if she was here now trying to protect her. She shrugged her slim shoulders at that and told me,

“I haven’t done anything for her that she herself wouldn’t do for me. But she has trust issues and is guarded for good reason… that asshole, did you know she works every extra hour she can? All so she can pay off someone’s else’s debts?”

I frowned at that, quickly putting two and two together and making another assumption.

“He was a gambling addict, right?” I said, making her shake her head, but this wasn’t done to tell me that he wasn’t, it was because there was obviously more he had done to Nessa.

“He left her with nothing. Such a shame… people, I don’t know how they can live with themselves, you know?” she said, and I looked to my brother, half listening to his conversation with our girl.

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