Page 27 of Hunting His Vampire Mate

But that line had gotten awfully blurry in recent months. It was even more blurry now, because I wasn’t one hundred percent sure Icouldhunt Danny. Not even if he was off murdering innocent bystanders for their blood. After losing him tonight—after the agony of thinking he really was gone for good—I wasn’t entirely sure if I could do it, even if it were a choice between him or me.

But I sure as hell knew I couldn’t do it just on principle. Not even if that’s what Danny thought he wanted.

Because Danny was still in there. He was still acting like a person, and not like the savage, near-mindless newborn vamp Bryan had warned me to expect. But that was hardly even surprising. After all, leave it to Danny to be an exception to therule. He’d spent the last five years surprising me and I was pretty sure he’d spend a lot longer doing it now, too.

So long as he didn’t try offing himself first.

I had expected that I would need to employ the same sort of tactics one might use with an injured animal—or maybe a wild one. Namely, contain it so that it can’t hurt itself or anyone else, and then try to soothe it as much as possible. I’d expected to have to feed him, too. From what Bryan had said, the hunger of a newborn vamp is so intense that it’s painful. You’d do just about anything to make the pain stop. I hadn’t even flinched when he’d told me that. I’d bleed into a fucking chalice if that’s what it took. I’ve never minded a little blood.

But it wasn’t some wild animal, crazed with inhuman hungers, who had woken up in Danny’s body. It was still very much Danny who had glared back at me and told me to end him.

That realization—that he wasn’t gone at all, he was still rightthere—made tears spring to my eyes yet again and I wiped them away immediately, abruptly furious with myself.

Yes, Danny still being himself made me want to sag with relief and start bawling uncontrollably. And yes, it made me want to drop to my knees and thank whatever divine being would bother listening to me. And yes, it filled me with dread, too. Because there were some mighty awkward conversations in our very near future—especially now that I’d just done the big reveal that he wasn’t the only one with some big fucking feelings in the mix.

But right at that moment, Danny didn’t need any of that from me. Neither one of us did, as a matter of fact. What he needed was for me to think, rather than feel.

And yeah, I was still fucking madly in love with him. But so what? I pretty much always had been. And I figured I always would be. When it came to that, his becoming a vampire hadn’t changed a goddamn thing.

If anything, it made things more possible on that level, not less. That might sound awfully strange, coming from someone who had spent years hunting vamps, but it really wasn’t. Because now I wouldn’t constantly be worrying, in the back of my mind, about how fragile a human body was. I wouldn’t be worrying if tonight was the night he’d leave me. I wouldn’t be worried that the same thing that had happened to Joshua would someday happen to him. It already had happened. But unlike Joshua, he had come back to me. And now he was far less breakable, but he was still my Danny.

I didn’t need to soothe and contain. Instead, I needed to show him what had been blindingly obvious to me from the instant I’d stepped foot into the barn: that Danny was still himself. And before the night was through—and maybe for a bunch of other nights after that too—I would show him. Whether he liked it or not.

* * *

Danny was still right where I left him when I walked back into the barn. Granted, he gave me a thousand-yard stare the whole time, until I plopped back down into a sitting position in front of him.

“I’m an idiot,” I told him, without preamble.

He eyed me and somehow managed to convey with that one look that he thoughtIwas the wild animal that needed to be soothed. Or possibly shot with an industrial-sized tranquilizer dart.

“Yup.”

I couldn’t help but smile, even though his tone wasn’t encouraging.

“We’ll talk about that later,” I told him. “We’ve got time. But when I talked with Bryan, he said that you’d be hungry.”

If it was possible, Danny went even more pale. But his gaze zeroed in on my neck and his lips parted. Then he screwed his eyes shut and turned his face away from me.

“It’s a normal part of what you’re going through.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he whispered, sounding ragged. “You left my hands untied. You’re talking about me…feeding.”

He said that last word in a rough whisper, like it was a bad word.

“I figured you wouldn’t have the presence of mind to undo a knot, even if you wanted to. And I left your hands untied so you could hold a cup. I wasn’t sure I trusted you to stop, so I figured that you biting me would be a no go.”

“Shut up!” Danny moaned, pulling on his ropes. He’d obviously picked up on exactly where this conversation was headed. “Please just stop fucking talking, Michael!”

“Bryan said the hunger would cause you pain, at first. Especially for the first couple of days. He said it feels like dying.”

Danny swallowed hard at that and closed his eyes, probably so he could avoid looking at me. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not. And if I have to bleed into a fucking dixie cup, I will. But it would be easier if you just took it directly from the source.”

“You’re insane,” Danny breathed. He let out a little laugh that sounded half-crazed. “I guess I’ve known that for years, though.”

“No. I said I loved you. And I fucking do. If you’re still Danny, you’ll stop when I tell you to.”

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