Page 35 of Ruthlessly Mated
I turn my head to the side and let my teeth nibble along the side of her neck, tasting her and teasing her. I feel tremors ofexcitement rushing through her body as she responds to me with need. We are still very much in the first flush of mateship. My need for her is being tempered, but it is intense.
“Tell me,” I rumble. “Tell me what a terribly clever, devastatingly dangerous mate I have.”
She whispers something. A little too quiet for me to hear. I lean in, my ear closer to her lips.
“What was that?”
The second time I hear it, though, it doesn’t make that much sense.
“I’ve got Alexander’s heart.”
“You mean he’s in love with you. That’s why he’s chasing you around, hunting you down? He’s obsessing after you?”
“No,” she says, lifting her voice. “I mean I literally took his maker’s heart. It’s this relic he kept in his castle. It’s what remains of the thing that made him, and it matters to him, and it has powers, probably. I don’t really know.”
“I see,” I say, trying to avoid sounding so horrified she stops talking.
“Don’t worry. I took proper precautions. It’s encased in a concrete block that has been laced with all sorts of compounds. I put a thousand crucifixes in it, for starters. And some other things. It’s not safe to be handled. Wildly explosive.”
“Wildly explosive?”
“Even more explosive than that,” she beams very proudly.
The bedroom door slams open, kicked off its hinges by an angry alpha. Conroy comes storming in, his hair practically on fire from fury.
“So you are fucking with a vampire. For the fun of it. And that’s why we were tortured,” he cuts in. She is lucky I am holding her against the wall. It stops him from grabbing her and whipping her ass for this most recent revelation.
She looks over my shoulder as she replies. “You were tortured because while everyone else worked out they needed to get the hell out of there, you didn’t. You don’t have any survival skills because you think you’re the one people have to worry about.”
Damon grabs Conroy, pulling him back from me and from her.
“You little shit,” he growls.
“Stop it,” I snap back. “You’re acting as badly as she is, and she’s a good decade younger than you. You didn’t even ask her why she did this. And don’t forget, we were all strangers when she planned this. It’s not about you, or us.”
“We’d already mated. She knew me well enough. She should have loved us.”
Conroy’s exclamation makes me feel terribly sorry for him. He sounds hurt. Badly hurt.
“She didn’t know us.”
“She knew me. She knew what it felt like to have me inside her.”
“It felt like being fucked… it felt like being obliterated as a person. It felt like I wasn’t going to be anybody by the end of it. It felt like I was a thing for you to use, a stranger you were rutting because you decided I belonged to you. So no, I didn’t owe you.”
“She didn’t owe us anything,” I say. “We’re just getting started. Every romance starts with a drama of some kind.”
I am feeling quite good, having my mate pinned here, safe in my arms and squirming against my leg. I think she quite likes being here too. I can smell her pheromones, which are increasing with each and every breath she takes. She likes fighting.
“Alright. Fine. This is what love is. Fucking someone and then having them leave you to be mercilessly tortured is just part of the courtship,” Conroy says, running his hand through his hair. “I’m not fighting about this anymore. We’re going to deal with this. We’re leaving the vampire heart here. That’s what he’s tracking. Isn’t it. Not you. His body part.”
“It’s nothisheart. It’s his maker’s heart. I guess it has sentimental value, or whatever. Trust me, he deserved me stealing it. He’s a terrible person. Or vampire.”
“He’s an ancient evil who has stalked the world since time began,” I say.
“Well, he doesn’t have to be a dick about it.”
I press my thigh between her legs more firmly and flex it lightly, getting her attention. She likes being held like this. Likes the firmness of it. Likes the way she’s contained for a bit. I don’t think Kita wants a life of recklessness and danger. I don’t think she’s been given many other options.
