Page 36 of Ruthlessly Mated
“We’re leaving. Tonight,” Conroy says. “We’re leaving that fucking time bomb behind and we are going to hope that once the vampire gets what he wants, he decides to bother someone else.”
“No!” That sets her off again. She struggles against me, only succeeding in grinding her pussy against my thigh. “Do you know what I had to do to get that heart! I had to get inside his most ancient stronghold. I had to put up with the horrible advances of his guards. I almost had to sleep with them. I could have lost my virginity to them, or even been imprisoned in his dungeon forever. Or I might have been killed. Or worse.”
“Why would you have done any of that?” I ask the question more gently. “What prompted you to go through all of that? Why did you risk your life?”
“For revenge.”
“Revenge for what?”
Her eyes darken. She looks as though she is about to cry again. She takes a deep breath and pulls herself together with some obvious effort, looking adorably stoic as she does.
“That story I told when we came into the city?”
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t make it up. Alexander really killed my parents. I thought that was a bit much. So I stole something dear to him. I would have killed his parents, if I could have, but they died thousands of years ago.” She bites her lower lip and draws in a deep breath. “I’m not giving up the heart. You three go. Save yourselves.”
“That’s not happening,” Conroy says. “We don’t leave our mate to die, even if that’s something you would do.”
“Fuck you,” she says.
“I did fuck you. Didn’t make a difference.”
“My loyalty isn’t located in my vagina,” she snaps back, grinding that same body part against me.
“You two have to stop arguing,” I say, flexing my leg forward so she cannot move. She is pinned in place, unable to take physical pleasure from her rebellion. “How can you have his maker’s heart? I thought vampires crumbled to dust when they were killed.”
“Well, if that’s true, then I guess his maker isn’t dead. Technically.”
Conroy’s eyes darken. “What you have in that truck is incredibly dangerous.”
She grins ferociously. “I know. That’s the point.”
They’re back to their immovable object, irresistible force thing again. The most adept diplomat would have great difficulty trying to get these two to come to an agreement.
“Conroy, please. Stop talking.”
I can feel Conroy’s annoyance at me, but we need to talk, and all he knows how to do is bark orders.
“So you have a very personal relic belonging to Alexander,” I say. “And your plan was…”
“To sell it,” she says. “It’s worth more money than you could possibly imagine. It’s a relic of untold power and truly ancient provenance.”
“Right. You’ve performed a heist and now you are trying to sell the goods. Okay. Excellent. That’s a paradigm we are familiar with.”
“A good idea, right?”
“Well, I might not go that far,” I say. “You see, the vampire you stole it from seems to be very much aware of the heist and also the little wolf responsible, and seems to be insistent on destroying everything between him and the heart.”
“Yes, but I knew he’d do that. That’s why I planned to come here. I’m not an idiot.”
“I think you had an incredible idea, and you’ve executed most of your plan very well, but you’ve met us now. So that changes things.”
“It doesn’t need to.” She looks at me with real rebellion. “I was doing something. I am still doing something.”
“It doesn’t make sense, sweetheart. We need to get out of this city, and away from that thing. I know you’re angry at the vampire, and I know you don’t want to leave the relic behind, but I can tell you that holding that vampire’s maker’s body parts hostage is not going to bring your parents back. We need to put ourselves first. We need to put our future first.”
“A girl has to give up her dreams and career the second she finds mates, does she?”
