Page 54 of Taken By the Vampires
I don’t know how I opened my eyes against the heaviness of my heart, but when I did it was to find a calm, quiet room. Davon was sprawled out next to me. We’d found each other in sleep. One arm was thrown over my waist, the other was curled beneath me. My head rested on his shoulder. The weight was…astonishingly comforting and…welcome. I had to remember in was only the bond making me seek him, even in sleep.
My leg was thrown over his thigh, the sheets twisted around us. My front crushed against him. Locked against him like two halves of a perfect whole.
I was still naked – it seemed to be a perpetual state around them – while he was only shirtless. It still gave me a tantalizing view of bunched muscles, smooth skin and a powerful body.
His lashes created a fan over his cheeks, hiding the unique color of his gorgeous eyes His head was tilted slightly my way, emphasizing the line of his cheek, the cut of his jaw.
I wanted to reach out and run my fingertip down his face but I had to hold myself back. I didn’t have the right to touch him. Didn’t have the right to take that action. I was the one rejecting them. They’d only done everything for the greatest of my good.
I turned my head to see Xander and Cassius, each having taken up the two chairs in front of the fire, also asleep. Their profiles were outlined in a flickering, golden glow.
The fire crackled as high and bright as it ever did. I knew the answer to my question now. It wasn’t a gas fire, or a fake, electrical look-a-like. There was no wood. They didn’t need to tend it because they didn’t have to. It was a magical fire. One that would go on and on and on. Just like they would.
There was a loud crack. A log broke in half, the fire shifted, and for a moment I was drawn back to my dream. The flames eating a half-burnt corpse flitted through my mind. A hysterical laugh echoed in the back of my mind. Ginevra. It had to be. She had to have been broken-hearted about her husband. He’d been very sick and had died. She’d obviously loved him beyond measure. But to stoop to blackmail and curse three men to this life was abominable. Bordering on insanity.
It wasn’t their fault. Not in any way at all.
And yet she’d still cursed them to this life with her dying breath. Nothing about her actions made it right. They weren’t the cold-hearted Vampires that kept children up at night, wide-awake and scared for their lives in their beds. The reality was quite, quite different.
If I listened closely, just in the right way, I felt the connection. Had felt it when I’d made the decision to make love to all of them. It was warm and welcoming, and everything I’d ever wanted in my life. Someone to accept me and love me and build a life with me.
It was the purest form of torture.
I hated that I’d even come here. Hated that Gary was the cause of me driving out on that night and running to hide the Grimoire. Hated the fact I even had the Grimoire, and that Ginevra had damned these men for centuries because of pure, insane hatred. Hated that I could unbind them with a simple blood-letting. Hated that I doubted.
How exactly that worked, I didn’t know. Xander hadn’t gone into that detail, but if it was anything like the bites he’d given me – it would be pure bliss.
If only I could give in and let them bond to me. The thought was foreign, and yet not. It was as though I’d always known something like this to be possible. Something underlying that had yet to fully surface. But that could also be imagination. Longing to change the unchangeable.
But what if I did bind them and I wasn’t their true mate? What if I bound them to me and it turned out to be false? I’d be cursing them to centuries more torture than they’d already suffered.
If I did that, I’d also be keeping them from their true mate, if she so happened to come along one day. A ragged jolt stabbed through my heart. Something harsh and uncomfortable. Jealousy? I didn’t have any right to be jealous, of all things.
Longing for love and the best sex of my life didn’t mean the future they described. It just meant I longed for love and had experienced the best sex of my life. Sex and love and doing the right thing were far different things.
And if we bonded and their true mate did come along – they’d hate me for the rest of their lives. That much, I knew.
I felt a heaviness in me and glanced back to Davon to see him looking at me. “Good morning.” He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to my forehead. He smiled and I caught a glimpse of his long, white teeth.
Before I knew what I did, I lifted a finger and touched the tip to the elongated tooth. He shuddered and I gasped, removing my finger. He caught my hand, with super-human speed. “It’s okay. It’s just sensitive, but in a good way. You can explore.”
He opened his mouth and so very slowly brought my finger back to the tooth. I rested it there for a moment and a faint throb pulsed through it. It was quite elegant. Not as thick as a normal canine. It was pure white, a lethal weapon settled amongst otherwise normal teeth.
I pressed my fingertip right at the end. I didn’t even feel any pain, didn’t even apply much pressure, but the tooth cut through my skin. A drop of blood welled. I sucked in a quick breath and quickly withdrew my finger before it could fall against his tongue.
Davon’s fingers remained curled around my wrist. He folded my arm over his chest, where I felt his steady heartbeat. Vampires having no hearts must be another fallacy. I’d found nothing about these guys that fables had led me to believe. “Relax, Ella. A drop will do nothing.”
I had to wonder how much blood they had to take to bind us. Wondered how all of us had ended up here. Them, a vampire. Me, a supposed witch without power. “How did you…become a vampire?”
“Ah, a history question is a good question to ask.” Davon smiled his handsome smile at me, the action easing tension from my shoulders I didn’t know was there. I sighed, and breathed in his scent. I should make the most of this, being close like this with him. It would be my last time.
“So, you don’t mind?”
“That you asked? Or that I was Changed?” Davon asked.
He sent me such a charming expression, I blushed. I ducked my head, a little embarrassed at my reaction, which was disturbingly more like a lover than anything else. I had to set aside the feeling that I was. “Both.”
Davon chuckled, the deep sound deliciously reverberating in his chest. “You can ask anything of me, Ella, and I won’t mind.”
