Page 96 of Taming His Vampire Mate
I found myself smiling at the thought of Jeremy. If I was awake, I was sure he was too. And he wasn’t far away—just in the building next door, where I’d left him after our awkward goodbye, knowing full well we’d see each other again the moment we slept.
And the sooner I dressed and made myself presentable, the sooner I’d see him again. The thought sent butterflies throughmy stomach, like I was a schoolboy with a first crush rather than an eight-hundred-year-old vampire.
But there were so many unknowns. I had let Jeremy make love to me again. It was different this time. What if he changed? What if he revealed his true colors, now that he thought he’d captured my heart? What if the other shoe was poised to drop and squash me underfoot?
It wouldn’t be the first time caring for someone had led to heartbreak.
I shoved those thoughts away.
Jeremy wasn’t like that. Even thinking it wasn’t fair. He was many things, but not duplicitous. Nor was he that good an actor. He couldn’t fake being someone else with me. And the dreamscape had shown me who hereallywas on the inside: a man worth loving, someone savagely wounded and filled with guilt.
Yes, he was the same man who’d attacked James and Pierce. Those choices had still been his. There was a streak of darkness in him. His grief had pushed him to act on it, but the impulses had already been there.
And yet, he was so much more than that.
Besides, he had clearly changed. When he said he felt remorse, I believed him. The pain and regret on his face whenever he spoke of that night were impossible to miss. He couldn’t have faked that—not well enough to fool me. Hell, he wouldn’t have bothered trying. Subtlety wasn’t his strong suit.
But then there was Ian.
As I lay in bed, a chill of genuine fear crept through me. I found myself wondering what he had been like. Jeremy’s first mate. If Ian hadn’t been killed, they would still be together. James and Pierce wouldn’t have met without Jeremy’s attack. And then Jeremy and I might not have met.
From what my wolf had told me, they’d grown up together. Ian had been Jeremy’s first love, his first everything. And Jeremy blamed himself for Ian’s death—a grief so consuming it had turned him inside out.
His reaction to seeing, in the dreamscape, what had killed Ian came back to me. Would Jeremy ever feel so strongly about me? What if Ian had been kinder than me? Gentler? More understanding?
That seemed a near certainty.
After all, I could be cold and harsh, even without meaning to. Jeremy might eventually grow tired of that. Ofme.
I scowled at myself.
That didn’t matter yet, did it? And there wasn’t a single thing he’d done to put these thoughts in my head. They weremyhang-ups, not his.
With age comes self-reflection. Life experience means knowing yourself well enough to recognize when your deeply held bullshit is getting in your own way. And the truth was, I was feeling scared and vulnerable. I was looking for an excuse to push the wolf away.
It was rather juvenile of me.
But deep down, I couldn’t deny that a sliver of doubt still lingered—even after the magic of the dreamscape and the intense intimacy that had followed. Perhaps more so because of it. That wasn’t fair, but it was the truth.
At the end of the day, I was scared of being hurt by him. And whether I’d planned it or not, I had already handed Jeremy my heart.
But could I trust him?
* * *
In the end, the prospect of seeing my wolf won out over thesilly, entirely expected fears circling in my head. I got out of bed, showered, dressed, and groomed myself in record time. By the time I was done, I could almost pretend I didn’t have any doubts about us at all.
I glanced at the fridge before leaving, but my desire to see Jeremy took precedence. I didn’t need to feed yet. In a pinch, I could grab something at the bar. There was always a stash of blood bags on hand in case someone came in too hungry to be safe around mortals. It might even be better to drink from a tumbler in front of Jeremy. We’d have to cross that bridge eventually, and it was certainly a gentler introduction to my feeding habits than him seeing me take it directly from the source.
Nathaniel’s Place was much quieter than I expected.
My apartment is on the third floor, down the hall from James and Pierce. Below that, on the second, are conference rooms, including the green room—where the now mostly defunct vampire council used to meet. On the top floor is the penthouse apartment, where Nathaniel and Ethan reside. And on the ground floor is the bar, open to the public and accessible from the street. Some kings and queens prefer compounds or castles complete with moats, dangerous spells, and modern security, but that was never Nathaniel’s style. He wasn’t in this for power, so he didn’t think like a power-hungry despot. He welcomed his community with open arms.
Though, you still had to know the bar was there. It sat on a side street in an unassuming brick building. The windows were heavily tinted—impossible for a mundane human to see through—and the sign out front was so small and unremarkable you could miss it entirely. Magical wards, courtesy of the coven, now supplemented that, limiting how many mundanes could stumble in the way Derek had.
Afternoons tended to be quiet, but edging toward happy hour, there should have been far more patrons. A dozen, at least. Instead, when I opened the bar door, I found only a handful: Poppy, Simone, Sadie, and a human donor I barely recognized—a college-aged man with brown skin, black hair, and dark eyes. And at the center table sat Quinn and Derek.
Fury filled me.
