Page 19 of Love Heals
Jared.
He'd come back after all. In spite of the shit I'd tried to pull on him. That was something else I deserved to be punished for. With my sire gone, though, it seemed nobody would hold me accountable for anything.
I took a deep shaky breath, knowing that I needed to pull myself together.
"It's okay," Jared said, as if he had any idea the mental turmoil I was going through. "You're safe."
I wanted to snap at him that my safety wasn't the issue, but I couldn’t find the words—I hardly even found the breath. I pulled my knees even closer to my chest, if only to give my hands something to do and keep them from trembling.
Jared's hand left my shoulder to rub circles on my back. "Your sire can't hurt you anymore," he said.
I scoffed, and the next moment, the words I'd been wanting to say burst out of me. "He only hurt me when I needed to be hurt." My head whipped around to Jared. "I never wanted him to die!"
Okay, maybe that wasn't the full truth. Maybe there had been moments when I'd wanted him dead, but that all stemmed from a foolish and misguided part of myself that I tried my hardest to shut up. When it refused to go away, I did my best to refuse its existence.
That was how I coped, how I operated.
How was I going to operate with my sire gone?
Jared didn't seem to have an answer for me either, but even so, he never let go. In fact, he pulled me closer to himself. I didn't resist, didn't see a point in resisting. His embrace felt nice, even if I didn't think I deserved it. I wondered what he might do next, though. What he'd really come to this room for. He'd been watching me while I was asleep, hadn't he?
Maybe he would try to get that kiss again.
As soon as that possibility entered my mind, all my thoughts focused on it. I could sense Jared's attraction even now. It hung in the air between us, dusted my skin like a fine mist that only I could feel. Jared was still keeping it controlled, though.
He wasn't the kind of man who would just grab me as I slept. There was no threat emanating from him. Slowly, as we sat there, one of Jared's arms wrapped around my waist and with his body warming mine, I let myself relax. The trembling of my hands subsided. I only half-remembered what had caused it in the first place.
"You’re going to be okay," Jared said after a long moment.
"You don't know that. You don’t even know me," I replied, even though I made no attempt to disentangle myself from him. My gaze slid to the side of his face. When I focused on it, I could hear the sound of his heart pumping his blood through his veins. It would have been easy for me to bite him again, the way we sat. For some reason, Jared didn't seem to be worried about that. Because he 'knew' me? But how?
I didn't understand this man. Not at all.
"I knew you when you were Michael," he said.
Michael... the name meant nothing to me, but I could guess at what he might be referring to. "Whoever I used to be before I became a vampire doesn't matter," I said. Nicolai had freed me from that life—and told me enough about it to know to be grateful for that. The glimpse of the memory I'd gotten while drinking from Jared earlier only corroborated that fact for me.
"It matters," Jared insisted. "You're not the first vampire I've met. I know whoever you were as a human, that person lives on in you."
I shook my head. "It's not that simple. Even if that were true, I'm..." I paused, finding myself unable to speak as memories of my early days as vampire flooded my mind. The early days had been bad. Back when I'd still had to learn my place.
Back before I’d learned to listen to my vampire instincts.
You're past that,I reminded myself as images of flogs and canes and bottles of poisonous blood flashed before my inner eye.
"I'm not who I used to be," I said finally. My sire had shown me the ropes, and how to become who I needed to be to fit into my new role, my new family, my new life.
But all of that was gone now, wasn't it? I'd become the one thing I could never be. A traitor. A sob lodged itself in my throat as I thought of all the vampires who'd been in the basement that night. What made me more worth saving than them?
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
"You used to live on the streets," Jared said, as if my protests didn't matter.
"I know that. I was a whore," I spat the word, feeling nothing but disdain for my former life. I'd sold my body for a few dollars. How much could I have been worth before Nicolai came and made me something more? So what if I had to serve him? Serving him made me happy, just so long as I could focus on his pleasure instead of my own… just so long as I could be good…
"You did what you had to in order to survive," Jared said without ever loosening his grip on me. "It's not an easy life, not everyone could have done it. You didn't do it just for yourself either. I admired that about you. You had so little, and yet you shared all of it."
