Page 32 of The HalloQueen

“You are not a cow,mon coeur.”

“Shut up. What if I say we drop the whole thing?”

“Then we go our separate ways. You panic your way through your launch and I keep plundering the emotional wells of every hormonal teenager in the Halloween store. Oh, and you make the unbreakable vow stating you’ll tell no one I exist under penalty of death.”

“DEATH?!” She screeched.

“If I don’t have to worry about you exposing me then you should have no problem making the vow.”

“But what if it’s relevant information to like a police investigation or something?! I’m just supposed to live knowing a murderer lives in our town?”

I grinned, “your town is no different now than it was last night or the night before.”

“Yeah, but then I didn’t know! I can’t be an accomplice to murder for the rest of my life.”

“I don’t kill people, Annabel.”

“But others do.”

“I’m not them.”

She groaned and knocked my hands off her waist and began pacing the kitchen. “And we can’t just…casually let you calm me down or something? Open eating relationship or something? Feeding with benefits?”

I lost my patience and played dirty, “Annabel, like calls to like. Now that you know that Others exist, they will find you. If you want my protection, I will not share you.”

“Oh good, so now I have a death vow and the creature from the black lagoon will be joining me for tea?”

“I wouldn’t worry about Frasier. He’s a nice guy.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Now,hewas before my time,” I grinned and she groaned, sliding down onto the floor with her fingers in her hair.

“Fuck.” She exaggerated the ‘F’ and the stress came off her in waves palpable enough to make me shiver. I squatted in front of her and extended my hands, palms up, to her.

“Touch me, Bels.”

A tear slid down her cheek, “I thought I was so clever, coming up with a plan and you had like four others.”

I shrugged one shoulder, “they were good plans. Take my hands. Let me help.” She eyed me suspiciously and I sighed, fully sitting on the floor, “no vow required. Let me help you.”

She extended a shaky hand and I took it, breathing deep as another enormous wave of her feelings tried to drown me, “fuck, Bels, breathe.”

It felt as though I was caught in a riptide, quickly trying to sort through the onslaught of her feelings, siphoning out the bad and pushing back the good through the hand I’d placed on her hip.

“Annabel, I promise you that I will not hurt you. I promise you that I will never force you to do anything. If you want to move forward with any of the proposals, yours or mine, it will be your decision. I am already addicted to you, and I hope you know I’m open to alternate plans too. I have never met someone like you before, and gods be damned, I want to keep you, but I will not steal you from your life. I will not be the monster in your nightmares or the villain that locks you in a tower. You are the only one capable of making the decision that works best for you.”

She released a shaky exhale and the waves lessened, softening into a gentle roll as her heartbeat steadied.

“You promise you can’t manipulate me into wanting you?”

“I promise, and even if I could, I wouldn’t want to. If you decide to want to be mine, I want it to be because you want to, not because I made you.”

She nodded once and pulled me toward her until her lips touched mine, the feelings coursing through her changing so rapidly that it felt like we were moving from water into fire, so I pushed feelings of calm back into her. I couldn’t compete with how strongly she feels things, but I would not have her pass out on her kitchen floor either. Who was this woman with feelings deep enough to drown an immortal?

“Please tell me if we do the Twilight thing that you won’t make me wait until marriage?”

I laughed against her lips and pulled back, “God no,amour, I’m European and far too old for such nonsense.”

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