mentally counted to three, waiting for Nathan to explode. He did, but not as I expected. With a howl of laughter, he fell sideways off the bed.
“Nathan! It’s not funny!” I pounded the mattress. “I almost slept with Max!”
Peering over the edge of the bed, I saw Nathan wipe tears of laughter from his eyes. “Oh, I heard you. I bet it was dead romantic, too.”
“Oh, shut up,” I admonished with an involuntary laugh. “I can’t believe I thought you slept with Bella.”
“I can’t believe you did, either. I can barely stand her. Do you know she chews her toenails? I mean, she doesn’t clip them off like normal people, she puts her foot in her mouth and chews them!” He shuddered in disgust. “I thought you’d give me a little more credit.”
Our laughter subsided into charged silence. Nathan sat up, resting his forearm on the bed as he studied me. “Carrie, I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to. If you don’t want to come home, tell me.”
Home. Our home. My chest squeezed as though it would suddenly collapse. My mind raced for some proof that this was an elaborate trick to break my heart again. “I do want to come home. But I can’t promise I’ll wait for you. It’s too unfair to ask that of me. So…”
“So?” he asked, a reluctant smile quirking the corner of his mouth.
I hated to kill the happy expression that might grow there. “So, I’ll think about it.”
His smile held the promise of happiness. Realistic happiness, but still, more happiness than we’d had. “Carrie?”
The way he said my name, the way it sounded heavy and meaningful on his lips, gave me chills up my spine. “What?”
“I’ve been dying to kiss you.”
At those words, the chills ran straight from my spine to my stomach, raced down my arms and pulled a soft, “Oh,” from my throat. I swallowed thickly and nodded, wetting my lips, which had become suddenly parched in anticipation.
Wordlessly, he climbed into bed beside me and we kissed as though we’d never done it before. Not because it was clumsy and awkward, but because there was more to it on both ends than there ever had been. There was a fierceness in him I’d never experienced before, not born of desperation, or fear of losing me, as when I’d first become his fledgling. It was something between determination— determination to let go and make this right—and confidence I would be there when all was said and done.
I wished I could be as sure as he was.
But my body was certain of what it wanted. No matter what had transpired between us, I needed him on a primal, visceral level. His blood was in me, making me a part of him. I couldn’t seem to touch him enough, even as his mouth covered mine again and again, even as his hands found their way to my back, pulling me tight against him.
I rose on my knees before him, and he mimicked my action, pulling his shirt off in the process. I actually moaned at just the sight of him, his pale skin pulled taut over hard muscle. The scars from the Soul Eater’s spell still marred his chest and arms, and I wondered briefly at the power of a magic that could leave permanent marks on a vampire. But rational thought fled when he reached for me. Like always, Nathan could make the complications of the world disappear for me when I was in his arms. Not because I was an affected flower prone to swooning, but because everything about him—his body, his mind, his scent, his touch, his problems—everything was larger than life.
And you always get caught up in it, and you always fall, and he’s never there to catch you.
I ignored that warning voice, ignored every thought in my self-righteous brain, because Nathan was touching me, so everything was all right.
He slipped my T-shirt over my head and bent his face to my neck. It was nearly impossible to stay upright with his skin rubbing on mine, his mouth burning a trail across my collarbones. It was too much sensation after being apart too long, and when I moaned, felt an echoing shudder in his body.
“I’ve missed this,” he rasped, lifting my breasts in his hands to kiss the tops of them. “God, I’ve missed this. I’ve missed you.”
I clutched his hair in my fingers and held his face close. He smelled wonderful, like the sandalwood of his soap and the heavy opiate smell of the incense he burned in the shop. I almost screamed in need when his hands slid to my back and curved over my buttocks, pulling my vulnerable, naked flesh forward to make contact with the rough denim of his jeans. I reached between us and fumbled with the button at his waistband, and he pushed my hands away. “Wait, wait. Slow down. We’ve got all day.”
“I don’t want to take all day,” I panted, punctuating my statement with a firm tug at his jeans.
His eyes darkened and he stared down at me for a long, silent moment. “I’m so glad you said that.”
In a few frantic seconds, he’d shucked his pants and pulled me to straddle him as he lay back on the bed. I gripped the base of his cock and squeezed, gliding my fingers up, over all the hard, straining length of him. He hissed and clutched at my thighs, and the desire I felt through the blood tie magnified my own. I rose above him and positioned him at my entrance. My flesh throbbed at the first touch of him; my body shuddered when he flexed his hips and slid inside.
“God, Carrie,” he managed through clenched teeth. “You feel so good.”
I wanted to answer him, to say something witty and self-assured, but he pressed his thumb to the hot, tingling bit of flesh at my center and all I could do was let out a hoarse cry.
It had been far, far too long since I’d been with him like this. It was more than a physical connection. With the blood tie between us, I could read his thoughts, feel his desire and experience the pleasure he felt as if it were my own. My skin burned where his hands touched me, my body tensed and spasmed around his cock as I rode him. I lost track of the times I cried out in release, lost to the feeling of his thickness stretching and spreading me, the hard, ridged length of him pounding into me. When he grabbed my hips and jerked me down, so hard against him it was almost painful, I felt him throb inside me and fell forward onto his chest, my arms too weak to support myself.
The tears that came to my eyes were unexpected. I swiped them away and carefully moved off of him, blocking him from the blood tie with what little mental strength I had left. He’d felt my sudden overload of emotion, though. The relief at being reunited with him. The uncertainty whether I could trust him to heal the wounds inflicted on him by his sire. But most of all the fear that I would be hurt again.
His hands shook as they smoothed my tangled hair from my face. “You can trust me now, Carrie. You can trust me, because I can trust myself not to hurt you.”
I leaned against his cold skin, buried my face in his neck. The scent of my sire’s blood, primal and familiar, filled my senses.
I’d missed him so much—the feel of him under my hands, the weight of him, solid and sure, at my side. As much as I hated the codependent notion of needing another person to make you “whole,” the blood tie did make us two halves that were only completed by each other.
It would be so much easier if I didn’t love him.
Three: Possessed
Max couldn’t believe her nerve.
There Bella sat at the kitchen island, her head bent over a book, occasionally turning to take a bite from the sandwich she held in her left hand. She perched on a stool, her right foot on a higher rung than her left, so she could rest her elbow on her knee and still turn pages.
How could she look so relaxed after all that had happened? When people he’d known for years—he assumed she’d known them, too—were dead. Tortured to death by the Oracle, who now roamed around unchecked. Oh yeah. Perfect time for a sandwich.
If I