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“You should only stay in 5-star hotels.” And if I had anything to do about it, I’d make sure that happened.
“Because you work so hard all the time for everyone else,” I said against her temple. I pressed a light kiss there, inhaling her lovely scent. “And you should be treated like the queen that you are whenever you have to leave home.”
“All we know is that once he started gathering werewolves into his pack about twenty years ago, the violent crimes involving werewolves diminished.
Then she cupped my cheeks like always and admired me the way mothers do. Yes, I was nearly four hundred years old, but to my mum, I was still her little boy.
but for the life of me, I couldn’t force the words out of my mouth. If she’d decided not to meet them for any reason, I feared it would be a sign that she still wasn’t ready. That she still didn’t want this. Want me.
Jules took the glass from Mum. “My favorite.” “Yes, we know,” Mum teased. “I asked Ruben a hundred questions when he told me he was bringing you to meet us.”
“But isn’t his brother your second?” “Yes, but Gabriel doesn’t ogle my mate the way Edmund does.” My father burst out laughing, a hearty deep sound that made me smile. “I don’t blame you for hating him then,” he finally said, still chuckling.
I wanted to take care of Ruben. Like I wanted him to take care of me. I looked over my shoulder, catching his fleeting glimpse while listening to his father.
Ruben had never consumed blood in front of me. That had me wondering something that had been troubling me for some time. What did vampire couples do for blood?
His voice rumbled low and intimate. That feeling of contentment vanished, a slow burn of heat melting into my limbs. “They use each other,” he answered with deliberate slowness. “Only each other?” His eyes rolled silver in the dark of the cab. “Only each other.” “I didn’t realize you could. From one person only.”
“Are you truly sincere this time? With our sire?” “Sincere?” I asked, unsure what he meant. “I realize this may come across as forward, but I hold Ruben in the highest regard.”
“But do you truly care for him now?” The implication was that I didn’t care for him when we were together before. I had to cool my instant reaction, which was nothing but red-hot anger. “I cared for him before,” I clarified steadily, holding his gaze.
“You,” I began, swallowing hard at the lump in my throat, “you renamed your club The Green Light...for me?” I could barely get the words out of my mouth.
His expression—aching and adoring and severe—belied the calm tenor of his voice when he said, “I’ve been bleeding inwardly for over a decade.”
And when I realized that you were more than an obsession to me, that you were the only one I was ever meant to be with, I watched and waited and yearned for this day when I could tell you.”
“More than that, I trust you.” My magic warmed inside my chest. Goddess was telling me something. My gaze fell to his parted mouth, fangs long and sharp as he covered my hand with this own, holding my hand to his heart. “Ruben, I want your bite.”
He flinched, eyes flaring wide for a second. “What?” “You’re right. You’re my mate, and I’m yours. The Goddess wouldn’t have paired us together if we couldn’t join in every way.”
“I won’t get that from you. Not my mate.” “How do you know?” I wanted to laugh. It was as if he were trying to talk me out of something I know he desired as much as I did. “Because I know. Goddess tells me so.” Spirit sang sweetly to me, humming joy. Like one of Clara’s happy spells, but it was generated by me, by my discovery and faith in what I knew must be right and true.
“This is right,” I whispered to my powerful vampire who remained rigid and frozen on top of me. Almost like he couldn’t force himself to take that step he believed for so long was forbidden.
Trailing my bloody finger over his bottom lip, I coaxed my vampire out to play.
I’d never been the seductive one. That had always been his role, but I gladly took the reins to prove to him I was telling the truth. That this was meant to be. That we were meant to be, in every way, shape, and form of that definition.
On an agonizing groan, he closed his mouth over the tip of my finger and sucked, eyes opening, a single silver ring surrounding the black. “Yes.” I rocked my hips again, clenching my hand in the back of his hair. “More…please more.”
“No going back once we cross this line,” he rumbled, voice hard and rough. “Be fucking sure.” He was terrifying in his intensity, a feral shift in his gaze that told me I was looking at the beast inside him. All signs of the sophisticated overlord were gone, replaced by a wild, ravenous predator.
With lightning speed, he sank his fangs into my throat, and the world disappeared. Sharp pain paralyzed me, swiftly followed by unimaginable pleasure. I arched my spine, pressing my breasts against him, crying out and moaning with agonizing ecstasy. Magic, his and mine, pulsed and tangled together with a vicious surge, binding around us.
Leaning closer, he placed a kiss to my throat where the bite was tender and raw. I could feel it even under the toxin’s tranquilizing effects. “This bite is for everyone to see.”
Her telekinesis started acting up again. Vaguely, I heard the sound of cracking and splintering wood. Something thudded on the ground, but I didn’t care. My body and brain was pure sensation and solely hers.
On a purring rumble, I unlatched from her thigh and licked the wound to help heal it. I hadn’t done the same to the bite on her throat. On purpose. I wanted every mother fucker on the planet to see my mark on her, to know she was mine and mine alone.
No spoiled celebrities throwing a rager here. Just my telekinetic witch under the influence of orgasmic euphoria that I was responsible for.
The thought of being Ruben’s blood host had haunted me for years and years. That feeling of forever not being what he needed in a partner. But when it hit me, it hit so fucking hard I couldn’t ignore the truth of it.
Clara, completely unscathed by the milk catastrophe, leaned in and smiled sweetly. “Jules, your aura,” she whispered and shook her head, blinking quickly with glassy eyes, “it’s so stunningly beautiful.”
“Is that why you look so sad all of a sudden?” “Oh, no.” She pulled her long, white-blond hair over one shoulder, a nervous habit of hers. “That’s because I don’t understand why Henry doesn’t just admit that he likes me.”
Henry and I are going to have six boys and one girl. But not if he doesn’t ask me out.”
“Maybe he’s shy,” I suggested. “Henry?” She tilted her head in thought, ruminating over that. “Maybe.” “Perhaps you should be the one to ask him out, Clara.” “Hmm.” She thought a second then smiled. “Maybe you’re right, Jules.”
But my inner cavemen is shrieking for me to just club you over the head and drag you all the way back to my cave. In New Orleans.” I wrapped my arms around one of his and pressed my chin to his bicep, looking up at him. “You don’t have a cave.” “I’m going to get one.”
“Well, if you look anything like your father when you’re gray, then by all means, age away.” “Oh, really?” He arched a brow, and his fingers curled slowly at my ribs, his other hand just above my knee. “Don’t you dare.”
He waved a big paw toward Jules. “You’d know more than anyone. Your sister, the witch doing the tattoos.” “Violet.” “We’ve got one of our own like her.”
Bristling slightly, because I couldn’t fucking help myself when another man found my mate beguiling,
“You know, Ruben. You won’t need Damon anymore. Or anyone else.”
Never in my wildest imagination did I dream she’d offer it to me freely, even hopefully. It was staggering, the level of trust and devotion she had proven she had for me in that one small act of offering me her blood.
“It’s a muzzle. For a werewolf.” “No.” My stomach turned. “We’ve heard of the werewolves going missing,” he added tightly. “My father mentioned a friend of Abrams’ nephew was one of them.
“Whatever you decide,” I whispered, wrapping my fingers around his thick wrists, “whatever you tell me, I’ll do. You’re my partner. My mate. We’re in this together.”
“Jules? It’s Gabriel. Are you okay?” Why wouldn’t I be okay, Gabriel? Immediately, I was suspicious.
“Won’t you let me in?” “No, Gabriel. I won’t.” “Why not? Ruben sent me up here to check on you.” My heart plummeted because now I knew he had betrayed his overlord. Ruben wouldn’t send him up for me. Ruben said not to open the door for anyone, and I wasn’t a fucking idiot.
I was aware that it was racing at a dangerous speed, but how was I to calm myself when my mate—my love—was suddenly missing in this godforsaken place.
“What is it, sire?” I held out my hand with the clump of grass. “The traitor.” He smelled, his eyes rolling white-silver. “Gabriel.” “He’ll die for it, Roland.” “Yes, sire. As treason of this kind deserves.”
Stones are old, stones are cold, but blood is colder. Violet’s nonsensical words from the witch’s round flitted back to me. Now, they made much more sense.
My chest squeezed with anguish, knowing the pain Ruben would feel when he realized Gabriel had betrayed him so horribly.
“If you want my power, just bite me and get it over with. Take it!” I screamed. “I don’t fucking care! Just don’t take my will away. Please. Don’t take my family, my—” Ruben. Dear Goddess. Don’t take him away from me.
“Vampire mania?” I breathed out hoarsely. “My clever queen. Yes. A permanent form of vampire toxin psychosis.”
He’d strip me of everyone that mattered to me: my parents, my sisters, my family, my friends. He’d take Ruben away, and in all of their places would be only Edmund. I wouldn’t just want him. I’d die and kill to have him, to keep him. Bile churned in my gut. “No.” A tear slipped from one eye and into my hair.
