by Peiri Ann
I can’t understand what the difference is from being his mate to being bound. I don’t want to be around anyone but him anyway. I sit quietly for a minute without answering him. Does he think I will change my mind about him?
“Maybe,” he responds quietly to my thoughts.
“Why?”
“Look Tracey, I’m not human and I’m filled by demon, feared by everyone, and capable of anything. Most of my relationships weren’t successful, and I don’t want to risk your life, based on my stupidity. Once we are bound, I become stronger. I’m already strong, but I’ll get stronger—for you. And no, I’m not saying that it is a bad thing, because you may advance too. But life…life becomes more dangerous. More—” He pauses, searching for the word. “—of my kind will be after us, trying to kill us. They won’t just be after me anymore. Now, when you hurt, I hurt, but when I hurt, you don’t hurt. But after the bond, when I hurt, you will hurt. When I change, you will change. And a while from now, we may have kids, and they may be burdened and they will have to deal with what I had to growing up.” He leans back. “And you have your family, but you wouldn’t live with them anymore. You would have to—no, you would want to, need to—move in with me.”
“I’m sorry,” I interject, “but I don’t see the wrong in any of that. I’m all or nothing. If you only want half, then I’m nothing.” There is no way him going demon, me leaving my family, or our children having demon in them is going to change how I feel. If we have to deal with bad things, we are going to deal with them together anyway. He wants us to be two, and I want us to be one.
Dropping the subject, I reach around him, grabbing the popcorn. I eat it as I start watching the movie that I missed the beginning of.
John Travolta’s character hijacks a train and now has to get a large amount of money within a certain amount of time.
Nathan is just staring at me. I ignore him. I think I’ll make him take me home in the morning. I’ll deal with the pain—away from him, rather than with him. My body craves to be one with him, I want everything his life has to offer, but he is still denying me of it. Yeah, the pain would be worse, but I’m strong enough. If he is able to deny me and take it, I can also deny him and take it.
I watch the movie and Nathan watches me.
Something beeps loudly. “What is that!?” It startled me.
“The intercom,” he says, walking over by the door, placing his hand behind the TV. “Yeah?”
The intercom beeps again. “There is a Melissa here to see you,” a deep voice sounds.
Who the hell is Melissa? “Tell her to leave.”
There is a long pause and Nathan starts to walk away.
The intercom beeps again. “Nathan! I’m not going anywhere. What are you doing that you can’t talk to me and have been ignoring my calls?”
Nathan shakes his head and continues walking back to the bed.
“Nathan!” Melissa’s voice yells through the intercom from outside.
I sit up in the bed, trying to keep myself calm. Anger flushes through me. “What—the—hell?”
“A girl I shouldn’t have dealt with. I cut her off the day I met you. She’s been calling me, but I don’t answer—you know that.” He scratches the back of his head. “I don’t know how the girl found out where I live,” he says, more to himself. He is way too calm about this.
“Well, let’s go take care of it.” She is screaming his name and it is pissing me off.
“Don’t blow up, Tracey.”
“I’m not going to hear anything from you but ‘Come on, Tracey.’” I look over to him as he starts putting on a shirt. “I’m still done with you.”
He stops and stares at me. I see the hurt in his face and my chest aches. I turn away from him, walking to the door. He meets me, shirt on.
I start opening the door. “Tracey, wait.” I turn to him, but I’m looking towards the computer. “Look at me.”
“No.”
“I didn’t—”
“NNAATTHHAANN!” Melissa’s voice is loud—no longer coming through the intercom—and my anger rages.
“Whatever you have to say can wait.” I walk out the door and he follows me.
“I don’t see why we can’t just let her yell.”
“The same reason we didn’t just let Michael yell.”
He pushes his hands through his hair. “Touché.”
Unfortunately, I don’t know my way and he has to lead us to his front door. We walk outside and there she is, standing in the driveway, preparing herself to yell again.
She is taller than me and thinner. Her hair is long and flowing, and dark. She has on too much makeup and her jeans are tighter than her skin.
“Can you please, shut up?!” I say, before Nathan makes it to my side.
“And who are you?” she asks, irritated.
Nathan steps slightly in front of me. “Melissa, it’s late, you’re outside, losing your mind, yelling and disturbing my family. How did you even find out where I live?” He’s calm.
She smiles. “Nathan!” she says with excitement. “I’ve been trying to see you. I’ve been calling you and you haven’t been answering.”
“That’s a hint,” he responds.
“Well, can we talk for a while without the extension?” She points at me in a sassy nature.
Yeah, she is about to lose a finger. I step forward and Nathan wraps his bear arms around me as if he is hugging me instead of keeping me back. “No, Melissa. Unfortunately, due to unforeseen occurrences, I’m no longer available.” Those are my words. “Now, if you could leave, I’d appreciate it. You’re ruining our evening.” He starts backing us towards the door. She isn’t budging. “Or I can have you escorted off my property.”
She gives an insulted look as if she’s surprised by what he had said to her. Then she looks at me like I’m the worst person she has ever saw. I smile and wave goodbye.
“This is not over, Nathan!” she yells over her shoulder as she walks back to her car.
13: Relinquished
Nathan turns me around and I shuffle out of his arms as we walk back into the house.
“Tracey, why are you acting like this?” He is a little louder than I expect him to be, considering that we are in the doorway of his house.
I look at him quickly and away as I remember the way to his room.
I’m done going tit for tat with him. We will just go to sleep, and he’ll be gone when I wake up—as usual. Then he’ll come back when he senses I’m awake and I’ll ask him to take me home. My heart aches at my thoughts. I ignore it, just like I’m ignoring him, following closely behind me.
The movie is still on when we walk back into the room. I go to the bathroom to wash off my feet, because I walked outside with no shoes. He follows me and does the same. He stares at me, and I avoid looking back at him.
He’s concentrating as he stands there staring at me.
“If you turn me into sand—” I start walking from the bathroom. “I am going to be so pissed.” He’s still on my heels. “And I don’t think Pailen will like cleaning me up.”
He grabs my hand, turning me around. “Stop it, Tracey.” His eyes demand my eye-contact and his voice is mesmerizing. I’m speechless. “Just stop, okay?” I can’t look away. “The things I’m doing, I do them for your own good. I know you better than you know yourself. I know what you can handle and what you can’t. Now, I could be wrong about what would happen if we were bound. But I know you like to have choices and make your own decisions. I do not want to take that from you. You will be mine and only mine. There are no friends, no family, unless I’m providing it to you. Haven’t you ever thought about why Glen hasn’t been home?” I hadn’t. “She can’t go, and she doesn’t even know if she wants to or not.”
He starts to push us backwards. “Now, after a while being bound does get easier for you to control, you mature into it, and it is better when your mate is helping you, to give you guidance and help you control some changes you may experience. But getti
ng to that point, while trying to stay alive, is the hardest. And right now, with everything that is going on, I don’t want to risk it—if someone comes around trying to kill me, like the three guys did today. And believe me, they come around often.”
The back of my thighs touch the bedside. “Now, when I brought you into this with me, I asked you if you would trust me.” He lifts me, sitting me on the bed. “You told me you did, and that you wanted me.” He removes his hands from me. “And now you’re telling me you want to leave me?”
I am saying that. I know what I feel. I don’t answer him.
He moves over me, forcing me to lie back on the bed. I fall back onto my elbows. He doesn’t touch me—his hands are placed beside me, holding himself up—but he kisses my cheek. “You know, I’m not going to force you to stay with me. And if leaving me is what you want, I have to give it to you.” So this want he can give me? “You’re really over-thinking everything, babe.”
“Or, maybe you’re not thinking enough.” I touch his cheek, still in a trance. He turns his head, kissing my palm. “There is no real difference. There is no in-between. You either jump—or you walk away.” I pull him closer. “And for the record, I jumped and I’m falling—hard.”
“How do you know what you’re feeling is real, and that it’s not just me, making you feel that way?”
“I know what I want. I know that I’m going to want you regardless? Even if you are influencing my thought, I’ve felt this way before now.” I look at the ceiling coming to conclusion about this whole bound thing. Looking back at him I say “Sounds to me that we are meant to be together by some higher-power. We’re here, and becoming bound is just the seal to complete it.”
He looks at me. “It is.”
“And you don’t want to complete it?”
“No, I’m not saying that. Tracey, I’m often in your head. I know your feelings about a lot of different things. Are you really ready to dedicate all of you to me, and take on me, giving you all of me?” Am I? I can say ‘yes,’ but is it just me giving into my hormones, wanting him so badly? “Exactly.”
“So, what am I giving up now, if not all of me?”
His eyes, green and brown, swirl in front of mine. “Your time.”
My time? My feelings are crossed. I know what I want, but something is making me second-guess myself. Do I really want all of him, like I think I do? Being obligated to him—what does that even mean? It sounds like marriage. I don’t want to be married. But I want him—to fall asleep next to him, wake up next to him, breathe him, kiss him, and love him. I think.
Wait…why am I arguing with myself? I know what I want. I understand what I need.
“Nathan!” My tone is serious. He raises an eyebrow. “Did you really just try to change my mind? Did you just get in my head, and rearrange my thoughts?” He is crossing boundaries. And him denying me…how much more does he want me to take?
“Tracey.”
“Don’t lie to me,” I say aggressively.
He shakes his head. “I did. But I just wanted to make the idea occur to you, just to show you how you would feel. To see if that would make you feel any different.”
“And did my feelings change? I don’t feel a change in my feelings. Not cool, Nathan.” I push him—well, try to push him, but he doesn’t budge. “Excuse me,” I say reluctantly, and he moves to the side. I turn and climb onto the bed, trying to keep my head clear and not think about my feelings and my next move.
I lay down, and his phone starts ringing from the TV stand. It has a crazy ringtone that would jar me awake from my sleep. He looks over at me, and then walks over to his phone. He answers it and just listens.
Then he says, “Yeah, they did. No, they tried to kill Scott and me in front of Tracey.” Pause. “What was I supposed to do—let them? It’s not like I acted from anger. I was being protective. They came to kill us. What would you have preferred that I do?” He pauses for a long time. “Okay, I understand. Tell her I say ‘hi’ and ‘I love her.’” He ends the call.
“What was that all about?” I ask, wanting to know if there is a problem, or if we should be expecting another problem.
“My father. He was questioning me about the eels from this evening.” He walks over to the side of the bed that I’m lying on and sits down. “Look, Tracey. Shit is about to get bad for me.” He takes a breath and pushes his hands through his hair. “Not even three hours ago it happened and my father already knows about it. Meaning more may come, with the word traveling so fast. Things may be about to change for the worse and there are going to be sides of me that I don’t want you to see.
“Seeing me kill, and when I get really angry, my appearance changes. You can still recognize me, but I can take on the appearance of a…demon, and that’s when I’m out of control. If you’re caught in that fire and I hurt you, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.” He walks to the bathroom, closing the door.
I walk over to the bathroom door, sliding down beside it. I can hear him breathing heavy. “I’m all in…even if you go full demon. I know you will not hurt me.” I stop speaking now, knowing that I need to show him that I’ll stay with him. “Touch your chest, Nathan. You feel my heart beating, not yours,” I say in a faint whisper. “I’m permanent, through whatever—forever. I don’t care if you tear the world apart and smile when you finish. I’ll stand by you and with you. The day I decide to turn on you would be the day you rip my heart from my chest. And that will be the day we both fall.” He walks out of the bathroom, looking down at me. I meet his gaze. “How can you ask me to trust you, if you don’t trust me?”
He closes the door behind him, sliding down beside me. “What are you saying, Tracey?”
I look him over before I answer. “What does it sound like?”
“Sounds like something I need to hear.”
“Or something you need to listen to.” I scoot closer to him, and he puts his arm around me as I lay my head against his chest. “You know, this is all your fault. If you wouldn’t have hit me, you could have been all demon by yourself, like you want.”
“Nah, I like being with you more than I like being by myself. You give me reason. And I like having something or someone to keep me leveled and my head on straight.” He takes a deep breath. “I just didn’t expect for you to accept me like you do. I just knew after you saw my performance today, that was it.”
I shake my head. “I think I’ll stick around. I’ll put in a little more time getting to know you. If you don’t want to give me one-hundred-percent, I guess I’ll take your twenty.”
He moves so he can look at me. “If you want one-hundred, I’ll give it. Just know, there is no going back. I guess we will have to figure it out as we go, like what you’re going to do about your family, how you would finish school, and how to avoid getting killed, but—” He shrugs his shoulders.
“You’d let me get killed?” I ask, with a questionable look.
He pulls me into his lap. “Never.”
“So don’t talk crazy.” I start getting up. “Come on, let’s start the movie over so we can watch it. We can figure everything else out later.” I hope. “Maybe we could work on a couple of dreams you’ve had about me.”
He looks at me through his lashes as he starts to get up. “How do you know I dream about you?”
“You told me.”
He thinks for a moment, once on his feet. “I did, didn’t I?”
“You did,” I say, intrigued.
“You know something, Tracey?”
He follows me over to the bed. “What?”
“You are a freak.” He turns me around once we are at the bed.
“Only for you.”
“Keep it that way,” is the last thing he says before I’m in heaven. I knew he wanted it just as bad as I did.
I’m high off of Nathan—from his scent, his kiss, his touch. Everything feels amazing. His touch feels vibrant; his kiss feels exotic. His smell is enticing, and when he speaks, although it’s unknown to me, i
t makes everything passionate. How he does it, I have no idea, but he makes me feel good; he makes everything feel good. I forget about everything that has bothered me, and my thoughts are replaced with him and every feeling of him.
I’m tired of sitting back; I want to feel him under me. He’s not the easiest guy to move, but he lets me turn him over and sit atop him. He grabs my waist and squeezes off and on as I kiss him from his lips to his neck. I take his shirt off and he does the same to me. I have not felt him skin to skin, and I am craving it once the opportunity arises.
He pulls my hair tie from my ponytail and my hair falls around my shoulders. Taking all of one second to watch it, he attacks my neck. I push him back down to the bed, staring at him and his bare chest; he stares back. I lean over, kissing his chest. It is smooth, hairless; my lips move against and off of it with ease. He says nothing as I lower myself to his stomach, although his breathing deepens.
I lower myself to his navel and tug gently on his shorts—to move them a little lower. Lowering to his abdomen, I let my tongue taste first, and lower my lips to kiss after. As my lips touch, he lets out a throaty grunt. Quicker than I can blink, he has me on my back, my bra is off, and his lips are on mine.
I missed something.
Gently, he kisses me. “What are you trying to do to me?” he whispers.
I lift my legs up to his sides until my feet feel the waistband of his shorts. “Whatever you’re trying not to do,” I say as I kiss him, starting to inch his shorts down slowly, hoping he doesn’t notice too quickly.
“I notice,” he whispers through a kiss.
I’m intrigued. I reach down, pulling the drawstring of my shorts, and he moves my hands—stopping me. Grabbing both of my hands in one of his, he pushes them over my head. Moving back to my neck, applying sinful, body-scorching kisses, his free hand travels along my body—across my shoulder, over my breast, down my stomach to my shorts, and unties them. Butterflies erupt in my stomach and my legs fall to the bed as he pushes them down.
Trying to calm the nervous butterflies, I let out a quiet breath of satisfaction, and he pulls them down with no struggle. He sucks on my neck, hitting my ‘prepare her’ spots. My hormones rage out of control. Heat rolls from his body as I moan quietly in his ear.