by Lisa Olsen
“It is not. Bedrest is lying down, not sitting up,” he insisted stubbornly and I couldn’t help the roll of my eyes.
“Oh come on, you’re acting like my mother. I feel like I’ve been cut off from the world forever, I have no idea what’s going on and you don’t have a TV in your bedroom.”
“I’ll move the TV in there for you.”
“How about I lie down on the couch and I’ll let you carry me around like a baby if I have to move at all, how about that?” I gave him my most winsome smile, hoping at least part of him was still susceptible to my charms.
“Fine, you win,” Bishop swept me up into his arms, carrying me into his bathroom to set me down on the hard stone floor. My arms automatically rested around his neck at the motion and they were less eager to let go of him once he released me. Slowly they slid down the front of his chest, and I felt Bishop’s fingers curl around the belt loops of my jeans, drawing me closer before he let go all at once, taking a step backwards. “There are fresh towels there, let me know if you need anything.”
I could think of a few things, but I just nodded, letting out a pent up sigh after he left me to my bath all alone. From that single action I could tell there were still unresolved things between us, and Bishop hadn’t decided to go back to the way things were before Jakob showed and screwed things up. Taking a good long soak, I replenished the hot water twice, enjoying the heat and my prune-free fingers until I heard a short knock at the door.
“Are you alright? You’ve been in there a long time.”
“You’re more than welcome to come in and check,” I replied, an unmistakable note of hope creeping into my voice, but Bishop didn’t rise to the bait. We were back to that game again, the one where Bishop pretended he didn’t want anything more than friendship from me and only helped me out for my own protection.
If I’d been a more skilled seductress I might have been able to bust through that veneer of control he kept about himself, but my efforts fell flat. First I tried coming out in just a towel, but Bishop took one look at me and ordered me to put some clothes on. Then I tried leaning against him on the couch and he got up and moved to give me more room to stretch out. He didn’t renew that offer to carry me around everywhere either. Maybe he didn’t trust himself, I don’t know, but after a while I stopped trying and settled in on the couch to relax, until an alarm went off on his watch.
“Is there somewhere you have to be?” I asked.
“Time for you to eat,” he rose from his chair, silencing the alarm.
“I thought I can’t have bagged blood?” My brows drew together in confusion. I’d figured I’d have to do without for a while until I was back on my feet again. With all the blood they’d given me at the lab, I wasn’t even hungry.
“You can’t.”
“Okay… I’m obviously not in any shape to hunt. What are you going to do, order out for pizza and give me the driver?”
“I’m going to give you some of my blood.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Unable to hide my surprise as Bishop sat beside me and pushed his sleeve up, I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth either. “Um, thanks,” I smiled, picking up his offered hand.
“Don’t worry about it.” Bishop stared straight ahead, his body rigid in anticipation, as if he expected me to tear a chunk out of his wrist instead of take a drink, and I tapped on his arm to get his attention.
“Hey, you can relax, I won’t take that much.”
“Take what you need,” he said grimly, barely giving me a nod.
“If you say so,” I murmured, fangs extending with a snick as I remembered the last time I’d tasted his blood. My lips brushed over the smooth skin on the inside of his wrist in a lover’s kiss before I brought the sting of my teeth, wanting him to feel what I was feeling too. The instant I pierced his skin drew a sharp intake of his breath, and his free hand immediately tightened on the seat cushion behind me. Had I said I wasn’t particularly hungry? I was hungry alright, hungry for more contact and I reached out blindly, my hand splaying over the taut ridges of his abdomen as I drank.
I could feel the tension within him as Bishop tried to resist the pull between us, but as my mouth drew at his flesh, he lost that battle, gathering me onto his lap with a groan. His hand ran over the flare of my hip, fingers kneading, and I could feel his response growing beneath the rough fabric of his jeans. I gave my hips an experimental twitch, loving the throaty growl I dragged out of him in response.
I knew it was a purely physical response on his part, but I wanted it to be more. I wanted him to feel something more for me than obligation or regret. In that instant I wanted the man more than I wanted his blood. My mouth left his wrist, seeking him out in kind. Our lips crashed together in a blood fueled kiss, and it was like we’d never been apart. I clung to him desperately, my body singing under his touch until he wrenched his mouth from mine.
“That’s enough,” Bishop pulled me off his lap, depositing me on the couch as far away as possible.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured, still reeling from the abrupt change.
“You know we can’t be together like that.”
“Hey, that wasn’t all me and you know it. Bishop, let’s talk about this.”
“What’s left to talk about? You might not mind bouncing back and forth between us, but I don’t shift that fast.”
He meant Jakob, and I couldn’t believe he’d just said that to me. “I’m not.”
“I shouldn’t have brought you here, this was a bad idea from the start.” Bishop got up and retreated to the bedroom. “Why don’t you call Jakob to come and pick you up, I’m done servicing you.”
For long seconds I sat there dumbly, processing the hurtful words until my gumption kicked in. That was it, I was done. “You’re an idiot, you know that?” I’d never been anything but honest about my feelings for him, he was the one who kept bouncing in and out of my life. He had no right to talk to me like that when he’d been the one to insist on bringing me to his place, he’d been the one to insist on feeding me his blood, and he’d been a very active participant on the other end of that kiss. Jumping up, I stalked to the door, half expecting him to call me back at any moment.
But he didn’t.
And when that call didn’t come, my hand hovered over the door handle wondering why not? It came to me then, Bishop was pushing me away deliberately. I could easily guess why, but the real question remained - was I going to let him get away with it?
It would certainly simple up my life to go on home and leave him there to sulk in the dark all alone. It’d be light before too long and I had to get back home in time for school anyway, the last thing I needed was to stay there and bear the brunt of his insults while he nursed his bruised ego. It would be the simplest thing in the world to pull that door open and go home.
My hand tightened on the door handle.
Instead I turned around and went back to find him sitting on the edge of his bed, head in his hands. Bishop looked up as I stood in front of him, a deep scowl appearing, as if he waited for me to read him the riot act for his angry words. Instead my hands reached out to hold either side of his face. Slowly, giving him plenty of time to pull away if that’s what he wanted to do, I leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to his lips.
Bishop’s lips parted with a gasp of surprise, but he didn’t resist. Maybe he was in shock, I know I was a little shocked at my boldness. This kiss was slow and tender, at least on my part. Still, it felt like Bishop held back, kissing me with his mouth but not really into it and I began to worry I’d made a mistake. Maybe I couldn’t reach him?
But then his arms wrapped around me, binding me to him, and I felt him come to life in my embrace. Effortlessly, he pulled me back onto the bed with him and rolled, pinning me under his body. All at once I felt that familiar fire spring up between us, and our limbs tangled together as we fumbled to remove each other’s clothes. Neither one of us wanted to think or speak, there would be time for words later.
Besides, I knew everything I needed to when I looked into his eyes.
I wasn’t the most experienced girl when it came to guys, but I wasn’t the shy virgin Bridget pegged me to be either. I didn’t have sex without love, and no amount of heat from shared blood would have left me naked and panting beneath him, this was the real thing. I was ready to accept Bishop in every way, into my heart and into my body.
I shifted beneath his welcome weight, hands guiding him urgently to let him know what I wanted. Where Bishop had been hesitant with me in the past, there was no such caution now. His touch was strong and certain, making me ready for him. I opened my mouth to tell him I couldn’t get any readier, and he captured it for another deep, drugging kiss, pulling back to watch my face as he took me with a single stroke. For long seconds we stared at each other, sharing that perfect moment, and then his lips dipped to mine again and with that tiny friction we burst into flame.
The room filled with our soft cries of pleasure as we moved together, each kiss and stroke on my overly sensitized body carrying me that much closer to release. I don’t know if it was because of the blood connection or hell, maybe Bishop was just incredibly intuitive, but it felt like I had only to wish for something and he was doing it. There was no awkwardness that came from a first time together, our bodies danced in a perfect synchrony of movement. The dance became more frenzied as we strained together and my teeth scraped at his shoulder to keep from shouting with pleasure.
“Do it,” Bishop panted, his body covered in a fine sheen of sweat.
I knew what he wanted, because I wanted it too. My fangs sank into his neck and our moans of pleasure melded together as I drank. Once again I was overwhelmed by the intoxicating taste of him, only this time it was coupled with the feel of him moving and surging within me, it was almost more than I could bear.
And then he bit me in kind, and my world exploded in a shower of sparks as I reached a place I never knew existed. On and on it went, and for the space of long moments I could feel his pleasure mingled with mine. We were wrapped together, joined body and soul and I never wanted it to end.
Gradually though, the sharp pleasure subsided, and my senses returned enough to realize that Bishop had stopped drinking from me, still lazily lapping at the wound. I did the same, glad to see the puncture wounds begin to heal quickly. My body felt alive and tingly and very, very satisfied, and I could see from the expression on his face he felt the same way. Until his face clouded and he stared at my neck in self loathing.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that.”
My heart sank, second thoughts already? Couldn’t he even let us enjoy the afterglow? “I’m not, it was perfect.”
“You’re still weak, I had no business taking any blood from you.”
“Oh that, but I wanted you to. Or are you saying you regret everything we just did?”
“What? No… that’s not…” Bishop blinked, clueing into the source of my distress. “No, I don’t regret what just happened,” he smiled down at me tenderly, stroking the side of my cheek. “But I shouldn’t have drunk from you, it’s too soon.”
Relaxing, I kissed his hand. “It’s fine, I feel fine. I feel better than fine I feel… supercalifragilistic…” I stopped at his blank stare. “You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you? You know, the word you say when you can’t think of what to say?” Cartoons did handsprings in my head singing along with my choice of words, but that pretty much summed it up. Still, Bishop gave me a helpless shrug. “You’ve never seen Mary Poppins, have you?”
“That’s a kid’s movie, right?”
“That’s debatable,” I frowned, wondering if they had it streaming on Netflix. “I can’t believe you’ve never seen it.”
“I haven’t been a kid for a very long time and they didn’t have that one when I was growing up,” he grinned.
“We’ll have to watch it sometime, it’s a classic. In fact, I’m betting there are a lot of things in pop culture you’ve probably missed out on. I think it’s time I take care of that serious dent in your education.”
Bishop’s smile stretched wider and he carefully rolled off of me, curling me up against his side in the process. “I like the sound of that.”
“Mmm, me too,” I sighed happily, playing with the light dusting of hair across his chest, tracing a path down to his hip where the strange symbol tattooed there made me think of the Order. “Is Bishop supposed to be a first name or a last name?”
“Just Bishop. It’s the name I was given when I joined the Order. It has to do with leaving your old life behind.”
“Hence, no more Ulrik?”
“Yep,” he pressed a kiss to my temple and closed his eyes.
“Why does it bother you to talk about the past so much? Was it awful?” I eased my way into the question of his past. Some of it I knew from Jakob and Mason, but I still wanted him to share that part of himself with me, I couldn’t help it.
“Parts of it were, but not everything. There are some things I’m not proud of doing and some things I’d rather forget about entirely. I guess I feel like the past is the past and there’s no sense in dwelling on it.”
“I like to hear about your past, even the not so good parts. It’s still a part of you, whether you want to ignore it or not, you know.”
“I know,” he sighed. “I’d still rather not talk about her, just like I’d rather not hear about the time you spend with him.”
“That’s alright, I’d rather not think about you with her either,” I agreed. “And just for the record, I’m not with him, I’m with you. As long as you want me to be.”
“Or until he takes you,” his arm tightened around me slightly.
“We’re not talking about him, remember?”
“Right,” he chuckled, kissing the top of my head again. Now that the dam was broken, he couldn’t seem to stop touching me or laying little kisses wherever he could reach. I could definitely get used to that. “What do you want to talk about?”
“Tell me about your life, when you were alive. You mentioned having a sister.”
“I did, Adriana. She was my baby sister, barely twelve when I was… when I had to leave. She was a singer like my mother, we were all performers when I was small, that’s how we earned our living.”
“Really? What did you do? Play the piano?” I tried to picture him as part of a musical group like the Partridge family, traipsing all over Europe.
“I did,” he nodded, the ghost of a smile coloring his features. “Actually, it was an ottavino, which is more like a harpsichord. Nothing to brag about at first, our equivalent of show tunes at the time, songs the masses enjoyed but never made the history books. I accompanied my mother when she sang on stage, and later my sister. Some nights we only played for table scraps and beer, but some nights… some nights we filled the halls and raked in the money.”
“What did your father play?”
“Dice.”
From his tone I guessed not very well. “He wasn’t a musician then?”
“No, he was my mother’s manager. At least, that’s what they called it, but I knew, even from the time I was very young what it was. He pimped her out for private performances on a regular basis.” At my sudden intake of breath, Bishop turned to meet my gaze. “I told you it wasn’t all pretty.”
“And she was… okay with that?”
“More than okay with it. It paid a lot better than the money we made at the theater, and she got to keep the presents she earned.”
“I’m sorry,” I laid my head down on his shoulder. “Did it bother you very much?”
“I made my peace with it a long time ago,” he gave a half shrug.
“How long ago was all of this?”
“I was born in 1547… Christ, time flies.”
I did the math in my head, that put him at over four hundred and sixty years old. “Wow, and this was in Germany?”
“Actually I was born in Italy on the road between festivals. My mother was Italian as was her
manager, who I grew up thinking was my father at first. Now he was the original bastard. God, I hated his guts.” It was easy to see those feelings hadn’t faded much even after so many years.
“Where did the name Ulrik come from then?”
“That would be from the man she claimed was my biological father. My mother said he was a wealthy German Lord, but that could have been bullshit. I never met him, but he did make sure I was properly educated, so it couldn’t have been completely made up. My father hated me for that, used to accuse me of being too uppity, but he didn’t say no to the money he sent.”
“That must have been hard on you. What about your sister, was she his?”
“God I hope not, but my mother claimed she was.”
“What happened to her?”
Bishop was silent for long seconds, his eyes trained on the ceiling and I almost thought he wasn’t going to answer me. “Her own father turned her out.”
“He kicked her out of your home? Why?”
“No, he turned her out, like my mother. Barely thirteen years old and he forced her into letting men…” his voice broke, and I held him in silent shock as he fought for control.
“You don’t have to tell me about it if you don’t want to,” I said softly. “But I’m here for you if you want to get it out.”
“I wasn’t there. I should have been, I would have taken her out of there, but Carys had already come for me. It was months before we passed through town again and I went to visit. My mother had consumption and couldn’t work anymore, so that bastard put Adriana to work instead. I killed him where he stood when I found out about it, broke his neck just like that,” he snapped his fingers. “I should have made him suffer.”
“With needles,” I agreed vehemently, appalled by the tale of woe. “Or possibly water boarding, too bad there wasn’t electrocution back then.”
Bishop’s arm gave me a squeeze. “My mother told me later that Adri had been brutalized by one of the men he sent her to, and she slit her own wrists to keep from going back.”
“Did you kill him too?”