by Lynsay Sands
“You sensed my obsession and need for you and it scared you,” he said with a nod, and then, his expression and voice achingly sincere, he said, “I am sorry, Corazon. I handled everything in the worst possible way. I should have read your grandmother to learn more about your past. Had I known of the abuse you suffered as a small child, I would have handled things differently. But I did not know, and I longed to be close to you despite it being a torture to me. So, I kept making Ana hold parties for business associates and high-ranking immortals, just so that you would have to walk home alone, and I would have an excuse to accompany you.”
He bowed his head briefly, and when he lifted it again, his expression was grim. “And then one such day, you did not come out to make the walk home. I waited an hour, and then I decided that you must have stayed to help your abuela with the cooking, and gave up. By that time, guests were arriving, so I went in to the party. It was only after the meal that I was able to get away to the kitchens. I was hoping just to catch a glimpse of you, but you were not there. Confused, I read your grandmother and learned that you had gone to a birthday party directly from school. I went back to the party, but could not get you from my mind and finally made an excuse to leave early.
“I had gained the address of this party from your abuela, and so I went there. I thought just to check on you, perhaps watch from a distance to be sure you got home all right. But it was over when I got there. So I went to the home you shared with your abuela, but there were no lights on. You were not home.”
“We had gone to the cantina where Emilita’s brother worked,” Ildaria whispered.
“Si,” he said sadly. “I learned that when I returned to your friend’s house. The parents thought you had all gone to Emilita’s cousin’s house so that she could play her guitar for you while the parents stayed at her house. But her little sister knew the secret and I eventually read it from her. Of course, then I hurried to the cantina. I intended to drag you out and give you hell for behaving so badly when your grandmother had trusted you. And for taking such risks when the Haitian soldiers were everywhere, raping our women and—” He paused abruptly when she flinched and then ducked his head, his hands clenching. But after a moment he continued.
“I heard you cry out, begging someone to stop as I approached the cantina. I followed the sound around to the alley in back. And when I saw those two men attacking you . . .” He shook his head, his expression tightening with remembered fury. “I have never been so enraged in my life . . . or so frightened. You could have been raped. You could have been killed. I could have lost you,” he said with horror.
Swallowing, he closed his eyes briefly and then continued. “I dragged the first one away from you, the one pinning your arms to the ground, and tossed him aside like the trash he was. I then grabbed the one who was actually on top of you. He had your skirt pulled up, but was distracted trying to get his pants undone. He hadn’t even noticed his friend’s absence. Him, I bit,” he acknowledged grimly. “But I did not just feed from him, I tore his throat open on the spot for daring to touch you. It should have soothed me to have punished them so. My temper should have eased then. Instead, heat poured through me and my rage increased, becoming almost unbearable. I wanted to soothe you, but instead I attacked and berated you. And si, I threatened you with shameful violence.”
He looked away, shame on his face, and then said, “I wish I could say with certainty that I would not have used you that way, but I fear I would have. Fortunately, the rage in me was twisting me up so much that I stopped to grab you by the shoulders and shake you.”
Juan faced her again, his expression bleak. “The change in you was instantaneous. The weeping and pleading stopped at once. Rage suffused your face and you suddenly clamped down on me like a dog with a bone. It was a shock. The sudden change in you as well as the fact that there was anything out for you to bite. I hadn’t even realized I had been dislodged from my pants, I remember the pain, and trying to push you away without doing you damage, and then out of desperation I hit you and that ended it, though not the way I had been hoping for,” he said with a small, wry smile.
“You ran off then, leaving me rolling on the ground in agony. A few minutes later, Miguel, one of my men who patrolled the streets, found me. He helped me to my feet and started to help me out of the alley when we heard a moan. The man who had been pinning your arms, the one I had pulled from you first, he still lived. I told Miguel to bring him to me, that I would feed from him. He started toward him with me, but paused after a couple of steps and shook his head. He said he was no good for me. He was messed up from opium, mescal, and coca leaves.”
Ildaria stiffened, recalling an immortal warning her about that not long after she’d first turned. She’d stopped her from biting a soldier Ildaria had lured behind a building. She’d seen her lead the man there and had followed to stop and warn her. She’d said that the soldier’s blood was no good. It was soaked with opium and mescal, and even cocaine from coca leaves. Most of the soldiers seemed to like the combination, but it was not a good mix for immortals. They had been known to go mad from it. Besides, it would not help her. Her body would expend more blood removing the tainted blood and she would simply be in more need.
Ildaria had been very careful after that, always reading prospective donors before feeding from them, to make sure they had none of those substances in them.
When she sighed and met Juan’s gaze, he nodded soberly. “That was the source of my uncontrollable rage. And, ultimately, yours.”
“Mine?” she asked with surprise, and then protested, “I was mortal then, and I’d consumed no blood.”
“Think back,” he said patiently. “When did your anger start? The anger that made you want to bite me?”
Ildaria frowned, recalling it well. As she’d told G.G., one minute she’d been weeping with confusion and fear and then Juan had started to shake her and she’d suddenly been suffused with rage. “When you were shaking me.”
“When I touched your bare shoulders with my bare hands,” Juan pointed out gently. “We are life mates, mi amor. My passions transferred to you in that moment. My need and my rage. The same uncontrollable rage that struck me when I consumed the blood of the bastard who had been attacking you. Before that I was angry, si, but at them, not everything and everyone. And not like I was after I bit him. Then I was just . . .” He shook his head. “It was uncontainable, and confusing. I needed to hurt someone, and you were the only one there after I’d dealt with the men.”
Ildaria frowned and then glanced to Lucian. He nodded silently.
“I have regretted that night for the last two hundred years, mi amor,” Juan continued. “I have searched for you. I have had my men search for you. Even your abuela tried to help.”
Ildaria’s head shot back around, her eyes finding his. “What?”
He hesitated and then said, “The moment I healed and recovered from my injury, I started looking for you. With no luck. You were not at your abuela’s and neither was she.”
“She stayed with me at the plantation for the first few weeks,” Ildaria murmured.
“Si.” He nodded. “I learned that from a message Ana sent me. It was waiting for me at home when I returned from searching for you one night, but I was tired and did not bother with it until morning. I could not believe it when I read that she had the daughter of her cook, with her. That the girl had been turned, but had no memory of how or by whom despite weeks of healing, and she felt the Council needed to intercede.”
He grinned. “I thought God had answered my prayers. Not only were you found, but you did not remember those terrible minutes in the alley; neither the attack by the soldiers, nor by me. It seemed a blessing. I rushed over at once, making plans along the way. You were still too young to claim, but at least I need not worry about your coming to harm before I could claim you. I would see to it that you and your abuela were well taken care of until you were ready to be my life mate. I would see you just this once to assure myself
you were well, and then would send you away with your abuela so that I would not be tempted to try to see you until you were at least eighteen. In the meantime, I would keep myself distracted by building you the most beautiful home, and filling it with everything you might like. And I would plan the wedding too.
“I greeted Ana joyfully when I got there, and told her to take me to you. But you were gone when we got to your room. Ana sent servants looking for you. A maid came back several minutes later saying one of the men said you had left. He thought you had gone for a walk. But I feared you may have seen me, and that it had brought your memories back to you. I feared you had fled when you remembered and realized Ana was my daughter.”
“Si,” was all Ildaria said. It was all she needed to say.
He sighed unhappily, but continued. “And so I started the very long search for you. First I went to your abuela, hoping you might have returned to her, but you had not. I stayed a while to see if you would come. Your abuela served me tea, and I told her that you were my life mate. She was very pleased at the news. She was happy that you would be settled and with a man she considered to be honorable and strong and able to protect you down through the ages.” His voice turned bitter at the end, but then he cleared his throat and continued. “I felt like a fraud under her benign eye, and I told her what had happened.”
Pausing, he grimaced and said, “I did not intend to, but your abuela . . .” Expression sincere, he said, “She was a very special woman. There was nothing but kindness in her heart and soul. She was most understanding, and assured me all would be well. I would find you and all would be as it should.” He sighed. “I enjoyed my visits with her. I went to see her two or three times a week, and we talked of little but you and her hopes for you. Neither of us had any idea you would hide so well or for so long.”
“You had tea with her two or three times a week?” Ildaria asked with disbelief.
“Si. I enjoyed her company. It was soothing. And I missed her terribly when she passed. I grieved. I do not often grieve for mortals. I am sorry you missed her death and funeral.”
“I was there,” she told him, recalling watching him at the graveside. “I had to stay at a distance, but I saw.”
“Why?” he asked with bewilderment. “Why did you not simply come and join us?”
“Because your men were everywhere, hunting me.”
“They would not have harmed you. They had orders not to harm you,” he assured her.
“Well, I didn’t know that. I thought you—” Ildaria stopped abruptly and scowled at him. She still couldn’t believe that he hadn’t wanted to hurt her for what she had done to him. Or that he wasn’t the monster in her story. Mouth twisting, she asked, “What of your jacking up the price of blood to force immortals along the shore off their property so you could have it?”
“It is not what you think,” he said, and explained, “Three times in the last twenty years my men almost caught you near the shoreline.”
“Si, and each time I managed to escape,” she snapped triumphantly.
“Si,” he agreed, sounding a bit snappish himself for the first time. “But only because they were under strict orders not to harm you. My men took grievous wounds trying not to harm you while trying to capture you.”
Ildaria straightened, offended at the suggestion that her escaping had been purely because he’d refused to allow his men to hurt her. She was a good fighter, dammit.
“But were you good enough to take on three or four trained Enforcers and escape?” Lucian asked, apparently in her thoughts.
Ildaria frowned at the question, not wanting to acknowledge that she’d been more than a little lucky a time or two. She’d always escaped unscathed. Her hunters had not always been so lucky. She had caused more than a few grievous wounds. Not wanting to think about that, she said, “You still haven’t explained the price of blood and taking people’s land.”
“I had concluded that you had someplace on the shore where you lived. But a check of the land registry did not turn up your name, or anything close to it. Either you had used a different name, or someone there must be hiding you. My only hope was to force you out of hiding there. To do that, I needed to force the other immortals out. Perhaps then—” He paused abruptly, his lips compressing, and then said, “I was becoming desperate, Angelina. I have been searching for two hundred years. It was the only thing I could think to do.”
“So you ruined all those immortals.”
“No one was ruined,” he assured her quietly. “I know the rumors say I got the land cheap from desperate immortals, but I spread those rumors on purpose. The truth is, I paid more than fair market prices for the properties, and then moved them to properties I own by the shore down by La Romana. Properties I gave them for free. All they had to do was show up to sign the contracts, where I could read them to see if they knew of you, or had even unknowingly seen you. After that, I made them agree never to tell anyone, and never to return to Punta Cana. Every one of them was happy to agree. They got the new land plus payment for their old property. And it is nicer there, less developed.” His mouth tightened. “I had no desire to ruin poorer immortals, I was just trying to flush you out by taking away your hiding place.”
“But Vasco . . .”
“Vasco has no idea what I have been doing. None of my children do. They all believe the rumors and stories they hear. I have not spoken personally to any of them but Ana since the night you were attacked. And I only saw Ana once or twice afterward. Fortunately, she was newly mated as well, easily read and either unable or too distracted to bother reading me.”
Ildaria frowned. Vasco had said his father had been distant the last two centuries, but he’d never said he hadn’t seen him at all. “Why wouldn’t you see your own children?”
“Because I am ashamed,” he confessed unhappily. “I attacked you like an animal. Drugs be damned, I should have been stronger than those blasted drugs. I should have resisted the rage. I should have protected you from myself. I will not have my children know I am such a weak, disgusting animal.” Closing his eyes, he ran a weary hand through his hair. “I needed to find you first and make it right with you before I could face them.”
Opening his eyes, he managed a smile. “But now I can. I have finally found you. I can claim you now and finally make things right. Say you will be my life mate, Angelina.”
“The hell she will. She’s my life mate!” G.G. roared before she could respond. She wasn’t the least surprised by his outburst, or the way he suddenly leapt up and rushed across the room. She was surprised when he suddenly stopped dead. His face went blank and he backed up to the couch and sat down.
Ildaria turned back to Juan and demanded, “Let him go.”
“I will release him when you give me your answer,” he said simply.
When she started to shake her head, he said quickly, “Lucian told me this mortal was a possible life mate too. But he also told me he has refused to turn for you, Angelina. He cannot possibly love you as I do, or he would not hesitate to turn.”
Ildaria frowned. He was hitting her where her insecurities lay. G.G.’s refusal to turn and be with her longer than the thirty or so years he had left as a mortal did bother her despite knowing the reason for it. She’d hoped that time and life mate sex would convince him. That he would come to love her and change his mind. But while they’d admitted their love to each other in the SUV, he hadn’t said anything about turning, and she was beginning to fear he never would. That she wasn’t enough to make him want to. Her only hope was whatever trick his mother had up her sleeve and she didn’t even know what that was.
Ultimately, it didn’t matter though. She did love G.G. But even if she hadn’t loved him, Juan had been the boogeyman to her for two hundred years. And while she believed it was possible he was telling the truth—
“He is telling the truth,” Lucian said mildly, and Ildaria whirled on him furiously.
“Will you get out of my head and let me think?” she demanded
.
“I am just trying to be helpful. I am telling you that everything Juan has said is true. He has been desperately searching for you for two hundred years, and became so desperate, he came up with that ridiculous plan to try to force you out into the open by removing any immortals in the area where you were spotted most often.”
“Thank you, Lucian,” Juan said dryly, obviously taking umbrage at his plan being called ridiculous.
“None of it matters,” Ildaria said firmly, scowling from one man to the other. “The fact is I love Joshua, mortal or not.”
“How can you love him?” Juan burst out, really looking as if he couldn’t understand it. “My men said they call him G.G. for Green Giant here for heaven’s sake, and look at his ridiculous hair and clothing.”
Ildaria did look. Her eyes traveling over G.G.’s bright green Mohawk, and the jeans and T-shirt he’d donned that day. The jeans were a faded blue with several rips and frayed holes, and there was a chain dangling between one of the belt loops and his pocket. His keys were on that chain, she knew. As for the T-shirt, it was pale gray with three small boxes on it, one under the other. The top box was empty and had the word SINGLE beside it; the next one down was also empty and had TAKEN beside it. The bottom box, though, had a check mark inside it and the words next to it were Waiting for a blonde with three dragons.
Ildaria smiled now as she had the first time she’d seen it. It was a reference to a television show called Game of Thrones. G.G. had purchased the entire series from Apple and had insisted they had to watch it when he’d found out she’d never seen the show. They’d only gone through half the first season so far, but she was enjoying it.
“He is a mortal child,” Juan said with disgust. “He could never love you as I do.”
Ildaria turned back to Juan, taking in his face, more traditional hair, and the designer suit he wore. He was a handsome man, she had to admit . . . but so was G.G., just in a different way. And G.G. had been nothing but kind and loving and passionate with her, while Juan . . .