“You speak theoretically.”
“I’ve seen it happen.”
Revulsion streaks across his face. “It sounds dysfunctional.”
I smile, but the corners of my lips pull down killing it dead. “You’re the first thing I choose to keep for myself. That I refuse to give up.” I pat my chest. “Mine.”
Daniel doesn’t speak. He scrubs the sponge over my back with rapt attention.
How embarrassing to throw all that out there and to get nothing in return. ‘I’m not trying to pressure you–’
‘Don’t assume I won’t respond.’
Struggling not to hold bated breath, I focus on the haunting music. I inhale deeply to appreciate the delicate high notes of the bath oil. I flex my back and take pleasure in the steam caressing my skin; cooling gathering, rolling down to re-join the body of water cocooning my limbs and offering the gentlest buoyancy.
“Before I carried the curse of the bloodline I was a plunderer.” Daniel is intensely still. His voice is quiet and scarier for it. “Life was to take. Hoard. It was the nature of those who surrounded me as well. Life was hard. It created men of cruelty more often than kindness. Becoming this,” he motions to his body, “amplified my defects. I am– No.” He rocks onto his heels. “I hear your thoughts. I am not kind, Harmony. There can be no greater mistake in believing so.”
“You are to me.”
The sponge is flung to the floor.
Daniel shifts onto his knees. He takes my head in both hands, fingers tunnelling my hair and digging into my scalp.
He drags me over the edge of the tub until my stomach presses into the rim.
Water drips onto the stone floor in steady plunks.
Startled, my heart bangs against my breastbone. I grab his forearms and splash water over us both. Bubbles dribble from my hands down his arm to pop on his elbow.
I shake.
He forces my head to turn. “I fed on you.” His wintry voice is infused with power. Each syllable punches my eardrum. “I fucked you. I took you to do both at my leisure.”
I jerk my head around. Close. His nose brushes mine, and his breath blows over my wet lips. My gaze alternates from his left eye to his right. The right one has a hazel splotch edging his iris. His pupils contract to slits. Witchy. His catlike traits are peculiar. Something I never thought I’d call beautiful.
His intensity no longer frightens me. Isn’t that funny? He uses such clever tactics to scare people, to hold them at arm’s length. Unearthing more of his thorny character is the prize after withstanding these dynamic moments.
“I’m not offended.” Keeping eye contact, I kiss the tip of his nose. “I won’t run from you. You say things to scare me, but in case you haven’t noticed, I end up thinking the opposite of what you want.”
“I hear you rationalizing. You think you can take the measure of a man who admits his faults.” His fingers dig harder. “That you can endure him if you know deep inside he is good and honourable.”
“I refuse to be intimidated. Not this time.” Crisp hairs dampen under my palms as I stroke his forearms. “Nothing has been forced on me. I left with you. Willingly. I gave my body to you, willingly. My choice.”
His lips drift closer to mine until they touch. ‘Naïve. I manipulate. My nature twists any endeavour I attempt. You are a conquest.’
‘You think you control me. That the things you do for me out of kindness are for your benefit.’
‘There is no emotion you feel that does not pass your lovely face. There is no word you say that does not give insight to your every thought. Even those are not hidden from me. I anticipate what you will do, what you will say. I use it to my advantage. Everything is used to my advantage.’
‘I’m young compared to you, but my mind is mine. So are my actions. Anyone can guess what someone will do. How does being observant of those around you make you unkind?’
‘The core of my kindness is deceit. A self-serving that ensures my best interests.’
My forehead furrows. ‘Well, everything we do is self-serving. Altruism is a myth suggesting we’re stronger than our baser nature.’ I shrug. ‘You’re up front. I respect your honesty.’
He lets me go, and I slip back into the tub.
“You will learn.” He is frustrated, eyes distant and cold. “Wet your hair.”
Grinding my teeth, I meet his glare and remain still. “Don’t order me around. I’m young not a child.”
Shaking, I shove my hips forward and dip my head. My arched back pushes my breasts out of the water, and my nipples tighten in the colder air.
He does not touch me, not as I wish him to.
Sex is easy. The body can communicate in ways the mind cannot match. I know how to react to Daniel when he wants inside me. The atlas of his mind is something else entirely. Those pieces don’t fit. They don’t always make sense nor have a way to be touched.
I wrap my arms around my knees and curl inward.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Gentle and methodical, Daniel soaps my head with shampoo that smells like lavender. His nails lightly scrub my scalp, and he lifts the heavy mass of my hair to rub the ends.
I stifle a giggle as suds crawl down my neck in a lingering tickle.
The last notes of the piano fade away.
I rinse then stand. The water sluices down my body and wets the stone. “And the music? I still don’t understand.”
Daniel folds me into a towel and dries my face with the edge. He follows the contours of my chin reverently. “I hate others can find pleasure in what I create when I cannot. Music lost its hold on me long ago. The magic left.” He looks lost when he says this. He doesn’t know why he no longer finds pleasure in his own music. “So I play for none but myself.”
Touched, he explained something so important, I brush my hands through the strands of his hair. “We do what we need to stay sane. I’m grateful you felt you could share some with me. Maybe one day you’ll play for me.”
His gaze flashes to mine then away. “I wanted to give you something ... good to remember me by.”
“Stop. I’ll pass this stupid test, and then you’ll have to spend the rest of my life making it up to me.”
“The rest of your life.” His whisper is aggrieved. “So short.”
“Don’t.”
His demeanor darkens. “You would have left anyway.”
“I said stop.” I tug viciously on his hair. “You can’t use that as an excuse to push me away. Death is a natural cost of life. You’d give up everything we could have for something that will happen decades from now?”
“Drinking my blood would help. A friend of mine.… No, a brother, Sebastian was besotted by his Bride. She was Human, and drank from him to extend her life. It worked, but after so many years her mind … cracked.” His voice is brittle. Empty. “The taint stretched her sanity to breaking. Dug deep and took hold. Ben tried for years to persuade him to let her pass. Nia longed for it, but Sebastian couldn’t bear to give her up.”
“You’re not telling me this story because it has a happy ending.”
“It would be the same with you.” Introspective and unfocused, his fingers tighten on the towel. “Poisoned until there is nothing but sickness that devours.”
There is a point to what he’s saying. Complicated and wrathful as he can be, I’m not sure I want to learn it.
“You’re trying to scare me.”
Can’t say it isn’t working.
“Scare you?” Daniel is amused. “I have no need to, sweetling. The night I tried to kill Ben, Sebastian visited Castle with Nia. He was offered a choice, to stand by my side or Ben’s. He chose wrong.” Daniel studies me. He taps my shoulders. “Go ahead. Speak your mind, I haven’t looked.”
I chew on my bottom lip. ‘I’ve learnt not to assume when it comes to you.’ I’m beginning to peek around the façade Daniel is so talented at presenting. He drops provocative statements into conversation then moves aside to watch. People lose sight of who he i
s. They make horrible assumptions, and throw accusations at his feet. How often has someone proved him wrong and waited for him to confirm or deny what he or she is thinking? I’d been guilty of judging him without fully understanding what had happened too. Falling victim to that neutral expression he uses to cloak his emotions. When I learnt he’d killed Sean, I assumed he’d done it because he’s wicked and spiteful, not because he was defending himself. “My first thought was you killed them in cold blood, but it’s all gray with you, isn’t it?”
“I rebelled against the new Child.” He’s thoughtful, eyeing me in a new light. “My opinion was not radical, only my actions. My followers felt as strongly as I. The most loyal of them, Damien, took Nia’s life when Sebastian made it clear what he thought. He saw no honour in my campaign. Damien gave me the loyalty I wished from my Protégée, but he was not half the man Ben is.” Broad shoulders slump in a rare show of distress. “Their death is not what I wanted. He said there was nothing left for him. He begged me to end it. So I did.”
“What happened to Damien?”
“Destroyed. Those who followed me were considered too dangerous and put down. Ben would never allow those who’d endangered his Bride to survive.” Daniel chuckles. “Except me, of course, but the mercy to spare my life came from Lee herself.”
“Such loss.”
“Thousands of years of experience destroyed because I could not bear him finding the elusive thing, other than power, that I desired and believed I had lost.”
White hot, viscous jealousy. “Anya. You believed there was no hope for you to love again because you thought you’d lost your Bride.”
He studies me.
“You loved her.”
Still nothing.
“Love her?”
“Love?” He repeats the word as if he can’t comprehend it. As if it’s sticky or contagious.
“It’s not a disease.”
“I ask myself that question now and know I do not, did not. We brought out the worst in each other. I took from her and she from me. Respecting the limits of others has never been a strength of mine. I took too much. The body of her Sire.” He lowers his head. “The life of her son.”
“Her son?”
“I thought you would have asked about the Sire.”
I want every detail about the Sire to torture myself with, but I’m too proud to ask. “You’re like, old, right?” I roll my eyes, jealous but amused. “I’d be worried if you hadn’t, you know, with others. It’s alright.”
His lips twitch. “How gracious of you.” The tension between us eases some, and he spreads his hands across my waist. “Anya fed her boy blood to keep him with her throughout her reign. She gave me immortality, but still I was envious of him. He stole her from me.”
“She was his mother. If she was desperate enough to feed him tainted blood of course she would spend time with him.”
“I never said my relationship with her is healthy.”
“Was. She’s dust.”
Daniel blinks. “I forgot. Time has passed.”
Awkward.
“You killed her son?”
“He was a murderer. Sick in the head.” Daniel squeezes my waist until I meet his gaze. “I told you. The blood destroys the mind. Our mutated bodies can handle it, but Human flesh is not designed to contain such wickedness. It’s why we die and change when we become what we are.”
“So what if he was a murderer? You don’t give the impression you care if people live or die.”
“The need to kill indiscriminately is the mark of a weak man with a weaker mind. I kill without hesitation but never without provocation. His death was past due. My motivation was wrong, but the justification in the eyes of moral obligation unquestionably right.”
I’m astounded. It does my heart good to know I’d been right to learn about the Vampires myself rather than depend on tales told to me as a pup by the Pack.
“I’m surprised Ben didn’t see your uprising coming. It’s going to be hard for him to forgive you.”
“Ah, sweetling, you think he’ll try.” Daniel flicks me under the chin. “How old-world.”
I catch his hand and move it from my face. “Jesus, Daniel.”
“Do you know what infuriates me? I meant to help. Ben never saw that or he would have tried to hear me. Though I never even attempted to explain to her, Lee did. She understood. To this day, I’m convinced that is why she could not end me. Though there are moments I seriously disapprove of her benevolence.” His smile is small but genuine. “Times I do not are when I think of you.”
He makes sure my back and chest are dry before squeezing the water from my hair and patting it down.
That Daniel has lost so much so recently broke my heart. “I’m so, so sorry. Sebastian sounded, well, he sounded cool.”
“Cool?” Chuckling, Daniel wraps the towel under my arms, knotting the front so I’m wearing a terrycloth dress. “It happened, and I’m over it.” He meets my eyes again, and there’s no pretense. “I was the moment I took his pain away. I pray his soul found hers. No one deserved an afterlife more.”
He pulls the bath plug. The water drains.
“I offered the same to Lee once.”
“An afterlife?”
“I offered to end her pain. I think she would have said yes, in the end, but Ben came for her.” He heaves a sigh. “Fate is cruel. It offers what I desire most, a false promise of happiness.”
The room drops in temperature. The light seems to flicker and darken. Daniel’s emotions are so intense I feel the atmosphere thicken with dread.
My wolf shivers, wary of the predatory shift in the Vampire.
“When will it be? Tell me, Princess.”
Sensing danger, I tense at this hushed mention of my title, something I didn’t think he’d ever acknowledge let alone call me. “What?”
“How much time will pass before you resent what I am?”
“And what are you?”
“A demon with venomous blood.” He leans forward, aggressive. “How long before words of devotion from me make you ill.”
“I don’t get it. Why assume things will end badly?”
He rakes both hands through his hair. “This won’t work.”
“I know you’re worried because we’re different, but it doesn’t matter. Not if we don’t want it to.”
“I’m cursed.”
I growl warningly.
“How long before you hate me for damning your soul?” He shouts. His bellows are tormented and harsh. “How many years will you withstand before you covet death just to be free of me?”
“You’re scaring me.”
“About time.”
“This doesn’t have to be complicated. Talk to me.”
“I am.” He cuts the air with a violent swipe. “You’re not hearing me. This thing between us would lessen if you stopped accepting it.”
“You want me to fight it?” I thrust out my chin. “I will if you will.”
“I am.”
“Then why am I here?” I stamp my foot, childish, but it gets my point across. “You act so high and mighty when you’re just as sucked in as I am. Why did you wait for me back on the hunting grounds?”
“Curiosity.”
“Why bring me here?”
“Convenient.”
“It was convenient to bring me back to Castle when you’d been beaten and drained near death by the family you’d betrayed?”
“You forced me to bring you here.”
“Yeah, you’re a slave to my whims.”
He hisses in frustration. “I don’t expect you to understand.”
“What is wrong with you?”
He grabs my arms and shakes me violently. “I am protecting you.”
“From what?”
‘Me. Everything I touch bleeds black.’
Suffering, I shove him away and falter in the slippery tub. I sway back dangerously off balance. Daniel yanks on my arm and sweeps me into his chest. Both our hearts beat f
ast, chests lifting and falling in tempo.
The adrenaline coursing a fiery path through my veins makes me nauseous.
Daniel’s strenuous grip loosens. “It would be a lie to ask forgiveness.” He is grave in solemnity. “This is who I am.”
Holding me too him, he leaves the bathroom and strides the length of the fire lit corridor.
This is an odd way to be held – kind of like an overgrown toddler on his hip as his arm secures my waist.
Options, Harmony?
Scream my lungs out, scratch at his eyes until he releases me, and run away baying in terror?
Where would that leave me?
Going out into the world by myself has no appeal. Lone wolves are rare, and I’m definitely a Pack animal. I want freedom, but I want to have a family close by too. Going home with my tail between my legs is worse than being alone. I’d be publically reprimanded and humiliated.
Daddy would give me to his Beta.
He’d have no choice.
As Daniel said, this is who he is. The darkness is a part of him. He’s older than I can fathom, and has a broader understanding of life. Accepting who he is the only way I’ll get what I truly want.
I’m not exactly a walk in the park either. I’m pushy and demanding, presumptuous, and erratic. There are times I’m painfully immature in comparison to Daniel. Yet he’s willing to deal with that. He may believe tomorrow I’ll succumb to my wolf instincts, but he’s never suggested he doesn’t want me despite my flaws.
“I don’t want to sleep.” My voice is a bit high with lingering panic. “Can we go downstairs?”
“We will not be sleeping.”
I recognise the pictures on the wall. I explored Castle when he left me for those two days. We’re heading towards the guest room I slept in. “Do you have your own room here?”
“I do not go there anymore.”
It’s on the tip on my tongue to ask why, but he would’ve told me if he was ready to offer an explanation. I’m thinking that just for tonight, I’ll no longer push him.
Bite My Love Dark Creature Page 11