A sob welled up inside her, breaking free as she struggled in her friend’s hold. Her throat swelled until she couldn’t draw breath, a magnetic current drawing her back to the door and she didn’t want to withstand it. She wanted to get in. Get in now. Go to him. Her vision transitioned into an angry red and her fingers turned to claws.
“Let me go,” Ginny shouted. “Please.”
Was that her voice?
She sounded almost possessed, but caring was beyond her at that moment. Who cared about anything when her heart was being wrenched up to her jugular, over and over again? He’s in there. He needs me.
“Jonas!”
The lights sizzled in the hallway, dimming, brightening, like a pulse. And then came another roar, this time of her name.
Her lungs seized, her skin feeling like shrink wrap on her bones.
With an agonized whimper, Ginny twisted in Roksana’s grip, noticing that Tucker and Elias were now holding her back, too—and that made them the enemy.
“Let me in,” she begged, eyeing the apartment door like it was heaven’s gates.
“Not until you listen,” Elias snapped, the steel band of his arm wrapped around the breadth of her shoulders from behind. “Believe me, I’m on your side. I know you going in there is inevitable, but we need to prepare you first.”
Roksana pressed a cool hand to Ginny’s check and nodded at her slowly. “He’s okay. He’s going to be okay.”
Apparently that was exactly what she needed to hear, because she dropped like a puppet with severed strings, Elias and Roksana lowering her the rest of the way to the floor. “Why does he sound like that? What’s wrong?”
The slayer sat in front of her on the floor, cross legged, and took Ginny’s hands. “This might be a little scary. We should have drunk more tequila.” She shifted. “Last night, when Jonas tasted your blood, it became obvious to him that you are his mate.”
Warm pleasure blew across Ginny’s senses at the word and she stared longingly at the door. “What exactly does that mean? His mate?”
And why do I like it so much?
Roksana hesitated. “Well…”
“I had an inkling when I saw the way he behaved around you,” Elias said quietly behind her. “But it’s not supposed to be possible for our kind to have a mate…twice.”
Jonas’s words, spoken days earlier, came back to her. I felt something like love once, a long, long time ago. Probably before your parents were born.
“He’s had a mate before,” Ginny pushed through bloodless lips.
“Briefly,” Tucker confirmed. “Very briefly. But the length of time doesn’t matter. It’s fate. A connection. For Jonas, both times his mate has been human.”
“Which is not only very unusual, Ginny,” Roksana said slowly, her gaze uncharacteristically sympathetic. “It comes with some…difficulties.”
“What are they?” Suddenly none of them would look at her. Not even Elias, who didn’t seem the type to hesitate while delivering bad news. “Just tell me.”
“A vampire senses his mate, but until he tastes her blood, he remains Silenced,” Roksana explained. “Last night…you made his heart beat again.”
Pure joy caused her lungs to seize. “How is that a bad thing?” Ginny cried. “Is he…human now?”
Tucker squatted down beside her, sympathy etched in his features. “Far from it. Still can’t be exposed to the sun, still has his abilities and needs blood to sustain himself. He’s actually more vampiric than before—and Roksana is right. It comes with a lot of complications.” He sighed. “Now that’s he’s tasted his human mate’s blood, he can’t drink from anyone or anywhere else.” He rubbed at the back of his neck. “Or he can…but it won’t make a dent in the thirst. Won’t nourish him and he’ll…”
“Weaken,” Elias said succinctly. “Die.”
Ginny’s ribs caved inward. “No.” She shook her head and tried to gain her feet once more, pushing at Roksana’s traitorous hands. “You weren’t going to tell me this? You thought I would let him die?”
“He made me promise,” she said, lunging to her feet in between Ginny and the door, fending her off with outstretched hands. “Put yourself in his position. He doesn’t want you to spend your life as a…as a-a—”
“Snack,” Elias pronounced. “A permanent one. Every day of your life.”
The ground shook under the intensity of Jonas’s next bellow. Dust puffed down from the ceiling, distracting her three friends long enough to allow Ginny to lunge for the door, shaking the handle. “Open it. Let me go to him.”
“Think first, sweetheart,” Tucker said, oh-so-casually laying a hand on the door to keep it closed. “He’s our friend. He saved our lives, once upon a time. We don’t want to watch him die any more than you do. But he made his wishes clear.”
Ginny’s mind went back to their conversation in the alley outside the bar. Before she truly knew what they were talking about. “Elias said he wouldn’t want to keep me away if he knew the separation was causing me pain.”
“Pain that will subside if he…” Elias paced down the hallway and halted, hands on hips. “When he eventually goes.”
Every snapping nerve ending in her body screamed at her to get inside the apartment, but she bore down hard on the impulse, attempting to break through the hold desperation had on her. Something inside of her was alive, like a current. And it ran directly to Jonas. But she was her own person. She was a single, solitary woman and in that moment, a trail diverged in front of her.
If she went one direction, her life ahead was a complete mystery. What did it mean to be the mate of a vampire? To quench his thirst each and every day.
She ignored the arousal and satisfaction that tried to make her rush. Instead, she imagined the consequences of embracing this life.
“Will I continue to get older?” she whispered.
Tucker looked down at the floor and nodded.
She absorbed that. “What happens to him when I die?”
“We don’t know,” Elias said, still turned away. “The few times in the past a vampire mated with a human…they were either executed by the King or…”
“Or?”
“Or their attempt to Silence them didn’t work.”
Ginny’s temples beat heavily, making her dizzy. She closed her eyes and felt Jonas’s presence inside the apartment, taciturn and heartsick and miserable. “Me too, Dreamboat,” she whispered, splaying a palm on the door.
What if she took the other path?
The one with the much clearer future?
She continued to work at the funeral home, surrounded by memories of happy times with her father, while never making more happy memories. Of her own.
The very idea of waking up in her bed every morning and knowing Jonas no longer walked the earth flooded her with burning acid. She fell against the door and wheezed through an inhale—and she knew. She knew that searing agony would never go away. It wouldn’t fade like the remnants of some crush. Twice now she’d experienced his pain. Hadn’t she? Yes. A connection like that didn’t die. Letting it die without a fight would be a travesty.
Furthermore, she wasn’t sure she could live without him.
Call it intuition, but she was no longer simply herself. Not merely Ginny. She bore the invisible mark of this vampire on her soul. This. Being together. It was supposed to be. Being without him wasn’t an option at all. It was taking a machete to the eternal ribbon of fate.
In the firmest voice she could muster, Ginny said, “I understand what I’m doing. Open the door.”
Without turning around, she could feel Elias, Tucker and Roksana exchanging looks. That didn’t concern her. She was focused on the man on the other side of the door. Now that she’d made the decision to live as his mate, come hell or high water, rightness settled on her shoulders and raised her chin. Whatever obstacles were to come, they would be together. And they would make each other whole.
Elias inserted a key into the lock, twisted and pushed open the
door.
Jonas was nowhere in sight, but his scent slid down her throat like warm, minty chocolate, sweet and welcome. Instinct told her where he was—and the realization made her eyes flood with moisture.
“He’s chained in that room, isn’t he? With the silver?”
“On his order,” Roksana said. “We need to leave him chained, Ginny. Until he gets himself under control. He’s…not himself right now.”
“The control he must have exercised…” Tucker whistled under his breath. “To taste his mate and not only deny himself more, but make it home and lock himself up. It must have damn near killed him.”
Ginny’s heart twisted painfully. “Well his suffering ends now.” She squared her shoulders and strode in the direction of the back room—
Only to be felled by a wave of pain so astronomical, it made the first two episodes seem like a sneeze. In the center of the living room, she doubled over and landed hard on her right shoulder, screaming pitifully at the top of her lungs. Razors slashed at her insides and fire climbed her throat, needing, needing, needing…
Distantly, she heard chains rattling and Jonas’s broken shouting of her name.
Roksana dropped down beside Ginny, her expression tortured. “What do we do?”
Nothing. There was nothing they could do.
She had to do it.
She had to get to Jonas.
Now. Or something told Ginny the pain would overcome her.
Battling the blistering waves traveling through her middle, Ginny positioned herself onto her stomach and crawled on her hands and knees down the hallway. At some point, Elias ran ahead and opened the door—and revealed Jonas.
Or what used to be Jonas, anyway.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Her prince was no more.
In his place was the embodiment of sunken eyed starvation. His manacled wrists were bloody and ravaged, hair sweaty and matted to his forehead. He was shirtless for the first time since Ginny had met him, but her perusal of him yielded no enjoyment. Lord no. He was gaunt, his muscles straining beneath waxy skin.
The wild look in his eye stopped Ginny mid-crawl, even though it hurt to put any kind of hitch in her momentum. How would she ever get moving again? Because no matter how feral Jonas looked, she would continue. She would go to him. If anything, his appearance made the journey more urgent.
Move.
Ginny slid a knee forward on the wooden hallway floor, smacking a palm down and pulling her throbbing body closer. She completed the movement twice more before she realized Jonas had stopped rattling his chains. A glance in his direction showed him down on his knees, watching her in horror.
“What is wrong with her?” Jonas boomed, making the floorboards tremble. He pulled on the chains with a desperate sound. “Ginny!”
“We think she’s feeling your pain.”
His breath left him in a shuddering rush. “No.” Slowly, his head started to shake in vehement denial. “No, she can’t be feeling this. I can’t let it go on. Elias, bring me a stake. Put it through my fucking heart.”
“Don’t ask that of me,” Elias seethed.
Jonas’s green eyes blazed over Ginny, his wrists restless in their chains. “She will suffer until I go otherwise. No. No, God. It could take weeks. Don’t you understand?”
“You aren’t going anywhere,” Ginny managed, almost to the threshold of the room where Jonas had imprisoned himself.
“Stop where you are,” Jonas ordered, even as his fangs sliced into view. “Elias. Tucker. Stop her immediately.”
“I’ve made my decision.” The pain started to lessen in degrees and she barely kept herself from slumping to the floor. “You’re my decision, Jonas.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” he croaked, a hint of his usual regal self peeking through. “Take the way out. Now. Otherwise it’s fucking forever, Ginny.”
Didn’t he think she’d considered that? Didn’t he think she’d weighed the fear of the unknown against a life without him?
The pain had left her so weak, it was impossible to form words and breathe at the same time, so she just kept going. He wouldn’t be able to deny her once they were touching, so that was her goal.
When she reached him, Jonas’s princely presence was once again eclipsed by the starving vampire. He jerked toward her with a growl, teeth bared, his naked chest heaving. “Get out.”
“No.”
The floorboards quaked beneath her knees, lights flickering in the hallway. “Get out.”
In lieu of answering—obviously he wasn’t going to listen or give her credit for knowing her own mind—Ginny reached up and molded a palm to Jonas’s cheek. A shudder passed through him, his lids turning heavy. He leaned his face into her palm, whispering her name. “Ginny. Love, my love, my love…”
“It’s going to be okay now,” she said softly, pushing aside his chaotic hair. “You can’t make decisions like this without me. Do you know what it would have done to me if you’d died? Because of me?”
“You’d have been safer,” he muttered thickly. “Happier.”
“Not happier. Never that.”
His body was still tense but the air of violence hovering around him had thinned. Now he swayed toward her with a clenched jaw, as if chastising himself for needing to get closer. Well Ginny wasn’t having that.
She looked back over her shoulder at their three friends. Elias had his back turned, Tucker looked fascinated by the sight of Ginny and Jonas on the floor. Roksana looked afraid for her, so Ginny tried to reassure her with a small smile. “Close the door, please.”
“Are you sure?” Roksana asked.
“Completely.”
“Hang the key by the door,” Jonas rasped. “Where I can’t reach it.”
Elias grunted his agreement and hooked the key on a nail that had been hammered into the wall by the entrance. Seconds later, they were alone. Jonas was stretched as close to Ginny as he could get while attached to the chains and his body was beginning to shake. “It won’t always be like this, love. I won’t wither after a single day without your…”
“My blood.”
His swallow was audible. “I’ve been neglecting my appetite. Some part of me knew the minute we met, nothing would ever taste the same again.” He strained against his bonds, sending a ripple across the muscles of his abdomen. “Jesus Christ. I’m so afraid of hurting you, Ginny. Please God don’t let me hurt you.”
“You won’t. If you’d lock yourself up to keep from hurting me, if you’d willingly die for me, how can I not be safe?”
“I haven’t recognized myself these past twenty-four hours. I’ve never drunk directly from a human before and my first human is my mate,” he said hoarsely. “You can’t know what I’ll do.”
She took a deep breath to calm the fluttering of her pulse. “I guess that’s why we have the chains.”
His skepticism did nothing to quell the hungry way he looked at her. As if beckoning her closer with his gorgeous face and seductive green eyes, while worrying at the same time she’d actually obey. That worry thinned and vanished, making way for lustful awe, when Ginny placed a hand on his chest and pushed him into a sitting position. Soothing him with gentle strokes of her fingertips, she climbed onto his lap and straddled him.
An animal groan burst out of Jonas, his hips shifting beneath her, the links of the chains clinking together.
“I made your heart beat,” she whispered, pressing her ear to the center of his chest, listening in awestruck silence to the hectic thrum. “It’s beautiful.”
“No. No, it aches. It burns. It’s heavy with longing for you, but it also needs your blood to keeping beating and that makes…that makes the longing savage. You have to get away from me.”
“No,” Ginny breathed. She patiently waited for him to settle, before sliding closer on his lap. Right up until the tight material of her skirt prevented her from opening her legs to accommodate his shifting hips.
Maintaining their intense eye contact,
she reached down tugged the skirt higher, higher, his energy turning more and more fraught with every inch. She intended to stop once her thighs were able to hug him tightly, but something rebelled inside of her and before she knew it, the entire skirt was rucked up around her waist and she was settling her panties atop the ridge in his jeans.
Both of them tested the friction and moaned.
Jonas angled his head and licked into her mouth slowly, threatening to erode her composure. “What is this little outfit you’re wearing, love?” he rasped, letting his tongue rest on her lower lip. Dragging it side to side. “Did you think by looking the part of a sacrifice, you might help persuade me to take it?”
“I’m not a sacrifice.” She shook her head. “I can’t explain how I know this, but tonight feels…inevitable. Don’t you feel that?”
“Yes,” he hissed, his handsome face contorting with pain. “I hate that you felt an ounce of this pain. It’s going to haunt me forever.”
There were painful stirrings inside Ginny, telling her another episode was approaching and while she wanted to avoid that, she wanted to alleviate Jonas’s agony just as much. She leaned in and kissed him softly, hating the tremors passing through him, knowing first hand they were unbearable.
“Ginny, I can’t have you this close much longer without—”
“I know.” She stroked his face. “It won’t…make me a vampire?”
“There’s a venom inside of us that only releases when a victim is close to…” His eyes squeezed shut. “Dying. It’s involuntary, a product of our true nature as predators and it’s the only thing that can transform a human…God help me, I won’t let it get that far. I’d never make you like me.”
Entranced by the fangs he’d exposed to her in his vehemence, Ginny gathered her long hair in a fist and arranged it to one side. “I trust you.”
And then she offered him her neck.
Green embers whipped up in Jonas’s eyes. He still seemed determined to fight his obvious thirst for her. To Ginny, his lust was intoxicating. It wasn’t only for her blood, either. With her neck exposed and vulnerable, she felt his shaft thicken between her legs and her nipples peaked in response. Her inhales and exhales grew sharp, uneven, and she could no more stop herself from rocking in his lap than she could shoot lasers from her fingertips.
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