He sighed, his countenance sad. “I will do whatever you want. I will never hold you against your will.” He untied the rope that bound me.
I rubbed at my wrists, though they weren’t red. “How…?”
“Synthetic fibers don’t cause friction burn. I’d never harm you, Erin. Never.”
“But you just…” I sat up and moved to the edge of the bed, suddenly ultra-aware of my nakedness.
“I just took your blood. I may have taken a bit too much, and I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
The sadness in his dark eyes was too much to bear. I gulped, looking away from him. Running away screaming seemed juvenile. I honestly didn’t feel I was in any danger. He’d unbound me when I asked, and now he was taking great pains, from the longing on his face, not to touch me. Plus, this was my home. Where would I run?
One thing was certain, though.
This had to end.
Now.
I turned back to him, facing his troubled eyes, his distressed posture. “You’re right. It won’t happen again. None of this will ever happen again.”
“Erin.” His voice was low and husky. “Please. Let me explain.”
“Explain what?” I touched my neck, new images swirling in my mind. Dante walking the streets at night, searching for prey. Dante, lying down in a coffin to sleep. Dante, bursting into flames in daylight. Dante, struck dead by a silver bullet. I cringed.
Then a new picture, this one disturbingly clear. It was me. With fangs. “Oh my God. Am I going to become…one of you?”
He reached forward to touch my forearm, but I snatched it away and grabbed the sheet from the bed, wrapping it around me.
“No. You won’t become one of us. Vampires are born, not made.”
“But aren’t you…?”
“It’s all myth, Erin. We are people, just like you are. People who just happen to require blood for sustenance. You’ve seen me eat meals. You’ve seen me bleed. I’m a living being, not undead.”
“You go out in the sun.”
“Yes. Though our skin is particularly sensitive to it. We need strong sunscreen.”
“You don’t burst into flames?”
He chuckled softly. “You’ve seen me in the sun. Did I burst into flames?”
Anger rose deep in my gut and burned through me. “Don’t laugh at me. You’ve just challenged everything I believe. Everything I’ve been taught. How can you expect me to accept this?”
“Because you have to, Erin. I love you and you love me.”
Yes, I did love him. I could never deny that. But I’d have to get over it. I wanted to crawl back in bed and go to sleep and forget any of this had ever happened. I fell back onto my pillow and closed my eyes.
Maybe this would all go away.
Chapter Three
Dante
She didn’t return my sentiment, though I could see it in her eyes. She wasn’t frightened, exactly. She was fraught with disbelief—that struggling duel when the mind and eyes are in conflict.
She would come around.
She had to.
I touched her cheek, the warmth of her blood tingling against my fingers. “Erin. What do you want? I’ll do anything for you.”
She opened her eyes. “Anything?”
I nodded, fearing what was about to come out of her mouth.
“Leave. Go and don’t come back.”
I nodded again. I would do so. I would leave.
But I would be back.
She would beg me to come back to her. In my heart, in my very soul, I knew that as much as I knew anything that was proven fact.
We couldn’t live without each other. Not now.
River was still on sick leave, so it seemed logical to go to his place. I didn’t want to talk to Bill, though I’d need to eventually.
Despite my sadness at Erin’s rejection, I felt a renewed energy and purpose. I was sated beyond my wildest beliefs.
And I knew she was as well. She’d get up, and she’d feel it, and when the feeling dissipated, she’d know to come to me to find that feeling again.
More than energized, more than satisfied.
Reborn.
Once bonded, never broken.
Where had I heard those words? Maybe River would know.
“Yeah, come on in,” he said when I knocked on the door.
I entered, and he sat on the couch in his living room, his laptop set up before him.
“Hey, Riv.”
“Hey,” he said, still looking at the screen. “I’ve been doing some research—” He looked up. “Dante? What the hell?”
“Yeah? What do you mean?”
His eyes widened. “You look…different somehow.”
“I do?”
“Yeah. More… This won’t make any sense, since we’re vampires and all, but you have color in your cheeks. And your eyes… I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something different.”
I walked into River’s bathroom and gazed at my reflection in the mirror. My eyes looked no different to me, but my cheeks had a definite pinkness. Not a lot, but some. I touched them, and they felt warm. Vampires had a normal body temperature of about a degree and a half below humans. We often felt cold to the touch.
Another side effect of the blood bond maybe? There was so much I didn’t know. I walked back out to River.
“See what I mean?” he said.
“Yeah. Weird.” Though really not weird at all. Nothing about me felt weird at the moment. In fact, I felt absolutely normal, as if I were finally where I’d always needed to be.
“What’s up?” he asked me.
Where to start? What had transpired between Erin and me felt intensely personal, and even though River was one of the closest people to me in the world, telling him about it felt almost like a betrayal.
It wasn’t a betrayal, of course, and I needed to talk to someone. I cleared my throat. “I was with Erin. I…took her blood.”
He arched his eyebrows. “And?”
“It was the most intense and erotic experience I’ve ever had.” Not that I had much experience in that area, but nothing could ever compare to what Erin and I had shared. I was sure of it.
River didn’t flinch. “And…how did Erin take it?”
How had she taken it? When she’d come to reality, she hadn’t taken it well at all, understandably. But during the feeding, when we were both in climactic bliss…
“Good and bad,” I said. “And that’s the God’s honest truth.”
“Okay. What exactly do you mean?”
“She accepted me. She didn’t try to stop me. She allowed it, which made it all the more amazing. But afterward…” I shook my head. “I told her what I was and what had happened between us. She asked me to leave.”
“Understandable.”
“She’s in denial,” I said. “I could see it all over her face. We’re a myth to her. She thinks we burn in the sun and live forever.”
“That’s what everyone thinks, Dante. We made it that way ourselves. Not us, maybe, but our ancestors.”
“Yeah, I know. Perpetuating the lies so we could live in peace with humanity. I get it.”
“She’ll come around.”
“I know she will. I know she’ll come back to me. I’m not sure how I know, but I do. I’m necessary to her now, as she is to me. But I have no idea how long it will take her to accept the idea of us. That we’re meant to be. That our love is only one small piece of what we are to each other.”
“You’re waxing a little poetic, cuz.”
I laughed. “I guess I am. I have no idea how I know these things. I’ve had no experience at real life at all. I mean, I was…” I drew in a breath. I didn’t want to think about my past now. Didn’t want it to darken what I’d just experienced. “I can’t really explain any of it. After finally tasting her, a whole new world opened up to me. I know things, Riv. I feel things I never knew existed.”
“Like what things?”
How could I explain that
my orgasm was a physical, tangible thing, with colors and shapes and melodies all its own? How could I explain that the taste of Erin was more than just the flavor of her fragrant blood, but the energy of her, her aura, everything that made her innately Erin? Words didn’t exist for what I’d experienced.
“Everything’s just brighter. More vivid.” And even that wasn’t close to what I wanted to say.
“I suppose that’s a good thing. Maybe you just had really good sex.” He laughed.
Could he be right? I had no experience other than my fumbling attempt as a teenager. It was possible.
“Does really good sex make you see things? Hear things?”
“Like what?”
Again, I couldn’t explain. The sex had been amazing, but until I punctured her flesh, I hadn’t felt the true release. The true intensity.
No, it wasn’t just good sex.
Once bonded, never broken.
“I don’t know.” He wouldn’t understand anyway, not unless he was lucky enough to form a blood bond with someone, and he probably never would. It obviously didn’t happen often anymore. But those words… “Have you ever heard the phrase ‘once bonded, never broken’?”
River twisted his lips. “No, I don’t think so. Why?”
“They formed in my head after I’d taken Erin’s blood. I could swear I’ve heard them before. I just can’t figure out where or when.”
Once again, the words forced themselves into my head.
Once bonded, never broken.
“No!”
Her voice. Her words.
“Fuck, no!”
Chapter Four
Erin
I didn’t sleep.
How could I?
Several times, I’d walked to my bathroom and examined my neck in the mirror. Two marks. Looked like bug bites. But now I knew better.
Then I examined my thigh.
Two punctures.
Dante hadn’t bitten my thigh.
Someone else had.
Our first encounter came crashing back into my mind.
He swept me into his arms and placed me on my bed. “Mine,” he growled. “These lips are mine.” He ripped my bra open at the middle. “These breasts are mine. That treasure between your legs is mine.” He licked his lips, his eyes dark with desire. “You are mine.”
“But yesterday,” I whimpered. “You didn’t want—”
“Forget yesterday. I want you now. And I will have what’s mine.” He inhaled. “I can smell you. I can smell how much you want me.”
I could smell it too. My lust was thick in the room, and it hadn’t been there with Logan. Dante had brought it out in me.
Dante, who I hardly knew.
Dante, who was rude as hell.
Dante, who had broken into my home.
Dante, who I’d found vandalizing the blood bank.
Dante…who I wanted more than my next breath of air.
Couldn’t think. Couldn’t form words. All I wanted was his mouth on me. Everywhere.
He tugged off my shoes, then my jeans and panties. He spread my legs and closed his eyes. “Your musk is the sweetest thing I’ve ever scented.”
Scented? Odd use of the word. But then he lowered his head, slithered his tongue over his bottom lip…
Opened his eyes…
And then his mouth, his eyes ablaze with rage.
“What the hell is that?”
Scented. I’d thought its use as a verb was strange, but he could smell me. Even that first night, in the blood bank, he’d sniffed at my neck, muttering words that hadn’t made any sense. He’d said I smelled like truffles, chocolate, blackberries, tin. Tin? Copper? What did those things smell like? I had a vague idea, but I wouldn’t pick them out in the midst of truffles and chocolate, two strong and distinct smells.
Cabernet Sauvignon. Fuck. Fuck, you smell so good.
I remembered every word. Every feeling the words had invoked in me. I should have been frightened, scared out of my mind.
But I hadn’t been.
I’d felt fear, yes, but something else had overpowered it.
Need. Ache. Want.
That relentless pull I’d felt since Dante Gabriel catapulted into my life.
And now?
I still didn’t feel fear. He would not harm me. He loved me. I knew that as much as I knew anything that was real and tangible.
He’d taken my blood. I still couldn’t wrap my mind around that thought.
But there was another thought that was even more difficult to comprehend.
Someone else had taken my blood first. Blood from the femoral artery in my thigh.
What the hell is that?
Who tasted you?
He hadn’t meant a kiss. Or even my pussy.
Dante had been referring to my blood.
I spent most of the night searching my memory, seeking one tiny recollection of someone biting my thigh, sucking my blood. I searched and I searched and I searched, and…
Nothing.
Then I remembered something else. I’d seen the same marks on Abe Lincoln in the ER.
I’d seen the same marks on my brother.
If Dante was a vampire…did that mean Jay’s partner was also a vampire?
Had River fed on Jay? And did Jay remember?
Abe Lincoln had said that vampires hypnotized their victims so they wouldn’t remember having been fed on.
I didn’t believe in hypnosis. I thought it was mostly crap.
Of course, a few hours ago, I hadn’t believed in vampires either.
Dante Gabriel, you have a lot of explaining to do.
But how could he explain if I never saw him again?
Chapter Five
Dante
What’s wrong? Dante, what’s wrong?
My body shook with tremors. “Get out of my head!”
“What? No one’s in your head, man. What’s going on? You’re scaring me.”
I opened my eyes to reality. My body wasn’t shaking on its own. River was shaking me.
Those words. Those words—words that had seemed so meaningful when they’d first come into my mind—had come from her.
“Stop,” I said. “I’m okay. I’m okay.”
River let go of me. “What was that about, Dante? You went into some kind of trance or something.”
“It’s just…” God, how to say this? “It’s…nothing.”
“Oh, hell, no. That was not nothing. I’m going to call Bill.” He turned.
I grabbed his arm, yanking him back toward me. “No. No Bill.”
“Then I’m taking you to the ER.”
“No ER. What exactly are you going to tell them? That a blood bond is making me crazy? That words are making me crazy? They’ll cart me off to some mental hospital and lock me up.”
He sighed. “Yeah, we can’t do that. How about that vamp doctor that Em sees? Dr. Hebert? I’ve seen him a few times. He’s great.”
“Jack. Yeah, he’s cool.”
“I’ll take you there.”
“No, Riv. I don’t need a doctor. I need…” I shook my head. What the hell did I need? Counseling? Maybe, but where would I get it?
Once bonded, never broken.
“I remember where I heard the words. The female vampire who held me captive. She said them. To me.”
“Oh, man. Okay.” River sat back down and pulled his computer onto his lap. “You’ve got to let me find this bitch. Please. I can get her put away, and she’ll be punished for what she did to you. I’ll make sure of it.”
“I don’t want you going after her,” I said softly.
“Are you fucking kidding me? I’m a detective. It’s what I do. I solve cases and I put criminals behind bars. Do you want what happened to you to happen to someone else?”
“Of course not.”
“Then let me do my job.”
“It’s not that simple,” I said. “She’s powerful. How else would she have been able to keep me for so long? I should have been able to
break through those leather bindings. My muscles never weakened. The bindings were…enchanted or something.”
River scoffed. “This is reality, Dante.”
I scoffed back at him. “What the hell is reality, anyway? To Erin, vampires aren’t reality, but we’re here. A month ago, I would have said werewolves didn’t exist, but you’ve assured me they do. And now Bill believes in ghosts, despite what we’ve been told our whole lives. How much further is it to believe that maybe the leather bindings that held me down for ten years were enchanted? What other explanation is there? The goons who fed and tortured me were human, Riv. Human. I should have been able to overpower them, but I couldn’t. Something else was at work. Something I don’t want you prying into, for your own good.”
“A little voodoo doesn’t scare me, Dante.”
“Voodoo, if it actually exists, is good magic. Whatever kept me captive all that time was evil. I felt it, Riv. There was evil all around me. I fought against it. I stayed strong and kept from crying out. But I couldn’t overpower it. Believe me, I tried.”
“The vampire who took you is evil.”
“She is. I’m not denying that. But there was a force there. It was more than just her. Maybe she created it. I don’t know. But it was there. It was dark and powerful, and you don’t want to fuck with it. Trust me.”
“All right. All right. I’ll let it go.” River scratched at his head. “I hate to ask this, but…do you think she’ll come back for you?”
I drew in a deep breath. “The thought occurred to me, but I’ve been so consumed by Erin that I haven’t been overly worried, even though I probably should be. But no, I don’t think she will, at least not for the time being. She let me go, Riv. I’m almost sure of it.”
Later, after River had gone to bed, I went out. It was after eleven, and I knew Erin would have already left for work. I needed to check something.
I drove to Erin’s and sat in my car for a few moments. Was what I was about to do a violation? She’d asked me to leave, and I’d promised I’d do as she asked.
Unhinged: Blood Bond: Parts 4, 5 & 6 (Volume 2) Page 2