Blood Ties Bundle: Blood Ties Book One: The Turning / Blood Ties Book Two: Possession / Blood Ties Book Three: Ashes to Ashes / Blood Ties Book Four: All Souls' Night. Jennifer Armintrout

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СКАЧАТЬ tenderness in his eyes overwhelmed me. “Why didn’t you tell me what he did to you?”

      I shut my eyes. “Why would you want to know?”

      His lips brushed mine. There was nothing in the gesture but kindness, the love of a sire. His frustration and rage shook me to the core. “I could have made it better. I don’t know how, but I could have.”

      I swallowed against tears. “You could make me forget.”

      With a sad smile, he nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”

      He moved within me, slowly. Over and over, he withdrew almost completely, then slid back in, gaining a bit of speed each time. Soon, he pumped against me so furiously, an explosion of breath escaped from me with each thrust. I clenched the sheets in my fists and rocked in time to his movement.

      The familiar spiraling feeling, the sense of swiftly losing control, gripped me. I needed only a little push to make it over the edge. Hearing my silent desperation, he slipped his hand between us and rubbed my swollen clitoris. The stimulation was exactly what I sought. I arched up from the bed.

      It was his name I cried when I came, his face I saw when I opened my eyes. The relief was so intense that I almost sobbed.

      “That’s it, sweetheart,” he groaned against my hair. He abandoned the rhythm, plunging into me with more urgency than before.

      “Come,” I urged, clutching at his sweat-slicked back. He thrust almost too hard against me as he reached the end.

      “Thank you,” he whispered over and over when he could speak again. He kissed my lips, my forehead, anywhere he was able to reach.

      When he laid beside me, I rolled awkwardly off of the bed, wrapping the sheet around my bare body.

      Nathan frowned. “Where are you going?”

      I suddenly felt cold, and oddly lonely. “The bathroom. To clean up.”

      When I got to the door, he spoke. “It was good we got that out of our systems. It was probably inevitable.”

      “Yeah,” I agreed. Hadn’t it meant anything to him? It didn’t have to be serious, but he had to feel something more than just relief that it was over.

      Exhaling in frustration, he leaned up on his elbow. “You know it did, Carrie.”

      His answer to my unspoken question should have comforted me, but it didn’t.

      I shuffled to the bathroom and snapped on the light. As I stared at my suddenly tired face in the mirror, a tear slid down my cheek.

      No, I don’t know. And I don’t know you, either, Nathan. I turned away from my reflection, slightly disgusted with myself.

      I didn’t know him any better than I ever had.

      Twenty-Two

      I Left My Heart in San Francisco

      Though I dreaded the fallout from our encounter, the nights that followed were too busy to be very awkward.

      During my recovery, Nathan had been feeding me his blood. With nothing to replace what he’d given, he’d seriously drained himself. Combined with the marathon insomnia and the energy he’d expended with me, he could barely get out of bed the next evening.

      Luckily, I was able to contact his emergency donor. A perky suburban woman, she graciously dropped off neatly labeled and dated bags of blood. The first night, he was so weak I had to hold his head up so he could drink, but he improved quickly after that.

      Ziggy’s room was nearly packed up. Nathan had obviously been splitting his time between caring for me and repressing more memories. The only indication that the kid had ever lived in the apartment at all was the small collection of framed pictures on the bookcase in the living room. I rummaged through the boxes and brought out a few other items, tucking them away in places I knew Nathan would find them later. I wasn’t about to let him forget Ziggy.

      Little by little, I began to learn about Nathan’s past. Not that he helped with the process. Occasionally, things would come to me in a flash of intuition from the blood he’d shared with me. That’s how I learned the photograph hidden in the closet was indeed his wedding portrait, and the woman in it was Marianne. She’d been seventeen when they’d wed, and it had been a quickly arranged affair, owing to the bundle of joy that had already been on its way. But she’d lost the baby, and subsequent others, the first sign of the tumors ravaging her organs. The feelings of guilt and desperation that blanketed those memories was too thick to see past at times.

      I didn’t go to bed with him again, and neither of us mentioned what had happened before. I slept on the couch for a few days until Nathan recovered and took Ziggy’s things to storage. One day he’d tossed me a clean set of sheets when he returned and said, “Ziggy’s room is all yours.”

      Apparently, he wanted me to stay. Though I balked at the fact he hadn’t bothered to ask me if I wanted to, I didn’t argue. There was nowhere else to go, and no other place I felt safe.

      After another two weeks, I wondered if Cyrus would ever bother me again. At first, it had been easy to assume he bided his time, waiting for an opportunity to strike. But I knew he wasn’t patient enough to wait a full month.

      The nights grew gradually shorter as spring approached. Renovations on the bookstore were nearly completed, and I found myself working with Nathan, cataloguing inventory in preparation for the upcoming grand reopening. Still, reading ISBN numbers hardly kept my mind off the nagging feeling that any moment, Cyrus would come back for me.

      It didn’t help that, for the fourth day in a row, I woke to find Nathan beside me in the tiny twin bed.

      I knew he wasn’t asleep. “Nathan, what’s going on?”

      He leaned up behind me, propping his chin on my arm. “Max will be here tomorrow. We postponed the mission when I told him what happened to you, but the Movement is getting impatient.”

      “We’ve still got to kill Cyrus?” The calm feeling that had just begun to take root in me vanished. I rolled over to face Nathan, careful not to push him off the bed.

      His expression confirmed my fear before his words did. “We better get it out of the way now. Before Max goes after the Soul Eater.”

      “Okay.” I tried to smile and appear unconcerned. “What’s the plan?”

      I shouldn’t have bothered with the facade. He didn’t. “Don’t get killed.”

      “How do we do that?” My voice wavered as a balloon of fear swelled in my chest.

      He didn’t answer right away. He toyed with one strap of the tank top I’d worn to bed, sliding it off my shoulder and back again. In the semidarkness of the room, he looked tired and defeated. “I don’t know.”

      He was certain he’d lose me. His terror surrounded me in waves, terror that he’d feel the same pain over me that he’d felt over Ziggy. Over Marianne.

      But Nathan would never admit he felt anything toward me but the obligation any sire feels toward their fledgling. It was a good thing, СКАЧАТЬ