Chapter 10 #3
“Darcy. Do you remember me?”
She licked her lips and shook her head. “No.”
His eyes, which had seemed so hopeful a moment ago, flattened into dark copper circles. She couldn’t bear it. She reached out, touching his forearm with her hand, aware of his breath hitching softly as he took a small step toward her.
“Then nothing’s changed.”
“I’ve changed,” she whispered, her voice a mix between a sigh and a sob.
“How?”
“I don’t remember us, but I saw us. I saw us together.
That first night on the stage when you kissed me.
At my cousin’s wedding. In your house. The pain of separation.
The joy of reunion.” Her eyes fluttered closed as her fingers tightened around his skin.
He stepped closer to her, placing a hand on her waist, and she opened her eyes again, taking another step closer to him.
“The love, Jack. The…the binding. I felt it.”
“You did?”
A tear slipped down her cheek as she nodded. “I did. I’m here because I know I loved you. I’m here because I want that love again.”
“I’m bound to you,” he said, holding her eyes. “I belong to you. Right now. Right here. Forever.”
“I know,” she sobbed. “I’m so sorry I made you wait for me.”
“Darcy Turner Lesauvage, turned, not blooded,” he said gently, his other hand falling to her waist and pulling her against his strong, broad chest. His eyes swam with tears, with exhaustion and hope. “Will you re-bind yourself to me?”
“Willingly,” she murmured.
Looking away from her, Jack turned to Saint Germain, who was watching them with fascination.
“But she’s newly turned,” Saint Germain observed, narrowing his eyes. “How can you be re-bound? It would mean that you’d been bound to a—”
“Does it matter?” Jack interrupted quickly.
“I don’t know,” answered Saint Germain, looking back and forth between Jack’s copper-colored fiery eyes and Darcy’s own silvery-green. “You’re both Rougs now.”
“You called everyone here to confirm my binding,” Jack hissed through clenched teeth, impatient to kiss his mate again. “Let me confirm it for you.”
“And answer my questions?”
“Another time,” confirmed Jack.
“Very well,” said Saint Germain. He turned to the crowd, raising his arms over his head theatrically. “Did you come here for a binding?”
The roomful of Rougs, which had been patient as Jack and Darcy reconnected, thundered its approval, banging the floorboards of the ancient bleachers with their feet and howling.
Saint Germain looked back at Jack and Darcy, and intoned, “If she be for me, let my heart stop beating. If I be for her, let it be born again.”
Jack turned away from Saint Germain, facing her. He lifted one hand from her waist and pressed it to her throat, as he had so many years ago.
As he inclined his head, she heard his voice, raspy with emotion, whisper, “Darcy Turner, it’s you.” And as the heat of his lips touched down on hers, Darcy died for the second time in one day.
For the second time in his life, Jack felt his heart grind to a stop, and under his fingertips, he felt Darcy’s pulse still as he leaned back from her.
He searched her eyes, which blazed like an inferno as her hand reached up to clasp the back of his neck and demand his lips again.
As they touched down on hers, pressed flush against their beloved sweetness, a thunderous thumping started under his fingertips as her heart awoke, re-bound to his, and in his own, pounding in recognition of the mate he’d missed so desperately these long, lonely weeks apart.
Dropping his hand from her throat, he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her tightly, fiercely against his body as he parted the seam of her lips with his tongue.
As though they’d been apart for far longer than three weeks, he savaged her mouth, claiming it, unable and unwilling to allow the hot satin of her tongue to leave his, and reveling in her own domination of him.
The way she flexed her fingers in his hair, razing his skull with her nails, tasting him, demanding him, pressing herself against him, let him know how much she wanted him and that she was completely his for the taking.
And how his heart thrummed and rejoiced in belonging to her again, just as she had always belonged to him. His redheaded girl from the Southern Bloodlands, turned, not blooded, who belonged to him forever, from whom he would never be parted for the rest of his life.
The energy in the room buzzed with excitement as Saint Germain exclaimed, “What is bound cannot be broken!”
The howling and foot pounding celebration faded to white noise as Jack drew back from Darcy, and she slowly opened her burning eyes. His heart clutched with relief when he heard her voice in his head, saying, Jack, I remember everything. I love you. I belong to you.
His heart erupted with love for her, and he felt the smile split his face as he wiped away her tears and tenderly cupped the cheeks of his woman, his bound mate, his heart, his soul, his love, his bride. Recovered to him. Somehow delivered unto him. This time, forever.
I love you, Darcy. I belong to you. Forever.
Her answering smile told him everything he needed to know, but he read her eyes, anyway. Forever, Jack. Forever.
And then, holding her face as he would every day of his life for the rest of his life, he touched his lips to hers again.