Chapter 21
twenty-one
BLAIR
I was still red-faced and out of breath when I finally made it to the hospital portion of Vamp Manor.
“I know I’m insanely late, I’m sorry,” I apologized as I made it through the door. Lou and Kara were talking, neither of them looking annoyed that I was more than an hour late. “I would say it was Damian’s fault, but it was mine too, so let’s just leave it at an apology,” I said, dropping into the chair I always took during my injections.
Lou’s nose wrinkled. “You smell like sex.”
“Give us all the details,” Kara ordered.
Lou made a gagging face. “Don’t even think about it.”
I wouldn’t have given Kara the details even if Lou wasn’t there, so I just shook my head.
Kara grabbed the tiny injection tube. “Did you talk him into feeding every day yet?”
“Yeah, he finally came around yesterday. Definitely seems to be doing good today,” I said, my face flushing further.
Part of me couldn’t believe I’d gone beneath his desk and taken him in my mouth like that, but the other part of me couldn’t stop thinking about how much fun I’d had.
And wanting to do it again.
“You’re a hero,” Kara said, a knowing look on her face.
“Thank you,” Lou said, her expression grateful. “I’m sure he makes it good for you—but thank you for taking care of him. He needed that desperately.”
“He takes care of me too,” I admitted. “We’ve never really acknowledged being mates in the real way, but I think we might be moving toward that. I’m not sure. I know his feelings for me are growing, but he hasn’t said anything about it. And I’m just… it’s a lot.”
“What do you mean, in a real way?” Kara asked. Her voice was curious.
My face flushed warmer. “He forced me to mate with him, remember? I’m over it now, I know it was his best option. But when we sealed the bond, we agreed that nothing was going to change. We were going to keep hating each other, and feed from each other just because the bond demanded it. We never talked about being anything more than that.”
“You haven’t hated each other for a long time now,” Lou pointed out.
“Longer than I want to admit.”
“Then what’s not real about your bond?” Kara asked me.
“I don’t know. We had rules against the normal mate stuff, like holding hands and snuggling and having vulnerable conversations. We snuggled for the first time last night.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Kara grumbled.
I sighed. “It seemed like a good way to stop myself from developing feelings for him at the time.”
“And what about now?” Lou asked.
“I don’t know.”
It was the truth.
I’d just kneeled beneath his desk and given him a blowjob during a boring financial meeting—which was absolutely insane—but I still didn’t know if I could tell him that I loved him.
Or if he was sure enough about his emotions to admit that he loved me too.
What if I opened up to him, and he told me he didn’t feel the same way?
Or what if he wanted me to keep hating him?
There were a million things that could go wrong if I admitted the truth, and so very few ways it could go right.
I needed to be sure before I opened up, didn’t I?
“How does he feel about you?” Kara asked, finally injecting me. “You have to know, don’t you?”
I nodded. “He loves me. But some emotions are buried deep. I don’t know if he knows that he loves me. If I tell him I think I feel the same way, and he hasn’t realized his feelings yet, it could ruin everything. It’s a risk. And I don’t usually take risks.”
I wasn’t like Izzy—I couldn’t mate with a stranger just to get out of Vamp Manor. I’d done it because there was no other way to protect myself and my sisters. And even though I knew now that Damian wouldn’t have really given us to Curtis, I hadn’t known that at the time.
If I had, I might’ve refused him.
And who knew what would’ve happened from there.
“He never hated you,” Lou said. “He was just trying to cope with the mate bond, and made a mess of it. I tore into him for forcing you to bond with him.”
“I’m starting to believe that.” I ran a hand through the top of my hair, making a mess of the golden waves. Damian had already done the same, so it wasn’t like they could get much worse. “I think I just need more time to work through my feelings.”
“He’s your mate, honey. You’ve got all the time in the world.” Kara put a Band-Aid over the injection site, even though we both knew it was unnecessary. “You’re all set.”
“Thank you.” I gave her a quick hug, and hugged Lou too before heading out to meet Damian.
After lunch, I was meeting up with my sisters.
We’d help Izzy pack… and then we’d go for a swim, just in case it was a while before we saw her again. We could hope like hell that her mate wouldn’t keep her from us, but with how much she wanted to get away, I was worried about how often we’d see her.
She was insane for agreeing to seal a bond with Porter.
But, like Damian said, it was her decision to make. And I had to respect that, even if I wanted to lock her in a room and force her to see how crazy she was.
Hours later, a large rock came sailing down to the bottom of the pool. I recognized it as one we’d rescued from our house—one of the only things Curtis’s guys hadn’t destroyed, because they didn’t realize the rocks held meaning for us.
I caught Clementine’s eye, gesturing toward the surface, and she grabbed Izzy’s shoulder. All of us swam upward and slipped out of the pool.
Damian was waiting beside the water, his hands in his pockets and his sleeves rolled up his forearms like usual.
My gaze lingered on his arms.
Damn, he was pretty.
“Porter’s waiting in my office,” he said. Though the words were for Izzy, his gaze lingered on me.
“Guess it’s time to meet the pretty bastard,” Izzy said, her voice far from upbeat. She didn’t usually do upbeat, though. Sarcasm definitely, but optimism? Not typically. She wasn’t pessimistic, but she was very much a realist.
Damian pulled his button-up over his head and tugged it over mine. I rolled my eyes at him, but didn’t argue when he buttoned it up to my chin.
Zora snorted.
Clem whispered, “At least he didn’t throw her over his shoulder and carry her up to his room to have his way with her again.”
“Eventually, you will both know what it means to be mated to a big, possessive bastard,” I warned.
“There are perks,” Damian tossed out.
“Big perks,” I admitted, albeit a little reluctantly.
“Big, hard perks,” he drawled.
All of us busted up laughing, though Izzy only managed a small smile.
She’d learn about those particular perks pretty soon. And I’d heard enough about how much she enjoyed sex to be positive she wouldn’t regret the mate bond for that reason, even if there was regret on other fronts.
Damian took my hand, lacing his fingers through mine as we headed off.
Our walk to the elevator and then down the hallway to Damian’s office was short, but the mood grew much more serious as we went. Worry made my abdomen tight.
I worried about Izzy taking a mate… but more than that, I worried about the worst outcome of the coming hours.
Porter could lose after he challenged Curtis.
Curtis could be even more set in his ego and even more of a dictator afterward.
He could want us even more for conspiring against him.
And that would be really, really bad.
We probably should’ve hidden the rest of my unmated sisters, but one look at the three of them told me they were going to meet Izzy’s mate, consequences be damned.
Maybe we could claim they were sirens in need of help too, if we had to.
Porter was waiting outside Damian’s office. He was bigger than he’d seemed on the video call—maybe even as big as Damian. He had tan skin and wild, reddish-brown hair that was shaved on the sides but longish on the top.
When he asked Izzy for a minute alone, she agreed, and slipped inside with him.
We heard a thud against the door a moment later.
My sisters and I exchanged looks of surprise.
“Damn, they didn’t waste any time,” Zora whistled.
“He’s so hot, I’d screw him too if he asked,” Clementine whispered conspiratorially.
“Don’t let Izzy hear you say that after he’s her mate,” Avery warned.
All three of them looked at me, and I had a feeling similar things had been said about Damian.
My hand tightened on his, and he squeezed it lightly.
He was mine.
That was what mattered.
And my sisters could be horny, but none of them would ever dream of screwing a mated man. Mated pairs were solidly off-limits.
A few minutes after that, the couple finally stepped back out. Their faces were red and they were breathing faster than usual.
The black marks around their throats drew my attention immediately. They were pretty, swirling bands that I knew Izzy would love even without asking.
From there, we headed down the hallway.
And to the neutral territory.
Zora, Clementine, and Avery all hugged Izzy and whispered, “Good luck,” before staying in the vampire wing of the Manor.
We met a massive group of vamp guards in the hallway, led by Egan, and Porter growled an order to Izzy before he strode away without us.
All of us couldn’t arrive together.
Not if we didn’t want everyone to think we’d teamed up to work against Curtis—and we didn’t—so, we had to stay separated.