Chapter 25
Lock
Seraphim’s story made me trust this whole situation less because he didn’t have full control over himself and he’d implied that this person could discern certain things from their little bond. Whether or not he had some grasp on it didn’t matter. It put Sam and I in danger.
Then again, having him on the opposing side also put us in danger. Both scenarios had their drawbacks and I found myself missing the days when vampires were mysteriously going feral. There were too many people on this planet anyway.
I passed Sam the iced coffee I’d picked up for her and looked down at where Seraphim was sleeping on the couch. He’d been pretty drunk during their talk and must have passed out while I was gone. From the looks of things, he was out pretty good…
“No.”
Raising my gaze to Sam, I quirked a brow. “No, what?”
“You were thinking murderous thoughts.”
“What’s new?”
“He’s struggling,” she said softly. Her stare was intent, as if she was attempting to see inside of his head.
“I’m sure he’ll sleep it off. He’s probably just an emotional drunk.”
She shook her head as she began to pace. “I have to do something.”
“I’m not sure there’s anything you can do, darling. I know you want to help, but this is beyond our understanding.”
“No, it’s not. Whatever pact they made can’t be infallible. What we have has to be able to beat it somehow.”
“Okay, say that you find a way. Then what?”
“I don’t know.”
“He was right when he said the two of you together only complicates things. If this thing is after power in some form, your measly circle is probably more than it’s had in ages. Whatever it needs you for can’t be good.”
She waved a dismissive hand, continuing her path back and forth. “You’ve never cared about people getting hurt.”
“I care about you getting hurt. Don’t start discarding your own wellbeing just because you have a groupie now.”
“In a way, he’s my responsibility. We’re supposed to keep each other safe.”
“You will not put him above you. If it ever comes down to it, you will not put yourself in danger for his sake. Do you understand?”
Three seconds. That was how long she went without answering me and each one chiseled a massive chunk out of my chest. By the time she finally nodded, I’d considered ten different ways to subdue and imprison her, just until I could find a way to end either Seraphim or his master and make her safe again.
“I’m sorry,” she breathed.
Moving in front of her, I cupped her face and stared into her amber eyes. “Never apologize to me, but never make me worry that you’ll pull some ridiculous martyr shit for that fata del fuoco.”
“You know I don’t speak Italian.”
“He called me a fire fairy,” Seraphim muttered.
“Ah, he’s alive,” I announced, feigning excitement. “And he speaks Italian. That’s fantastic. Vai ad ucciderti.”
“Classy, Lock.”
“I’ve never claimed to be. I grew up a poor Italian boy.”
“And now you’re a billionaire. I have no pity for you.”
“Where’s that dramatic horn mask you wore to make up for your tiny cock?”
“Why would I be wearing it here? That would be ridiculous.”
I hummed thoughtfully. “You were slightly more tolerable when I didn’t have to look at your face.”
He smirked, then settled his gaze on Sam. “I remember when Sam was all over my face. Her hands, her lips, her tongue.”
“Raf,” she warned, glancing at me meaningfully.
He dragged his tongue ring over his lower lip slowly. “She even rubbed up on my dick in that little dress and her pussy was so warm back then.”
When I flipped the couch, he grunted and darted to the side. I locked a hand around his throat, not hesitating to squeeze my fingers together. The crunch of his trachea under my grip made a tingle race down my spine. There was orange dancing in the honey brown depths of his eyes, but it faded just before they closed.
Excitement coursed through me when I thrust my hand into his chest. His ribs splintered as I reached for his heart. My fingers barely grazed it when my body suddenly felt like it was on fire. At first, I thought he was fighting back, but he was unconscious from the damage he’d sustained to his body.
“Lock, let him go,” Sam demanded.
“Or what?”
The heat increased, reaching deeper into my tissues. I just had to be quick. She’d be mad, but she would get over it.
“Stop!”
Closing my eyes, I struggled against the ferocity of her emotion. Fury I could deal with. It was her terror and despair that felt crippling.
“This can be over, Sam. If he’s gone, it’ll never find you. I don’t see how any of that is frightening you.”
“It’s not that.”
“Then what are you afraid of?”
“Right now? You.”
I pulled my hand from Seraphim’s chest, letting him fall to the ground. When I turned to Sam, there were tears streaming down her face, even as she stood silently with a look of… I didn’t know what was on her face, actually.
“You’re afraid of me?” I asked, the question settling uncomfortably in my gut.
She nodded. I pulled her into my arms, cradling her head against my chest.
“I would never harm you, Samara. I’ve told you this.”
“That’s not what I’m scared of. You would hurt Raf- you’d kill him- even though I’ve begged you not to. You know what that would do to me, but you would do it anyway.”
“You’re scared of me because I would hurt him?”
She pulled back to look at me. “No. I’m afraid that I can’t control you and you’ll do whatever you want, consequences be damned.”
“It’s to make you safe.”
“It’s because you hate him,” she argued. “If you’d look past your bruised ego and taunts over a kiss that meant nothing to either of us, you’d see that what I’m trying to do here is the right move.”
“It’s risky.”
“All of this is risky, regardless of how we go about it. This way, we have a shot.”
“He can’t be trusted, Sam. He has tried to kill you more than once.”
“Trust me, Lock.”
Looking down at his still form, I felt like an idiot. He hadn’t even tried to fight back.
“He did this so you’d be angry at me. To cause dissension.”
“And you leapt right into his trap. What does that say about how much I can trust you right now?”
“Sam,” I called as she walked toward the back door. “He did this. Don’t walk away from me.”
“You did this, Lock.”
When the door closed behind her, I turned the couch upright and sank onto it. There was still time for me to rip out Seraphim’s heart before he woke up, but I forced myself to remain seated.
“Stronzo,” I muttered at the crumpled heap on the floor.
The bed dipped beside me, but I kept my head turned away on the pillow. Moonlight was coming in through the thin curtains and it gave the room an ambience that had been relaxing me for the past two hours since I’d given up on waiting for Sam in the living room. Once Seraphim woke up, he was completely silent, but his presence was stifling nonetheless.
He had greeted her when she got back, but she’d ignored him, which was slightly satisfying. If she thought she could pull that with me, she was wrong. I continually chased her, even when she pushed me away and pulled manipulative stunts like starving herself. Maybe she was mad at me and perhaps I’d been overzealous before. I was angry with her too, though, and that was something we’d been conveniently ignoring since she woke up.
“Are you sleeping?” she asked, scooting into my side. When I didn’t answer, she climbed onto my chest, straddling my waist. Her face nuzzled into my neck and her breaths on my skin made me shiver.
Even with the way my body reacted to her, I didn’t touch her. Truthfully, I was feeling melancholy and I had half a mind to fly somewhere rainy so that I could stand in the downpour for a while.
“Why are you ignoring me?” she whined.
With a frustrated grunt, she grabbed my hands and moved them to her waist. I pulled them away, settling them behind my head, and met her eyes.
“Lock.”
“Yes, darling.”
“Stop being mean to me.”
“I may display poor judgment at times, but I do know that I’m not doing anything to you at the moment.”
“Exactly. You’re doing nothing when you should be touching me.”
“I wouldn’t want you to be afraid that I can’t control myself.”
Her face went blank. “Seriously? We’re being petty.”
“No, we are being accommodating. It’s something you always ask of me.”
“Not like this. Now, you’re just trying to punish me.”
“It’s possible that not everything is about you, Sam.”
She let out a childish shriek and slammed her fists on my chest. I raised a brow at the display.
“Perhaps your scary vampire moniker will be King Kong.”
“Tell me what your deal is,” she demanded.
“Okay. I have been tiptoeing around you for quite a while now. I would never tire of caring for you in any way that you need, but I feel as if this is a bit one-sided.”
Her eyes widened. “One-sided? That’s ridiculous.”
“No. At first, it was about your adamant denial of us being mates, as well as your failure to tell me the true reasons you were afraid to change.”
“We got past that.”
“Yes, but it’s pertinent to the story. The moment you awoke, you refused to let me help you and you lied to me. You lied to my face for days, Samara. Days.”
Her eyes fell to my chest. She had so much to say a moment ago and now she was quiet as a mouse.
“It took him showing up here for you to come to your senses and stop trying to end yourself. The magic you were too afraid to use around me comes to you easily now under his guidance. You are quick to attack me to protect him.”
“Are you saying you’re jealous?”
I breathed a laugh, looking up at the ceiling. “No, Samara. I’m not jealous. I’m fucking angry.”
“Why?”
“Because you have no faith in me. Since the moment we met, you have not trusted me except when you had no other choice.”
“That’s not-”
“Yes, it is. Until I had you restrained at the warehouse, you chose to run from me. When Seraphim planted doubts in your head, you did not come out and say the true nature of your concerns. You ran and I had to chase you down, then you left me. When I found you on that street with him, going with me was your only option. On that rooftop, when you were falling to your death, you accepted that I would not save you. I saw it.”
Her lip quivered and I couldn’t stand it. Sitting up, I tucked my fingers into her hair and leaned my forehead against hers.
“When you woke up terrified and in pain, wielding a power you couldn’t fathom, you kept it all to yourself. You did not trust me enough to share it with me. And when I had my hand in Seraphim’s chest, I was ready to rip it out and ask forgiveness later, but I am not some mindless animal. If you’d simply asked it of me and given me a chance to come down from the height of my rage, I would have let him live, just as I have every day since he arrived.
“You told me to trust you. What the fuck do you think I’ve been doing? I’ve put my faith in you from the start, never once feeling afraid that you would hurt me, even though I’m very aware that you are capable of it. Where does that leave us, Samara? Because I refuse to go back to being the mate on the sidelines attached to a leash and paraded around as some sort of fear tactic.”
“You’re not a pet to me. You’re not a weapon. I don’t want you to ever think that.”
“I don’t think that you do, but you’ll find any reason to doubt me. It’s like you’re always looking for a reason to run away from me again.”
“I don’t mean to.”
“I know. You don’t trust people. I get it. Nobody has ever shown you what love is. It was always intertwined with expectations and if you didn’t live up to them you were unworthy. Broken. It’s time to learn to trust, Belladonna. First, me. Then, yourself.”
“Fuck, Lock. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I assured her, brushing my thumbs over her cheekbones.
She grabbed my wrists and pulled my hands away. “No. It’s not okay and you don’t get to comfort me right now. It’s backwards.”
“I don’t need you to comfort me, darling. I simply need you to hear me.”
“I do hear you, but I also want to make sure that you feel loved and wanted. Safe. I want you to feel all of those things with me and to never doubt how much you mean to me.”
Humming a laugh, I laid back and brought her with me, keeping her pinned against my chest.
“I feel all of that and more with you, my Belladonna. You are a peace I never knew was missing from my soul until you opened that sassy mouth and threatened to kick my ass.”
“Now, I could kick your ass.”
“We’ll put it to the test someday.”
She snorted. “How about at dawn?”
“No, I’ll wait until we’ve completed the bond. Perhaps I’ll at least have a fighting chance.”
“You could always just run.”
“Ah, so you admit I’m faster than you.”
“Shut up and cuddle me until the sun comes up.”
“Until it explodes and tears apart the solar system, my love. Then, I’ll consider letting you move from this spot.”