Chapter 27 #2
Tears prick my eyes and I grab a knife out of the butcher block beside me. “I said, what are you!?” I point the knife at his uninjured side.” I know you’re not human so don’t even try lying to me. She stabbed you, more than once, I didn’t realize it at the time but she did.”
“She did, you’re right.”
“You should be in the hospital. Not here with me, healed like nothing happened. How did you do it?” I ask him and then because if he’s not going to kill me and I’m practically crying, I add, “Are you an angel?” Julian laughs at that.
Like well and truly throws his head back and belly laughs. “What the fuck is so funny?”
“I’m no angel. I’m the farthest thing from an angel, Maris.” It’s with a smile on his handsome face that Julian takes a step towards me. “You should have never been here alone. I’m going to fix everything. From here on out, you are under my protection. I am yours.”
I am yours.
The tears that I’ve managed to hold back break and one rolls down my cheek. Why am I crying? I swipe at it angrily. “Stop right there. Don’t come any closer.” I tighten my grip on the knife. “What did you do to me?”
Julian crosses his arms. “I healed you.”
I roll my eyes. “You didn’t answer my question. How? How did you do it? What did you do to me? Am I-” I stop myself, I can’t go there. If I do then I might really freak out.
“Are you what?” Julian asks. He tilts his head to the side and comes a step closer.
I hate the way my hand shakes when I point the knife at him.
“Are you still human?” he asks me. “Are you like me now? Isn’t that what you want to know?
” He pauses and takes another few steps, he’s within striking distance now.
I could stab him if I wanted. A lot of good that would do me though. I’ve seen the way he heals.
“You felt different today, didn’t you?”
I almost drop my knife when he says that. “W-what?”
“You felt better. You looked perfect. Every mark on you was gone, wasn’t it? It was like a clean slate for you when you woke up.”
“I-I,” I stammer. He’s right. I did feel that way. “You changed me.”
“I did.” Julian’s smile turns sharp. The predator is here now.
His smile is the only warning I get before he’s moving.
He closes the space between us and crowds me against the counter.
He looks like he’s going to kiss me but the knife I hold to his throat stops him from taking my mouth.
Julian’s smile softens, from predator to loverboy right in front of my eyes.
He’s crazy.
He puts his hand over mine and grabs the handle of the knife. “You could if you wanted. I wouldn’t stop you.”
Yup, fucking out of his mind crazy. A lunatic. He’s telling me I can slit his throat with a smile on his face. I thought I was fucked up but Julian has me beat.
“Stop it,” I tell him.
He lets go of my hand but he doesn’t move away from me.
The blade of the knife presses against his jugular when he speaks.
“My life is yours, Maris. Don’t you get it?
There’s no me without you. I changed you when I healed you.
The bond between us came alive, there’s no stopping this, not unless you decide to end it. ”
End it.
“You mean kill you.”
He dips his chin in a nod and the knife comes dangerously close to cutting him. We’re in a dangerous spot right now. My hand is shaking and Julian is out of his mind, coming in closer and forcing the knife against his skin.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I belong to you. I only deserve to live as long as you wish it.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. I-I’m a…” my voice fades and I shake my head, “I’m not right. You don’t want me deciding if you live or die.”
“That’s where you're wrong. You’re exactly who I want to make that call. I’ve been alive far too long to know when it’s my time but if you told me I’d lived enough, that all my time was done, then-”
“Then what? You’d let me kill you? Why?”
“You’re my mate, Maris. My heart, my body, my mind, it’s all yours.
If I had a soul I’d give it to you. There is no greater honor than surrendering to one’s mate.
Do you know how many of my kind have found theirs?
” Our bodies press together and when I breathe in, I push up against Julian.
It’s only when we’re this close that I realize his chest doesn’t rise and fall like mine. It hardly moves at all.
Julian leans in, neck against the knife, his eyes on mine. “If you’re going to do it, do it. We both know you can. You’re strong enough.”
We both know you can.
Julian doesn’t know how right he is. He knows about Mike but not about Brian. I’ve taken someone’s life twice now. Mike’s was just like this, my knife to his neck. He didn’t let me do it though. He never even saw me coming with the way he was screaming and destroying the house.
The knife turns when Julian does, my grip on it is so tight my fingers ache and my palm hurts from where the handle bites into it.
“Martinez! Where are you?!”
Julian’s face vanishes and I see Mike. The kitchen isn’t here, I’m in the dining room watching him through the doors. The knife in my hand feels heavy. I know what I’m going to do.
I blink and Mike is gone, I’m back here with Julian.
The knife in my hand feels so fucking wrong.
What’s happening to me? Tonight and the night I killed Mike merge and blend together, they tangle and snag together so that I can’t tell them apart.
I sway on my feet, lightheaded. I can’t figure out where I am, what night it is.
Who’s neck is it that I have my knife to? ”
Julian or Mike?
My eyes zero in on the knife as it presses to his neck.
All I have to do is jerk my hand, one quick movement and it’s done.
I did it so easily before. Why can’t I do it now?
I look up to Julian’s eyes. Hunger, desperation, devotion, it’s all there in his eyes.
This man, whatever he is, needs me. Desperately.
“Maris.”
No, not a man. He’s not a man, Maris. He’s…he’s…I don’t know what he fucking is but it isn’t human.
“What are you?” I whisper.
The doorbell rings and I scream. I drop the knife and it nicks his throat on the way down. Bright red blood blooms against his skin. I watch it as the knife clatters to the floor. Julian pins me in against the counter, a hand on each side of me.
“It’s the food,” he says softly. He looks into my eyes and I swear to god I feel like he’s staring into my soul when all he did was tell me our delivery is here.
“If we don’t answer, they’ll keep ringing the doorbell.”
“Then we should get it.”
I nod. The blood has already stopped flowing, the wound on his neck is completely healed, like it was never there. Only a thin line of blood from the cut remains on his neck and chest. My fingers itch to touch him again but I keep my hands where they are, pinned at my sides by Julian’s.
“If we go get the food are you going to stay?” Julian asks me. Not are you going to scream, not are you going to decide yes, you want me dead but are you going to stay.
“If I stay, will you tell me what you are?”
“I will.”
“Then I’ll stay.”
Julian’s smile is instant. Bright and beautiful, it’s dazzling.
Like a movie star smile that you see at the Oscar’s or splashed across a magazine cover but it’s not.
Julian’s smile is just for me. Something starts to pull apart in me with that smile.
The fear, the anxiety, it starts to pick itself apart.
He reaches down and snags the knife from the floor before he puts it down on the counter.
I watch grab the kitchen towel by the sink and wipe the blood from his neck.
When he’s clean he grabs my hand, leading us to the door like I didn’t just have a knife to his neck or finding out that he isn’t human.
I follow him like a zombie on wooden legs.
I look down at my hand. It fits perfectly in his.
An easy thing when Julian has such nice hands.
They’re large, capable, strong, the kind of hands that you’d expect to find on someone who builds things, or takes them apart.
Taking them apart fits more with Julian.
His hands are not the hands you expect from a doctor.
The doorbell rings again and I jump. It’s a double ring from the delivery person. A second later they start knocking and that irritates me slightly. “Hello? Is anyone home?” They call. Nosy fucker is tenacious.
I sigh and take the lead to the door. “Come on. Let’s get this over with. They’ll be calling fucking Sheriff Dayton if we take any longer.”
“They take their job very seriously,” Julian muses when we leave the hall and come into sight of the doorway. The porch light is off, but the foyer light is on so we’re able to perfectly see the delivery person’s face pressed up against the glass as they look around for us.
“No, they take gossip seriously. This is Vesper Point. Gossip is the only thing they care about,” I tell Julian. I stop and pat my pockets. “Shoot, I don’t have my wallet, I have to run upstairs and get it.” I turn to go up the stairs but Julian stops me with a firm tug on my hand.
“You’re not paying. What the fuck?”
“But-”
“You’re never paying for anything ever again.”
I make a face at him. “I have money too. A lot of money.”
“I don’t care. You can have all the money, you can have my money, I don’t give a fuck. My mate does not pay for things. I’m dead, not dickless.”
My mouth drops open at the casual drop of ‘dead’. “What do you mean dead?”
“You’ll find out soon enough, wife.”
I feel like the ground is tilting. It’s tilting isn’t it?
The whole room is coming apart around me.
I stumble after him on the way to the door.
The delivery driver looks like they’ve been treated to a Christmas gift now that they see us.
Oh my god. They’ll be calling back to the restaurant the second they’re off my porch.
“Wife?” I whisper. “I’m not wife material.”