Chapter 38
Chapter thirty-eight
Ethan
A soft tickle on his nose pulled Ethan from sleep, and he blinked at the faint spears of sunlight just peeking over the horizon. He glanced at his watch and groaned. Five a.m.
Maybe he was more suited to the life of a night creature than he realized, because five a.m. was not typically a time he wanted to be awake.
Brushing aside the moth that had landed on his cheek, he climbed to his feet and stared down at his mother’s grave.
“Well, Mom, any bright ideas on what I should do now?”
Whoever coined the phrase “as quiet as a graveyard” was clearly not a vampire, because his ears were filled with sound—the chirping of early morning birds, the scuffling of squirrels, the passing of cars on the main road.
So much noise, and none of it was what he wanted to hear.
He ran his hand over the top of the headstone, his vampiric eyes picking up every tiny crack in the seemingly smooth rock. Nothing was ever what it appeared to be on the surface.
“I miss her voice, Mom. I miss her laugh. Fuck, it hasn’t even been twenty-four hours, and I feel empty. Like a piece of me is missing. I don’t think I can live without her. I don’t know if it’s the whole mate bond thing, or something else, but…”
“That’s not it.”
He flinched at the somber voice that floated over from behind him. So familiar but also filled with so much hesitancy. So much worry. It was her, and yet it was not.
He slowly turned around to see Tressa standing beside a tree on the edge of the cemetery twenty or thirty yards away. He shouldn’t have been able to hear her at that distance, but her voice was clear as day. And so was the fear distorting her beautiful face.
His nose twitched at a familiar copper-tinged scent—almost but not quite hidden by her sweet smell—and his eyes traveled down to her fingers. Blood under the nails. She’d been picking at them again. Because of him.
“What do you mean?” he asked, fighting the urge to rush over to her. To take her in his arms and kiss her until she forgave him for running away like a jackass.
“What you’re feeling,” she replied, taking a few tentative steps toward him then stopping herself.
It killed him. To see her so shy and reserved. It was like everything that made her Tressa had been siphoned away. He wanted her to make a bad joke. Or tease him. Or call him some silly name like ‘Dr. Rose.’ Hell, he’d even take ‘Science Boy’ if it made her smile like she used to.
He wanted his mate back.
“How do you figure?” he asked, shoving his hands in his pockets so he didn’t do something stupid like grab her and kiss her senseless. Maybe that had been their problem from the beginning. They kept giving in to their lust when they should have been talking.
“The mate bond,” she replied. “It does draw you to a person and urges you to find them when they’re gone.
It makes you feel this sense of rightness when you’re together, like you just know that the person belongs in your life and it hurts to be away from them.
But the bond doesn’t make you care about their feelings.
Doesn’t make you want to do anything in your power just to see them smile.
It doesn’t…” She sighed. “It doesn’t create feelings in you that wouldn’t otherwise exist. It doesn’t make you love them. ”
She stuttered over the word love, and he didn’t know what to make of that.
Did she love him? Could she love him after everything he put her through?
Could he love her? They’d only known each other for…
Had it really only been two weeks? But he couldn’t deny that he felt something.
Something that was more than just a sense of rightness.
He craved her with every breath. And not just her body, but her heart. Her soul. He wanted to be the reason she laughed or smiled. He wanted to be the reason the glow in her eyes never went out. He wanted to be the light that made his Sunflower bloom.
And yes, he also wanted to make her scream with pleasure. If he was being honest, just seeing her had things stirring in multiple places in his body. Some slightly more awkward than others given he was standing next to his mom’s grave.
“So, how do you feel?” he asked, hauling his caveman brain back to more important matters.
“About me? Mate bond aside, what do you feel for me, Tressa?” He took a few steps toward her, closing the space between them to something less monumental and more manageable.
A gap that could be overcome, if she was still willing.
Pausing a few yards away, he waited for her response.
She dropped her eyes and picked at her nail for a second. When she looked back up, some of the fear had been replaced with… hope?
“When I first met you,” she began, her words hesitant as if she was choosing them carefully, “I felt excited. You don’t understand, Ethan.
For vampires, finding your mate is the one thing you spend your entire undead life waiting for.
Being in a relationship with another vampire is almost impossible because you both know your mate is out there somewhere.
And being with humans is, well, it’s never more than temporary at best. So when I felt the connection between us and knew what it meant… I was filled with all this joy.”
She sniffled, and Ethan had to fight the urge to wrap her in his arms and comfort her. The only thing that held him back was knowing that the moment he got his hands on her, all talking would cease, and they needed to get everything out in the open if they had any chance at a future.
“And of course that happiness was followed immediately by this intense fear about how you’d react,” she continued.
“You’d just been attacked by one of my kind.
She almost killed you. She did put you in a coma for months.
What was I supposed to say? ‘Sorry you think vamps are undead monsters, but I promise I’m a good one.
Oh, and by the way, the universe also thinks we are destined to spend eternity together.
Want to go on a date?’ Tell me I’m wrong, but I don’t think that would have gone over well. ”
Ethan laughed softly and moved forward, cautiously eating up a little more of the distance between them. “Fair enough. But you didn’t really answer my question, Tress.”
She cocked an eyebrow, and he took another step forward.
“You told me how you felt. I want to know how you feel.”
She curled in on herself, and the hope filling his chest deflated a little.
“I don’t know how to answer that, Ethan,” she replied quietly.
“At least, not in a way that will make sense. I waited almost three hundred years for my mate, and when I finally found you… you were the most gorgeous guy I’d ever met.
You were smart, much smarter than me, and so very clever.
You also had the same rage simmering under your skin that I’ve struggled with.
I instantly knew you were my other half.
” She looked up at him with wide, vulnerable eyes and whispered, “Ethan, I was half in love with you the first day we met.”
He inched closer. “And now? After everything? After I said… those words to you back at the compound?”
She finally took a step toward him, eliminating all but the last bit of distance between them.
“Now I feel like I know I’m in love with you.
You’re my perfect match, Ethan. The universe knew we would complement each other beautifully, but you’re the one who made me fall so deeply and completely in love with you.
I just wish I could do the same for you. ”
Her eyes dropped to the ground, and he surged forward, lifting her chin with one finger to pull her face up. “And you think you can’t?”
Tears pricked at her eyes. “I don’t know. It could just be wishful thinking, but I want to. I want you to understand how sorry I am that I lied to you. I never meant any deception. I never meant to hurt you or take your choice away. I never meant—”
“Shut up, Tressa,” Ethan interrupted as he cupped the back of her head with his other hand.
“None of that means anything to me anymore. Right here, right now is all I care about. I love you, Sunflower, and this is our start. This is the beginning of our story.” He gave her a wicked grin.
“And I think I know how I want to kick it off.”
She smiled, the light returning to her eyes. “Really? And how’s that?”
He leaned in close to her, letting his hot breath ghost over the shell of her ear.
“I want to take you somewhere and make love to you. I want to memorize every curve and dip of your body until they’re so ingrained in my mind that I know you better than I know myself.
And once that’s done… Once you understand that I love you now and will continue to do so for the rest of time…
that’s when I want to chain you to a bed and fuck you until we’ve fully tested out the limits of my new vampire body. ”
A shiver ran through Tressa, and he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into his chest.
“I think I could be open to that,” she murmured, rising up on her tiptoes to kiss him.
Tiny shocks crackled across his skin when their lips met, and he let out a primal groan. His tongue dove into her mouth as he surrendered to the blissful taste that was Tressa. He hoped vampires didn’t need much oxygen because he wanted to drown in her. Wanted to claim her as his.
His love.
His mate.
His forever.
Without breaking contact for a second, he slowly walked her backward until she hit a tree, and then he gripped her ass and lifted her up. She wrapped her legs around his waist, rubbing herself against his crotch, and he moaned at the contact.
For about two seconds.
“Fuuuck,” he swore, frustration drawing out the curse as he pulled away and pressed his forehead to hers. “We can’t do this.”
Tressa’s legs went limp and fell to the ground. When she spoke, her voice was coated in misery. “I… I understand, Ethan. You need more time. You need—”