Chapter 32
Chapter thirty-two
Cora
“When I asked you earlier if you were out of your fucking mind, the answer to that question should have been, ‘Why yes, Cora. Yes, I am.’”
It was the only logical reason that he would have looked at her with such amusement when he’d told her to jump.
When Saiden had first dragged her from the car in the middle of nowhere and started off down the overgrown pathway, she was worried he might be taking her somewhere to finally murder her.
It would have been one hell of a long game considering he could have done it at almost any other point, but she saw no other reason he would bring her out into the woods.
Until they arrived at the waterfall. The setting sun cast an orange and red glow across the top, almost as if the water was fire spilling down the side of the cliff, and it was incredible to witness.
There had been one couple splashing at the base of the falls, but they left the moment she and Saiden arrived. When she asked why, he simply shrugged and said that people around there knew his family valued privacy.
Before she could ask anything else, he’d swooped her up into his arms and dashed up the steep side of the falls. Depositing her at the top of the cliff, he’d grinned and said, “Jump.”
Clearly laughing at her assessment of his mental faculties, Saiden started stripping off his shirt.
So that's why he brought me here, she thought. He was back in seduction mode.
Except it didn’t feel like it. He wasn’t casting her heated glances or slowly pulling the shirt up to reveal each of his defined abdominal muscles one by one. No, this felt like a different Saiden. Relaxed and carefree. Like he genuinely just wanted to go for a swim and nothing more.
Which would have been fine if said swim wasn’t at the bottom of a hundred-foot drop.
“Come on,” he protested. “It’s only forty feet.”
Hrmph. Looked like a hundred.
“Seriously,” he continued, yanking off his boots. “It’s not like I’m asking you to jump off Burney Falls. Now that might warrant the very dubious look you’re giving me right now.”
“That’s easy for you to say; you’re a vampire. You could jump off here or Burney Falls or, hell, even Niagara and you’d be fine. I’m not quite as invincible as you are.”
“You could be,” Saiden commented under his breath, but the words were still loud enough to reach her ears.
Eyes widening, Cora froze in place. Had he just offered to turn her into a vampire? Or was it just an off-the-cuff comment with no real sincerity? And why was he even bringing it up? She’d made her thoughts on that matter crystal clear.
She wanted to blame the uncomfortable silence for the idiotic decision she made next. Cora had never done well with those awkward quiet moments, but she also never realized she would risk her life to get out of one.
“Fine. I’ll do it,” she announced, slipping out of her ballet flats.
Saiden’s head shot up so fast that she didn’t even see him move. One second he was bending over to pull off his pants, and the next he was staring at her with the intensity of a cougar that spotted an injured deer.
“The jump,” she clarified in case he thought there was any chance she was referring to his potentially non-existent offer to make her a vicious creature of the night.
Not that she was really thinking there was any accuracy to the term anymore. It was hard to think of Tressa and Raven as either ‘vicious’ or ‘creatures’ after having sipped martinis and snacked on hors d’oeuvres with them while basking in the afternoon shade.
She really didn’t like the way her world view on vampires kept shifting.
It was a lot easier to think of them as evil.
Evil was something you ran from, not toward.
You didn’t sleep with evil. And you definitely didn’t feel a warm pulse in your lower belly when evil slipped his pants off and stood in front of you wearing nothing but those damn tight boxer briefs.
It made her more than a little self-conscious, his perfect body with olive skin and defined muscles in places she didn’t even know could have muscles.
Her pale, thin figure that she never minded in the past suddenly seemed so lacking.
Really the only thing the illness hadn’t taken from her was her breasts.
Those were still a solid handful, even for hands as big as Saiden’s. Something she knew all too well.
Okay, she was getting wildly off track. If she didn’t get her clothes off and her ass in the water soon, then her clothes were going to be coming off for a very different reason.
Turning her back to him for some unnecessary modesty, she slid off her leggings and t-shirt.
Glancing down, she was glad she had absentmindedly packed her black lacy underwear.
This would be a whole lot more awkward if she was standing in front of him wearing her granny panties with the hole in the waistband.
It was like her body had subconsciously urged her to let something happen while she was here.
On the other hand, her body had like three recall notices so she wouldn’t be paying much attention to it anytime soon.
Bracing herself, she turned back around to face Saiden.
Who was gone.
What the hell?
She frantically searched around, trying to locate where he’d run off to. Had he seriously abandoned her in the woods? She’d only been worried about him biting her before, but now she had to add being mauled by a bear or cougar to her list of fears.
“Saiden?” she squeaked out, hating how high and timid her voice was. She’d watched the Conjuring in her pitch-black apartment, alone, and not even flinched once. She didn’t usually do the scaredy cat thing.
That was a movie, though, and this was real.
“Saiden?” she called again, trying to squash the little quiver in her voice.
“Down here,” he called, his voice muffled by the rushing falls. Cora whipped her head around and raced toward the cliffside, stopping herself inches away from flying over the edge.
Glancing down, she saw Saiden swimming lazily in the turbulent pool.
“How did you get down there?” she demanded.
“The same way you will. I jumped.”
She didn’t know if it made her feel better or worse that he’d already made the leap. Either way, there was no backing down now.
Should she be doing something like this in her condition? Probably not. But life was short, and hers was shorter than most. She’d told him she wasn’t a broken doll, and she meant it.
Cora took a deep inhale and squeezed her eyes shut.
And then she jumped.