Chapter 5 #2
Then I woke. Naked in silk sheets of a bed I didn’t know. Panic spiked through me with hard disorientation, though nothing beat under my chest.
More severe than that was a new, all-consuming thirst that threatened to consume me from the inside out.
Seth swept into the room in an open red paisley robe with black trim that billowed behind him. He only wore a pair of black boxers. For a man who appeared to be in his sixties, he still kept fit and groomed.
Him floating in the room, looking deliberately like a snack for a hungry vampire, was yet another red flag.
But I couldn't process anything other than the thirst, burning me alive from the inside out. He cradled my head to his neck, cooing and encouraging me to drink. He’d take care of me, and in turn, I’d be his golden boy. His lucky charm.
The moment my fangs sank into a god, I was eternally clasped to him as a decorative item.
“Yeah, I did.” I shoved my hands in my pockets. “I drank his blood.”
Miranda sighed, leaning back on the couch. “I know we dealt with Seth before you were clued in on the supernatural shit, but Aaron, a blood-bond? You knew what that was. Why the hell would you agree to that?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t think it through.” Seth came to me when I was vulnerable, offering everything I wanted.
Even now, I wondered if I’d known Seth was a god at the first, would I have accepted his help? I’d like to think not. But I’d been so desperate to make myself better for Timothy, I might have made all the same dumb mistakes and ended up exactly where I was.
Immortal and bound to the wrong man.
“When Seth said he could help keep me from hurting others, it didn’t occur to me that he planned on doing it through a blood-bond where he could control me.
I was a starving fledgling. Honestly, I think I would have tried to take a bite out of anyone who’d been nearby.
” I ran a hand through my hair, the thought souring on my tongue as soon as I said it.
Miranda huffed again then pinched the bridge of her nose. “At least this is something we can easily fix.” She stood, her shoulders squared with resolve.
My eyebrows raised of their own accord. “Oh?”
She shot me a look like I was an idiot. “Yes. If you bite Timothy, a blood-bond with him would break the one you have with Seth.”
She was right. Now that she said it, I remembered something in the weird unwritten rule book of vampires that this was a thing.
If I drank the blood of another god, I would be bound to them instead.
As soon as the solution was presented, it dissolved, and I went flat. “That’s not an option.”
"The hell it isn't," Miranda said with force. “Cut the shit, Aaron. You missed Timothy, and you thought if you became immortal, he’d stop keeping you at arm’s length. That the two of you would have a real shot.”
My jaw tensed at her no-bullshit callout.
“And sure, you made some insanely stupid moves to do that, but it’s romantic as hell. So march your sculpted surfer butt over to that uptight god and tell him you want a taste so you can be his love slave for all eternity.”
“Miranda!”
“Aaron!” she yelled back, mimicking my tone.
I collapsed onto the couch, slumped over where I sat. “He doesn't want me.”
She crossed her arms. “Bullshit.”
My thoughts darkened as I remembered the electric spark sizzling between our hands when they touched in his office.
I was right there.
I basically put myself on a platter for the taking, consequences be damned. But that was the thing. Timothy feared consequences and mess almost more than he feared his desire for me.
“I already went to see him,” I informed Miranda.
Her arms dropped as some of the steam she’d been rolling over me evaporated. “What happened?” she asked, her voice softer now.
I shook my head, unable to forget the invisible wall he threw up between us. “He doesn’t want to fight for me.” A lump formed in my throat. “Not when it could make waves. Not when it interferes with the balance between gods and politics. I’m not w-worth it.”
Dammit. The uncontrollable stutter only tripled the pain crushing my chest.
Miranda sat next to me this time, her shoulder pressed against mine. “He loves you, Aaron,” she said quietly. “He’s gotten even more uptight and fastidious since you left. Like if he threw himself into work, it would make him forget. But anyone would know he couldn’t. Not you.”
The lump in my throat doubled, and my nose began to sting. She was trying to help, but what she said only made things hurt more.
“I thought if I became like him, if I became unbreakable, he’d feel safe enough to take the leap.” My gaze darkened. “I was wrong.”
Miranda licked her lips before biting the lower one, looking off in thought.
“I used to be a lot like him. Unwilling to bend the rules, unwilling to bend myself for anyone, afraid I’d break.
That everything would fall apart if I let myself feel vulnerable around someone else. ” Her voice cracked on the last words.
“Then you met a crazy guy in a basement and said fuck it, the sex is too good to care?” I taunted, knowing very well who she bent herself for.
Xander had been a crazy, snarling mess, and every night while she was trying to put him out of his misery with Bob—the god-killing blade — she was also falling for him.
Xander didn't care that she was human, but it became a non-issue when he was drained of his power and became mortal himself.
She punched my arm. Again, I whined as I touched the spot she hit, pretending it hurt.
“No,” she growled before her expression softened. “Well, a little, but a relationship with a god...it’s a lot. I didn’t take that lightly, and neither does Timothy. He just needs...time."
“Welp,” I said, slapping my thighs and standing. “Time is all I have. But right now, I have to head to rehearsal for my next show,” I lied even as I led her to the door. “It’s going to be a doozy. Can I count on you to be there?” I waggled my brows at her.
“Wouldn’t miss your dumbass being suicidal for the world,” she said, rolling her eyes before heading out.
As soon as the door closed behind her, dread filled me from the tips of my toes to the top of my head.
I’d been working out at a near manic pace, not only to take the edge off my frustration with Timothy, but to take the edge off another kind of frustration.
A thousand pull-ups and I’d still feel the creep of unrelenting cold stiffen my muscles the way it invaded me now. It felt like dying. Again.
I couldn’t ignore the freezing pain spreading through my entire being or the desperate thirst that had me in a chokehold. My eyes squeezed shut tight even as my throat seized with impatient need, my cells turning in on themselves to cannibalize each other.
It took all my willpower to close my hand around that doorknob, twist it, and leave.
The hallway stretched before me with mocking invitation, each step on the burgundy carpet muffled as I trudged the familiar route to the elevators. The distant chime of the bell echoed hollowly. My limbs felt leaden, my movements sluggish against an invisible current as I took the familiar route.
Even in the following few days after Seth bonded me to him, I thought I’d remade my life for me. I thought I’d gotten what I wanted. But I didn’t yet realize what I’d done. What I’d allowed to happen.
The crushing, violent need to drink propelled me forward on reluctant feet. I knocked on the double doors to one of the penthouse suites that was a permanent residence and by far the grandest.
With a click, the door opened itself. Seth lounged on the leather sectional, his lean frame framed by an emerald silk robe that lay open.
The blue glow from his phone cast eerie shadows across the sharp planes of his face and glinted off the tortoiseshell reader glasses perched on his aquiline nose—glasses I knew were purely for show, a calculated affectation.
Without even glancing up from whatever had captured his attention, he raised one long, pale finger in my direction, commanding my silence and patience while he continued scrolling with his other hand.
The quiet tap-tap-tap of his manicured nail against the screen was the only sound in the cavernous room.
Hands shoved in my pockets, revulsion skated under my skin at what I was here to do. A few more taps, then he finally set the phone down.
“You are up to two million followers from that last video we posted.” His grin was victorious, but faced with it, something wilted inside me. The stunts were thrilling. The best hit of life reinforcing adrenaline a guy like me could ask for.
But the followers, the growing adoration and fame...I couldn’t care less. But that was what he wanted. I was his new spectacle. My job was to draw a crowd.
“Is my lucky charm thirsty?” Seth asked in a patronizing tone, before straightening and patting the spot on the couch next to him. “Can’t have that.”
In my original vision, I’d be using one those vampire ethically-sourced blood banks to drink from pouches like they were Capri Sun for the rest of my life.
Instead, there was only one source I could drink from now. Only one blood type my body would accept as sustenance. That’s what it meant to be in a blood-bond.
I slunk across the room, feeling like a dog, settling next to him. Seth’s arm opened to rest around my shoulders and draw me in. “There’s a good boy.”
My nose wrinkled before I bit into him. Despite myself, I let out a shaky sigh as Seth’s blood welled from the bites, and I sucked his essence down. My cold, frozen body warmed, thawing with the blood I took in.
I drank his raw, electrified power with a stringent aftertaste, but my body responded enthusiastically, my hands clawing at his shoulders and chest as I took more and more.
“There’s my golden boy,’ Seth patted the back of my head. “What would you do without daddy?”