Chapter 20
T essa woke to complete darkness. Amos was still curled around her, his body totally still. He wasn’t breathing. When she felt for a pulse, there was none. It was unnerving, but he’d warned her that it would happen. Oddly enough, he was still perfectly warm.
She shifted slightly, reaching blindly for the nightstand. She found her phone and checked the time. A few minutes to sunrise. Taking advantage, she slid out of bed and groped in the darkness until she found the bathroom door. She rinsed her mouth and answered the call of nature before sliding back into bed with Amos.
She curled into his arms and he shuddered, his chest rising as he drew in a deep breath. His hold tightened around Tessa as he shifted into wakefulness. His purr resonated in the peaceful silence. Without warning, he flipped her onto her stomach and rolled his weight on top of her. His cock was already hard, nudging against the curve of her ass.
“Beg me not to,” he said, voice rough with morning rustiness .
“Please don’t!” she said, fingers curling into the sheets.
“But I’m going to,” he purred against her ear. “Why don’t you just try to enjoy it?”
“No! Stop!”
He spread her thighs with his knee and pushed his cock into her slick, eager pussy. She stretched around him, groaning as he filled her, hips arching up to take all of him.
“Please don’t do this,” she whimpered as he began to thrust into her.
“I know what’ll change your tune,” he said with cruel pleasure. His lips brushed the nape of her neck.
“No!”
His fangs sank into the unmarked side of her neck. He drank as he fucked her, pumping in and out of her helpless, ecstatic body. When his own climax took him, he shuddered, fangs and cock buried deep, wet heat flooding inside her.
He pulled out and turned her onto her side, holding her in his arms as she rode out the last effects of his venom. His hands stroked over her body with tender sweetness, soothing and worshipping.
“You’re not leaving me anymore,” he told her.
“I don’t want to.”
“I mean, you live here now. Not with your mother.”
“Okay.”
“You—what?” Clearly he’d expected more resistance than that.
“Okay. The upstairs rooms are mine, right?”
Amos didn’t respond right away. After a long stretch of silence, he nuzzled against her, purring. “Yes. Already know what you want to do with them?”
“I want one to be a… sort of a greenhouse. I’ve got a lot of plants that will be moving in here with me.” She hesitated, th inking about the layout of the rooms. “If that can be done?”
“We can have more windows installed in the south-facing room,” Amos answered readily. “What else do you want?”
“I think I want one to be sort of like an art studio.”
“What kind of arts do you do?”
“I don’t actually know how to do any,” she admitted, a little sheepish. “But there are several I’ve always wanted to learn. Like sewing? And maybe pottery?”
Amos made a wordless sound of encouragement. “And the other two rooms?”
She thought for a second. “I’m not sure. Do I have to decide right away?”
“Of course not. They’re there for you, whenever and whatever you decide on.”
They lapsed into a cozy silence for a little longer. After a while, though, Tessa had to ruin it.
“I do have to go back to my mother’s for a little bit tonight.”
Amos’s arms tightened ever so slightly around her.
“I have to tell her about us.”
His hold loosened. “Oh, right. That was supposed to be the final step in properly courting you—getting your family’s approval.”
Tessa grimaced. “Well then, you may have your claim mark on me—”
Amos’s purr abruptly increased in volume.
“—but our courtship might not conclude for a good long while. My family is… stubborn.”
“Hmm.”
“Anyway, I’m going to tell Ma about us, and I need to pack my things to bring here.”
Amos nipped her shoulder. “That’s reasonable, I suppose. Do you want me to come with?”
“I think it would be better if I told her alone. She’ll want to meet you eventually, but I can spare you the initial blow-up at least.”
“I’m not afraid of conflict. I can be there to support you.”
Tessa shook her head. “That would make it worse.”
Amos kissed the top of her head. “Alright. But if you change your mind, call me, and I’ll be over right away, okay?”
Tessa twisted in his arms to face him, planting a kiss on his lips. “Okay.”
After she cleaned up in the bathroom and put yesterday’s outfit back on (minus her ripped panties), Tessa stood in front of the mirror, examining the claim mark high on the left side of her neck. Every time she touched it a wave of comforting warmth seemed to wash over her, and then Amos would appear a second later in the doorway, eyes bright and doting. She had to shoo him away each time, lest she be distracted from the task at hand—breaking the news to her mother.
Down in the front hall, she pulled her coat on and looked at herself again in the mirror hanging near the door. The claim mark was livid and red, the skin tender and puffy around the bite. Thick bloody scabs crusted over skin that was deeply punctured in a perfect cast of Amos’s dental print. She pulled her hair over her left shoulder, letting the curling mass of it hide the mark. For extra insurance, she flipped her jacket collar up. It would have to do.
Amos brought her home, setting her at the foot of the front steps. Before he left, he gently cupped the side of her neck, trailing his fingers over the mark. The powerful feeling elicited by Amos’s touch on the mark nearly made her knees buckle. They stared at each other, both breathing a little unevenly.
“Later,” she promised. “But first, I have to talk to my mother.”
Reluctantly he released her, watching from the sidewalk as she climbed the steps to her mother’s house. She let herself inside with mingling feelings of dread and relief. At last, she was no longer going to be living with her mother. But breaking the news was going to be an ordeal. She shut the door and glanced out the window once more at Amos before turning to face the music.
“Ma?” she called. “You home?”
“In the kitchen!” Ma called back.
Tessa found her in her usual place at the kitchen table, reading glasses perched on the end of her nose as she clipped coupons from the Sunday paper while Family Feud played on the little TV above the microwave. It was an achingly familiar sight—one that she had witnessed since the earliest days of her life. The only thing missing was Dad sitting at the other side of the table, drinking coffee and doing the crossword.
“Hey, Ma. I have to tell you something.” Tessa slid into the chair next to the one that used to be Dad’s.
Ma looked up, brow furrowed. She set the coupons down. “What happened? Are you pregnant?”
Tessa half-choked on a laugh. “No. But… I’m moving in with the guy I’ve been seeing.”
Ma blinked, apparently stunned into silence .
“I’m sorry to spring this on you so suddenly. But the credit cards are paid off and the mortgage is back under control, so you don’t need my help anymore.”
The stunned silence didn’t last long. “You’re what? ” Ma demanded, aghast. “You’re moving in with some man that you just met? Are you out of your goddamn mind, Teresa?”
“No, I—”
“This is Lucas all over again! He’s taking advantage of your soft heart! As soon as you move in with him, he’s going to oh-so-conveniently get laid off, and you’ll end up footing all the bills while he spends all day playing video games, pretending he’s looking for work. You’re smarter than this!”
“He’s nothing like Lucas. I learned my lesson from that, Ma. Listen, he’s—”
“Oh god, you’re just like your father,” Ma lamented. “You’re a caretaker and provider, and people take advantage of that. Just have a little common sense, Teresa. What kind of trustworthy man wants to move in with a woman he’s only known for a few weeks? A crazy one! A lazy slob who’s looking for a meal ticket! Don’t you remember what happened to Ceci with that useless man she almost married? I can’t believe you’re—”
Ma kept talking, but the words blurred into meaningless noise in Tessa’s ears. She realized there’d be no reasoning with Ma until she’d gotten this tirade out of her system. So she waited patiently until Ma ran out of calamitous prophecies to sputter.
“Promise me you’ll rethink this!” Ma begged as Tessa tuned back into what she was saying.
“Ma, listen,” she said patiently. “I didn’t just meet him. We’ve been seeing each other for several months now. ”
Ma’s brows shot up. “Several months ? And you never told me?”
Tessa winced. “I’m sorry. I know it sounds bad. It’s just that… he’s just really special to me, and I wanted him to be just mine for a while.”
“‘Just yours.’ What does that even mean? I don’t like this, Teresa. Not one bit. What kind of decent man agrees to stay hidden from your family for months ?”
“I promise you don’t have to worry about him taking advantage of me. He’s a little older than me—” understatement “—and he’s very established. He makes more money than I do. He has his own company. He owns a nice house in Old Town. If anyone’s taking advantage, it’s me.”
Ma scoffed, but Tessa could see the emotional tide had finally turned. “His own business?” Ma said skeptically. “Doing what?”
“He’s a software developer. I don’t really understand it all, but he’s got clients all over the world and several employees.”
The corners of Ma’s lips turned down and she tilted her head from side to side as she considered that. “That’s where all the money is these days, isn’t it? Computers.”
“I don’t know, but Amos is doing all right. He won’t be mooching off me.”
Ma crossed her arms. “How much older is he?”
“He’s forty-two,” Tessa said, giving his age at the time of being turned.
Ma’s brows shot up. “Nine years?”
“Dad was seven years older than you. It’s hardly any different.”
“Well don’t you have an answer for everything,” Ma said sourly. Even so, her posture had relaxed, and she managed to return her attention to her coupons. “Am I ever going to meet this man?”
“Well, you kind of already did.”
Ma frowned. “The kicked puppy who showed up on my doorstep yesterday?”
Tessa nodded. “He’d be happy to get a proper introduction—to meet the whole family, even.”
Ma slid her cheaters off so she could glower more intently at Tessa. She pursed her lips in thought. Finally, she pronounced, “Tell him he’s coming to dinner tonight.”
Tessa wanted to argue with Ma’s presumptuousness, but it had admittedly gone more smoothly than she’d expected, so she agreed. “Alright. I’ll call him.”
“You drive a nice car there, Amos,” Rob said with a weird over-friendliness that made Tessa bristle. She shot him a warning look, but he ignored her. “Audi, huh? Guess that software gig pays the bills.”
Rob and Amos were like night and day standing next to each other. Rob had raven black hair, long on the top with the sides cut in a meticulous fade, and a thick, equally meticulous beard. He’d been a varsity soccer and track star in high school, but those days were long past and he was settling comfortably into his dad-bod era. He was the spitting image of their father, with warm brown skin and eyes so dark they were nearly black.
Amos, on the other hand, was pale even by Norwegian standards. He was clean-shaven and his wheat-blond hair was cut efficiently short in an admittedly nondescript style. Despite the fact that he worked with computers now, he still had the body of the steelworker he’d once been. His blood-red eyes—which he’d explained to Tessa’s family as a congenital condition—were attentive, guarded, where Rob’s eyes were laser-focused, on alert for any reason to hate the interloper.
“I’ve been very fortunate,” Amos said diplomatically. He sipped at the beer that Rob had basically forced into his hand. Tessa knew he was only pretending to drink but, fortunately, nobody could tell through the dark brown bottle. Periodically, when no one was looking, she grabbed his beer and swigged a few inches off of it to maintain the illusion.
“Well, we can’t all be desk jockeys,” Rob said smarmily, indicating himself.
“Rob, you literally work at a desk,” Tessa cut in.
“At the port,” Rob replied impatiently. “Wearing a hardhat and steel-toed boots.”
“Why would you wear a hardhat at your desk?”
“Obviously not at my desk,” Rob snapped. “But I need it when I’m walking around the terminal.”
“For what? To get to the break room?”
“Will you two quit your bickering?” Ma called from her position at the stove. She was busy with the gravy, but kept one ear twigged while the rest of them socialized around the kitchen island.
“We’re not bickering,” Rob and Tessa called back at the same time.
“Shipping’s crucial work,” Amos cut in before the sibling battle could escalate. “And hard work. I take it you work in logistics?”
Rob nodded, turning his attention back to Amos, clearly mollified by the praise. As he launched into a long-winded, overly-detailed explanation of his job, Tessa stood in silent agitation, waiting for Rob to turn passive-aggressively competitive again.
“And what do you do?” Amos asked Sarah when Rob had paused for a breath.
Sarah, who’d been standing silently beside Rob, blinked, as if caught off-guard by the acknowledgment of her existence. She looked like a short, blonde owl. “Oh. Uh. Me? I’m an accounts payable specialist at Kuepper—they’re a frozen food manufacturer.” Obviously uncomfortable with the attention being on her, she quickly changed the subject. “The wine you brought is delicious, by the way.” She held her glass up.
“Well of course he knows all about wine,” Rob said, that grating competitive edge back in his voice. “He drives an Audi.”
“Will you shut up about the Audi?” Tessa snapped. “Maybe he bought it used.”
“I didn’t,” Amos said serenely.
Tessa shot him the same annoyed look she’d been saving for her brother. “It’s not like it’s a Rolls Royce,” she muttered at them both.
“Well, it’s very good wine,” Sarah intervened mildly. “I usually only—”
Isabella and Gabriel—Rob and Sarah’s kids—chose that exact moment to come racing back into the kitchen and fling themselves at Amos’s legs. They wrapped themselves around his shins like koalas.
“It’s been fifteen minutes!” Izzie declared, smiling a manic, gap-toothed smile.
“Give us a ride again!” Gabe crowed.
“I said you could come back in the kitchen after fifteen minutes,” Sarah objected tiredly. “Not that Amos was going to be your personal playground.” Amos had accidentally demonstrated his inhuman strength when he’d first arrived, tossing the kids around with a little too much ease when they’d started crawling all over him, and since then, they’d been pestering him for “rides.” Hence the fifteen-minute banishment.
“Sar, just let them have the iPads,” Rob groaned.
“Ready?” Amos asked. He lifted the foot Izzie was attached to high into the air. Izzie shrieked like a banshee, clinging and laughing as he waved her around like she weighed nothing.
“Amos, you really don’t have to,” Sarah said, looking torn between embarrassment and amusement.
“Me next!” Gabe cried. Amos set Izzie down and swung Gabe up. More shrieks filled the kitchen.
“What’s all this noise!” Ma cried. “You’re going to make me go deaf!”
“Alright, alright,” Rob said. “That’s enough. Ride’s over. You guys can stay in the kitchen if you can sit still and be quiet. Otherwise, go back in the living room.”
“We can be quiet!” Izzie promised, still clinging to Amos’s leg.
“That means no climbing on guests,” Rob said sternly.
Plaintive objections met that declaration. Tessa smothered a smile as she watched Rob—her loud, mule-headed, often insensitive brother—get bullied by his own children.
“Alright!” Ma bustled over with a platter heaped with herb-crusted roast pork on a bed of roasted vegetables smothered in pork drippings. She set it at the center of the table. “Everyone sit. Dinner’s ready.”
As they took their places—Amos finally free of his ankle weights—Ma dished everyone’s plates up before taking her usual seat at the end of the table.
“Thank you for this, Mrs. Vargas,” Amos said. “It looks excellent.”
Ma acknowledged that with an impatient gesture. “Don’t let it get cold, then.”
Tessa watched out of the corner of her eye as Amos cut a piece of pork and put it into his mouth. He chewed and swallowed. “Amazing,” he declared.
Always susceptible to praise for her cooking, Ma gave Amos her first real smile of the night. “Well, there’s plenty, so have your fill.”
When she’d called him to tell him he had to come over for dinner, Tessa had suggested that they tell her mother that Amos had some kind of gastro-intestinal disorder. But he’d told her not to bother. He could eat food, he just didn’t like to. It tasted like nothing and did nothing for him nutritionally or calorically. And until his venom broke it down, he would have a stomach ache, but it was hardly the worst thing in the world.
“Thank you,” Tessa had said softly, “for doing all this for me.”
“Tessa,” he’d replied just as softly. “There isn’t a thing you could ask that I wouldn’t do for you.”
She’d been overwhelmed, grateful, humbled, nervous. This love was so unlike any she’d felt before.
“Just know that dinner with your family is hardly a great sacrifice on my part. What time should I be there?”
And now, there he sat, calmly eating a meal that would make him sick, all so he could make a good impression on Tessa’s lunatic family. After the roast, there was lemon meringue pie. Tessa tried not to wince as Ma cut a giant slice for Amos. Without even the slightest flicker of dismay, he accepted his plate and dug in.
By the end of the meal, Tessa had a tension headache, but Ma had warmed considerably to Amos, and Rob had stopped with the puffed-chest egoism. As Sarah rounded the kids up to leave, Rob shook Amos’s hand.
“Be good to my sister,” he said gruffly.
Tessa pursed her lips together, torn between annoyance and a sudden sentimental urge to hug her brother.
“Of course,” Amos answered.
Once they were gone, Amos insisted on helping Ma clean up the kitchen. She made a few cursory objections, but a few minutes later, Amos was loading plates into the dishwasher while Tessa wiped the stove down and Ma put the leftovers into containers. Ma insisted Amos take the leftovers and he obviously couldn’t refuse, so Tessa knew what she’d be eating for the next couple of days.
Once the kitchen was clean, Amos followed Tessa upstairs to help her pack her essentials to take to his house. She stuffed a duffel bag with as many clothes as she could manage and filled a box with all her toiletries. Amos loaded everything into his car while Tessa said goodbye to her mother.
“I’m not that far away, and I’ll be over all the time, because you know I can’t give up your cooking.”
Ma looked small and tired again, and it broke Tessa’s heart to leave, but she knew she had to. She had to create her own life for herself. She had to allow herself the happiness she’d been missing for too long.
“I know, baby.” Ma wrapped her in a hug and held on for a long time. Finally, she pulled back, planting a kiss on Tessa’s cheek. “He’s a good one, your Amos. He’ll take care of you.”
Tessa swallowed, her throat suddenly tight. “Love you, Ma.”
“Love you, too.” One more kiss on the cheek, and then she was sent on her way.
Out in the car, Amos held the passenger door for Tessa. As he slid into the driver’s seat, he froze, one leg still out of the car.
“What’s wrong?” Tessa asked.
“The windshield,” Amos answered, getting out of the car.
Something flat and round was tucked beneath the wiper. Amos pulled it free and got back in the car.
“What is it?” Tessa asked, leaning over.
Amos turned it in his hands, letting the streetlight illuminate it. It was a plastic gold medallion, with a design embossed in the top that looked like a kid playing soccer. It was scuffed and grimy, obviously long forgotten by whatever kid had originally owned it.
“The thrall,” Amos snarled. His hands clenched on the medallion, snapping it in two.
“Another gift?” Tessa took the pieces from his white-knuckled grip. “Be honest—how terrified should I be?”
“If he’s demonstrating courting impulses towards you, he won’t want to harm you. You’ve got my claim mark, so he won’t be able to claim you, even if he were capable. Thralls can’t claim bloodmates. Regardless, the impulses are there. And without his sire to keep him in line, he’s at the mercy of his impulses.”
Tessa took that in, quiet for a moment. “Then, Amos… please don’t kill him.”
Amos stiffened. His pupils dilated with predatory intent .
“It’s not his fault this was done to him,” she said. “He’s alone and lost and he needs help. You know what it’s like to be alone. I know what it’s like. So, please. Help him.”
The stiffness eased from Amos’s posture. He sighed. “Alright.”
“Thank you.”
He leaned across the center console, pulling her in for a kiss. “You are incredibly compassionate. It is one of the many qualities that I love about you. But I’m putting one condition on this compassion. If it comes down to protecting you from him, I won’t be bothering myself about the thrall’s safety. Understand?”
Tessa nodded. “That’s fair.”
He kissed her again. “Let’s go home.”
Her heart warmed. “To our home.”
A soft purr resonated in Amos’s chest as he put the vehicle into gear.