Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Landon
“The pass is reopening around midnight, so we should be up there by mid-morning tomorrow.”
Joshua’s voice cut through the room from where my phone was perched on the low dresser, the speaker crackling a bit with whatever Joshua was doing while discussing their new travel plans.
I studiously sorted through the dissertation proposals I hadn’t reviewed before the winter break, reading the words without actually comprehending them.
But anything was better than remembering Harlowe’s soft skin and breathy moans while her father tried to talk to me.
Fuck, I was hard again. Thinking about Harlowe. While chatting with her father.
I was going to hell.
“Sounds good,” I said, clearing my throat to cover the sudden desperate rasp in my voice.
“I’m sure you’re desperate for everything to reopen as well,” Joshua said, understanding in his tone now. “We will understand if you’re out with a host when we get up there. No need to wait for us to arrive.”
A host.
Just the thought of taking some random human’s vein to my mouth had me wanting to vomit.
All I could picture was Harlowe’s soft skin and the mouthwatering taste of her strawberry blood.
Saliva surged in my mouth, and my fangs extended between one heartbeat and the next, more than happy to slake the need.
Even though my body wasn’t actually in need of blood and wouldn’t be for several more days.
“Of course,” I managed to choke out. And then I steered the conversation away from anything to do with this cabin and this holiday.
He hung up a few minutes later, drawn away by his own chosen mate.
Meridith and Joshua weren’t Fated, but their love and commitment ran deeper than most I’d ever seen.
None of our friends were Fated, actually.
It was incredibly rare, not something every person was destined to discover.
There were musings by the more philosophical of our kind—of vampires—that not everyone even had a Fated to discover, that it was something that appeared randomly just like any other trait.
Much like how some animals were born with albinism.
There perhaps was a reason for it to appear, but no one had taken the time to discover just exactly what those causes might be.
I had a Fated.
My stomach clenched with the thought, just as it had every time it coursed across my mind today, pacing in this tiny bedroom like a caged animal myself.
I knew myself. I knew I didn’t have the self control to resist forcing myself on Harlowe if I saw her.
Not with my bite in her wrist and the reality that she was my blood mate hanging in the air between us.
I put down the proposal I had been trying to read for the last half hour, finally admitting defeat.
There was no way I could focus on the minutia of my profession, no matter that I found great satisfaction from teaching various aspects of the Middle Ages.
This spring I was finally getting to build a course revolving specifically around the Norman Invasion and its long lasting, rippling affects through the rest of the medieval period in England and Europe as a whole.
A soft knock had my head shooting up.
Harlowe stood against the threshold, still in that charcoal gray sweater and flowing, thin dress beneath it.
Her hair was messier than this morning, more strands falling around her face.
There was a burning intensity in her gaze, in the set of her shoulders, that hadn’t been there this morning.
My stomach clenched in dual anticipation and foreboding.
“We need to talk,” she said without preamble, that hardline sass back in her voice.
I gathered the papers and dropped them unceremoniously onto the dresser beside my phone. Shoving my hands in my pockets, I propped a hip against the ledge, forcing my body relaxed.
“All right,” I said.
She hesitated, her teeth biting into the plush skin of her bottom lip. My dick twitched in renewed interest, but I ignored it entirely. She didn’t move from the threshold, her arms wrapped protectively around her stomach.
“You want this to mean nothing?” she asked after a long silence, no inflection at all in her voice. It was a neutral question, as if she was asking if I had noticed the snow finally starting to slow this afternoon before the sun set.
“I think that might be best,” I offered, that same ashy taste on my tongue.
Her lips pursed, and then she shook her head. “You’re lying.”
“Excuse me?”
Indignation ripped through me. Indignation and fear.
How could she possibly know that the last thing I wanted was for this to mean nothing, that what I really wanted was to splay her out across this bed and claim her in every way possible between two people.
Nevermind that we’d both done all of that countless times before with others.
I needed her body pliant under mine, needed her cunt clenching down around my cock and not just my fingers, needed to feed from her as I brought her to an indescribable orgasm.
“I said you’re lying.” This time, there was fire in the words. She took a step into the bedroom and dropped her arms. “I know that you wanted to do more than just eat me out last night. I know that you want to announce to the clan that I’m your Fated.”
All the blood drained from my face. “You know nothing.”
She rolled her eyes and then held out her hand, palm up. My bite was still bruising her skin, and it had that ravenous, primal hunger that had nothing to do with my blood thirst roaring up in me.
“Yes, I do.” She took another step closer, and I scowled, unable to pry my eyes away from my twin punctures. “It’s my gift.”
That had me focusing on her face again. It hadn’t even occurred to me that she might have a gift that would present like this. How could I have forgotten that all dhampirs had a special gift, the amalgamation of their unique genetics?
“You’re a verifier?”
It was a mediocre term for the ability some dhampirs had: the ability to know the truth of what someone said.
The ability was more or less strong depending on the person.
Some had to touch you to know, a living lie detector in truth.
Others could taste a lie but not the truth.
Each was wholly different, just like the dhampirs themselves.
She shook her head. Her gaze dropped to her hand as she clenched it and then spread it flat again. “I’m a reader.”
Holy fucking bloody hell.
Surprise ripped through me, my mouth dropping open.
Readers were practically myth, something discussed but never actually encountered.
I couldn’t think of a single dhampir in the last century with a gift that fell under the umbrella term.
I always thought it was a lucky thing, too.
Being inundated with the thoughts of those around you sounded miserable.
There was no privacy even when you wanted to provide it, even when all you wanted was quiet.
Harlowe was quick to continue, her words falling over each other.
“It’s by touch only, just in my palms. My palms have to touch bare skin, and then it’s only the surface thoughts. I’m not able to, like, dig around or anything. I don’t see images or anything, either. I just hear thoughts, just the words themselves.”
All at once, small behaviors fell together, morphing into a coherent picture. Her careful reserve with everyone, even her own parents. The quick grimaces when she thought no one was looking and the ones that made her seem uncomfortable with the person she has greeting.
And then her odd comment last night suddenly clicked into place.
“That’s why you said you didn’t hate me,” I said. My voice was oddly detached despite everything spiraling inside me. “You were touching me when I thought that. You…”
Bloody hell. How much else had she heard?
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “It’s not something I can stop. If I want to touch someone… if I want to feel their skin against mine…”
Her eyes closed and her throat rippled with a swallow.
“So tell me the truth, Landon,” she said, her voice suddenly strong and full of demand. “I deserve to know it.”
All at once, the desire I’d tried to hold back all day, the primal need to know my Fated in every possible way, in every possible iteration, sweeps through me. My fangs elongate, and my claws lengthen. My dick is so fucking hard it aches.
Her eyes brighten, but she doesn’t back down. “What do you really want, Landon? Do you want this to mean nothing?”
In answer, I crowded her into the doorway, lifted her until I could press my hips against hers, and buried my fangs in the unmarred side of her throat.