Chapter 11
Sam
“One day soon, we’ll be far away from here.”
Joseph smiled at me, the gesture lighting up his green eyes. “Hearing that never gets old. I can’t believe we’re so close.”
“We still have a year,” I pointed out.
“That’s nothing. We’ve been planning this since we were kids.”
“A lot can happen in a year.” Even though they were my own words, they felt portentous.
He took my hand, pulling me closer. “Hey. You’re lost in your head.”
“Just thinking about it all. I need to find a way to sneak out of town more often. The more money I can earn, the better off we’ll be.”
“As long as we’re together and not in this place, we’ll make it work.”
My somber mood lifted, making me grin. I closed the distance between us, pressing my lips to his. He took me around the waist and turned me onto my back in the grass, deepening the kiss. It didn’t matter that the morning dew was wetting my shirt or that I had to get back soon. Right now, all that mattered was him. Us. We were always the thing that mattered most to each other.
“We’re going to get fancy degrees,” he murmured against my mouth. “We’ll live in a small, rat infested apartment.”
I laughed, tipping my head back against the ground. My fingers traced the lines of his cheekbones as he hovered above me.
“You’re going to build the most acclaimed building in the city,” he went on. “Your name will be everywhere. Even our parents will hear about it and they’ll be so pissed.”
“And I’m going to get on birth control so we can spend our free time fucking in our dingy little home.”
His eyes were wide as he breathed a laugh. “When you say that, a year suddenly sounds like eternity.”
Butterflies spread through my stomach, making me breathe harder. The thought of doing something like that with him was equally exciting and terrifying. I would’ve suggested it already, but the last thing I wanted was to accidentally get pregnant. That was not in my plans, even after we left this hell hole.
“Wow,” a pretentious voice called, drawing out the word dramatically.
Joseph scrambled off of me, moving his body in front of mine. “Mag, what are you doing here?”
“Sight-seeing. There’s a lot to see out here, clearly.”
“Get the hell out of here,” I said, rolling my eyes at the nosey bitch. My voice came out stronger than I’d expected, considering I was actually close to shitting my pants right now.
“Wow, Sam. For someone that just got caught being a little slut, I’d think you would be kissing my feet.”
“I’d rather be cutting off your toes.”
She gasped. “You’re screwed.”
When she took off, Joseph swore. I gripped his wrist, meeting his eyes. They were full of the same fear I felt. He didn’t say anything as he leaned in and kissed me, his movements achingly slow and sweet. After he pulled away, he got to his feet to run after his sister and I sat there, simply watching him get further away from me.
My eyes opened, but what I really wanted was to sink back into my head. The rest of the memory wasn’t pleasant. I’d been beaten by my mom while she repeatedly told me what a slut I was. They’d called in the doctor to check that I was still intact. Unsullied.
At least, when he’d confirmed I was still a virgin, my dad found relief in the fact that I was still worth something. He’d said it as if I should be grateful for his praise. Because I had poor impulse control, I’d spat at him, which ended with me receiving a slap so hard, I woke up on the floor.
That wasn’t the worst part of the whole thing. A beating was nothing compared to being abandoned. Joseph and I never kissed again. He avoided me for the most part. I would’ve taken being violated by the creepy doctor every day over the deep loneliness I felt in the year leading up to my escape.
There was something truly torturous about that feeling. With it came a sense of worthlessness, a desperate desire to be loved, yet never being able to trust that someone could actually feel such unconditional devotion to me.
I was pathetic.
Pushing the memory away, I blinked until my eyes were clear. Now that my mind was less hazy, I tried to figure out what exactly had happened. The last thing I remembered was my magic going haywire. And pain. It had been excruciating, like my body was sucking through a straw in an empty cup. There was nothing left to draw on and it had felt like my very cells were being torn from my body to be used as fuel.
Keeping myself weak wasn’t foolproof, apparently. That energy would just search deeper for something to latch onto. I wondered what would happen if I just let it keep going. Would it kill me? If it did, at least I’d have a failsafe.
Now that I was fully awake, the pain was back. I needed blood, just a little bit.
When I rolled to my side, I realized this was definitely not my room. The walls were lined with rustic wooden planks and the floor was dark gray wood. I rushed out of bed and headed for one of the doors but found myself in an ornate bathroom. The other one led into a hallway that I followed until I reached a large, open living room with a giant, rock-lined fireplace.
Most of the back wall was made up of windows, revealing a sparkling blue lake outside. There were tall trees leading down to it and at the edge of the water was a wood dock.
Had I been kidnapped? If so, it was the fanciest kidnapping I’d ever seen, even though my only frames of reference were from movies.
I moved toward the row of windows, looking for a way to get outside, but there was no door. After touching various parts of the wall, I found that one of the windows was actually a sliding door. The kidnapper didn’t have to know how impressed I was by that.
As I took another step forward, I was overcome with a burning sensation under my skin. Unable to support my weight, I fell to my knees and clutched at my chest. It felt like there was something pulling at my insides, like I was being vacuum sealed.
Someone appeared in front of me and dropped into a crouch. When I looked up, I was met with eyes that looked more gray than blue in this light.
“You need blood,” he said, as if I didn’t already know that. He lifted me and brought me back inside, setting me on the couch before disappearing for a moment. When he returned, he had three bottles of blood.
I grimaced, taking one and drinking half of it. His eyes narrowed as I tried to put the cap back on.
“If you don’t finish that, I will force it down your throat.”
“Jesus. I’d prefer if I was actually kidnapped.”
“Technically, you were.”
After finishing the blood, I sat up and stretched my arms. The pain had gone away, but I still felt tired. I eyed the other two bottles before I got to my feet.
“Where are we?”
“My cabin.”
“I can see that it’s a cabin. Why are we in the middle of nowhere?”
“For rest and relaxation.”
“Somehow I don’t believe that.”
He smirked and the expression was so familiar to me, I almost stopped caring that he’d somehow knocked me out and stranded us in god knows where.
“Sprinkle in some magical training exercises and we’ve got ourselves a perfect week.”
“Week?” I repeated. There was no way I could do this for a week. He’d catch on to my diet plan eventually, which would inevitably lead to a fight that might end in the destruction of this entire forest.
“Or two or three. However long it takes.”
“We can’t be gone that long. You have work and I have… training with Ryan.”
“Everyone works remotely these days. I won’t even dignify that second part with a response.”
As I fidgeted my hands, I tried to think of another reason we couldn’t be here. Maybe I could just stall or distract him until something came up that brought him back to the tower. That still didn’t really solve my little blood problem, though.
He brushed my hair behind my ear, then wrapped it around his hand, tipping my head back.
“I can see your thoughts running rampant. What aren’t you telling me?”
“Nothing.”
Tightening his grip, he leaned in until his lips barely brushed mine. “You don’t want to be here with me.”
“It’s not that.”
“Then what is it?”
When I was silent, he let out a frustrated puff of air and released me.
“You can’t hide from me, Sam. I’ll always find you, even if I have to drag you out, kicking and screaming. Actually, we haven’t played this game for a while. I’m a little bit excited.”
There was bitterness creeping up my throat. I swallowed it back and watched him cock his head. When he studied someone like that, it was unnerving as fuck. I hadn’t been on the receiving end for a while and I’d nearly forgotten just how dangerous this man could be. Being a vampire didn’t do much to ease the feeling of unease.
“I need to take a shower,” I said casually. As I walked away, he caught my wrist and I had to resist the urge to shake him off.
“You need the other two bottles.”
“The one was enough.”
“Sam, you blew through everything you had. Even a regular vampire would need more than one bottle. Stop worrying about how much your body needs. We have plenty.”
I forced a smile and grabbed them from the table. He leaned down to kiss me, brushing his thumb along my jaw. Heat prickled along my skin and I pulled away quickly, rushing down the hall before he could comment.
Lock kept trying to assure me that I couldn’t hurt him, but I didn’t believe that. Earlier, I’d sent some sort of ice toward his chest and if he didn’t have impeccable reflexes, it would’ve hit its mark. I didn’t know if that could kill him, but I never wanted to find out. Even the burns I’d given him a few times filled me with shame and disgust.
Once I’d locked the bathroom door, I listened to make sure he wouldn’t follow me. Confirming that the coast was clear, I turned on the shower and opened the bottles, flipping them upside down until all the blood had drained out.
As it mixed with the water, turning thin and diluted, I couldn’t help but feel bad. It felt like I was wasting food, which I technically was. He said there was plenty, though, and it wasn’t like either of us had qualms about finding someone to eat if necessary. I wouldn’t drink from them, but obviously that wasn’t because I really cared about their life.
I sat on the shower floor while the water rained down on my head. This was one of those moments where I needed a really good, sad song so that I could sit in here and cry for a solid hour. That would only raise more suspicion from Lock, though, so I took a deep breath and got to my feet, taking my time as I washed myself.
Before I went out there, I needed a game plan. Even with the miniscule amount of blood in my system, I had no idea how to control my power. He was too stubborn for me to think he’d let me off easy. He’d expect perfection, total mastery of my abilities.
There was no way this would turn out as anything but an epic failure.