Total pages in book: 64
Estimated words: 62580 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 313(@200wpm)___ 250(@250wpm)___ 209(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 62580 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 313(@200wpm)___ 250(@250wpm)___ 209(@300wpm)
“What would you have done had I been… you know?”
I let her see exactly what I would’ve done.
“You would’ve protected me?” She gasped. “But, Constantine!”
I shrugged unrepentantly.
“I’m in love with you,” I told her bluntly. “You can’t really expect me to do anything differently. I know that you wouldn’t.”
I could read the truth in her eyes, and it caused me to grin widely.
She dropped her head to my chest and closed her eyes, causing me to feel content for the first time in well over twenty-four hours since this entire mess had started.
“I love you, too, you know,” she whispered into the quiet.
I squeezed her tighter.
• • •
“How does that work?” she asked, voice scratchy. “I thought you weren’t dead when you were turned.”
I rolled over in the bed, allowing my eyes to fall closed despite Acadia’s best effort to wake me up and keep me awake.
“You don’t have to be,” I admitted. “But in this case, and Chen’s case, you both had just imbibed on my blood the day of and the day before. Had you not done so, it wouldn’t have been possible.”
Her eyes widened. “So am I different than a regular vampire?”
I nodded.
“I had to will a lot more of my power into you than I would’ve done to any other vampire. You’re more like me, and a lot less like a newly formed baby vamp,” I admitted. “You’ll have more affinity for the sun at first, and by the end of your first year I’m sure you won’t even have a problem standing out on the beach once it’s all said and done.”
“What, exactly, happens to you with the sun?” she asked warily.
I grinned.
“Nothing.”
She blinked.
“Nothing?” she gasped. “But… why demand all those cells away from the sun then?”
My grin split my face.
“People believe what they want to believe. In this instance, I gave them something they thought would control me. It makes them feel better, and helps me in the long run for them to think they have that out.” I cleared my throat. “If they ever do try to torture me with it, then they’re in for a rude awakening.”
“So what would happen if I went into the sun right now?” she asked, sitting up in bed.
She was staring at the windows—the ones covered by the shutters—like she was about to fling the things open.
“Nothing, not really. You’ll be lethargic, like you’re sick. If you were to drink some blood, you’d feel a little more like yourself. Mostly, though, you’ll just be tired. Like, not being able to lift your hand off the table, tired,” I explained, tugging the t-shirt—my t-shirt—that she had around her frame.
She came back willingly and rolled, straddling me in the process.
“Why am I not hungry?” she challenged.
I shrugged again. “Another question I’m unsure of.”
Her eyes went to the pulse that thrummed at my neck.
“I could taste you, though,” she said, her smile going wide.
That’s when I saw her fangs had released, and I bared my neck for her.
She moved down to my exposed skin slowly. So slowly that I nearly brought my hand around the back of her head and tugged her in closer. But I didn’t, and I was rewarded for my patience moments later when she laughed, her hot breath tickling along my throat.
“Now that I’m Superwoman,” she murmured, trailing those beautiful lips along my jaw. “Does this make me safe to go and do what I please?”
I placed both of my hands on the exposed skin of her thighs and shook my head.
“You can be killed, darling,” I told her bluntly. “Easier than most, still. Though decapitation or the removal of your heart is the only way to kill you, that doesn’t mean that you can’t be killed. On the contrary. Normally new vampires think they’re indestructible, but they’re anything but. They find out the hard way, unfortunately.”
She moved her lips until they were touching the tip of my Adam’s apple. “Keep talking.”
I growled low in my throat.
“About what?”
Her tongue darted out to run a line down my throat to my collarbone, then trailed the same line back up again with her lips.
My hands convulsed on her thighs, then started to move up and down her legs as I tried really, really hard not to rip the panties that I knew were covering her, off.
“About anything,” she insisted.
I rumbled deep in my throat.
“I like the way your chest vibrates when you talk,” she whispered softly, moving her lips up to my jaw and along the line of my beard. “And the way your rough hands scrape deliciously against the sensitive skin of my thighs.”
I growled some more.
“Are you fond of these panties?” I asked her, moving my hands from the backs of her thighs to the seam along each thigh. “Because I’m about to tear them from your body and use them for something other than their intended use.”