Page 17 of A Bond Beyond Blood

Her lip trembled and my hands tightened on either side of the doorway.The wood creaked and moaned beneath my grip and her gaze flicked up at the sound.

“Jacqueline,” I whispered.“Tell me what’s wrong.”

“It’s the anniversary,” she stated without emotion, still staring blankly at my hand gripping the door frame.

My shoulders fell as the realization hit me.Her father’s death, a year ago today.Just days before Christmas.“Franco.”

She swallowed, then nodded.

She was barely twenty-one years old and had already suffered the loss of the man who raised her.

I didn’t know what happened to her mother, but she wasn’t around, so I could only assume Jacqueline had mourned that loss as well.So young and already so familiar with grief.

It wasn’t fair.

After a long moment of internal debate, she finally sighed.“Come in, Vincenzo.”

She turned away from me, but before she could make it a full step, I scooped her into my arms, kicking the door closed behind me.Jacqueline startled, looking up at me with wide eyes, but then she circled her arms around my neck and pressed her face against my chest.“It hurts.”She shook with a silent cry and I picked up my pace, striding down the hallway until the unmistakable scent of her led me to a bedroom at the end of the hall.I walked to the bed, then placed her on top of it, letting go of her long enough to pull the covers down and nudge her within the sheets, then I kicked off my shoes and slid in beside her, pulling her into my arms.

With her face tucked against my throat and completely surrounded by the delicious scent of her, I held her tightly through her grief.

Eventually, when her sobs turned to heavy breaths and then those slowed to deep, rhythmic breathing, I closed my eyes and reveled in the way it felt to finally hold her.Pressing my nose into her hair, I inhaled deeply to pull the scent of her into my lungs.I’d memorized the unique essence of her in the months we’d trained—the hint of vanilla and musk in her shampoo, the wildflower and orange bouquet of her perfume—and had desperately wished I could trap it within my lungs and pull from it whenever the need for her was too strong to bear.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she whispered, startling me from my thoughts.

I smiled against her hair, slightly embarrassed that she’d caught me doing something so creepy while I’d thought she was asleep.

“I like the way you smell, too,” she admitted, and I froze as she readjusted, turning to look up at me.“Like the changing of the season from fall to winter.”Her eyes searched mine, flicking back and forth, and it took everything in me not to push her for more, to squeeze this moment for everything she would never allow herself to say.

Instead, I waited.

For whatever inner battle she struggled with.

She licked her lips and I held my breath, teeth clenched as I fought my impatience to move things along.Jacqueline didn’t need that from me right now.She needed comfort.Care.

She needed me to be here for her, nothing more.

I’d been patient this long; what was a little while longer when faced with eternity?

Thankfully, I’d fed before our missed appointment.I was always careful not to go into our training sessions hungry.Lust and hunger would not mix well where Jacqueline Fiorino was concerned; I wanted her too damn badly.

But that recent feeding meant life thrummed in my veins, hot and human.It responded to her closeness, that dark look in her eyes.I tightened my hands into fists at my sides to keep from touching her.

“Vinny?”she said softly.

“Hm?”

“I don’t want to like you.”

I chuckled in spite of the way her admission hurt.“You’ve made that quite clear.”I wanted her with every beat of my undead heart.

And she was determined to keep me at arm’s length.

“I understand,” I finally said when she didn’t elaborate.

She nodded slowly, then rested her head on my chest.I tucked her close to my body, fingers tangling in her hair.I wouldn’t rush her, not after we’d just made such strides.Allowing me—no,invitingme—into her home, into her bed, was a major step forward, and I didn’t dare risk pushing her away now.

“I can hear your heartbeat,” she said, her voice laced with awe.

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