Page 58 of Auctioned for Her Blood
He growls, deep in his chest, and then he throws me onto the bed, landing on top of me on all fours.
I squeal in surprise. Even if he can take sunlight now, he hasn’t lost his unbelievable strength and power.
We arrange some pillows behind us then he drapes his arm around me as we lean back against he headboard. He pulls the duvet to cover us both and then looks deep into my eyes, and my lips tingle, wanting so badly to kiss him again, but there’s more than just lust in his eyes. He’s looking at me…strangely.
“Whatareyou?” he asks.
“What amI?” I frown, not sure whether or not to be offended. “You think this is about…me?” I pull back a bit. He is the one who’s not human. “You’re the one who bit me. Who drank my blood. Twice.”
“Yeah, but, I’ve bitten…” He shakes his head. “Let’s just say your vein was not my first and nothing like this has happened before.”
My teeth scrape my lower lip. “But I didn’t do anything…I don’t know…Nothing about this makes sense.”
“That’s an understatement.” His fingers tease my upper arm, and I snuggle in closer against him as we breathe together, absorbing each other in silence.
“You said your mother disappeared when you were a kid?” he asks, his voice low.
I nod against him. “What does that have to do with anything?” Unease creeps inside me, as if part of me already wonders if my mother could be the key to what’s going on. Her magic. Her claims that my blood was special. Something Zuben claims too.
“Your mother just vanished into thin air? His fingers trail across my collarbone. “What did the police say?”
I draw a long breath. “I never reported it to the police.”
“Why?”
I close my eyes, trying to think clearly—to remember things I’ve tried to forget and have never told anyone.
“Don’t you trust me?” he asks.
I open my eyes to find his scrutinizing mine.
“To be honest.” I bite the inside of my lip. “I don’t know.”
He turns away from me, and I reach up to coax his gaze back to mine. “Idotrust you, Ryker. It’s just…I’ve never talked about my mom or about what happened—not to anyone.”
He nods, his face full of anticipation as he waits for me to say more.
“I’m not even positive that I remember what happened. I have these strange nightmares…” Nightmares of another time someone was taken from me. “It’s me I don’t trust. I don’t know which memories are real and which are dreams.”
“And yet—” His expression is so serious. “In all those years, you heeded your mother’s warning and never went out after dark. She is the one who warned you about that, right?”
“Yes.”
He nods. “She knew.” Stroking my arm, he shifts and turns toward me. “Your motherknewyou’d be irresistible to vampires. That’s why she wouldn’t let you go out after dark.”
Ryker pulls up the duvet, tucking it around me with one arm as he leaves the other draped behind me, and I realize that I’m trembling. But it’s not the temperature that’s causing my shaking.
“My mother…” I pause trying to gather the courage and words. “My mother could do things.”
“What kind of things?” he asks softly.
“Magic things. At least magic is the only way I can describe it. She could move objects without touching them, lock the doors and windows so that no key or force could work, and…”
“And what?”
“I think she hid our house, the whole farm? It didn’t occur to me at the time, but the house was on a main road, not that far from a small town, and yet we never had visitors. No one even came down our drive, not until…” The trembling intensifies.
“Until what?”
