Page 58 of Trapped for Her Blood
I let one of my hands gently stroke her back to reassure her.
“Earlier…” She looks down, her cheeks flushing. “After you drank my blood, I thought, Ihopedyou were going to…to kiss me.” Her gaze lifts to meet mine. “But you didn’t. And you got upset.”
I turn away from her. My mouth turns bone dry and my eyes sting. Even though, as a vampire my eyes no longer shed tears, they often feel like they might.
“You were missing your wife,” she says softly, no question in her voice.
“Yes.” My voice is hoarse, and I clear it. “But…” Turning back, I look deep into her eyes. “My wife, she’s been gone a very long time. It is not grief that stopped me…”
She nods, looking up at me, patiently waiting for me to continue. Her eyes are so full of compassion and interest it makes me want to tell her things that I’ve never told anyone. And I need to turn the subject away from kissing.
“The memories of what happened to my family, to me. They are difficult to revisit.”
“You don’t have to tell me more about that if you don’t want to,” she says softly. “But sometimes it can help to revisit a trauma. I’ve read articles about PTSD.”
“PT what?”
“It’s a modern name for how people suffer, sometimes for years after a trauma. I’m no expert. And I don’t want to push you to do something that you don’t want to do, but maybe it would help to tell me about what happened?”
I nod. I don’t know anything about this PT thing she describes, but for some reason Idowant to tell her everything, tell her whatever she wants to know.
“You told me about the cages…” She shudders. “But how did you become a vampire? I don’t know howanyonebecomes a vampire. Who did this to you?”
I swallow to clear my tightening throat. “The vampire who turned me was female. And before turning me, she tried to turn my family and other members of my clan.”
“While you were in the cages?” she asks quietly.
“Yes.” I frown. “The evil bitch tried to turn us, one by one, killing everyone I loved as I watched, until…” I pause to let a torrent of rage pass through me. “Until it worked on me.”
“Oh, Axe.” She reaches out from under the blanket to touch my cheek, and I close my eyes at the warmth and comfort of the light contact. “That must have been horrible.” Her hand drops to her lap.
“It was.” I already miss having her hand on my face, but I love that she’s respecting my space, even though I can still sense the intense urgency of her physical desire. And I’m having trouble controlling my own.
“I’m sorry if I made you talk about it.” She licks her lower lip. “You don’t have to…”
“One by one,” I continue, hoping the story will quash my lust. “One by one the vampire drained my family and friends of their blood, and then forced them to drink hers.
“She drained them and then forced them to drink her blood, doing it again and again until they died. Until I was the only one left.” I shudder remembering how, in a fit of anger she tore out the throat of Seth, my eldest son, even as he lay in a coma, pale and weak with so little blood remaining and unable to ingest what she tried to force feed him.
“I’m so sorry,” she says softly. “I hate that you had to go through that.”
Nodding, I look into her eyes. “The vampire witch left me for last.” My eyes narrow. “I think I scared her. I was too big, too strong. And every time she came at me, I’d shift to bear form, ready to avenge my clan members and tear her to shreds.”
Ember gasps, a shuddering breath. “How did she do it then?”
“Using magic.” My anger rises as I voice the despicable word. “She used her magical powers to paralyze me, to keep me in human form so I could not fight her while she dug her evil fangs into my neck and stole my blood.”
My entire body is consumed by the memory and it’s hard not to shift now. I have to swallow my roar.
“How horrible.”
My shoulders relax at the sound of her voice. “Itwashorrible. And the worst part was…each time she fed from me.” I shudder. “I felt…pleasure.” I spit the word like it has the opposite meaning, because in this case it does.
Horror captures Ember’s face, but it quickly turns back to compassion, and now that the tap is open, I need to tell her it all.
“Each time she fed, I’d fall asleep, but I’d wake with her blood in my mouth, in my throat, in my belly. I’d cough, trying to spit it out, but my body had already consumed too much while I slept.”
“I’m so sorry.”
