Page 24 of Fighting for Her Heart
With the back of my fingers, I stroke her cheek lightly, and she sighs.
“So we just wait?” I ask the professor. “Why can’t I take her vein today? Wouldn’t it speed things up if we did these experiments in tandem?”
Zuben’s back stiffens again, but then he strokes his chin and looks off into space, in that way he often does when he’s thinking.
“In a perfect world, we would not,” he answers after a long pause. “But I will consider your suggestion further. Perhaps one of you could test the length of time you can withstand sunlight from a single feeding, while the other tests Evanora’s theory about whether multiple feedings will build up immunity over time.”
Chapter Nine
Ryker
I stopin the shade at the edge of the covered porch, and then toss the bundle of stakes ahead of me. It clatters on the hard ground.
Fuck. Even though I stepped through several beams of light in the house and through the sunlight guarding the door on this porch, it still feels wrong to walk into the bright light. Without Ember’s blood, I wouldn’t even be able to tolerate my current position in the shade.
“Here goes nothing,” I say aloud and then jump from the top step of the porch all the way down to the gravel path.
The sun immediately heats my leather coat, not to mention my face and the top of my head. My body tenses but doesn’t burn. I quickly remove the coat and toss it back onto the porch, and then, even though the temperature’s probably only in the low forties, I remove my silk shirt too.
Sunlight floods my body with warmth and my mind with joy. I haven’t felt full sun like this on my skin since I was a very young man, and even then it was rare.
My hands trace over my arms and my chest and I squeeze my eyes shut as I tip my face toward the heat, wanting to absorb every particle of sunlight while this lasts.
The only thing that could possibly make this better would be having Ember at my side. More joy flows through me, imagining how it would feel to lie out in the sun with her, to make love to her with sunlight bathing our skin, but then my joy drops down a notch.
This gift in her blood, while it lets me walk in the light, it comes with a cost. She will be left in the dark.
Even when she was human, she couldn’t walk in the light after I drank from her. It’s like my blood temporary stole that capability from her body, and now that she’s a vampire that option’s out all the time.
I tune into the voices inside the house, wondering whether Axe is fucking her again—I would be if I were still in there—but the three of them seem to be negotiating something else. While I bet I could settle whatever’s going on between Axe and Zuben, I don’t want to leave this pile of weapons unguarded. We can’t take the risk.
She might be Ember’s ma, but I don’t trust Nora as far as I could throw her—and I could toss her all the way across this field without effort. I can’t sense her anywhere on the property, and I hope she’s headed out for curtains instead of to Philadelphia to tip off Tavi or her witch pals who think Ember is dead.
Not far away there’s a fire pit of sorts—a ring of rocks around scorched earth. I dash back into the house and snag some matches from the mantel above the fireplace. And then carry the bundle of weapons toward the ring of rocks. I stop before tossing the stakes into the pit.
Ember’s been gone for over ten years, but it’s clear that this fire pit has been used much more recently. If this property is hidden from everyone except Ember and her mother, then who has been building fires here? And why?
Images of witches dancing around the fire and brewing up spells in a pot flicker through my mind, but I shake them off as silly stories. If human myths have vampires so wrong, the same is likely true for witches. Doesn’t mean I trust them.
I glance around the field, then close my eyes to concentrate, but I can’t detect any other living beings on the property beyond flora and fauna. Can witches hide themselves from vampires? Probably.
Dropping the weapons for a moment, I dash into the woods and gather some dried twigs and branches from the forest floor, then return the kindling to the pit.
Even though it’s been so long since I’ve done it, building this fire feels both normal and strange at the same time: the fresh air and the sun on my back foreign as I arrange the kindling and then make a teepee of wooden weapons around it. I strike a match and then watch the flames alight.
The fire growing, I lean back against one of the rocks, waiting until the flames are strong enough to take more stakes.
Over the centuries, I’ve become more of a city guy, but have to admit that it’s nice here on this property. I don’t trust Ember’s mother—I’m having a hell of a time making sense of her story—but maybe I should leave all the thinking to Zuben and concentrate on making Ember happy. And fucking her of course.
I never thought I’d care about someone else’s happiness as much as my own, never mindmorethan my own, but fuck if that isn’t true—at least this morning in the afterglow of taking her vein and that incredible fuck.
I’ve been part of double penetration scenes before, but nothing compared to that action. And it wasn’t just the size of Axe’s cock that made it more intense. It’s how we feel about each other. Who knew emotions could turn everything up to eleven?
For the next hour, I feed the fire, watching the deadly weapons burn one by one as I dream about the future. Although we haven’t fully discussed it, at this point it’s hard for me to imagine any future that doesn’t have all four of us in it—even the professor.
I never thought I’d let myself be dependent on another person, but turns out I need Ember to breathe. And Zuben and Axe have become like brothers, each with their own good and bad points, and it’s clear that Ember loves them both. Fuck, she’s already the bear’s mate.
Using the longest of the remaining stakes, close to a spear, I poke the fire and watch as sparks burst and flames rise, disappearing against the bright blue sky.
