Page 60 of Bitten By Mr. Darcy
“I did,” she said. “I wished you to be jealous.”
He sighed heavily. “Lizzy, I am ruinously jealous. I think of him touching you and I lose my mind.”
“I don’t know why I am insecure when it comes to you, Ty,” she said. “You have proven to me over and over what lengths you will go to for my sake, and I know that you love me in a way that perhaps no one else does, a truly unselfish way. You would sever yourself from me—even though you badly desire me—if you thought you would harm me. You have proved this again and again. But, for some reason, I feel unsure of you, and I don’t know why.”
“Well, that makes sense, I think,” he said, looking up at her. “I abandoned you. Whatever my reasons, it must have felt like indifference to you.” He bowed his head. “In a way, maybe it was.”
“You are indifferent to me?” This cut her.
“I am not,” he said. “But I well know how time works, Lizzy. I could become indifferent to you. It might take some time. If I cut off all contact with you tomorrow, it might take fifty years or seventy-five until I no longer felt wounded when I thought of you, but it would happen.”
She didn’t like the way that felt to hear. Perhaps it was true, but… She backed away from him.
He hung his head. “It would happen to you, too, and sooner, my love.”
“I would always be wounded,” she said.
“It would lose its sting,” he said. “Come now, you cannot deny this.”
She supposed she couldn’t. She supposed he was right, but even so, it was not something she wished to hear him say.
“I am not helping, I suppose,” he muttered. “You wished me to be jealous to reassure yourself that I am, in fact, in love with you, and that you can, in fact, count upon me, and here I am confirming all your worst fears.”
She went back to him, hands in his hair again. “Yes, quite. Yes, exactly.”
“You can count on me, my Lizzy,” he breathed, shutting his eyes, leaning in to her touch.
She traced the outline of his ear.
He sighed.
“But I suppose I want it both ways,” she said. “I want my attraction to him to mean nothing at all, just some passing fancy that has no significance, but I want our attraction to each other to be monumentally significant, to be indicative of some life-changing, unshakable bond. You say it would fade with time, so what makes it mean anything?”
“Well,” he said. “Choice, I suppose.” He reached up to touch her.
“Perhaps,” she said. “But it doesn’t feel much like either of us chose this, does it? Just that we have been inexorably drawn to each other by forces beyond our control, that we have been fighting against them because these forces want you to kill me, and the same forces seem to wish for me to surrender to being your victim.”
He let out a breath. “Yes, it’s all rather horrendous in some ways, isn’t it?”
“And if you turn me, it’s the ultimate test. Then, these forces that brought us together will be broken, and we must see if we even like each other.”
“We like each other, my Lizzy.”
“Ty, do we? Do we know each other? Or are we simply… entwined by blood and physical pleasure, by attraction and temptation, and… is it real between us?”
“It’s real,” he said, quite certain. “Listen to me, Lizzy, I am much older than you and I know these things.”
She laughed softly. “Yes, but here I am, so much less mature than you, trying to rile you up, make you jealous, get you to react, and you must think me so idiotic, even childish.”
“Not at all. I like that you rouse me. You make me feel alive again, like life is worth living again.”
“And when I am a vampire? Will you feel that way then?”
“I see,” he said. “You do not trust me. I have abandoned you already, once before. If I turn you, you are worried that I shall abandon you again, and you will be all alone and vulnerable and with no one else to turn to, cut off from everyone else you have ever loved, now a creature of darkness.”
Her fingers stilled in his hair. He was correct, she supposed, but she wished to argue with him and tell him he wasn’t. She wished to say he had gotten it wrong. She probed his words, looking for a vulnerable spot, someplace to attack.
But then, too much time had passed, and it had been quiet too long, and it seemed like acquiescence.
