Page 52 of Blood Vows
“Because for the longest time, revenge was all I ever wanted.”
“And now?” I asked softly, prompting his arm to tighten around me, pulling me closer until I could feel the steady thrum of his heart beneath my palm.
“And now,you are all I see,”he said, making me suck back a shuddered breath. Those words melted something deep within me. I leaned down and kissed him, unable to stop myself. His hand came up to cradle the back of my head, holding me to him as his lips claimed mine in a kiss that promised both ruin and redemption.
When we finally broke apart, my voice came out as little more than a whisper,
“Okay… but I still need to know why, how, and when.”He groaned, though his eyes still glinted with amusement.
“That’s quite a list.”
“It’s going to be a long conversation,” I countered. This time, when he sighed, it carried the weight of a man resigned to a truth he could no longer escape. He shifted from beneath me, and I instantly missed his warmth as he rose to retrieve his discarded pants. The sound of fabric brushing against his skin filled the quiet, and I reached for the fallen throw, wrapping it tightly around myself.
I also decided that if we were to have this conversation, I wasn’t going to do it sitting on the floor. So, I picked myself up and curled up on the chair. Thankfully, I was in no danger of leaving any marks on the leather, as he had already used his T-shirt to ‘clean up’ the mess he had made.
As for the man being questioned, the shadows danced across the sharp lines of his regal features. He braced one hand against the mantel, his head bowed, staring into the flames as though they held an answer he couldn’t yet speak aloud. The firelight sculpted him into something that was part man, part myth. A God forged in shadow and flame. Every movement made his muscles tighten and shift beneath his skin, each flex a reminder of the power restrained within that sinful, devastating body. I wanted to worship him almost as much as I feared to.
I pulled the blanket tighter around myself, the faint crackle of the hearth the only sound between us.
“You wanted to bargain me for the dagger,” I reminded him softly, my throat tight as I asked,
“So, what now, Vas?” He didn’t answer immediately. The silence stretched, heavy and suffocating, and though the storm outside had quieted to a distant murmur, it felt as though thetempest had found its new home here, between us. Then finally, his voice broke through, low and rough, like gravel dragged over stone.
“Things have…naturally changed.”The words were quiet, yet they struck something deep within me. My heart skipped, my pulse stuttering as I stared at him, unsure if I even wanted to hear the rest.
“Do you mind elaborating on that?” I asked, my voice barely more than a whisper. He lifted his head then, his eyes catching the light of the fire, those dark blue storm-lit depths reflecting something raw and fierce, something I didn’t yet understand. His jaw tightened, and for a moment, he looked as though he was fighting himself, wrestling with the war that lived behind his eyes.
When he finally spoke again, the words came out rough and frayed,
“I’m not giving you up.” The room seemed to tilt. My breath caught.
“What?”He turned fully toward me, the firelight striking his bare chest and sculpted arms, every inch of him carved from defiance and restraint.
“I can’t.” The air shifted around us, hot and charged. The fire snapped sharply, and for a moment I could do nothing but stare at him. He wasn’t just speaking out of impulse; I could feel it in his voice. He meant every word. Whatever this was between us, it had changed everything. And there would be no going back from it.
The frightening part was…I didn’t want to.
His words hung in the air like smoke, curling and clinging to the space between us…I’m not giving you up.
They echoed inside me, twisting everything I thought I knew into something dangerous and uncertain. I forced my voice through the tightness in my chest.
“Okay, but you can’t actually intend to keep me here.” He didn’t flinch. Not even an inch. Instead, his eyes, dark and unwavering, held mine.
“I can, and I will,” he declared without shame, and my breath caught at the admission. Because he wasn’t threatening me.
He was confessing.
And somehow, that was worse.
“But you said it yourself, I belong to all three of you. You can’t expect to keep me from them.” I pressed, my heart hammering at the thought. Ever since I had learned there was no curse, I knew my feelings for Victor and Tal weren’t as one-sided as I was led to believe. Their love for me had been real all along, which meant there was now nothing in our way from being together.
Well…other than their brother, who I had also fallen in love with and seemed intent on keeping me for himself.
His eyes flashed, the words striking some buried nerve deep within him.
“You cannot expect me to share you with them, the traitorous bastards who tried to kill me, just so they could take my place as heir to our line!” His voice cracked through the air like thunder, rattling the fragile peace between us. The flames in the hearth surged higher as if feeding from his fury, and before I could even breathe, the shadows began to move.
They unfurled from him in slow, sinuous waves, tendrils of living darkness that curled outward from his skin. They started rippling across the floor like smoke searching for something to consume. The temperature in the room dropped, the air thick with the pulse of his power. For a heartbeat, I couldn’t move, caught between terror and awe as the shadows reached for me, responding to his anger, to his pain.
