Page 10 of To Crave Madly
“Enough!”
The word was deep and guttural. Animalistic. Unnatural.
I looked around the room for the source of it, but all the other sets of eyes were on me.
Ah, shit. I had made that sound. How I had made that sound, I had no fucking idea. Was that my demon? I looked down at my hands and found sharp black claws digging into the tabletop. I pulled my hands out of the wood and watched in amazement and horror as the claws disappeared back into my normal, human-looking hands.
“Oh, shit…” Saskia breathed.
My stomach sunk like lead, thoughts ran around my mind at a mile a minute, and my heart raced a frantic rhythm in my chest.
I looked to Jasper, my eyes hoping to find some answers in his gaze, but a frown descended on his handsome face and my heart lurched at the confusion I found there.
“Look, why don’t we all just sleep on all this?” Fenris’ calm voice filled the tense space between us all. “This has been one Hell of a day and I don’t think screaming at each other is helping.”
Jasper nodded. “Good idea. We can reconvene this discussion in the morning. Dismissed.”
Cassian was the first to leave. He stormed from the room like a man on a mission, determined to get away from us, away fromme, as soon as he possibly could. I caught glances from Fenris, Alec and Saskia as they all left. They were clearly worried about me, among other things, and I gave them a shaky smile hoping it was enough to at least show them that I was somewhat okay. I didn’t want them to worry. They were fast becoming friends that I never thought I needed. I had always been a solitary person and found it difficult to really make connections with people. I could be sociable but making real friends was always a struggle. Maybe I’d subconsciously known I wasother, that I was non-human, and that kept people at a distance and maybe that was why Rae, my only friend, turned out to be a goddamn witch.
I looked back at my now normal-looking hands. I just stared at them, almost like they were an alien appendage. They looked like my hands now but what made them change? How did they change? Shit, were they going to change again? Fuck. I needed Levi. He’d figure it out for me.
“What’s happening to me, Jasper?”
He came around the table and cupped my shoulders reassuringly. “I don’t know. But we will figure it out. I’m not planning on losing you again.”
I looked up at him and my heart clenched. Was he coming around to the idea of living? I knew that he wanted to seek the True Death but when he spoke to me like that, with such conviction, I doubted his resolve to see that plan through and that thought made my heart soar.
“Torsten, would you give Jasper and me a minute alone?” I glanced over at my new shadow and met his frowning gaze. “I will be fine.”
“Very well, Mistress. I will be just outside the door.”
The door had barely closed before Jasper pulled me against him and claimed my mouth with his own. He kissed me like he’d never thought he’d see me again. It was hungry, angry and frantic. Tears welled in my eyes at the amount of emotion he poured into the kiss. I could feel them, almost like they were my own. They burst into my mind with such clarity that I gasped at the sudden onslaught of the emotions that weren’t mine. I broke the kiss and took a step back. I had to; that was way too intense. It was definitely more than I could handle at this present moment.
“Forgive me. I wasn’t concentrating and my shields dropped. Are you alright?”
“I’m fine, I just… What do you mean shields?”
“Vampires have a number of gifts when it comes to the mind, but we also have weaknesses. I have mental shields to protect my mind, but it takes a great deal of concentration. It is not a skill I am great at, but with you, well…”
His words trailed off as a vulnerability took hold of his gaze. He was always so steadfast and in control of himself, that to see him looking so fragile and raw had me falling a little bit more for him. He was always so prickly and commanding, but it was the moments like these, where I got to see the side of him that no one else did, that had me wanting to get closer to him. I just had a few walls to get through first. I also had to wrap my mind around the whole claiming thing he had going on. That felt like an eternal kind of commitment and I had to be absolutely sure I wanted to make it. I didn’t know him well enough, but maybe we could change that. I just had to be willing to try.
“But with me…” I encouraged him to continue.
“But with you, my mind doesn’t seem to want to keep my guards up. My mind wants to let you in.”
My hands cupped his jaw. I could tell he was afraid. This was a big thing for him; he wasn’t one to trust easily and Alec had told me some of the reasons why before the battle in the town square. I knew he’d been an assassin all his life and probably felt he didn’t deserve life or love, but I couldn’t deny how I felt about him. I needed to take the first step to show him that I wanted him.
I pressed a soft kiss against his mouth. “Let me in,” I whispered, before deepening the kiss. I felt his reluctance but slowly, I felt something brush against the edge of my mind. It was like a caress, a soft brush of his mind against mine, and then he steadily lowered those shields and I felteverything.He had been angry at me, at Lucifer, the team; he felt responsible for losing me and he was disappointed in himself because he saw that as a failure. I felt his unworthiness, his shame, and his pain. But underneath all those dark emotions, all that sadness, I could see a tiny flicker of hope trying to burn brightly. Images of me flashed in his mind, my smile, my laugh, my pout. Jasper seemed to like my mouth; I’d have to remember that. I knew I would need to keep adding to that fire to help brighten the dark corners of his mind.
I slowly pulled the kiss to a stop; if I let this continue, we were going to end up on the meeting room table and I wasn’t sure I was quite ready for that.
Jasper still had a look a bit like a deer in headlights, but it made him seem so much softer. I almost missed Mr. Grumpy Pants but I did like seeing him more relaxed. It suited him.
“Thank you.”
His brow furrowed. “For what?”
“For trusting me.”
