“Probably not. She was a simple girl. Sweet and loving and kind. She was too good for me.”
I wrap a leg around his hips and hoist him closer. “Well,” I say, stroking his cheekbone, “that’s not a problem you’ll have with me. I’m not that good at all.”
CHAPTER 17
LUCA
She sleeps in my arms, so soft, so trusting, so vulnerable. So perfect in every way. If it’s up to me, she will never leave my side again. I don’t care if this is because of a blood spell—I never want it to end.
I can still smell the sex we had earlier. My cum. Hers. The background scent of lemons. She snores gently, and I smile. She’s even more beautiful while she sleeps.
I hold her close and glory in the memory of it all. Her lying helpless on the bed, trying so hard to be still as I played with her. The way she squirted all over my hand. The taste of her blood. Merda. I haven’t known anything like it before. I was unaware how empty my life was until she came into it and filled it up.
She’s worth fighting and dying for. Worth living for. She might be the one who was tied up, but I am her servant.
I watch her for hours, scared that something will change if I let myself sleep. That I’ll wake up to a new reality, one without her in it.
Despite that fear, I’m drifting off when she sits upright, her eyes open and dazed. She grips the sheets and mumbled words spill from her mouth. Then her fingers go to the amulet around her neck, and I realize that she’s not simply dreaming—she’s being Called.
From what she’s told me, the Call can come night or day, and her visions are hyper-realistic. She’s often carried inside the mind of the predators who require intervention. I hate the thought of her being so close to the kind of filth she hunts. They may be vampires, but they’re not my people, and I know exactly how depraved these monsters can be. I know because I’m one of the worst of us.
Mumbling incoherently, she climbs out of bed, and I leap into her path and gently shake her bare shoulders. “Rosa! Rosa, come back to me.”
Her eyes unfocused, she knees me in the balls so hard I double over. Fuck. I was not expecting that. For a moment, I forgot what she was. She walks to the table, unrolls the pack of stakes she brought with her, and pulls one out.
Shit. I have no idea what she plans to do with that thing and I don’t want to hurt her, but I can’t let her use it on me. I push her arm away firmly, knocking the stake out of her grip, and block the kick that she aims at my stomach. Once I get behind her, I wrap my arms around her body, trapping hers at her sides.
She puts up a fight and manages to catch my nose in a reverse headbutt. Eventually I have her lifted off the ground, but she continues to kick her feet and claw at my skin with her nails. Jesus, she’s strong. Not to mention vicious. Her naked ass bounces against me, and I decide here and now that one day, when the world is less fucked up, we’re going to have a lot of fun using fighting as foreplay.
She’s showing no signs of calming down or giving up, and I throw her onto the bed in a furious heap. She immediately flips back up, snarling, her fingers twisted into hooks that she’d love to sink into my eyes. As she flies toward me, I slap her hard across the face, and she falls back onto the sheets. I hate everything about it—the sound it makes, the fact that I’ve hurt her—no matter how much it needed to be done.
Thankfully, it snaps her out of her vision, and she lies there, blinking up at me, her hand going to her cheek.
“Bella, I’m so sorry!” I stroke her hair back away from her face and check her over for signs of injury. “You were out of control—I had to stop you.”
She opens and closes her jaw a few times, then gives me a big smile. “All good. Still got my teeth. Looks like I gave you a bit of a crack too. I think your nose might be broken.”
“Yeah. My balls as well. You’re quite the hellcat when you get going.”
“Why, thank you. Now hold still for a minute. Let’s fix that before it heals wrong and spoils your handsome old vampire face.” She crouches in front of me, and I can’t help wincing as she yanks the cartilage of my nose back into place. It’s not the first time it’s happened, and it probably won’t be the last, but it’s never going to be fun.
We sit there for a moment, examining each other’s faces, and eventually she laughs. It’s a good laugh—loud and pure and genuine.
“We are so fucked up. Normal couples get embarrassed when they fart in bed—we just beat the crap out of each other and look at us now.”
“Yeah, well. We’re not a normal couple, are we?”
“We’re not a normal anything,” she says. “I had a vision.”
“I thought as much from the cloudy eyes and the creepy stake grab and the fact that you kneed me in the balls. I happen to know that you’re usually very fond of my balls.”
“I am, yeah. They’re my favorite balls in the whole history of balls. But I suppose you were in the way.” She pauses for a moment before continuing. “When I’m Called, it’s all I can see. It’s one of the reasons I’ve never had a sleepover kind of relationship—it’s pretty hard to explain to a civilian. I still feel it now. It’s Kurt.”
That name keeps coming up. He’s the one who wants to hurt her. My blood boils, and I fire questions at her. “What did he say? What did he look like? Where was he?” Anger has clouded my mind, because of course the last question is the most important. If he’s somewhere close, we need to prepare to fight. And he needs to prepare to die.
“He looked like the Partridge Family’s evil cousin. You know, that kind of seventies vibe some of the younger ones cling to? Charlie Manson chic.”
I do know. The hair-not-growing thing really bothers some of them, so they spend decades looking exactly the same as when they were transformed.
