Reawakening (29 page)

As soon as he was out of earshot, Mike snapped, “You should look elsewhere for dinner, sweetheart.”

He didn’t know what to expect for a response, but a broad, shit-eating grin was not it. She-vamp leaned back in her chair, rhythmically tapping her fingers against the worn, sticky table. “Are you offering instead, human?”

Shit … should he deny his friend the intense pleasure a vampire bite could bring? Just thinking of how hard he’d orgasmed with Giselle’s mouth on him made him uncomfortably hard.

Yes. Yes, he was cockblocking his friend. He didn’t know this female and while Mike may be more accepting that not all vamps have evil intentions, he was far from blindly trusting them.

“Fuck no. There are plenty of unsuspecting humans—and maybe some
suspecting
ones—you can find. But my friend isn’t one of them.”

Her nose wrinkled a bit when she answered. “He’s a big boy. I think we’ll let him decide for himself.”

“I— ”

He was cut short when Jake returned with a tray of amber-filled glasses, precious liquid sloshing over the sides in his haste to return to the dangerous beauty he thought he would bed tonight.

Shit. Now what?

Just then he felt a charge in the air. It was electric and every hair follicle he had stood on end. His cock hardened painfully and his blood sang. Slowly he turned his head toward the entrance and standing just inside, sights set firmly on him, was the woman he couldn’t stop thinking about. In the flesh. Everything and everyone else faded away.

How did she find him here?

He almost didn’t care. She’d tracked
him
down and that’s all that really mattered. She was here and she was a fucking glorious sight, looking all pissed and shit. He felt fury radiating from her across the twenty-five feet that separated them. Her gaze flicked to the yet unnamed female sitting at their table and he couldn’t help the slow smile that turned his lips. Green jealousy swirled with the icy blue of her eyes, making them a mesmerizing jade color that he could clearly see from here.

In a blink, she was standing at their table, hands on her luscious, curvy hips. She looked absolutely ravishing in the skintight, barely-there black dress and leopard print heels she wore. Christ, she was simply amazing. Every cell in his body screamed
mine
when he looked at her. And the possessive vibe and sharp daggers shooting from her eyes echoed the same feeling in her.

“Who the fuck is this?” she fumed. Every ripple of toned muscle she held in check mesmerized him. His cock strained, aching to get to the woman who owned every part of him.

“She’s nobody.” His eyes never left hers. He was done with this shit. She was coming home with him and she would be his. At the first sight of her standing across the room, his patience snapped. He was done waiting for her to make a decision. It was being made
for
her.

“Why haven’t you returned my calls or messages?” Her words were filled with venom, but hurt visibly strained her beautiful pixie features and all of a sudden he felt like a bastard.

Throwing sixty bucks on the table to more than cover his drinks, he stood, grabbed her by the hand and began dragging her protesting ass to the exit. Screw Jake. He was a big boy and could handle himself just fine. Hopefully, Mike didn’t find his body in the sparse trees outside this shithole tomorrow, but he wasn’t about to waste another minute letting Giselle flounder in the wind.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she yelled as they left the shabby building.

Taking her around the corner, where it was dark and private, he pushed her up against the paint chipped wood, trapping her in place with his body. Taking her face in his hands, he pushed his throbbing erection against her perfectly aligned core.

“I’m doing what I should have done a long time ago.” Feathering kisses along her jaw, he took her mouth in a bruising kiss. “I’m going to take you home and fuck you stupid until you scream for me, Giselle. I’m going to fuck every other man out of your head and replace every single bad memory with nothing but pleasure. With nothing but love. With nothing but
me
.”

Reaching his hands under her short hem, he pushed aside her panties and found her soaking pussy. Without waiting for invitation, he pushed two fingers in, circling his thumb on her swollen clit. He swallowed her moan with his mouth, whispering against her lips, “And don’t tell me you don’t want this or you’re not ready. Your pussy is weeping for me.” Not stopping the movement of his fingers, he continued, “You’re mine, and tonight I’m going to prove to you that I’m yours. You can trust me with both your body and your heart, Giselle.”

His assault was brutal and the clenching of her walls indicated she was close to tipping. Nipping her earlobe hard, she exploded around his fingers, digging her nails into his shoulders so hard, he was sure she’d leave bloody crescent-shaped marks. But he didn’t care.
Bring it, babe
. He wasn’t taking no for an answer. She was scared and scarred, but she trusted him or she wouldn’t be here. She wouldn’t have sought him out. She wouldn’t keep coming back.

Feathering kisses along her neck, he pulled back and looked into her heavy, sated eyes, once again laying his heart at her feet for the crushing. “God knows I tried to fight this, but I’m done. I’m a complete and total goner and you own me, Giselle. All of me. You’ve wrecked me for anyone else. I fucking love you. It will
ruin
me if you walk away from me again.” Pausing, he murmured, “You are mine. Come home with me.” He wanted to say forever but stopped short. He’d already said enough to drink himself into a coma for a month should she turn and abandon him again.

After several tense moments, just when he thought she’d reject him yet again, she grabbed and clung to him instead, and finally whispered the one little word he’d longed to hear for months.

“Okay.”

Chapter 47

Sarah

They’d been back in Milwaukee on and off for two days now. Rom had been gone much of the time in strategy meetings with Dev, Damian and others. Things were ramping up and everyone felt the thick, oppressive tension in the air, weighing down on them like an anvil waiting to drop.

And Sarah was scared shitless. Rom would go to Romania later tonight, even though the meeting with his brother wasn’t for another two days and she’d been on the edge of a panic attack all morning. Kate and Analise had tried taking her mind off things with a workout, but it was no use. All she could think of was never seeing Rom again and that flat out terrified her. They’d just found each other and it felt very unfair that the universe was endlessly throwing these life altering and threatening situations at them.

Screw Rom’s sadistic father.

Fuck her maniacal father.

Give them both a one-way ticket to fire and brimstone.

She just wanted all of this ugliness to go away. If Rom could magically poof them to another alternate plane where fluffy marshmallows were clouds and milk chocolate ran in shallow streams and never made you fat, she’d do it. Yes, it was childishly naïve, but who the hell cared at this point. Looked like sunshiny Rosie hadn’t strayed too far.

She also couldn’t get the latest dream about Seraphina out of her head, although she tried to temper those thoughts around Rom, because she wasn’t quite ready to talk to him about it yet.

Who exactly was she to Rom and why was Sarah so afraid to ask him? Seraphina hadn’t returned in a dream since the morning that they’d bonded and she had a feeling she wouldn’t. She’d delivered her message and she’d shown Sarah what she wanted her to know. Now it was up to Sarah to do what she would with that information.

And that was the million-dollar question. Did she
want
to know who this girl was? Because Sarah knew that Seraphina had been very important to Rom and that knowledge sat like a hard twisted ball of angry jealousy in the pit of her stomach.

Needing some time to herself, she sat alone in the library. She’d searched for a book to divert her attention and decided on the Gillian Flynn novel
Gone Girl
. Only two chapters in and already riveted, she felt someone staring at her. Looking up, Giselle stood in all her frozen ice-cold glory in the doorway.

“What?” Sarah barked. She just couldn’t find it in herself today to be nice to anyone, least of all Giselle, the one person in the world who cared about only herself and what you could do for her. And she had enough of her own damn problems to worry about what Giselle wanted.

“Jesus. What crawled up your ass and died?” Giselle spouted as she sauntered into the room, sitting across from her on the setae.

Hmm … That was
her
line.

She crossed her very long legs, of which Sarah was insanely jealous. “So you and Rom, huh?” Giselle hedged, picking imaginary lint off the arm of the fancy chair.

Had she landed in an alternate universe?
She looked around the room to make sure she wasn’t in Kansas or Oz or Hell because those are the only places this conversation would happen. Giselle didn’t converse. She didn’t ask questions. She didn’t answer questions. She certainly didn’t give a damn about you, how your day was or your latest OPI nail polish color. She was the vampire version of the stupid childhood game, dizzy bat.

Sarah narrowed her eyes, suspicion bubbling. “What do you want, Giselle?”

Instead of answering, she gestured toward the book Sarah was reading. “Damn brilliant read. Can you believe that wife set up her husband to take the fall for her fake murder and then had the balls to turn back up? That’s a mind-fuck right there.”

Sarah frowned, throwing the book to the side. She’d purposely avoided reviews and conversations about this book so the ending wouldn’t be spoiled.

So … thanks for that, bitch.

“Did you bring in a pint of Ben and Jerry’s and bottle of wine too so we can gossip about the best sex toys and the couple of hotties that Thane is regularly banging at the club?” she asked sarcastically.

Wow … her snarkiness had reached an all-time epic level.
Rock on Nancy, you callous ho.

Thinking that would surely send Giselle storming out of the room, imagine her surprise when she busted out laughing instead.
Giselle could laugh?
And the eighth wonder was just discovered.

“I like you, Sarah,” she said, wiping a stray tear.

She liked her? What the hell?
“Will the real Giselle please stand up?” she muttered.

Raising a brow, Giselle bit out, “Wow … she knows Eminem too.”

“I’m confused at what’s going on here.”

“Can’t a girl just want to talk?”

“Yes … but …” She didn’t want to say it. It was too cruel, even for her. Even though she was sure a hurtful word or jibe couldn’t pierce skin as thick and tough as reinforced steel.

“Yes, but I’m not a
girl
, right?”

A wry smile curled Sarah’s lips. “You said it, not me.”

Giselle watched her for a few very long moments before speaking softly; like she really had a heart beating in that freezing tundra she called a chest. “I have information about your mother. Your birth mother. I know her name.”

Sarah’s heart stopped. After all these years of wondering, she was about to find out her mother’s name. And if she had other living relatives. Aunts? Uncles? Cousins? Grandparents?

And suddenly it felt almost like a betrayal of the two people that had raised her as their own. Loved her just as much as they’d loved Jack, their natural child. Unlike Analise, Sarah had luckily landed in a very loving home with truly loving parents. Although she’d dreamt of this day for so long, she honestly didn’t think that she’d ever be successful at finding a shred of information, especially given the horrific way she’d been conceived.

With Giselle’s next intuitive question, Sarah saw a completely different side to the strong, arrogant and cold female vampire. A softer side. A
caring
side, even. One she knew always was locked deep inside, but just couldn’t bust through her harsh exterior for fear of being vulnerable.

“Would you like to wait until you’re ready?”

Would she?
Would it even matter that she had other family out in the world that she didn’t know? Who didn’t know her? Eventually she would have to spend less and less time with her parents as it was because now that she was bonded to a vampire, she’d never age and after time, that just couldn’t be hidden. Would it be fair to start a relationship with others, only to have to cut them out too?

After only seconds of mulling, the answer was clear. It didn’t matter how much time she could spend with them. Because the minutes we spend with our loved ones in our time on earth, no matter how short or fleeting, create irreplaceable memories that she believed were carried on into the next life.

She wouldn’t take back a second of the time she’d spent with Rom, no matter if their lives ended with these threats looming over them or not. Loving him, no matter if for two weeks or two millennia, was a blessing, and if she decided to not move forward with this, with meeting her family, she’d be doing the same thing he’d tried to do to her by not bonding. And then she’d be a hypocrite.

Decision made, and still trying to get over the fact that Giselle had actually followed through with her request, she willed the butterflies in her stomach to settle down and nodded at Giselle to continue.

“No. I’m ready.”

Chapter 48

Sarah

Marna Clark.
Marna Clark. Her mother’s name echoed off the walls in her head. She was just twenty when she was kidnapped, tortured and forced to have her in horrific conditions. And while her grandmother, Ellie, had recently passed away, she had a grandfather that was alive, still living in Des Plains, Illinois.
Bud
. Just the name made her smile. She also had an aunt, Brynne. Twenty-nine and unmarried. Twenty-nine. She was hardly older than Sarah. She felt giddy thinking about the chance to meet them both and see pictures of her mother.