B00AO57VOY EBOK (20 page)

“Like what?”  The gasp that
slipped through my lips had absolutely nothing to do with my bruise and
everything to do with the feel of his mouth on my skin.

“Our saliva has healing
properties,” he explained, his voice a husky caress that set my entire body on
fire.  “That’s why you never read about dead bodies showing up with fang marks.
 No vampire would leave behind that kind of evidence when they can just flick
their tongue over them…”  He swirled his tongue around my bruise to demonstrate
and I nearly came up off the bed, the pleasure that shot through me was so
intense.  “…and make them disappear.”

If he continued his
explanation, I missed it.  I was so lost in the desire he was making me feel
that I wouldn’t have heard it if a nuclear bomb had gone off in the room with
us.  With every touch of his mouth on my skin, I found another reason to give
in to him.  With every caress of his fingers, a new fantasy.  By the time he
was finished healing all of my wounds, I was nothing more than a burning puddle
of sensation beneath him.

“Do you have any idea what
you’re doing to me?” he breathed raggedly, kissing a line down my spine.  I
couldn’t even remember turning over, that’s how delirious he had made me.  “Tell
me you want me, baby.”

“I want you,” I gasped,
trying to turn over.  He wouldn’t let me.  Using his weight and his mouth to
keep where I was, he swirled his tongue around the sensitive spot at the base
of my spine.  “Please, Nathan!”

“Tell me you need me,” he
whispered, his cool breath fanning against my overheated skin.

“I need you!” I practically
sobbed.  If he kept it up, I was going to spontaneously combust for real.

“Do you trust me, Ember?”

I froze beneath him.  Did I
want him?  Hell yes!  Was I in love with him?  Completely and totally.  But
trust?  That one I was still having some trouble with.

“Do you, Ember?” he asked,
softly, turning me over so I would have to look at him.

“I want to,” I murmured,
feeling a wave of sadness that I couldn’t cool the desire in my blood.  “I
just—”

“You want to, but you don’t,”
he said, cutting me off with a hard smile. “Why is that, do you suppose?”

He moved away from me and
propped his back against the headboard, studying me through narrowed eyes.  Part
of me was pissed that he would demand trust from me, but the other part of me
knew he had every right to ask for it.  I had been ready to let him make love
to me, but without trust what would that have meant?  Nothing.  Without trust,
it would have been the equivalent of a one night stand.

“Trust is earned, Nathan,” I
muttered, pulling my shirt on.  “You can’t just demand someone trust you.  Do
you trust me?”

“Implicitly.”

“Yeah, well it’s easy to
trust somebody on a leash, isn’t it?”

I immediately wished I could
take those words back.  Nathan flinched like I had slapped him and I saw
something in his eyes die.  I watched, speechless, as he stood up and walked to
the door.  I knew I should call him back, that we needed to talk it out, but I
just couldn’t bring myself to do it.  He stopped with his hand on the
doorknob.  For a long moment he just stood there, his shoulders sagging in
defeat.

“I’m not sorry, Em,” he
whispered at long last, the sadness in his voice bringing tears to my eyes. 
“I’m not sorry because I can see something in that mark that you can’t.  I can
feel the beauty of the bond it formed between us.  And if you would only
forgive me, maybe you would feel it too.”

I stared at the door for a
long time after it closed behind him.  As the tears started to slide down my
cheeks, I wished I could feel what he felt too.  But I couldn’t. 

And it broke my heart to
know that I probably never would.

∞§∞§∞§∞

“You’ve been really quiet today,
Em.  Is everything okay?” Kim asked a couple of days later as we flipped
through a rack of formal gowns in a pointless search to find something Kim
would approve of for us to wear to the Black and White Ball. 

I shrugged and moved to
another rack to hide the tears that sprang to my eyes.  Kim had suggested a
break from demon research, and I had actually jumped at the chance to get out
for a little while and do something that had nothing to do with demons.  Though
I usually hated to shop, I had to admit that even the mall was more appealing
than the library. 

I was
really
starting
to hate the library.

For the last three days, we
had spent
every
spare second we had in the library looking for anything
that might shed some light on the problem we were facing.  We had tried the
Internet first, hoping, by some miracle, something there would help us figure
out where to start. 

If I read one video game or
movie synopsis, I read a thousand.  Every once in a while we would come across
a real demon site, but none of them seemed to agree on a method of getting rid
of them, proving Nathan had been right about each one being different. 

Giving the Internet up as a
dead end, we decided we would have to find what we needed the good old
fashioned way.  We would actually have to
read
.  Therefore, we had been
flipping through dusty books that smelled like mildew and were insect
graveyards for two of our three day research binge.  And for what? 
Nothing,
that’s what.  We hadn’t found a single thing to help us.

“You know, Blake said Nate’s
been pretty quiet the last couple of days too,” Kim said, holding up a black
satin slip dress that would barely come to mid-thigh for inspection before
making a face and putting it back.  “He’s not even snapping at Tyler anymore. 
Weird, huh?”

“Weird,” I agreed, grabbing
a dress at random and holding it up.  “What do you think of this one?” 

“Yeah, lime green will look
amazing with your hair,” Kim said, smirking.  

I looked at the dress I was
holding up, feeling my cheeks warm up. 
Way to be obvious, Em
, I
grumbled to myself.  I hung it back on the rack, but when I turned back around
to pretend to look for another dress, Kim was watching me with a knowing look
in her dark eyes.

“You wanna talk about it?”
she asked quietly, seeing the tears I wasn’t quick enough to hide.  “Are you
guys fighting or something?”

I shrugged again.  By
definition, you actually had to speak to fight, didn’t you?  Well, Nathan and I
hadn’t been real chatty the last couple of days.  We’d barely said five words
to each other since he’d walked away after the filter in my brain that was
supposed to keep me from saying mean and stupid things malfunctioned three days
before. 

“We’re not fighting,” I told
her when she kept watching me like I was going to mutate into a gorilla or
something. 

“Intimacy issues?” she
guessed, frowning.

“If by intimacy issues
you’re referring to Nathan’s move to the couch, then yeah, I’d say we’re having
some intimacy issues,” I muttered miserably. 

“He’s sleeping on the
couch
?”
she asked, her eyes flaring wide in surprise.  “What happened, Em?”

“Me.  I’m what happened.” 
She winced when she saw the tears overflow onto my cheeks.  I was starting to
get used to the extreme waterworks.  I’d cried more in the last three days than
I’d cried my whole life. 

With a sympathetic smile,
she walked over and looped her arm through mine.  Silently, she turned us
toward the food court.  Once she’d tucked me into a nice secluded little corner
so I could have my breakdown in relative privacy, she went and got us a couple
of coffees—and a handful of napkins for me to dry my face with.  Then, she sat
down across from me and took my hand.

“Okay, tell me what
happened,” she said as I wiped the tears from my cheeks.

Leaving out the part about
my mark, I gave her the whole story.  And when I say the whole story, I mean
the
whole
story.  I told her about Nathan kidnapping me the month
before.  I told her about falling in love with him on our road trip to
Washington.  I told her about his claim that I was his soul mate.  I told her
everything
.

“I don’t understand, Em,”
she said, frowning, when I finished my story and gave her a look that
practically demanded she tell me what to do.  “If you love him, and I know that
you do, why don’t you trust him?”

“Because I’m me and I have
more issues than most mental patients?” I suggested sulkily.  “I just don’t
know how to fix this, Kim!  We’re both miserable and it’s all my fault!  Tell
me what to
do
!”

I saw a flash of sympathy in
her dark eyes and decided I must look as miserable and confused as I felt. 
Rather than answer me, though, she pulled her phone out of her purse and
started scrolling through her contacts.  When she found the one she wanted, she
shook her hair back and pressed the phone to her ear.  When I just gave her an
impatient look, wondering how her phone was going to save my love life, she
just smiled.

“Hey, Mom,” she said when
the call connected.  “Yeah, we’re fine.  You know that project we’ve been
working on?  Is it ready?”

She grinned at me and I saw
her eyes start to sparkle with excitement over whatever Mrs. Val was telling
her.  Curious, I strained to hear what was being said and Kim made a point of
leaning away from me so I couldn’t.

“No, tomorrow’s good,” Kim
finally said, giving me a downright wicked smile.  “Yeah, I’ll pick it up on my
way.  Thanks, Momma.  Love you.”

“What was that all about?” I
asked, gesturing toward her phone, when she disconnected the call.

“That was about
me
saving
your
ass—again,” she said, not really telling me anything.  “You
are
so
lucky I’m your best friend.”

“And why would you think
that?” I snorted.  Never mind the fact that I
was
lucky she was my best
friend.

“Because I have something
you don’t, my little virgin friend,” she said, her eyebrows dancing up and down
comically.  I scowled at her, but let that crack go.  I mean, I couldn’t be mad
at her when she was only stating the facts.

“Dancing facial hair?” I
guessed.

“No, smartass,” she laughed,
rolling her eyes.  “I have a
plan
.”

Kim bailed on demon research
the next afternoon, leaving me with Blake as a research partner instead.  We
divided what was left of the list Kim and I had compiled and went our separate
ways to look for the books on our individual lists.  

I was on the aisle closest
to the window looking for a copy of the
Demonologies
when I felt a cold
chill on the back of my neck and the fine hairs there stood on end.  In the
good old days, I would have simply kept walking.  After meeting Gabriella,
though, my conscience wouldn’t let me.

“You’re looking for the
wrong book,” a low, deep voice said behind me.  “Try the one on the very end,
bottom shelf, with the black silk cover.”

I turned around, not sure
what to expect, and saw a boy standing there who looked to be about my age.  He
was handsome, in a geeky kind of way, with big, soulful, eyes.  He was wearing
a pair of navy blue slacks and a white shirt with a sweater vest in red and
gold.  Those were the Oakhurst colors.  I wondered if it was the uniform the
students had worn up until the early seventies.  I had seen them in the
pictures lining the halls for the last four years.

“It worked this time,” he
whispered when our eyes met.  “You see me.”

“Um, yeah,” I said,
hesitantly reaching for the book he had suggested. 

It was an odd tome and
definitely not the book I had been looking for.  First off, there was no title
and no author printed on the binding or cover.  Curious, I flipped it open and
found that it was handwritten in ink.  Some of the words faded in places, but
not so much that I couldn’t make them out.

“I have been trying to get
your attention for the last three years,” he said, still sounding stunned.  I
felt a little flood of shame at that.  Up until recently, I really had been
good at ignoring the dead. 

“It’s okay,” he said,
quickly, seeing the look on my face.  “It might not have been you, you know? 
Maybe I just wasn’t doing it right.”

“No, it was me,” I admitted
quietly, feeling even more ashamed when he just smiled at me sadly.  “I’m
really sorry I ignored you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he
said.  “You’re seeing me now.  That’s all that matters.”

“How did you know this was
here?” I asked, flipping through the book he had pointed me to.  At first
glance, it appeared to be a spell book.  It was the most useful thing I had
come across yet, in any case, and I was exceedingly grateful for his help.

“Because I put it there,” he
said, shrugging.  “It was my mother’s.  My stepfather didn’t know what we were,
you see.  He was a good man and we loved him.  I didn’t want him to learn our
secret and be hurt by it, so when my mom died I brought all her books here and
hid them throughout the library.  There’s a concealment spell on them so only
another blood witch could find them.  It’s always surprised me that no one ever
did.”