Worth Dying For (30 page)

 
“Then what about children? Won’t you come to regret giving up the chance to have your own?”

Amber laughed, making her answer clear before she spoke. “I’ve had thirty-five years to have kids. I’m pretty sure by now that I don’t want any. Besides, if I can’t have them with you, I don’t want anyone else’s.”

“And how would you feel if you saw an infant after you changed, and all you could think of was draining its blood? If you found a baby, crying for comfort but the only emotion you felt was joy that you could cure your thirst so easily?”

She stared at him in horror and Bane winced at the tears in her eyes. “That’s an awful thing to ask me, Malachi.”

The tortured anguish in her voice made him want to take back the words but he couldn’t now. “Yes, it is.”

“But if you can resist those urges, then so can I.”

He stroked her cheek, humbled anew by her strength of character and her absolute conviction in what she believed. “How can one so young be so sure of everything?”

“I am sure of the most important thing. I have never met anyone like you, human or otherwise.” She smiled and wiped away the last of her tears. “You’ve been fighting fate, don’t you see? Every time my life should have ended, the reason it didn’t is because you stopped it. We’re meant to be together. Can’t you see yet that we’ve been fighting God’s will?”

He could find no further protest in the face of her powerful words, nor did he want to. Amber seemed encouraged by his silence and climbed onto his lap to look him in the eye.

 
“And my life means nothing without you in it. Now are there any more stupid questions you want to ask me before you will believe me when I say that I know what I am asking for?”

Bane nodded, ignoring her exasperation. Now the decision had been made, he had one more thing to ask. He eyed her cautiously, trying to assess how she would react before he spoke.

“You are afraid of the pain. I can tell you are, so there is no point trying to be brave.” Her silence encouraged him but also gave him the confirmation he needed that she was not stumbling forwards blindly without considering the consequences. “If I could take the pain for you I would, but there is nothing I can do to help. All I can do is ask how and when you want me to do it.”

“Now?” Her voice squeaked, made weak by the fear she had tried to suppress. Bane fought the urge to smile, charmed by her brave impatience.

“No, not now. I can make sure you don’t know what is about to happen. I could sneak up on you or I could hypnotise you. Would you prefer that?”

She shook her head. “No, I want to know what is happening, although I’d prefer not to see it coming.” Amber bit the skin at the side of her thumb, mumbling as it got in the way of her words. “Could you just kind of surprise me?”

“Of course.”

Bane got lost in his own thoughts for a while, concerned he would not be able to do what basically came down to killing her now that he loved her. In fact, he could only imagine two ways he could take her that way—either on the hunt, when his blood lust had stirred to the point he could no longer control it, or while fucking her. The harsh word he rarely used seemed the only way to describe the kind of sex they would have to have that could end with her death.

Amber had often hinted at his restraint with her but she had no way of knowing how much he had held back. He would have to be very careful. Her fear would be like a drug to him and the line between changing someone and killing them was already too thin. He could not afford to frighten her.

Bane turned to look at the woman he would have to brutalise in order to keep her with him and saw the trepidation already in her eyes. That just would not do. Amber’s last few hours as a human would be filled with love and happiness, not terror.

 
“Relax, my angel. We will wait a few days. I know you are impatient for this to be over but I am enjoying your very human company too much.”

The shaky breath she released as he spoke told him he’d done the right thing. From that moment on, the day passed in a calm and relaxed mixture of love-making and planning. Or at least, Amber was calm. Bane’s nervousness escalated as the hours crawled by. When he left her to hunt again at nightfall, he needed to ensure that he fed well enough to enable him to stay by her side for the next few days at least.

He slept most of the following day, knowing he wouldn’t get much rest afterwards, giving Amber the chance to finalise her affairs. He would have to deliver the letters to her employer, her landlord and her mother when he was able to leave her but beyond that, she didn’t need to do much else. Her finances could still be handled remotely, not that they had much need for money in his world.

And so the evening dawned when Bane would have to end Amber’s life. He rose from his slumber and went to her, dragging her away from the book she’d been reading to hold her in his arms. Bane fought against the sadness permeating his soul. What he had to do terrified and appalled him and it made him sick to know he would cause her more pain than anybody else ever had or ever could.

Amber seemed to sense his mood and she pulled away to look up into his face. “Malachi,” she whispered. “I want this. Please don’t feel badly for giving me what I have asked you for.”

He tried to smile but failed, and chose instead to distract her. “We don’t need to think of it now. We still have time.”

They took a walk on the beach after the sun had gone down leaving nothing but a pink and orange sky behind to prove it had existed at all. Bane caught some fish, making Amber laugh as he lumbered about in the waves—the desire to keep her smiling making him ham it up a little more than was necessary.

He made love to her on the beach when a small part of his possessive nature had reared its ugly head. Bane remembered David’s failed attempt at seducing her there. The beach belonged to him—and now, so did she. He erased the memory of another man touching her forever by claiming her heart and mind, as well as her body, in a way David could not.

They cooked the fish on a bonfire Bane made on the beach, and then he carried her back to the cave when she got sleepy, unsure when or how to start what needed to be done. Amber bathed in the stream and crawled into bed, surprising Bane by calling for him moments later.

She turned back the sheet and held her hand out to him, an invitation in her smile. Marvelling at her stamina, he joined her without hesitation, throwing his clothing around the room in his haste to go to her.

“Uh, I hope you don’t think I’m picking that up,” she said, laughing at him. “I’m not spending eternity clearing up behind you.”

“What do you mean? My bachelor days are over.” Bane ducked as she took a swing at him, hiding his smile at her reaction to his teasing. “You know, I come from a time when women did as they were told.”

Amber’s green eyes flared with indignation and she sat up, folding her arms over her naked breasts. “Yeah, well I come from a time where a man can kiss my ass if he thinks I’m waiting on him hand, foot and finger.”

Bane could fight the temptation no more. He threw his head back and roared with laughter at her show of temper. “I’d love to kiss your ass,” he said as he reached out to grab her legs, pulling her back down beside him. She tried to ignore him, turning her face away when he leant in to kiss her but Bane saw the corners of her mouth quivering with a suppressed smile. He trailed his fingers across her ribs and she wriggled and squirmed while she held her breath until she gave in and laughed with him.

When Amber turned towards him, he waited until the humour in her eyes had been replaced with the love he needed to see. He had so much he wanted to say to her but he knew she would guess that the time had come. So he hid his emotions by kissing her until she seemed almost breathless. By the time his mouth made its way to her neck, Amber had no fear. Bane smiled against her skin, satisfied he had done his job by protecting her from knowing what was to come.

He moved away, aligning his body over hers and watching the reaction on Amber’s face as he entered her. She threw her head back, exposing her neck to Bane. The venom surged into his mouth. Amber’s hand reached up to stroke his face and he
turned into it, trailing his tongue over her palm. She gasped and reached for him, tangling her small fingers into his hair, subconsciously embracing death as she dragged his lips down to hers.

Bane’s tongue plundered her mouth as he pushed his cock inside her, and the last thought he had before he lost control was that he must fight to keep Amber alive. The vampire inside him wept with joy when the tight walls of her vagina clenched around the tip of his penis, drawing him in further. Bane closed his eyes as he allowed the sensation to build. Denying his burning need for release would help to ignite the lust for her blood.

Amber groaned beneath him, writhing as she tried to make him move closer, until she grabbed his hips and impaled herself on him. Bane jerked forwards to meet her thrust and her orgasm began before he had time to withdraw. While she rode out her peak against his body, Bane lifted her hand from its place on his hip and brought it to his mouth, nipping her wrist quickly before she could know. The orgasm pounding through her caused the blood to flow faster through her veins but he battled his thirst as her scent permeated the air and the venom gushed into his mouth in response. Bane’s body was assaulted by a million different sensations and wants at once when the smell of her hit the back of his throat and his hips surge forwards as her muscles rippled and undulated around him.

Bane’s lip curled back on a snarl, his black gaze fixed on the throbbing vein in her neck. He leant closer, running his nose over it as he thrust into her again, desperate to find his release before he lost control. He could not afford to wait any longer. His inner demon had surfaced and was fighting to take over and end her life. Bane had waited as long as he dared.

He pushed harder and faster, holding her against him with strong hands as he buried his love, his agony and his future happiness inside the frail human that he loved more than life.

Amber came again before he could. Her eyelids fluttered open and her piercing green gaze locked with his while she whispered his name over and over as the orgasm burned through her body. She collapsed onto her back, her head rolling to the side and her chest heaving as she gasped for air.

Her last, broken whisper sealed her fate.

“Make me yours, Malachi.”

Every sensation and emotion he’d ever had crystallised in that one moment and his climax began. Bane became wild and erratic thrusts jerked her body away from his, even while his hands bruised her flesh as he pulled her onto his cock again and again. She moaned in agonised pleasure when he drove harder still—and the beast inside him laughed in triumph.

His head snapped forwards even as his mind resisted the urge, his teeth latching onto her neck before he could form the thought that he must not kill her.

Scalding hot velvet gushed into his mouth and he sobbed at the first taste and the knowledge of what he had begun.

The animal that he was claimed its mate, and he climaxed again, unable to do more than spill into her helplessly as she spilled into him.

“Malachi, stop! You’re killing her.” He heard Mary’s voice as clearly as if she stood beside him. “You must stop. Do you want to face eternity without her?”

Bane groaned against Amber’s skin, searching for the strength he needed to resist the urge to drain her but he could not. Like trying to fight gravity or turn back the tide, finding the will to pull away from the sweetest, most satisfying blood he have ever tasted seemed futile. Amber would die.

To fight this hard for her and come this far, only to lose her now, would be an agony he could not survive. How right he had been to stay away and how cruel that he had been the greatest threat by far to Amber. His only hope was that she would never know he had failed them both.

“Malachi.”

Amber whispered his name and he felt her hand on his face, stroking a slow path across his features as if committing them to memory. It dropped to the bed beside him when the last of her strength drained from her.

No
!

Bane’s mind rejected the goodbye in her touch and he braced his hands against the mattress to push away with as much strength as he could find. His body flew backwards across the room and he hit the far wall with a loud crack, landing face down on the floor as bits of shale and loose stone rained down on him and the cave shook from the violent impact.

Bane ran to Amber, terror growing with every step as he drew closer but still could not hear her heart. He dropped to her side and bent his head to her body, almost sobbing at the sound of a faint tremble in her chest.

Pulling the sheet up over her body, Bane used a corner to wipe the drying blood from her skin. His venom congealed inside the wound, stopping her from bleeding to death. He wiped his face too, ashamed and disgusted by the evidence that he’d almost killed her.

Bane curled his body around hers and cried. He hadn’t even known he could. No tears fell from his eyes, but the agony in his chest and the sadness in his dead heart had him bellowing in pain and anguish.

When he calmed, Bane prayed for only the second time in over two centuries, unsure if anyone would listen to him but willing to beg the Almighty to save her.