Chapter 17
The look in her eyes tells me she’s starting to feel our mate bond
She doesn’t know what it’s called or what it means exactly. But my words, which are not frightening but instead calming and settling her, are the first step to her realizing and accepting that things are different between us, what she’s used to, and what our future will look like.
I softly say, “Let’s finish up here and then fix you something to eat.”
It’s almost noon and my woman hasn’t eaten yet. I need to do better. Maybe I should consider getting her a personal chef when I’m not here?
Silently, contentedly, we work together to unpack the rest of the items, moving around the kitchen like we’ve done this for years. It feels very domesticated. Since when do I do fucking domesticated?
Once everything is packed away, she turns and looks at me, and it’s clear her walls are back up. “I’m making bacon, avocado, and feta sandwiches. Do you want one?”
That’s something we vampires don’t indulge in anymore: mortal food. Yes, I can force myself to consume it when surrounded by humans, like in a restaurant. But I no longer need food to sustain me…
I forced down the soup earlier, not just because I didn’t want her to get suspicious but also because I didn’t want to offend her after she made it especially for me. Since when don’t I want to offend people? Not just people. Her.
“Sure,” I reply as 1 saunter to the barstool closest to the archway. It gives me the perfect view of the whole kitchen, but more importantly, everywhere she goes in the kitchen.
I pretend to be busy on my phone as she bustles around and collects ingredients and utensils. I have some emails that need my attention, and Griffin has sent various texts asking for further instructions on a few office matters that need my input.
But it can all wait.
Watching my mate drift around the kitchen, blissfully unaware that I’m physically unable to look away from her, is more important than even a hostile takeover of my company, or even mass extinction on Earth by way of meteorite.
“Can you stop looking at me like that?” she suddenly says, trying to sound annoyed but failing miserably, with her back still turned toward me. I’m glad to see she’s not as unaffected by me as she likes to pretend.
Innocently, I ask, “Like what?”
Glaring at me over her shoulder, she states, “Like you’re plotting something.”
“Who says I’m not?” I askin a seductive voice. I am wholly satisfied when I see it has the intended effect when a shiver runs down her spine and her hand tightly clenches around the knife she’s holding.
She doesn’t reply, and I smirk to myself.
After a few minutes of her still pretending I’m not in the room, she steps over to the stove on my left and prepares a skillet to grill the bacon strips in. When the bacon goes in the pan and the smell starts floating through the kitchen, I take my chance to get under her skin again.
Lightning quick, I’m behind her. My nose softly glides up her delectable neck, and as it stops just below her ear, I inhale deeply before suggestively saying, “Something smells divine.”
She startles at my touch, but when my words whisper over her eat, she lets out a faint groan that’s like an adrenaline shot to my dick.
“What?” she asks softly, but the way her voice hitches makes me believe she’s not looking for an actual answer. It’s her feeble attempt to distract herself, and maybe even me, from the tumultuous feelings my words and touch are awakening in her
Doing something I’ve been fantasizing about since I saw her earlier this morning. I place a chaste kiss in the hollow below her ear and then nonchalantly say, “The bacun, it smells divine.”
Whatever she says next is lost to me as I suddenly have an e ruined me. And she doesn’t even know I
epiphany. I’m ruined. That one simple, innocent enough
kiss has ruined me. She’s
Chapter 17
The flavor of her soft, silky skin beneath my lips was like tasting nectar from a lost paradise. It is sweeter and even more intoxicating than the coveted Elvish honey produced in log hives in the Kackar mountains in Turkey, near the Black Sea, which goes for $1,500 a jar.
I never want to
to taste anything else ever again.
I’m instinctively leaning into her, needing to be closer to her, to touch her, to consume her like she does me. My hands grab onto hips to strengthen our connection, my fingers sinking into her flesh, as my hardening length presses against her lower back.
o her lusci
luscious
Her intense arousal starts drifting towards me again, and her heartbeat is like a beating drum in my ears. She needs to stop that, she needs to stop me, or I’m going to do something that we’ll both regret this early on in our relationship.
Because if I had my way in this moment, she would be bent over the kitchen island with those tight distracting leggings ripped to shreds as my cock buries itself deep within her heat and my fangs sunk into her jugular to claim her as mine for all eternity.
Fuck. The imagery of that alone has me inadvertently grinding against her and a savage moan making its way from my throat.
“Thane…” she breathes my name as she subtly pushes back against me, increasing our friction.
“Little Flame…” I whisper in her ear before lightly nipping at its lobe.
va into
We don’t get to find out what happens next because a shrill, ear–piercing sound suddenly cuts through the sexual tension, causing me to go. protective mode with my instincts on high alert immediately.
I push her behind me, searching for the threat against my mate. More than willing to fight to the death if it means she’s safe and unharmed.
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13
Chapter 18
Troll my eyes
at him and his antics.
“Calm down, Mr. Overgrown Guard Dog, it’s just the fire alarm,” I say sarcastically as I push past him to get to the stove again.
Because he was distracting me with his strong, firm hold and that kiss that tore through my psyche, I forgot about the bacon frying in the skillet. It started to burn, causing smoke to drift towards the fire alarm. And with my eyes closed so I could get lost in the feel of him at my back as his words awakened carnal thoughts in my mind, I didn’t notice the smoke.
Wedging myself between him and the stove, I stretch upwards to reach the smoke alarm before it goes off too long and notifies the fire department. How would I explain to them that I was so distracted by the stranger in my kitchen as he felt me up and short–circuited my brain with one featherlike kiss in my neck, that I almost burned my whole house down?
When he sees what I’m after, he steadies me by the hips, again, and then lifts me, like I weigh nothing more than a single piece of paper, to basically eye level with the device. Granted, it isn’t very high; I usually use my two–step footstool to reach the same height. But, the fact that he makes picking my thick ass up look so easy, has me flustered. No man has even attempted it, and here he is, doing it like it’s just another typical Saturday morning.
I quickly switch it off and bring my hands down to his forearms before saying, “You can put me down now.”
He slowly drops me to my feet but doesn’t let go of my hips, as if the idea pains him. I can’t exactly call him out on it, because I’ve come to like his touch as it scars my skin.
Trying to distract myself from the feelings he’s unlocking in me, I turn the burner below the skillet off and do something monumentally stupid. I grab its handle to take it over to the sink because the bacon is burned to a blackened crisp and completely inedible.
Luckily, my brain starts working almost immediately when it realizes that my hand is on the verge of also being burned to a blackened crisp as well, and I drop the pan while hissing “Shit!”
I don’t notice the bacon grease sloshing over the rim when the pan wobbles precariously on the stove top. I don’t feel the searing pain in my palm and the inside of my fingers. I don’t even notice the smell of smoke still hanging in the air- most likely to stench up my kitchen if I don’t open a door or window soon.
What I do notice, though, is the way Thane grabs my injured hand by the wrist, holds it like it’s made of glass, and inspects it as if it physically pains him to see the reddened, sensitive flesh.
Gently, he pulls me over to the sink, opens the cold water tap, and guides my hand underneath the running water. Initially, it stings like a bitch, but after a minute or two, it becomes more and more bearable. Thane keeps looking at my hand as he holds it steady underneath the stream, making me squirm with the intensity that’s etched on his face.
“I’m fine,” I say when the tense silence in the kitchen becomes too overwhelming
-You
scared me,” he admits, his voice low and raspy.
“You li
literally got stabbed, but a tiny blister freaks you out?” I ask playfully, trying to lighten the mood.
Then, he blows my whole world to smithereens with his following words, said in a serious tone, as he looks me dead in the eyes, “Wounds heal. But you? You’re not replaceable.”
Well fuck me sideways with a pineapple.
He turns off the tap before I can ask him what he meant by that delusional statement, then leads to the fridge and takes out a bag of frozen peas from the freezer section. Wordlessly, he returns to my side, places the cold bag on the palm of my hand, and then wraps it up with the kitchen towel from next to the sink,
His gentle, slow, methodical actions have my heart picking up speed. I’ve never had someone look after me with such reverence and genuine
When he’s satisfied with his handiwork, he pulls me towards the couch in the living room and gently guides me down onto its cushions. “Sit, relax, don’t move your hand,” he orders. There he is. Captein Control Freak is back and ready for action.
“But I haven’t finished our lunch yet,” I argue halfheartedly. The last thirty minutes‘ emotional rollercoaster has taken a toll on me, and taking a moment to sit back and decompress does sound very enticing right about now,
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Chapter 18
He leans over, placing his hands
Is on the couch’s backrest on either side of my shoulders. His unique scent of sandalwood, vanilla, and iron wraps around me, and his electric blue eyes turn serious as he peers into the deepest recesses of my soul. Again, in a voice brooking no argument, he says. “I said sit down, Harley.”
This is the first time he’s used my actual name, and crap on a cracker, but it sounds like sin personified when he says it in that deep, gravelly voice of his that could make a nun sin.
Not able to answer him, afraid I might ask him to throw me over his shoulder, take me upstairs, and then ravage my body like it’s my last day on earth, I nad my assent at him.
And then he melts my brain again when he says, “Good girl,” before strolling into the kitchen. I swear, he’s doing it on purpose.
Sitting back against the couch’s armrest to face the direction of the kitchen, I pull my legs up and fold them underneath me. The sound of him portering around in my kitchen is weirdly calming, and before 1 know it, my head tips to the left and rests against the backrest, and my eyes flutter shut. I tell myself it’s just for a second so I can get my emotions under control, but before I know it, I find myself in dreamland with a certain broody, bossy hunk worshipping my body.
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