Blood Vow (Black Dagger Legacy #2)(61)

Nearly.

“Axwelle?”

He rubbed his face. “Can you do me a favor?”

“Of course.”

“Can you, ah … can you not call me Axwelle ever again.”

“All right.”

“Only my mother ever called me Axwelle. And I hate that name.”

“Well, I can understand why you wouldn’t want to be thinking about your mahmen during a time like this.”

The lift to her lips faded as he didn’t say anything more. And then she pulled her blouse over her breasts.

“I think I know what you’re worried about,” she said abruptly.

“Do you.”

Her eyes met his and held steady. “Don’t worry. I’m not a virgin.”





TWENTY-FOUR


Well, guess that was what gob-smacked looked like on Axe.

As Elise waited for him to put into words whatever he was thinking, she found herself shaking her head. “You know … it actually feels really good to just tell someone that.”

He rubbed his face and then looked away, to the fire. In the flickering light, the tattoos up that one side of his neck seemed to move over his skin. He seemed … dangerous. Sexy. And very removed from her, all of a sudden.

“I thought you would be relieved.” Elise frowned. “And I mean, come on, it’s not like you wouldn’t have found out if we did have sex.”

“I don’t think anything less of you, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“You don’t? Then you have a strange way of showing it.”

He shook his head decisively. “Nah, not at all.”

“So what’s the matter?”

“You want honesty, huh.”

“Yes.” She pulled one of the two loose blankets across her lower body and crossed her arms over her shirt-draped breasts. “Whatever it is, I want to know.”

He muttered something under his breath. Then spoke quickly. “I want to know who the male was … so I can go and kill him.”

Elise blinked. And then connected the dots. “Oh, my God, it wasn’t like that. At all. I wanted it to happen—”

“Fuck, now I really feel like murdering the motherfucker.”

Elise broke out in a laugh, and when he glared at her, she put her palms up. “I’m not making fun of you, honest. I’m just … I’m giddy with relief that you don’t think less of me.”

“I don’t. At all. I’m jealous as shit, but I don’t judge you.” There was a pause. “So who was he?”

Shifting her gaze to the fire, Elise opened up her memory banks. “He was a male who I fed from. It was all witnessed, of course. But one night—I’m not even sure why—I decided I just wanted to know what it was like. The whole … experience.”

Axe started to growl. And then cleared his throat to cut off the noise. “Sorry.”

She had to smile. “It’s all right. I’m complimented.” For that, she got a grunt. “Anyway, I went to find him, at his penthouse apartment downtown. I made an excuse and snuck out of the house. He was in the glymera, of course, and a friend of my father’s.”

Now she frowned. “He was surprised, but he didn’t tell me no. I was very young, my mother had recently passed after a failed birthing. There was … so much sadness in my house, I think I just wanted to escape it. We had sex, I wouldn’t even call it making love. To me, it was only a lot of body parts interacting, I can’t say as I really enjoyed it.”

As she fell silent, she could feel his burning eyes on her.

“Finish the story,” he said in a low voice. “It’s not over, is it.”

“No.” Elise took a deep breath. “I’ve always been a little different from other high-born females, you know? I mean, nothing like my cousin Allishon—I’m not reckless or anything. I just wasn’t into festivals and dances and events. One evening, no more than a week or so later, my father asked me to join him at a dance and the male was there … with his shellan. I never thought he was mated, you know? It never dawned on me to ask. I mean, in the aristocracy, there are so few males to go around for feedings, and as long as there are witnesses when you take a vein, there is no sex to worry about. But I felt awful as I looked her in the eye. And he clearly hadn’t told her. He ignored me the whole night, which was appropriate, and the whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth. Not because I was emotionally attached to him, but because I had used him, and he had let me … and together, we betrayed her.” She exhaled long and slow. “He was killed in the raids … so was she. They were childless. My regrets live on, though, and always will.”

“He was a fucking letch.”

“I was pretty sure he had done the same thing with other females he was feeding. Otherwise … why the penthouse? It wasn’t where he lived or stayed with her during the day, you know? It was all just so messy—and the reason I started to focus on psychology. I wanted to understand how people’s emotions work, and we vampires are not so different from humans in that regard. For example … like, you know what was really nasty of me?”

“What.”

She couldn’t believe she was speaking so freely, but Axe’s silent, non-judgmental listening was unheard of in her world. “After I met his shellan, there was a part of me that was relieved he was mated—because then he wouldn’t say anything. I had kind of worried about that. After just losing my mahmen, I didn’t want to lose my father, too, on account of my not being mateable. Can you imagine how selfish that is?”