Blood Vow (Black Dagger Legacy #2)(63)

Before she stepped off the stoop, he grabbed for her and brought her in against him. But he didn’t kiss her. He just cradled her close to his chest, holding her tightly. And oh, she held him back.

She got the impression it had been a very long time since he had hugged anyone. She also knew that he didn’t want to let her go.

The embrace was, she would reflect later, even better than any promise of mind-blowing sex.

And then she was gone.

Axe stood on the front steps of his father’s cottage for the longest time after Elise dematerialized. Under his skull, his brain was bucking like a bronco, what he and Elise had shared so outside of the norm of where he usually went with females—hell, with anyone—that he felt rattled down to his marrow.

It had been so long since he’d connected with another person.

And yeah, he didn’t like what he was feeling now—the things she’d told him about herself sticking around in his thoughts, processing and re-reprocessing, calling up all kinds of emotions he could really fucking do without. It was so bad that the only thing he could think of to do was go and find a fight somewhere. He knew how to fight. Knew what to do, how to strike, how to avoid getting hit—hell, he’d known that before he’d gone into the training program.

Whatever had happened in front of his fire back there?

No fucking clue how to handle it. Or its aftermath.

It was easier when he’d just seen Elise as a becky to fuck. Now? She was a person.

When he finally headed back inside, his stomach rumbled with hunger, but there was nothing to eat, and besides, he was used to an empty gut. As he shut the door, he intended to go take a shower and then crash, but he didn’t get that far. For some insane reason, he was drawn to the kitchen, to the door in the far corner, to the creaky old stairs that took him down into the basement.

He fucking hated the basement.

When he got to the bottom of the steep steps, he put his hand out into the pitch-darkness for the lantern on the hook. Cranking up the glowing kerosene wick, he almost hoped it wouldn’t come alive—

The illumination was yellow like the fire, fixed like the moonlight.

And the ghosts of the past came alive as he looked at his father’s workshop.

Breathing deep, he could still smell the wood chips and the sawdust that carpeted the dirt floor like honey-colored snow.

Even though nothing new had been made down here in over two years.

Holding the lantern out, he went over to the tall table with its scarred top and its countless tools and the drawings that had been tacked to the bare wall studs behind it. There were blocks of wood that would never see an artistic form and then figurines that were half-whittled, the rabbits, birds, squirrels, and flowers looking as if they were struggling to pull free of their squares.

There was also an extensive shelving system across the way, where his father had lined up his finished products. It was like a woodland scene, the winsome creatures frolicking together in a miniature forest, the fauna crouching, rolling over, running, climbing, sitting pretty, among tiny, intricate trees and perfectly carved rocks.

Axe hated to see what his father had been able to do.

The skill was that of a master, the end results the kind of thing that belonged in museums or under the protective, nurturing care of collectors.

And yet they were sitting here in the basement.

He wanted to light it all on fire. Just burn it all.

It was too fucking pathetic that the male had stayed down here all day, every day, making this shit because he was hoping a female who had left him for a better offer might be impressed when she came back.

But see, Axe had always wanted to say, she ain’t coming back.

And he’d been right.

His father had been such a gentle male—an uneducated one, but a gentle soul for sure. And commensurate with his nature, he hadn’t dealt with the betrayal by drinking and getting violent, by turning into a man-whore, by abusing the little boy who had been left behind with him. Instead, he had simply faded away, becoming a ghost that drifted in and out of the rooms and ended up haunting this space down here.

Axe had hated him for the weakness.

And yeah, a part of him still did.

But the tragedy that night of the raids had fucked all that righteous anger up—adding a watershed of self-hatred and guilt on top of the psychotic sundae he’d already been carrying around with him 24/7.

God, why the hell was he down here?

Well, that was a no-duh if he’d ever seen one.

Axe ignored the fact that he stumbled a little as he headed back for the stairs, and he took the lantern up with him, leaving it at the top by the door into the kitchen.

Needing something, anything, to focus on aside from his precious little fucking feelings, he went back to his leather jacket and got out his phone. Except he wasn’t sure exactly who he was going to call or text.

Not Elise, that much he knew.

He didn’t get to his nearly empty contact list, though.

Somebody had left him a voice mail, and it wasn’t a number he recognized.

As he played the message, he frowned—but two words in, and he knew who it was.

Good evening, Axwelle. This is Elise’s sire. There is an additional service you could provide me, and I would be most grateful if you would call upon me tomorrow eve, an hour after sundown. I shall look forward to your presence. Thank you.

What the hell was this about?