Captured (The Captive #1)(34)
She nodded, biting on her bottom lip. Her hands tightened briefly on his hard face, she leaned slightly forward, pressing her lips lightly against his forehead. She wished that she could do so much more, wished that she could heal the wounds that had been inflicted upon him so long ago, but she couldn’t. She could not undo what had been so cruelly imposed upon him all those years ago, long before she was born even.
“Braith,” she breathed, so completely lost and confused by everything that was happening to her. To them.
She pulled slightly back, surprised to feel tears burning her eyes again. She didn’t think that she could possibly have any more tears left in her, but she did. “Arianna, you must listen to me. I don’t wish to hurt you, I really don’t, but there are rules to being a blood slave, and there are rules about the relationship of a master and their slave.”
“I know my life is not going to be a long one,” she said softly. “I’ve known that for years. I’ve seen more death than people three times my age, and I’ve narrowly avoided it many many times. I understand the rules Braith; and I know there is nothing you can do…”
“But there is, or there could be, but you must do as I say Arianna. There have been other vampires that have kept slaves for a few years, even longer. But you must behave, you must stay quiet, and you have to stay away from your lover…”
“Max is just my friend!” she interrupted sharply; angered by the fact that he kept insisting upon something that wasn’t true. “I told you that already, and I meant it. We’ve been together since we were babies; he’s my brother’s best friend. If it wasn’t for me, and my recklessness and carelessness, Max wouldn’t be here. I can’t let him suffer because of me! I can’t let him suffer because I am a fool who never listens to orders…”
Aria broke off, her gaze widening as she realized what she had just revealed to him, or had nearly revealed to him. “Orders?” he inquired softly.
She shook her head, not wanting to discuss this now. She simply couldn’t. “He’s my friend and he is going to die because of me. I can’t… I can’t bear it,” she choked out. “All he wanted was to save me, for Daniel.”
“Daniel?”
Aria nodded, managing a tremulous smile. “My brother.”
Braith’s face was hard, his eyes searching as he looked her over. “I see.”
“Max could have gotten away Braith. I went in to rescue Mary’s child, but Max could have gotten away, he could have escaped and fled into the woods. He is here because he thought that he could save me from all of this, Max is an optimist to the end.”
“And you’re not?”
She managed a wan smile as she sat back slightly. “I have always been one hundred percent pragmatic. Like I said I have seen a lot in my short life, very little of it has been good. Max is good though, and I hate the fact that his goodness will be destroyed because of me. I didn’t mean to hurt you; I just wanted to see my friend, to know that he was safe, and that he wasn’t dead. At least not yet anyway.”
Braith sighed as he sat back. “You didn’t hurt me.”
Arianna nodded, her hands slipping slowly away from his hard face. “Of course I didn’t hurt you. I shouldn’t have said that, I didn’t mean it.” She couldn’t hurt him, she had been foolish to think that maybe that was the reason he had been so angry with her. She needed to remember that though her feelings for him might be changing, his feelings for her weren’t. “I didn’t mean to do what I did today. It’s just that when I saw Max he reminded me so much of home, and I missed him so much that all I could think of was getting to him. All I could think of was freedom. All I could think of was my woods and hunting and running free. Freedom, Braith, I loved my freedom, I reveled in it. And I’m sorry that what I did today could have caused us both problems, but I couldn’t stop myself because for one brief moment I was in those woods again. I could smell them, taste them, feel them around me, and it was wonderful.”
Aria broke off, overcome with a crushing sense of homesickness again. Braith was silent, his mouth parted slightly as he studied her, and then his fingers were in her hair and he was pulling her against him. Aria gasped softly, but then his lips were upon hers, his mouth claiming hers with a desperation that left her stunned and breathless. At first she was so surprised that she was motionless against him, unable to respond to the intensity and need she felt radiating from him.
And then her shock was buried beneath the torrent of emotions that surged forth in her. She was shaking, rocked by the need that filled her, the desperation that seized her. She needed this, she needed him. And it felt so right, so perfectly, wonderfully, right! Something inside of her seemed to be healing, mending, becoming whole. There had always been something missing in her life, something that she had been searching and hoping for, but she had never known what it was. Until now.
And now she knew that it was him.
He was what she had been missing; he was what she had been searching for, looking for. He was what had made her so reckless all the time, because without him she had been so lost and empty that she hadn’t stopped to think about the consequences of her actions. And though she knew there would be consequences for these actions, she didn’t care, because this was right. In fact, even though he was something that she had always hated and fought against, she thought this might be the first right thing she had ever done.