Wicked Soul (Ancient Blood #1)(77)

The only thing I could do after that statement was to bury my head under his chin and clutch his shirt again.

We sat like that for a long time, doing nothing more than simply being. Together.

“My Sire was a sadist,” Warin said after what must have been nearly an hour’s silence. His voice was quiet, calm. Devoid of emotion. “He found me as a young man, and he thought me beautiful. For twenty-one nights he kept me alive, and for twenty-one nights I would beg him for death. He hurt me in every way, but before the sun rose after each of those nights, he would give me pleasure as he violated me. That was when I would plead with him to end my life.

“On the final night, I knew he’d gone too far—I felt my life slip away, and I knew there’d be no coming back this time. I felt such… relief.

“The next night, I arose as a vampire. Tied to him with a bond more suffocating than any chain he could ever shackle my flesh with. I could feel him, all the time, inside my blood. Could feel the pleasure he got from my torment. The bond between a Sire and Child is… There is no force like it. I have been told it is the greatest gift, but… for me, it was not. I was with him for decades. How many, I don’t know. Something… broke in me during that time. I became… something else.

“One night, he brought home Aleric. They say the bond between a Sire and his Child is unbreakable. But I… I finally found a way to shatter his chains. I couldn’t bear the pain in my blood when he hurt my new brother. So I killed him.

“Even now… Sometimes I feel the broken bond aching in my chest. I feel the echo of everything he did to me. But the only thing that still hurts… is the memory of the times there’d be no pain. When I allowed his touch to bring me pleasure… relief.”

“Warin,” I whispered, because there was nothing else to say. My own pained past was a flickering candle in comparison to the roar of agony in my chest as I pressed myself to him, wishing with every fiber of my being that I could take away the torment of his entry into the night. Fresh tears rolled down my cheeks, soaking his already ruined shirt.

Warin held me as tightly as I did him, his lips pressed against the top of my head. “Don’t cry, Liv,” he mumbled. “Those nights with my Sire brought me to you. If I were given a choice, I would not have picked a different path now that I know where it has led.”

"What did I do to deserve you in my life?" I croaked against his collarbone.

He whispered something against the top of my head, but it was too quiet for me to make out.

Soon, I fell asleep. Safe in Warin’s arms.





24





I didn’t see Warin for nearly a week after we returned to Chicago. He called me the night after I flew back to let me know that he had a lead on the potential backer of the skinwalkers, and would be too busy to visit for a few nights.

As much as I wanted to see him, I knew it was probably best to take some time apart to cool off after our emotional trip to Denver. There’d been such a massive shift in our relationship, and I needed time to sort through my feelings. I even went so far as to google “vampire + human relationships”—but all that brought up was some really creepy porn.

The relentless sex dreams thanks to our most recent blood exchange didn’t help matters, at all, but I was still hesitant to cross that final line. And not just because of that porn clip, either.

As close as I’d felt to Warin in Denver, and as much as I knew he was already all the way in, behind every wall and every barrier I’d ever erected to protect myself, if we actually tried a… a relationship, and it went wrong…

I’d lose him.

And that was one thing I couldn’t do.

In the end, I decided to confine my urges for more to the hazy mornings when I woke up covered in sweat and aching from debauched dreams. I spent my days focused on work, on finishing the painting of Warin I’d been working on for weeks now, on chatting with Raven about witchy stuff and Roy about blessedly normal stuff, like football (he was a die-hard Packers fan) and gardening (and had a surprising love for his begonias).

When Warin finally texted me to check if he could come over, I’d managed to get enough distance from our intense time in Denver that I could ignore the flutter of butterflies in my stomach, even if I was entirely unable to get the giant and involuntary smile off my face.

He buzzed my door phone some fifteen minutes later, and I practically skipped over to let him in. It wasn't until his face lit up in an unusually warm smile when I opened the door that I realized that I hadn't managed to get rid of my excited grin since he texted.

I coughed and stepped back behind the door to try and school my features into at least a somewhat less insane expression, gesturing for him to come in.

"I have missed you," he said softly as I closed the door behind him.

The pesky butterflies returned with a vengeance. “I missed you too.”

We stared at each other in silence for a too-long moment, until I managed to get a grip and turned my focus to the wrapped package I’d gotten ready on the coffee table. “I… got you a gift. An early Christmas present.”

“Oh. That is… very kind, but I do not want you to spend your money on gifts for me,” he said, surprise clear in his voice as he followed me to the couch.

“I didn’t,” I said as I plopped down on the couch in my usual spot and nudged the present toward him. “Open it. I’m dying to see what you think.”