Bound By Darkness (Guardians of Eternity #8)(55)

His hands tightened on her face as she tried to glance away.

“No, I’m not going to be distracted,” he warned. “Tell me.”

They glared at one another in silence. Then with gritted teeth Jaelyn at last lifted her hands to grasp his wrists and pulled his hands away from her face.

“I was afraid what might happen,” she snapped, accepting that the stubborn Sylvermyst wouldn’t give up until he’d managed to drag the humiliating truth out of her.

Predictably the annoying man didn’t appear at all pleased with her confession.

“You didn’t trust me,” he said in flat tones.

“I didn’t trust me,” she huffed. “Satisfied?”

“No, I’m damn well not satisfied,” he snapped. “I don’t speak cryptic. What the hell are you talking about?”

She studied the perfectly chiseled lines of his face, her heart squeezing as if it had been put in a vise.

The Addonexus had done everything in their power to destroy her emotions. She was supposed to be a weapon, not a woman.

And she’d assumed they had succeeded.

Until this man.

This beautiful, powerful, truly aggravating man.

She didn’t know how or why, but he’d smashed through her defenses and threatened her in a way she didn’t fully understand but was smart enough to fear.

“I couldn’t take the risk that the blade would bind us together,” she forced herself to admit.

He glanced toward the sword that had been tossed on a wooden stool near the refrigerator.

“The blade merely absorbs your energy, it doesn’t actually steal your soul, regardless of the rumors.”

“Don’t be dense. I mean ...” She battled against a wave of embarrassment. Dammit. He was making her feel like an idiot. “Bind us. Forever.”

“Obviously I am dense. How could a few drops of your blood on my blade bind us together?”

“Because the blade transfers the blood to you.”

“And?”

“And it might very well be the same as if you took it directly from my vein.”

“I’ve never heard that taking the blood of a vampire is binding. Not unless ...” He froze, the bronze eyes narrowing with disbelief. “Not unless they’re mates.”

Ding, ding. Give the fairy a gold star.

A vampire needed blood to survive. And it wasn’t unusual to take the vein of a lover during sex.

But the exchanges were about body functions. Food and pleasure.

Nothing that a wise vampire couldn’t walk away from without a backward glance.

But for the rare few who found their true mate, the exchange of blood would entwine their souls.

They would be irrevocably connected.

Forever and ever and ever ...

Unable to bear his piercing scrutiny, she gave him a sharp shove backward, slipping off the table before he could regain his balance.

“We should be deciding what we intend to do next,” she reminded him in clipped tones, pulling on her clothes and belting her holster around her hips. “If you’ve healed I think we should concentrate on finding Tearloch and the child. We can worry about the cur who raised the zombies and his mystery friends later.”

Without warning he grabbed her upper arm and swung her around to confront his probing gaze.

“You’re babbling.”

She stiffened, sternly ignoring his gloriously naked body. Now was not the time to be thinking of how good it felt to have him between her legs, his heat seeping deep inside her as he plunged....

No.

She gave a sharp shake of her head.

“I do not babble,” she informed him, frost coating her words. “I was sharing a reasonable argument for a possible course of action.”

“You were avoiding the subject.”

“Because I don’t want to discuss it. That should be obvious even to a stubborn, pigheaded Sylvermyst.”

“Too bad.”

Jaelyn hissed in shock as he abruptly scooped her off her feet and carried her across the room to the door leading to a small cellar dug beneath the house.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Lowering her to her feet, Ariyal slammed shut the the door and leaned against it, trapping them in the dark, musty space that was lined with shelves holding hundreds of glass jars coated in dust.

Obviously the previous housewife had been dedicated to canning and juicing and pickling everything that came out of her garden.

Ariyal folded his arms over his chest, his expression brooding.

“One of us is always walking out just when the conversation is getting interesting.”

She snorted. “You and I clearly have different definitions of interesting.”

“You don’t think it’s mildly interesting that I happen to be your mate?”

The cramped space seemed to shrink even further.

Talk about awkward moments.

“You’re not my mate.”

The bronze eyes blazed at her denial. Almost as if he was bothered by her stubborn refusal to admit their growing bond.

“That’s not what you implied a few minutes ago.”

She shrugged. “What I said was ...”

“Yes?”

She glanced toward the shelf of pickled ochre. Yeah, time to split hairs.