me, but I recognize the wave of ecstasy that goes along with the bite. I don’t know if it’s his practiced touch or his painful confession, but I’m drawn to him. I press close, resting my back against his chest and reaching up to run my fingers through his hair as my other hand holds his larger one flat against my belly.
His lips move on my throat like violent kisses. I can feel his strength, his control… and a bit of leftover melancholy. I understand that. I can’t talk about my parents without it fucking up my mood for days. Some part of me hopes I didn’t fuck him up by prompting him to recall it, and I tell myself that it’s just because a vampire in a shitty mood is more dangerous than a happy one.
I don’t entirely believe my own excuse though.
Bastian finishes before I’m ready for the moment to end and licks my wounds closed. He leaves his face where it is, buried in my neck. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was drawing comfort from our embrace.
There’s a tug in my soul as we stand on the chilly rooftop together, a dangerous, impulsive urge to throw caution to the wind and open up to him the way he opened up to me.
If I were a different person—if he were a different person—I would.
Because the thing I remember most is my parents dying too.
Chapter Sixteen
“God, it’s like high school all over again out there,” Jessica complains a few days later as she flops backward onto my bed. “Winona’s got a whole clique going. They all hate her. They all worship her. It’s gross. Elise is collecting all the short-term girls. She says she’s teaching them how to avoid getting picked, but when I asked her to help me learn, she just laughed.”
I frown. “She laughed?”
Jessica shrugs miserably, twisting her hair around her finger as she stares at the ceiling. “She says there’s nothing she can do for me since I signed such a long-term contract. She says if I had made a point of being able to leave sometime this decade, she could have shown me how to get out of here single, but…”
She trails off, pressing her lips tight together like she’s trying not to cry as she runs a hand through her dark hair.
I turn back to the wardrobe, where I’m re-organizing my borrowed clothes for what feels like the hundredth time. Honestly, I don’t give a shit about the clothes themselves, or about closet organization, but it gives me something to do with my hands. I get twitchy when I’m anxious, and if I don’t find an outlet for the excess energy, it usually comes out in the form of blurting stupid shit at the wrong moment.
“You are going to be here for a long time,” I point out as gently as I can. “Are you going to try to stay unbonded that whole time, or is there somebody specific you’re trying not to bond with?”
Jessica snorts, but I can still hear the tears in her voice. I hang up a shirt and shuffle through the rest of the pile for the matching skirt.
“It’s James,” she admits thickly. “He’s been claiming me every night, and it hurts so bad every single time. Sometimes he forgets to clean up after, and then I have to walk around like a leaky faucet until someone else takes pity on me and closes me up. I can’t…” She shakes her head fiercely. “I cannot live with the idea of being bonded to that. Of wanting it in spite of myself. Of seeking out his rough handling.”
She sniffles, her voice growing angrier and more panicked with every syllable. “And what then? Vampires don’t touch each other’s bonded tributes, it’s against the bro code or something. Once I’m bonded, that’s it. If he leaves me open, he leaves me open, period. No one else will even be able to help me then, and I’ll bleed out unless he decides to save me.”
A hanger snaps in my fist as my jaw clenches so tight my teeth ache.
Motherfucker. I want to kill him. I could go find him right now. It wouldn’t be hard. Even the other vampires keep an eye on where he is in order to avoid him—that’s how big of a fucking dick he is. Would any of them even care if I shoved a chair leg through his shriveled little heart? No, no they wouldn’t. The