All Souls' Night - Renee Rose Page 0,36

more than she could handle. She goes limp in my arms.

I carry her downstairs to her room and gently place her in her bed. I wait for her to wake, pacing the room. Keri is strong. She isn’t like Arabella. Arabella was weak. She couldn’t handle the truth of who I am. Keri can handle it.

She has to.

Chapter 3

Opening my eyes slowly, I feel the softness underneath me. It’s the bed in the room Bentley has given me to use. He is sitting at the end of it. My boyfriend is a vampire.

My boyfriend is a vampire!

“That I am.”

“I’m not sure I like you reading my thoughts. I feel like it’s a violation of privacy or something.”

“Is there privacy between a dominant and his submissive?” he asks me.

“You think I’m just ready to be your submissive again after all those lies?”

“I lied to you to protect you, Keri. That might not seem like a good excuse to you, but who I am, it is not something I can just tell anyone. I had to wait until I knew for sure.”

“Knew what? That you could trust me?” I hope he can trust me, we’ve been sleeping together for a year.

“No sweetheart, I’ve trusted you for a long time.”

“Then what?”

“I waited until I knew beyond all doubt that I loved you, and that I wanted to spend the rest of your life with you.”

“The rest of my life?”

“Yes. The rest of your life. I love you, Keri. Did you hear those words?”

He loves me. My vampire boyfriend loves me. That is why he brought me here, to his armed fortress, that is why he is telling me his secrets.

“Why?” I ask.

“Why do I love you?”

Drat. He read my mind again.

“Butterfly, I love you for many reasons. Some people have a disregard for all things good—you are the exact opposite, Keri, and that is what made me first fall in love with you. There is the way you treat people, everyone we come across. It doesn’t matter what they look like or who they are, you treat them with respect and dignity. It isn’t just your actions, I can read your thoughts. You have never judged another person. You look at the beggar on the street the same way you look at the rich man at the theater. You were looking for a man who met all of your check marks on that impossible list of yours.”

“Hey! I really feel like some of my thoughts should have been private!” I protest.

“And some of them seemed a bit outlandish. But, none of them are unreasonable. You aren’t looking for a rich man to spoil you, you are looking for a man with steady financial means to be able to provide for your children. You are a good person, one of the best I have ever known, and believe me, in nine hundred years, you get to know a lot of people.”

“I wish you had told me sooner.”

“Butterfly, I didn’t tell you because my history with women isn’t the best. One of the women I told, Ann, was horrible. She spread rumors and lies, rejected me. Then the last woman I told, the last woman I loved, Arabella, she killed herself afterwards. I confessed my love to her, and she…” He scrubs his face with his hand.

“Oh, Bentley!” The pain is written all over his features. That sorrow I saw yesterday when we arrived, when I asked him if he had a hidden family, it is back, and this time it isn’t fleeting, and I know I hadn’t imagined things.

“There is grief, Keri… an enormity of grief that comes with being a vampire. A dark side of existence that people, that humans, don’t ever have to feel. I’m in a continuous hell, don’t you see? I’m living in an eternal Groundhog Day that includes watching those I love die, over and over again, day after day. My life is a never-ending funeral. I bury people, my people. My family died first, and then woman after woman whom I loved. My grief is heightened, all our emotions are, but the grief… sometimes, it feels like it’s trying to explode right out of me and take my heart along with it.”

He pauses for a moment, staring out into space. I let him have his moment, sitting quietly, knowing he just needs me to listen. “After Arabella died, I stopped letting myself grieve by stopping letting myself care. I loved her deeply. I wanted to marry her. I