He didn’t take me hard and fast as he had against the bookshelves. This time, he made love to me. It was deliriously slow and sweet and fucking beautiful. It felt like it went on for hours, leaving me limp limbed, his hot breath leaving my sweat-covered skin blissfully cool.
“St–Sterling.”
“Shh,” he hushed, his lips grazing over mine in a soft kiss, his stamina never draining. Even if this wasn’t a dream, I knew he could go on forever.
My mind went hazy from pleasure. Darkness closed in.
My eyes drifted shut, and the last thing I felt was him unloading inside me, groaning his release against my ear.
“Go to your youngblood now.”
Wandering the dreamscape was bloody impossible when there was nothing to guide me. It wasn’t like there was Google Maps for this kind of thing. The only means of finding my way into Corry’s subconscious was by following our bond’s invisible tether. Corry’s mating mark over my heart throbbed with heat the closer I came to him, like a freakish game of hot and cold.
After a while, I knew I’d found my way into his mind from the way his mating claim blazed like fire. Now all I had to do was navigate my way out of his memories to his dreams where he’d be waiting for me.
A specific memory of Corry’s formed around me, and I found myself standing outside on the sidewalk of a quiet suburban neighborhood. It was the dead of night, and the cookie-cutter houses were all dark, with nothing stirring except for the cool New England breeze rustling through the trees lining the street.
This was supposed to be Corry’s memory, so where was he? The youngblood was nowhere to be seen, which explained why everything was so still, eerily so.
A frown tugged at my lips as I scanned the darkness for the prince. If this was a memory, he had to be close.
As if on cue, the roar of a distant motorcycle shattered the silence. It tore down the street, a single headlight slicing through the night.
My heart thrummed with excitement when Corry’s Ninja came into view. The bike’s tires squealed as he slammed on the brakes, smoke and the stretch of burning rubber tainting the air.
The vampire jumped off the still-moving bike with some crazy acrobatics that seemed to take him by surprise by the way he stumbled back, his eyes wide as he watched the Ninja skid out of control.
My heart immediately plummeted to the hollow of my stomach. He looked drunk. Oh fuck.
Hewasdrunk.
Not from alcohol.
From bloodlust, his blood-red eyes a dead giveaway.
The young Knight prince stumbled closer to me, staring straight through me.
This wasn’t a dream Corry. His visage was just another element of this memory, so he wasn’t really looking at me. But for a second, it felt like he was. I jumped out of the way as he stumbled forward, his gaze glued to something behind me.
I whirled around, watching my mate start up the driveway of a powder blue house. I blinked, trying to figure out why a vampire prince was so fixed on a random human house in the burbs. With the way he looked at the place, you’d think he’d come across an oasis in the desert.
Corry stumbled around a silver minivan parked in the driveway. It had a stick figure family decal on the rear window, two adults and two like twins.
“M–mom! Dad!” The vampire’s vocal cords were shot to hell like he’d been screaming for hours beforehand. “Cora!”
My blood turned grave cold as the cruel claws of realization dragged their icy path down my back. Corry cried his twin’s name like the prayer on the lips of a dying priest. Like he thought he’d die before seeing her.
Because hehaddied.
This was the home of Corry’s family, and by context clues, this was shortly after Corry had been turned. I recalled the details of the story, at least the bits he’d told me. His youngblood senses had taken control, and he’d almost killed them.
I should have just kept walking. All the therapy in the world wouldn’t help me unpack the secondhand trauma I’d get if I stopped to watch every one of my mate’s traumatizing memories. But with this one, I was transfixed. Rooted to the spot.
It was like people who explained what it was like to witness a car crash on TV. I couldn’t look away.
The porchlight flipped on, and the door opened. A middle-aged woman with blonde hair appeared in the gap. “What’s going on? Who’s there?”
“M–mom?” Corry staggered forward. He was clearly disoriented, probably from a combination of fear and bloodlust. It almost seemed like he barely recognized his mother, his youngblood urges disorienting him like a potent drug.
