He hung closely to me the rest of the night, seeming to taunt me more with every second that crept closer to closing.
As we shut everything down,the last few people in the bar offered their congratulations. I even got one very enthusiastic hug before the woman’s husband apologized and pried her away from me.
Once Hannah and Kian left, James and I made one last pass through the bar. We turned off the lights, only leaving the one that illuminated the bottles behind the counter. As he locked up his office, I wandered through the tables, chairs turned up, and smiled, remembering what it was like to walk into this place for the first time. Man, how things had changed.
We strolled to the parking lot hand in hand. With a quick glance around to make sure we were alone, I pressed him back against the hood of my car, leaning in for a much more passionate kiss. He licked across the seam of my mouth, and I eagerly opened up for him.
“You didn’t have to ask me, you know,” I said when I came up for air. I took his left hand in mine, spinning the band around his finger. “My intentions were pretty clear.”
“Please.” His lips ghosted across mine, fangs razor-sharp against my bottom lip. “I’ve had this planned for months. You beat me to the punch.”
Smiling, I claimed my vampire’s mouth once more. We made out against the car until I no longer noticed the chill around me. Tongues tangled and hands roamed. James’s slid into my back pockets, and mine teased under his shirt to find hard muscle and soft skin.
“I know you like to be watched, love,” James muttered, “but I should get you home before we get a public indecency charge.”
I made a show of searching the empty parking lot around us. “Who’s going to report us?”
“Get in the car, Ryder,” James commanded. I opened my mouth to object, but he cut me off with a firm squeeze to my ass, and I gasped instead.
With a little grumbling, I obliged, but that didn’t stop me from teasing James during the drive. Keeping one hand high on his leg, I whispered the dirty things I wanted to do to him in a voice that only he could hear. By the time we arrived home, even Mr. Morality was ready to throw me down in the front yard, neighbors be damned.
Officially, James had moved in with me after his house fire, but he’d beenunofficially living with me since the day we got together. At first I craved my own space, but slowly my two-bedroom two-bathroom house in the suburbs started to feel too big for one person.
It turned out that it wasn’t an entirely natural feeling. James had blown my mind when he explained that we were bound by fate, destined to be together by something so much bigger than either of us. To no one’s surprise, my first instinct was to run. Though the more I fought it, the more miserable I became. It was only once I accepted those feelings that I realized fate was giving me exactly what I wanted anyway.
As if sensing my receptiveness, James hovered close by while I babysat Carlos in the backyard. We were still working on the Husky’s digging problem. Unlike Carlos, I didn’t have thicklayers of fur to keep me warm, so I hung out in the doorway. I sighed contentedly, grateful for James’s company. Typically, he would be as far from the dog as humanly (vampirically?) possible.
Standing there with my…fiancé’sarms around me, I could barely remember a time before James. Back in Vegas, my whole life boiled down to hookups, a studio apartment, and The Hopyard, and that had been enough. But now, I leaned back into James’s arms, arching my neck toward his lips, and marveled. God, how had I ever thought that I couldn’t have this?
His fangs elongated, tickling my sensitive skin, and I twisted my fingers into the silver chain around his neck. He’d been wearing it more often lately, the desire to turn me growing with each passing day. As his tongue darted out to wet my skin and his fangs scraped along the surface of his near-permanent mark, I felt the sudden urge to rip it off.
Where that should have made me panic, it instead sent a bolt of pleasure straight to my cock. While James waited for my permission to sink his fangs in, I mulled over the idea. My finger played with each link in the jewelry. Wouldit be so bad?
James claimed an unprotected bite would bind us together for life. But we were already bound together—by choiceandby fate—so was that really so different?
Even if it was, I’d already almost died twice at the hands of hunters who were after James. There was so much more at stake now than there was a year ago. My life was so much more valuable.
James licked across my skin and I banished the thoughts. There was too much thinking and not enough sucking, especially forme.
I ran my thumb across the chain until I found the clasp and expertly worked it open, letting the necklace fall to the linoleum floor of the doorway. James sucked in a breath and stiffened,tightening his hold on me and practically vibrating with the effort of holding himself back.
“Do it,” I pleaded, letting the feel of his skin against mine ground me.
“Are you sure?”
I nodded, then remembered his tendency to require my verbal consent before he bit me. We both knew that was even more important this time. “Yes,” I puffed, spinning in his arms and backinghimagainst the door frame. “I could give you some drawn-out emotional reason as to why I feel differently about it, but something tells me that you already know. You know my heart.” I took his hand in mine, thumbing his ring again. “This is as good as forever to me, so vicious vampire hunters aside, I think we might as well make it official.” I offered my neck to him once more. “I’m ready, baby. Turn me.”
Chapter 2
“Ryder,”James warned, “I need you to completely understand what you’re getting yourself into.”
His hands squeezed my hips so hard that it hurt—and I loved it. “Does it get any more complicated than being fated to a vampire?” I asked. “Or being targeted, not once but twice, by hunters determined to take us both out?”
James’s body thrummed with laughter. “That’s not what I meant.” After calling Carlos inside, James took my hand and led me away from the back door. “This could be very uncomfortable for you.”
“How uncomfortable?”
He stayed quiet as we strolled through the living room. I flipped off the kitchen light on the way, following him until the bedroom door clicked shut behind us, and James pressed me back against it. “I’ll only need to bite you once, and it’ll burn at first—that’s the venom spreading through your body. Once it settles, it’ll feel like the worst flu you’ve ever had. Your heart’s going to stop, and you’ll struggle to breathe.”
