He paused, waiting for the pieces to connect in my mind. “Shewas a vampire?”
“In fact,Iwas human, she wasn’t. She confided in me the night before our wedding in case I wanted out.”
The corner of my mouth kicked up. I loved the far away, nostalgic look in James’s eyes when he talked about her. He really loved her. “What happened to her?”
The mood in the room turned somber. “I’m sure you’ve heard of the trials.”
“The Salem witch trials?”
He nodded. “After two years of marriage and still no children, people became suspicious. We had a lot of people watching us very closely. I’m ashamed to admit it now, but I started to think I couldn’t love a vampire, a monster that, for centuries, we’d been taught to fear. Then I came home one day, and… she’d spent all day preparing my favorite meal. I realized she knew me better than I knew myself. How could someone with so much love in her heart be a monster? I wanted to love her for as long as I could, so I asked her to turn me.” He absentmindedly twisted the silver chain around his finger.
My eyes tracked the movement. “Was that hers?”
“No, hers was its more feminine twin, but she gave me this one. I was, uh…” He laughed nervously. “I was a bit of a nightmare at first. I didn’t know how to control myself.”
That didn’t surprise me in the slightest. “Pfft, you? Never.”
He pinched my thigh—lightly, but enough to make me squirm under his grip. “I was insatiable, feeding multiple times a day. I didn’t know it, but Elizabeth began skipping meals to give me more blood. One day, a child from the town was playing in the woods, and found her drinking blood from a dead animal.”
He fell quiet, and I picked up the story. “She was tried?” I guessed, my voice barely a whisper. “People were hung back then, right?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“But a hanging wouldn’t kill a vampire—you’re too durable for it to snap your neck, and you don’t breathe.”
“Which is why she didn’t die. Unfortunately, that only made the village more upset. Have you heard of being burned at the stake? It came from an old European practice, but it wasn’t a common practice in Salem. The villagers, frightened, grew desperate.”
A gasp forced its way out of my throat. “Fire.”
Another somber nod, and he signaled for me to move my legs. He went to his desk, unlocking the bottom left drawer and removing a small box.
He handed it over. “This was all that was left of her by the time I got to Gallows Hill.”
I accepted the box, my heart racing. I didn’t wantto look inside, but James was being extremely vulnerable with me. I tried to stem the shaking of my hands as I took the old, faded box from him. I lifted the lid.
A silver chain lay inside. Thin, daintier than his. The main difference was the small blue sapphire pendant hanging from it. Something about it was too sacred to pick up, so I reverently ran my finger over the metal instead, feeling the ridges of the sapphire under my fingertip. After a time, I closed the lid and handed the box back. “James…” I trailed off, at a loss for words.
“You don’t have to say anything.” He returned the box to his desk and locked the drawer. Almost out of instinct, I placed my legs in his lap again after he sat back down. “I don’t know the extent of your history with Erin, but I see how it’s hurting you to think Hannah might be taken away from you. You’ve been so vulnerable with me. It was time for me to return that trust. And to remind you that it’s okay to feel emotional about things that matter to you, love.”
“I’m not usually like this. All those years ago, when Erin and I broke up, I closed off my heart. I became everyone else’s rock.It’s always easier dealing with someone else’s emotions than your own. Now?” I swallowed. “I don’t know what to do with this feeling—the feeling that being a rock isn’t enough. ThatI’mnot enough. I’d never wantedto be enough for someone.” I was talking about Hannah, of course. Only about Hannah, definitely.
“I don’t know much about being a parent, but something I’ve picked up on over the years is that no one’s perfect. Erin’s not perfect, and neither is Ben. I’m sure they’ve made plenty of mistakes in the last seventeen years. It might take Erin a while to realize that, but she’ll come around.”
I rested my head against the back of the couch, unsure what to say. Eventually, I settled on a quiet, “Thank you.”
I grabbed him around the neck and pulled him in for a kiss. My lips lingered on his, the kiss growing in passion. James lowered me to the couch. He parted my legs with his knee, grinding it into my hard length. I gasped for air, breaking the kiss and arching into him, exposing more of my neck. He licked a path over his fading mark. I wiggled underneath him, needing more—somuch more.
“You sure?” he asked, his tongue darting out to tickle my earlobe.
“I’m sure,” I panted. “Please.”
I felt raw, splayed open for the entire world to see, and the only thing I wanted to soothe that feeling was him. It was a new sensation, but damn it, his hips grinding into mine felt too good to choose that moment to overanalyze our relationship.
As James licked over his mark again, I felt his fangs come out to play. I closed my eyes, preparing for that familiar high…
A gunshot tore through the quiet room.
Glass shattered. James cradled my head, pulling me into his chest. My heart pounded so hard that I feared it would burst right out of my chest. I held onto James like a scared kid, forgetting to breathe. James cupped my face in his hand. He strokedmy cheek, saying something I couldn’t make out over the ringing in my ears.
