She trusts me in her sleep. She reaches for me when she isn’t thinking. But when she wakes, she’ll remember who she thinks she’s supposed to be.
I turn my head and look at her again, studying every facet of her being. Her dark hair, her long lashes, and the curve of her soft jaw. Her body is still curled toward mine, and she looks so beautifully peaceful.
I want to be the man who gets to make her look like that forever—and I will, eventually. She’s mine. I know that with every ounce of my body.
But war is also coming. The elites are undoubtedly working to track us down, and happily ever after may have a time limit.
I need to make her mine on a cellular level that no one could ever refute, give us a slight advantage, but I can’t rush just to beat the clock.
I can’t force the bond to make myself stronger, and I can’t force Blair to trust me.
I’ll have to take this war as it comes. Even if it kills me.
Blair
I wake up with my heart racing.
I sit up too fast, scanning the room like something might have changed overnight, but nothing has. I’m still in this stupid fucking ugly cabin because I’ve been kidnapped by some blue-collar repo man vampire.
Ugh. This is such bullshit.
The side of the bed beside me is empty and cold. Kane, my kidnapper, is nowhere in sight.
I swing my legs over the edge and cross the room in quick strides, grabbing the door handle.
Locked.
I turn slowly toward the bed, and my eyes rake over the rumpled sheets on both sides of the mattress. My stomach twists into a knot with uninvited warmth and memories.
Was he in here?
I step toward the pillow on his side of the bed, and before I can stop myself, I press my face into it. Instantly, I’m hit with the scent of him—inviting, masculine, distinct—it’s an aroma that, for some strange reason, Iknowas though it’s my own.
He was in here, while I was sleeping. I remember sharply, as though I wasn’t asleep at all.
His body beside mine. My leg sliding between his. My mouth on his. The way I climbed over him.
I jerk back from the pillow like it’s burned me.
No freaking way. That had to have been a dream.
Ithadto be.
I might be delirious from being, you know, kidnapped, but there is no way in hell I’d straddle my abductor and kiss him like I was starving. I press my fingers to my lips, bent on proving my theory, but to my utter dismay, they feel tender and slightly bruised.
“Oh my God,” I whisper. “Did I kiss him…again?”
My mind starts to race.Is this what happens to victims? Do they start sympathizing with the person who took them? Is this some twisted survival response where my brain is rewriting him into something safe?
I pace the room, dragging my fingers through my already dried-out hair.
I stop in front of the mirror and stare. My face is devoid of makeup, my cheeks rosy but not from blush, and my hair is frizzing at the ends and flattening at the crown.
I look stripped fucking bare.
“Wow,” I mutter. “Pretty sure this is the worst I’ve looked in my entire life.”
I was raised to be polished and sophisticated and presentable. Not frizzy and unkempt and a complete dumpster fire.
