B00AO57VOY EBOK (33 page)

I didn’t break the kiss until
I felt the soft feel of the mattress against my back.  Even when I looked up to
see that Nathan was gazing down at me with a mixture of heat and wonder making
his hazel eyes even more hypnotic I still didn’t feel nervous.  I felt
exhilarated, sexy, wanted…loved.

“Are you sure, baby?” he
asked softly, never taking his eyes from mine.  “God, Em. If you’re not sure,
please tell me now.”

I could see what he was
looking for.  He was looking for fear, doubt.  He wasn’t likely to find it.  I
wanted him.  All of him.  Mind, body, heart, and soul.  He was mine and I was
his.  I had never been more decided on anything in my life. 

“Tell me you want me and
only me,” I whispered, placing my hands on either side of his face.  If he
wanted to know how I felt, I was more than ready to show him.

“Em, I don’t want you to—”
he said, his eyes widening to the size of plates. 

“Say it,” I said, reaching
for the hem of his t-shirt.

“I want you and only you,”
he said quietly, his expression torn.

“We are two parts of the same
whole,” I murmured, sliding his shirt up.  “Say it, Nathan.”

“We are two parts of the
same whole,” he whispered, pulling his shirt over his head and tossing it
across the room. 

I saw the confusion clear
from his eyes when I laid my hand over the scar Bastian had given him the last
time they fought over who would get me and who would die.  Looking deep in into
his eyes, I gave my heart and soul to him.  I gave him everything I was and
everything I would be.  And I gave him the one thing I had never been able to
give him. 

I gave him my trust.

“I belong to you and you
belong to me,” I whispered, watching tears form in his eyes.  “Forever.”

“Baby, are you—”

“Say it, Nathan,” I
interrupted, reaching for the button on his jeans, repeating the words he had said
to me, giving him the very opportunity he had given me to back out.  “Say it,
baby.  Out loud.”

For a long moment he just
looked down at me.  I waited, letting him work it all out on his own.  I was
offering him all that I was.  It was his choice to take it. 

And, at long last, he did.

“I belong to you and you
belong to me,” he said, breathing the words against my lips as his eyes drifted
closed.  “Forever.”

Something inside me exploded
with that word and my mark throbbed like it had come to life.  A bond was
formed with that declaration that both destroyed the me I had been and created
an entirely new me, blowing apart my walls and my defenses.  Without those
walls between us, I was finally able to truly
feel
him.  I felt his
emotions and the love that flooded through me was so intense that I felt like
I’d ascended to another level of being I hadn’t even realized existed.

“You’re finally mine,”
Nathan said, staring down at me in amazement.  “After four hundred years, you’re
really mine.”

“I’ve always been yours,” I
whispered.  “Always.”

I had never felt closer to
anyone in my life as I felt to Nathan as we slowly undressed each other,
discovering each other by touch and taste alone.  I found a new appreciation
for those long, silky fingers as they found and touched places no one had ever
touched, sending wave after wave of sensation crashing through me until I was
mindless to everything but him. 

My first time was everything
I could have ever wanted and everything I never would have thought to dream of.
 Nathan was so gentle with me, so considerate.  He knew just where to touch,
where to kiss, to drive me mad.  When I wanted him to hold me tighter, he did. 
When I tensed up, he soothed me with whispers of love and gentle caresses.

And in that moment when we
truly became one in every sense of the world, I knew I had finally found my
place.  It was in Nathan’s arms.

Nathan left my side only
long enough to start a fire in the fireplace and hang my clothes in front of it,
and then we spent the day cuddled together under the down comforter on our new
bed.  We talked a little, but mostly we spent the day kissing and touching and
familiarizing ourselves with each other.  It was romantic and sweet and hot and
passionate all at the same time and if I hadn’t been thoroughly and completely
his before, I was then.

Late that afternoon, I
sensed something change in him.  He was completely silent, his fingers tracing
patterns on the skin of my shoulder as if he was distracted.  I snuggled closer
to him, laying my head on his chest and listening to the soft sound of his
heartbeat against my ear.   

We would have to go soon and
I felt sad at the thought of going back to the drama and terror of real life. 
I wanted to stay right there forever, wrapped in Nathan’s arms with no gloom
and doom to interfere with my peace and happiness.

And then my dream was
shattered in the worst possible way.  Leave it to Nathan to remind me that the
monsters were still lurking in the shadows.

“What’s wrong?” I asked,
looking up at him in concern when his grip tightened too much to be comfortable
and his breathing quickened.

“I don’t want you to do it,”
he breathed, staring back at me with actual terror in his eyes.  “I want you to
run, Ember.  I want you to get as far away as you can as fast as you can.”

I stared at him for a full
minute, feeling all my good feelings fading away as reality crashed back in on
me with the force of a mountain falling on my head.  He couldn’t be serious. 
He had even sided with me against Grams when she had suggested the same thing. 
It wouldn’t do me any good to run.  If I didn’t face Bastian I would be running
from him for the rest of my life.  That was something I just couldn’t accept. 
I only had one chance to end it for good and I wasn’t going to run from that
chance.

“I can’t do that, Nathan,” I
said, my voice low and sad, pushing his arms away and getting out of the bed. 
He watched me silently as I pulled on his shirt and went to get my clothes, and
I felt my heart break a little.  We had had such a beautiful afternoon and he
had completely ruined it. 

Why is he doing this
now? 
I kept thinking. 
Now, when I need his support the most? 

When I turned back to him, I
recognized the stubborn look on his face and prepared myself for all-out war.

“I can’t lose you again,
Ember.”   Despite our recent activities, I still blushed when he stood up and
started pulling on his jeans.  “We’ve never made it to this point before, never
been so completely and thoroughly a part of one another.  I have never marked
you, never tasted your blood, never made love to you.  And I have damn sure
never completed a soul mate bond with you.  Just thinking about losing you
makes me want to howl in agony.  Actually losing you…”  His voice trailed off
and he had to swallow hard before he could continue.  “I don’t know if I would
be strong enough to resist the flames this time and that would doom us both.” 

 “Let me give you my
translation of that little speech,” I said, blinking back the tears burning my
eyes.  “What you’re actually saying is you don’t think I can do it.  You think
I’m too
weak
to do it.  Isn’t that right?  Well, thanks a lot for the
vote of confidence.”

“Ember, that’s not…” he
began, but I cut him off.

“I’ll tell you what,
Nathan,” I hissed, not even bothering to hide how angry I was or how hurt. 
“Either support me or stay the hell out of my way.  Your choice.”

A few tears trickled from
the corners of my eyes as I slammed out the door and I brushed them away
angrily.  I didn’t realize until I was already in the bathroom that there was
no electricity.  In my defense, I hadn’t exactly been thinking about lighting
for the last couple of hours. 

“Damn it,” I muttered,
cracking the door open so the light from the main room of the house would give
me enough light to see to get dressed.  My clothes were toasty warm from the
roaring fire Nathan had kept going through the afternoon, but they were also
stiff and itchy and my sweater had shrunk so much there was no way I was going
to get it back on. 

I was pulling on my cami top
when movement out of the corner of my eye alerted me to the fact that I wasn’t
alone.  My head whipped around and my eyes met Bastian’s even as a sharp,
excruciating, pain flared in my right side.  I caught one glimpse of a smug
smile and then he was gone.

I pressed a hand to my side
when I felt something warm and wet begin to slither across my skin and lifted
my hand to see that it was slick with something black.  No, not black.  Red. 

Blood.  My blood.

The asshole had actually
stabbed
me.

∞§∞§∞§∞

Nathan made the two hour
drive home in thirty minutes, one hand on the wheel and one holding a towel
pressed against the still-bleeding wound in my side.  He’d looked like he was
about to have a heart attack when he ran into the bathroom and I had held my
blood-covered hand out to him.  Without saying a word, he had scooped me up and
ran with me, grabbing a towel on the way, and placed me gently in the car
before squealing out of the driveway like a maniac.

He didn’t take a single
breath the entire trip.

“What happened?” Grams
demanded, her face paling, as we slammed into the house. 

“Bastian,” Nathan growled,
marching past her and down the hall to our bedroom. 

“He attacked at Oakhurst?”
Grams asked, her expression a little too knowing, as she sat down on the bed
beside me and examined the wound in my side.  The blood flow had slowed, but I
felt weak and light-headed.

“Not exactly,” I muttered,
not meeting Nathan’s eyes.  I was still mad at him for ruining what should have
been the most beautiful day of my life.  “We weren’t at school.”

“No, I didn’t think so,”
Grams said, laughing softly.  I blushed, but refused to say anything more. 
Whatever she thought we were doing, she was right. 

I’d tried to heal the wound
myself in the car, using the technique Mrs. Amelia had taught me the first time
Bastian had attacked Nathan and I in her attic, but I had only been able to
slow the bleeding a little.  Grams had the stupid thing healed in like five
seconds.

“This is unfortunate,” Grams
said, giving me a practiced once-over.  “Of course, I’m sure that was the plan,
to sap you of as much of your energy as possible.  Ember, we might want to
reconsider the ritual.  It was going to be difficult at full power, but now
it’s going to be even more so.”

“No,” I growled, sitting up
and ignoring the way my head was spinning like a top.  “I’m not letting that
jackass win now.  He stabbed me, damn it!  He is
so
going down.”

“Baby,” Nathan began, but
the look I shot him had him shutting up in a hurry.

“I don’t want to hear it,” I
snapped, the hurt I had been feeling before the demon version of Jack showed up
returning with a vengeance.  “I’ve already heard what you think of my
abilities, Nathan.  Believe me, I’m not so stupid that I didn’t get it the
first time around.”

We were still glaring at
each other when Kim walked in and stopped in the doorway.  She looked from me,
covered in blood, to Nathan whose eyes were glowing white, to Grams who was
watching the whole drama play out with an amused gleam in her eye, and then rolled
her eyes toward Heaven like she was hoping for some kind of divine intervention
or something.

“Did I miss something?” she
asked sarcastically, walking in like she owned the place and flinging herself
down next to me on the bed.  “Really, Nate?  Do you have to keep snacking on my
friend?  We’re supposed to be doing a ritual tonight, you know.  Bad timing,
buddy.”

“Your demon-possessed friend
stabbed her,” Nathan snarled through clenched teeth and Kim’s smirk disappeared
real fast.  “But is that going to stop your friend?  Oh,
no
!  The
all-powerful Ember is going to go right ahead and try it, anyway.”

I felt like I had been
slapped and actually flinched.  Is that what he really thought?  That I was
just trying to prove a point?  Maybe he had forgotten that my life wasn’t the
only one at stake this time around. 

I felt a terrible ache in my
heart as the nightmare that would probably never fade from my memory played out
again in my head, and I saw Nathan kneeling before Bastian, head bowed and
waiting to die.  I still didn’t get that.  Why had he been waiting to die so
calmly?  Unless Bastian was going to convince him, somehow, that I was already…

He had said it himself.  He
wouldn’t be able to stand it if he lost me this time.  The only way Bastian
could kill him was if I was already dead.  He would never be able to do it
while I was still alive and in danger.  Nathan would fight until his last
breath.

And, somehow, Bastian
stabbing me had something to do with it all.  The question was…what?