Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 92941 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92941 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
Chapter 4
Beau
I wasn’t sure if she was the most impulsive woman I’d ever met or just had the least self-preservation of anyone on the planet. Vampires liked to tell stories, especially the elders, and more often than not, human mates initially rejected the bond even though it hurt them. They didn’t trust it, were wary of tying their life to someone they’d just met, and held misconceptions and biases against our kind. The reasons were endless, and most of them were valid, especially from a species that rarely stayed with the same partner for an entire lifetime.
It was almost a rite of passage to court and woo your mate until they were ready to commit. Males boasted about how quickly they got their mates to fall in love with them.
Unless every mated male I’d ever met had been lying, I was pretty sure what had just happened in her apartment wasn’t normal. The sex was typical. Phenomenal, actually. And the exchanging of blood was pretty standard. The speed at which we’d cemented the bond, though, left me reeling.
My brothers and I had been taught what to do when we reached maturity. It had been a conversation with our father that each of us had come away from both mortified and fascinated. There were almost as many stories of Vampires and mates neglecting to finish the bond as there were success stories. Some went years before their mate’s canines dropped and the instinct to bite came into play, leaving them in a perpetual state of frustration. Thankfully, information had become more available as the years passed, and it didn’t happen so often anymore.
I stepped reluctantly away from Reese’s door. The woman had clearly wanted a little space, shooing me out the way she had, and that wasn’t normal either. Separation was possible once the bond was cemented—we wouldn’t be able to live our lives if we were forced to never leave our mates—but never so soon. My chest burned.
It took months for the bond’s effects to lessen enough that mates could go hours and, in rare cases, days without each other.
Slowly, I walked toward the stairs, the burn increasing with every step. At any moment, I expected her to throw open the door and follow me out. If the burn in my chest was getting worse, then her symptoms must’ve been incredibly painful. For humans, the need to be in close proximity to their mate was even more imperative—an evolutionary design that protected them until their immortality was locked.
I made it to the car before I realized that she wasn’t actually going to follow me. By then, my thoughts were so muddy that I was having a hard time concentrating. I had a mate. There was no turning back. No one gave up their fated mate, not when our lives depended on finding that other half of ourselves.
It had nearly killed me the first time I’d done it, and the only reason I’d been able to was because I’d never touched her. Time and distance had eventually lessened the effects. A lot of time and an entire ocean of distance.
My hand was on the door handle when I came to my senses.
There was absolutely no way that Reese was happily watching me walk away. My mate was just so stubborn that she refused to tell me she’d made a mistake, no matter how much it hurt.
Turning on my heel, I jogged back toward the building. Taking the steps two at a time, I jerked around a long-haired man who was meandering down them.
“Where’s the fire?” he asked, watching me go.
Ignoring him, I hurried down the breezeway. Reese hadn’t locked the door, and I swung it open, ready to chastise her for it.
“Did you forget something?” she wheezed snarkily.
“Gods,” I muttered, slamming the door behind me. “Was it so hard to ask me to stay?”
She was kneeling on the kitchen floor, the top half of her body bent downward so far that her forehead was nearly touching the linoleum beneath her.
“It was pretty clear that you wanted to hit it and quit it,” she said with a groan, her shoulders losing a little of their tension. “Who was I to stop you?”
“Come here,” I muttered, helping her off the floor. “You’re my mate.”
“Not your keeper,” she stated as she got her feet under her and tilted her head back to look at me.
“How long did you plan on writhing on the floor in pain?”
“It would’ve passed eventually,” she replied, brushing her hair back from her face.
I didn’t have the balls to tell her she was wrong. If anything, it only would’ve gotten worse.
“I don’t think I like this,” she said, looking away from me. “Uh, I think we should’ve thought this through a little.”
“What’s to think through?”
“Oh, I don’t know, tying ourselves to each other?” she said with a humorless laugh. “I mean, the sex was great, but is that really enough to sustain a long-term relationship? Probably not.”