Blood Kiss - Ward J. R. (книги онлайн полностью txt) 📗

“Who’s Mary?”

“You know, Rhage’s shellan. She’s a therapist.”

“Oh.”

Maybe she should follow that one up with another T-Y?

“I’m here if you need me,” the doctor said before she left.

And then Paradise was alone.

It was funny, even though she was safe and in her bedroom, and there were Brothers downstairs … the house didn’t feel quite so secured anymore. And maybe that was the point about the Mary conversation.

God … Anslam, a killer? Maybe even a serial killer?

He’d never shown any signs of instability. He’d seemed like a relatively normal, if slightly unpleasant person, just like her or anyone else from their class, their race.

To think she’d sat by him in training, sparred with him, talked and laughed with him—and all the while he’d been … brutalizing females?

It was the stuff of nightmares—before she even got to the part where he tried to murder her.

Glancing at the clock, she became even more stressed. There was only an hour before dawn came, and she didn’t know where Craeg was. Had he left yet?

She needed to see him.

With a groan, she stretched across for the house phone—

“You want me to help you with that?”

Jerking back, she looked up to find the male himself standing in her doorway. He jabbed his thumb over his shoulder.

“Doc Jane told me it was okay to come in. I’ve got to go, and I wanted to see for myself that you were still alive.”

Paradise closed her eyes and had to turn her face away. Tears came fast and furious, but she didn’t want to show them.

There was a soft click as he shut the door, and for a second, she thought he’d left her. But then she took a deep breath and caught his scent.

“I met your dad,” he said roughly.

Shaking herself back into focus, she forced herself to look over at him. He hadn’t come any farther into the room, and that seemed apt. His face was remote, his body tense, his affect that of somebody who had already left the house even though he was arguably standing in front of her.

“You did?” she said quietly.

“Nice guy.”

“He is.”

Long silence. And then she decided, Fuck it, and went for a Kleenex. Blowing her nose, she snapped another free and blotted her eyes.

“Sorry, I’m kind of emotional.”

“Why wouldn’t you be. You nearly got killed.”

Wadding up the tissues, she pitched them into the wastepaper basket by her bed and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry I said all that stuff to you. That I yelled at you.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Okay.” Man, for some reason that blase response, like none of it had particularly mattered, hurt worse than her concussion. “All right.”

“Look, Paradise, you and I…”

“Are what?” She glanced at him. “Or is it more like aren’t. As in aren’t meant to be? Is this the part where you go through all the reasons we can’t be together again, including, if not especially, because of my background? Because if it is, I’m pretty sure we covered that on the phone.”

When he didn’t say anything, just stared at the floor as if he were counting the stitches in her needlepoint rug, she imagined he was practicing the final good-bye in his head. And that would be a good-bye to their relationship, not a never-see-you-again. Because she was not dropping out of the fucking program; that was for sure: In just these initial nights—which felt like twelve thousand years, thank you very much—she’d already invested waaaaaay too much for quitting.

“You’d better go,” she said with defeat. “Just—”

“Why me?”

She frowned. “I’m sorry?”

As he looked over at her, his eyes were dead serious. “I guess, I don’t understand … why me? You could have anyone in the species. I mean, whole bloodlines would give their arms and legs to have a son with you. You are literally the most valuable thing on the planet—and that’s before they get to know how strong you are, how smart you are … how resilient you are. How courageous … and smart. Have I mentioned smart.” He looked back down at the rug. “And beautiful. And then there’s that voice of yours.” He made a circle next to his head. “It makes me crazy, your voice. Every day, after we’d hang up the phone, I would sleep with the fucking thing on my chest. Like maybe part of your voice, part of you was still in it.”

Okay, now she was tearing up for a completely different reason.

Craeg motioned around the room. “Even if you’d forgive me for being a total asshole … I can’t give you anything like this. My parents’ cottage has, like, two bedrooms and a galley kitchen. There’s Formica on the counters and linoleum on the floors, and really ugly carpeting in it. The wood is fake, it’s not antique. The oldest piece of furniture I own is from the seventies—and it’s horrible-looking. I can’t … I can’t buy you jewelry, or cars—”

“Stop.”

At the sound of her voice, he fell silent.

“I don’t think like that,” she whispered. “And neither should you.”

“What if that changes.”

And that was when she realized he’d never really shown her the vulnerability in him before. And wait, was he talking about them still being together?

“It won’t,” she vowed. “I don’t care about any of that stuff and that is not going to change.”

“How do you know?” he said softly. “Because … I’m in love with you. And if you decide tomorrow, a week from now … a year from now … that this is just a fling, or that you need to be with someone who’s classier than I am, I’m not going to survive that. That is one thing that will bring me to my knees and keep me there. So just let me go, okay? Put me out of my misery … let me go.”

Paradise wiped her eyes and had to smile.

“Did you just tell me you loved me?” When he didn’t answer, she prompted, “I think you did.”

“I’m serious, Paradise.”

Suddenly, nothing in her head or her body hurt, and the fear that had been like a toxic poison in her veins was gone.

“So am I,” she whispered.

“Then yes, yes I did just tell you I love you. And I’m sorry I lost it about you and your family. And I’m also an asshole for lumping you in with the people who killed my father. I don’t know … all I have to do is think back to that first night, when you didn’t want to leave me on the trail? You were like that with everyone, not just me. You … you would have locked yourself out of a safe room if it meant one more person could have fit in.”

He released a shuddering breath, and wiped his face with his broad palm, like he was struggling with his own emotions.

“Craeg, all I can say is this.” She waited until he looked up at her again. “I beat everyone that first night, didn’t I. I was the last one standing, right?”

He nodded. “Yeah. You were amazing.”

“Well, I would do that all over again right now if it meant I could prove the unprovable to you—and that is that my heart knows what it wants. It’s as simple and uncomplicated as that. You can try, if you like, to layer on all kinds of reasons why I’ll think differently sometime in the future, but my feelings are never going to change. I knew you were the one the first night I met you, when you walked into the audience house. I spent weeks wondering if you’d be back with your application. The night of initiation? I waited and prayed to see you come in. And when you did, all I could think of was, ‘Thank God he’s here.’”

She put out her hand to him. “I still think that every time I see you after I’ve spent some time away from you. ‘Thank God … he’s here.’”

Craeg came to her slowly, as if giving her a chance to change her mind. But then his palm was against hers. And then he was sitting on the bed next to her. And then he was leaning in and pressing a kiss to her mouth.

Except he sat back and got grave. “I’m going to ahvenge my father. I know you don’t agree with it, but I can’t change that. I’m sorry.”

She closed her eyes as pain struck her in the chest. “Please … no. And I’m not saying that to protect some distant cousin of mine. There’s been too much death already. I’m trying to protect another living thing.”