Then, suddenly, I started barking like a dog.
I got three barks out before I heard his voice in my head saying, Stop.
I stopped, lifted my hands, and clamped them over my mouth, retreating three more steps.
“That’s what it feels like,” he said carefully, moving slowly my way. “I had to do it once, just this once, so you’d know how it felt and you’d know what’s happening right now isn’t that.”
I took my hands away from my mouth and said, “But I didn’t feel anything.”
I started barking like a dog again, two barks this time before his voice was again in my head, telling me to stop.
“Again?” he asked.
Was he sadistic?
“No!” I shouted.
Then barked.
Then stopped.
“Do you feel it, Lilah?”
I hit bed, stopped moving, and lifted my hand his way. “Stay away from me.”
“Pay attention, close attention, to everything,” he ordered.
“Please stay away from me,” I whispered.
Then I barked.
And stopped.
But I heard it then. Felt it. His voice in my head, whispering what to do, and the barely perceptible frisson it sent along the back of my neck, both of these beginning and ending in less than a heartbeat.
He stopped two feet in front of me and spoke quietly. “The women I fed from, they know me, they remember me, they remember what we do together. They remember everything except me feeding. I free them from that block when it happens so they’ll want it, ask for it, get into it, but I put that block back up when I’m done with them. When I was younger, I did shit all the time, stupid shit, and I’ll admit, sometimes mean shit. But I learned from that. It can bite you in the ass and it isn’t nearly as satisfying as you’d think it’d be, even if they deserve it.”
He took a step closer.
I leaned back over the bed.
He stopped moving but kept at me.
“The stupid shit I did, the people I did it to, they didn’t know why they were doing what they were doing, or that I did it to them. They knew it wasn’t them, but they still did it. It was fucked what I made them do, but it was more fucked watching them react to doin’ something they knew wasn’t in them to do. The women, I erase my bite from their minds. They know they miss it, and when they get it back they think they forgot it, want it, have it, before I take it away again. They just don’t know I’m the one doing it.”
“Right, well, don’t ever do it to me again,” I hissed.
“You were freaking and needed to understand,” he explained.
“You made me bark like a dog!” I shouted.
He lifted his hands in the air and flicked them out impatiently. “Delilah, serious as fuck, would I tell you I could control minds if I intended to control your mind?”
That made sense.
Which sucked.
“Don’t get rational with me when you just made me bark like a dog,” I snapped.
“I didn’t harm you,” he returned, dropping his hands.
“That doesn’t matter.”
“I’d never harm you.”
My back shot straight at his tone, a tone that made the words he said burrow inside like they were writing themselves on my soul as a never-ending vow.
“You need to know me,” he said, his voice gentling. “You need to understand what I am, what I can do, who I am. I’m giving that to you. I’m doing it honestly. Nothing held back. You need that. We need that.”
He was right.
That sucked too.
“I think you might get all this is gonna take some getting used to,” I noted in my defense.
“Yeah, I get that,” he replied.
“It’d be freaking awesome if it wasn’t so fucking weird and didn’t come with people trying to kill us.”
I saw his body relax and his mouth get soft before he agreed quietly, “Yeah.”
“You want honesty, I’ll give it back to you,” I began. “All if this is totally flipping me out and I’m hanging on by a thread here.”
“How can I help that?”
He asked the question straight out and instantly, and after he did, my eyes fell on my purse on the table.
Shit.
I looked back to him. “We’re connected, aren’t we?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“No clue.”
“Doesn’t it freak you?”
“No, ’cause for the first time in my life, with you finally in it, I feel whole.”
Oh my God, he felt like me.
He felt like me.
I closed my eyes and let myself feel it, something I’d never felt in my life until him.
Whole.
Even in all the crazy, it felt marvelous.
I opened them again.
“Is there more about the world I don’t know? Like, does Superman exist?” I asked.
“Vampires and werewolves roam the earth. It’s a possibility,” he answered.
I smiled as I asked, “Could you kick his ass?”
“Absolutely,” he replied.
“Cocky,” I muttered.
He tipped his head to the side. “You want bacon and eggs?”
“Do I have to drink the eggs raw?”
His brows shot together. “Fuck no.”
“Then yes.”
His mouth still soft, he shook his head and reached his hand out to me. “You get the bacon, I’ll get the eggs. We’ll make breakfast, eat it, and you can tell me about your dad.”
I looked into his eyes.
Then I looked to his hand.
Finally, I reached out my own.
His closed around mine and he gently pulled me to the kitchen.