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Redemption (The Captive #5) Page 30
Author: Erica Stevens

Her body warmed at his joking tone but she still sought answers. She grabbed hold of his hand when he reached for another bag of blood. "I'm fine, right now. What other things are you, Jack? You know... you know about me now so it's only fair."

He was silent as his hand turned over within hers. For a split second she thought she actually felt her heartbeat against her ribs as his skin slid over hers, but the deadened organ remained un-beating in her chest. "What would you like to know Hannah?"

"Everything," she said honestly.

That smile could melt ice, she decided as his head tilted to the side. "You don't want to know everything. I've been alive for over nine hundred years, there were a couple hundred boring ones in there, believe me."

"Then tell me the important stuff, the interesting stuff, the stuff that makes you, you."

The muscles in his arms bulged as he sat back in the chair and folded them over his chest. It took everything she had to keep her face impassive as she surveyed him with a growing hunger that had nothing to do with the blood bags still sitting at his side. His beige shirt was loose fitting and he had rolled the sleeves up to his elbow to reveal his tanned skin. The brown pants he wore looked like they had been painted on as they clung to his well-muscled thighs.

"I'm sure you've heard the stories of my father." Thankfully, his words tore her attention away from his body before she started to drool.

"Some," she admitted.

He gave a brisk nod as his jaw clenched and his eyes drifted past her. "They're probably all true and they probably don't even scratch the surface of the truth."

She swallowed heavily and instinctively stretched out to rest her left hand upon his knee. Though his fingers slid into hers, she didn't think he was aware of the fact that he had taken hold of her hand. "Braith was originally the favorite target for my father's abuse. By the time I was born though, Braith was old enough that our father had stopped focusing on him, and I became the center of his attention."

Hannah felt tears brim in her eyes again but she didn't shed them as his thumb traced over the back of her hand. She couldn't picture anyone being so deliberately cruel to him and didn't understand why they would. Especially since Jack had been born a perfectly healthy vampire and not something that was to be shunned and despised.

"Thankfully once I reached maturity the beatings stopped and I faded into the obscurity that being the third born son allowed me to enjoy. Then the war broke out over a hundred years ago and everything changed." Judging by the lines on his face and the muscle that ticked in his cheek, what had happened back then bothered him more than his casual tone was letting on. "My father had secretly killed my mother and blamed it on the humans in order to start that war."

Hannah gasped as shock coursed through her, but his eyes remained unwavering as they held hers. "I'm so sorry," she whispered.

"It wasn't the worst thing that man ever did, believe me." Hannah believed him but there was nothing she could say to make what he had just revealed any better. "With most of the aristocrats scattered after the war, and most of his opposition dead, my father was free to let his cruelty reign. He instated the blood slave rule, kept the human and vampire races beneath his thumb, and allowed death and suffering to reign supreme."

"It sounds awful," she said when he stopped speaking.

He gave a shrug that she didn't believe for a second was anywhere near as casual as he tried to make it appear. "At least I wasn't a human."

No, he was most certainly not human. Even knowing that, she had the sudden urge to drive her fangs into his neck, to taste him as she had never tasted a human or vampire before. Her tongue prodded at the edges of her fangs as they tingled with their craving to consume his blood. She mentally shook her head to clear it of the compulsion, but she couldn't quite make her fangs retract as her gaze slid to his throat.

She wondered what he would taste like, but even as she thought it she knew he would be delicious. That he would be the best thing she had ever tasted or ever would taste. His head tilted to the side, his nostrils flared as a circle of red flashed around his irises before disappearing. Hannah was aware that her natural aroma had become enhanced by her yearning for him, but there was nothing that she could do about it as he bent closer to her.

A knock on the door caused her to jerk. A low moan escaped as her skin pulled and she could feel some of the scabs breaking open again. "Easy," he said as he placed a soothing hand on her shoulders. "It's only William."

Hannah frowned as she strained to hear or smell something that would confirm what he said, but his presence drowned out anyone else's. "How do you know that?"

"I've lived with the guy for five years, I know his approach."

"Really?" she asked.

"Really." His fingers slid over her back before he placed fresh towels over her burns. "Come in."

Hannah couldn't see the door but she heard it opening. Then she saw the worn boots, attached to a pair of legs clad in clothing similar to Jack's, before her gaze slid to William's torso and finally his face as he moved closer. He was paler than normal, his eyes shadowed as he studied her still form. "Are you ok?" he asked anxiously.

"I'm fine," she assured him.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know; if I had..."

"I know you didn't do it on purpose," she cut in. "Really, I'll be on my feet again in no time."

William remained hesitant and doubtful as he folded his arms behind his back. She frowned as she glanced between Jack and William. They were such a strange pairing. Most humans had always moved freely about their town and she'd always been friendly with them, but she'd never had a close bond with a human before. The friendship these two shared was baffling to her, but then she already found Jack to be a complex enigma that she was actually beginning to enjoy trying to solve.

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