“Until the girlfriend you lost?” I asked, my voice soft.
He shrugged. “Maybe Raquel would have been different, I don’t know. I wasn’t involved with her long enough to find out. A couple of months. We weren’t even really together. It was just another fling.”
I almost did a double-take. I’d had it in my head that she was the love of his damn life. Which, really, had been my own paranoia at work. He’d never once implied that they’d been a serious couple or that he’d been head over heels for her.
“It was three days after finding out she was pregnant that we were attacked by a vampire. He dazed me with his gift while he fed from her, and then he Turned me and hightailed it out of there, hoping my conversion would slow Sebastian down—he knew the tracker was on his trail. It worked. Sebastian brought me to The Hollow and then went back to tracking my Sire, who is now very dead.”
“He deserves to be.”
“Regardless of what some think, I didn’t love Raquel. I barely knew her. I didn’t really grieve her. I grieved the kid she was carrying—that baby was the only person I’d ever really claimed as mine. Three days later, it was dead. That fucked with me. And so it should have. The baby should have been grieved by someone. Should have mattered. He/she mattered to me.”
And, like everyone else in his life who’d mattered—his mother, his sister, his grandparents—he’d lost that baby. I gave him a soft kiss. “I’m sorry that happened.”
“Me, too.” He drew in a sharp breath. “The first time I had you in my bed, there was this … I don’t know … burst of possessiveness. Similar to the one I had toward that baby. I wasn’t ready to claim someone else. I wasn’t ready to lose someone else.”
Skimming my fingertips over his nape, I gave a slow nod. “I get it.”
“I don’t know if some subconscious part of me figured that holding back from you would spare me pain or some shit. But what went down with Beatrix … it wouldn’t have hurt less to lose you tonight just because I wasn’t wholly committed to this relationship. In fact, I’d have regretted that I wasn’t. I’m not interested in living with more regrets.”
My pulse began to quicken. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I’m all in this. Mind, body, soul. There might be times where I’m gone from months at a time while tracking—”
“But you’ll eventually come back to me,” I said, warmth filling my chest. “That’s all that matters. I’m not going to do what the women in your past did; I’m not going to make you feel that you need to change. But you’d worried I would, hadn’t you? That’s part of the ‘shit’ you were working through, isn’t it?”
He stroked a hand over my hair. “It didn’t hurt when they did it. They didn’t have that power over me, because they didn’t matter to me. You matter.”
“And you matter to me, exactly as you are. I don’t want you to change. I get that you’ll have to leave sometimes. I get that you’ll have to feed from others while you’re gone and that I will, too. It’s not ideal, but it’s also not the end of the world. And we’ll get to have lots of ‘oh God, I missed you sex,’ so there’s that. I’ll be happy as long as you always come back to me.”
He swallowed. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. And you don’t have to worry that I’ll ever ask you to Bond with me. I’m not sure that’s something you could ever do—”
He snorted. “You’re wrong there, baby. That’s a future I want with you.”
I frowned. “The Bond is super intense, Ryder. You don’t do well with being tied down,” I reminded him.
“I wouldn’t see it as being tied down. I’d see it as being tied to you. That will work for me just fine.”
“You sure?” I asked even as I heard the ring of truth in his voice.
His lips curved. “I’m sure. Now kiss me.”
(Ryder)
Her face all soft and warm, Maya lifted her mouth to mine and swiped her tongue over my lower lip. She let out a little hum and nipped that same lip. Then she did it a second time but harder.
Growling, I tangled my hand in the back of her hair. “Fucking kiss me.”
She did. Her mouth was hot and urgent as it moved against mine. I let her control the kiss for a few seconds, but then I took over and claimed her mouth in a ravenous kiss. She clung to me, scratching at my nape.
Raw hunger whipped through me, inflaming every nerve-ending. My blood pooled low, and my body tightened.
Wanting no audience, I pulled her away from the balcony without breaking the kiss. Intent on having nothing between her skin and mine, I yanked off the robe she’d slipped on after her shower. She shoved down my sweatpants just enough to let my cock spring free.