Tall, Silent & Lethal (Pyte/Sentinel 4)

He looked down at the counter and frowned until Marc gestured to his glass of blood. “You drink blood?”

“Yup,” Marc said with a careless shrug as he reached for the cookie jar and pulled it closer so he could grab a handful of Oreos.

“Why?” he asked, handing the glass of blood over to the boy, his own bullshit momentarily forgotten as he watched the young boy stuff an Oreo in his mouth and follow it with half the blood.

Marc popped another cookie in his mouth before he answered. “So I can grow normally,” he explained, grabbing another cookie as Christofer digested the information.

“So, when you’re sixteen you’ll actually look-”

“Sixteen,” Marc finished for him around another cookie.

“Of course,” Christofer said, chuckling as he shook his head in wonder. Of course his embarrassingly slow growth rate could have been fixed with something as simple as drinking blood, he thought as he grabbed the bag of warmed blood from the bowl and another cup from the cabinet.

As Marc polished off the contents of the cookie jar and two more glasses of blood, he sat there sipping blood and thinking about all the things that his child was going to need. Christ, they weren’t ready, but that didn’t matter. He had a baby on the way and responsibilities to deal with. The first of course was to find a home of their own.

He liked the Williams family, liked living here, but they were just starting out and needed some time alone before the baby came. He wanted to spoil Cloe, learn everything that he could about her, and make sure that she knew that he wanted to spend the rest of his very long life with her. He wanted to have the freedom to make love to her wherever he wanted, whenever he wanted and he couldn’t do that in a mansion filled with children and five other people who could hear every single thing they did.

He would have liked to take Cloe away on a trip first. He wanted to explore the world with her by his side, but that wasn’t an option. He had a family now and that meant that he had to put his wishes aside and take care of them. They came first and always would.

Everything else came second.

“Do you think that-”

“What the hell?” he rasped, cutting Marc off as he came to his feet, the scent of Cloe’s blood and an unknown shifter pushing all of his worries aside as terror struck.

*-*-*-*

“Real smart,” Cloe grumbled, shaking her head in disgust as she opened another window, grimacing when the cut she’d stupidly made across her palm stung as she gripped the window and pushed it up.

There really was nothing sexier than a gushing hand wound, she thought dryly as she opened the last window, hoping to air out the room before Christofer returned. Sighing, she walked to the bathroom for a quick shower. This really hadn’t been her best idea.

God, what the hell had she been thinking?

She wanted to experience his bite, to see if it was pleasurable and for some asinine reason she thought cutting herself was the best way to make that happen. For about thirty seconds after she’d cut herself, she’d stood there, prepped and ready to get it over with. She’d been determined to get rid of this fear, to overcome her past so that she could honestly say that she wasn’t still afraid of him, but then she started to remember what it felt like that night of his attack and all her bravado had quickly fled.

She hated this, hated the way she tensed up when he went too close to her neck, hated the way she forgot to breathe when his fangs dropped while they made love. She loved him so much, but this fear that she felt every time she saw his fangs was killing her. She didn’t want to live the rest of her life like this. She didn’t want to feel like she had to watch her back or worry when he didn’t feed every couple of hours, terrified that he would lose control and mistake her or their child for a late night snack.

She wanted……..

She just wanted him, but she knew that she wouldn’t be able to have him until she got over this innate fear of him. They were having a baby together, something that she’d known would never happen for her and now that it had, she would greedily protect it, even from its father.

God, she hated feeling this way.

She-

Gasped as a strong hand grabbed onto her arm and yanked her out of the shower. Before she could scream, she found herself pushed back against the wall and staring into glimmering red eyes as trembling hands moved over her, searching for something. Her heart pounded against her chest as her gaze locked on the long, white fangs that looked ready to tear into her throat. When her mind raced to catch up with her erratically beating heart and she realized who was standing in front of her, her fear spiked.

“Where are you hurt?” Christofer demanded as she took a deep breath to calm her frayed nerves. “I smelled your blood.”

“I’m fine,” she said, pushing his hands aside as she stepped away from him, needing a moment to compose herself before he realized-

“You’re terrified,” he said hollowly.

She tried to shake it off as she grabbed a towel, forcing herself to appear casual as she headed for the bedroom, needing to put a little space between them so that she could calm down just enough to hide her reaction from him, something that she normally could do, but tonight, he wasn’t going to give her that chance.

“Look at me,” he said, grabbing her arm more gently this time to pull her to a stop when all she wanted to do was to walk away from him and pretend that he hadn’t just scared the hell out of her, and probably always would.

Swallowing back her fear, she forced herself to look up and immediately wished that she hadn’t, especially when her breath caught and her stomach dropped when she realized that his fangs were still down. This time when she tried to step away from him, he refused to let her go.

“You’re terrified of me,” he rasped, noticeably swallowing as he waited for her to deny it, but she couldn’t.

So with a shake of her head, she closed her eyes in surrender and admitted, “Your fangs.”

“My fangs?” he repeated as though he wasn’t quite sure that he’d heard her correctly. “You haven’t reacted negatively to my fangs since-”

“I started to accept what I’d been changed into,” she finished for him, opening her eyes so that she could look at him as she admitted, “You scare me when you lose control.”

“Then why did you want me to bite you?” he asked, looking as confused as she felt.

She sighed, looking away from him, having absolutely no idea how to explain to him that she wanted to replace her fear with pleasure, to erase the memories of what he’d done to her, what she feared that he would one day do.