Bound to the Fallen (Prophecy #2) (44 page)

P
ulling me up against his naked body, he held me tightly.

Within moments I’
d drifted into a deep sleep.

Gavin

The
light from my window stretched across my face and woke me up. I opened my eyes and rolled over.

Brooke was curled up
on her pillow and her hair had fallen perfectly around her face. I laid there and watched her peacefully sleeping. I hated knowing what I was going to do to her, how I was going to try her trust, hurt her so deeply without ever intending to. The thought of what I had started in my sleep scared me. What if I hadn’t woken up? That innocent nibble on her neck could have very well turned into my tearing into her flesh, damning her and the entire world along with her.

My
thoughts redirected to the events of the previous night. My blood boiled under my skin as I thought about someone watching her. I had my doubts. I had initially thought this was all part of that defiant woman’s plan to ruin our relationship. The thought that it may be the retaliation from one of the Guardians had also crossed my mind, but Brooke seemed so convinced that it may be Dan. Either way, I would not tolerate anyone putting her in an uncomfortable situation, debasing her, and most certainly not threatening her safety.

She
was
mine
.

P
ulling on a pair jeans and a t-shirt, I walked out into the hallway. I glanced in the direction of the guest bedroom, quietly making my way down the wooden hallway.

I stopped outside of the door and listened.
Peering around the corner, I saw Constance and Ashley lying asleep. I narrowed my eyes as I stared at Ashley. I really hated that she’d befriended Brooke and was trying to figure out a way to unhook her claws from Brooke’s skin without having Brooke think I was trying to control her.

I knew what was best for my love, and Ashley West had nothing to do with it.

Leaving the room, I went down the hallway and entered my living room. I grabbed Ashley’s keys from the island and walked through to the garage. I needed to clear my mind; I needed to get out of that house, away from the distractions and the volatile mixture of circumstances that lie within it.

P
ulling up in front of the club, I parked my car. I had rarely come here during the day, but I also had not been frequenting it nearly as much as I used to. The stress that I was experiencing had to be released before it culminated into an uncontrollable rage.

I approached the building and knocked lightly on the door. Within moments the door opened and Raven squinted
from the light entering the entrance way. She backed out of the doorway and I walked inside, closing the door behind me and locking it.

“What in the hell are you doing here?” Raven question
ed me. “What’s wrong with you?” I tried to walk past her and she wrapped her cold hand around my wrist, her nails scratching against my flesh.

“Gavin! What in the hell is going on?”

“Nothing.” I said and yanked my arm free from her. “Nothing!”

Raven
darted past me, running to the end of the hallway and blocking the door. “Bullshit! You’ve been acting crazy the past few weeks. You’ve been coming in here on whims —
you
turned someone! I’ve never seen you do that! Their blood’s not yours. You take their souls, we take their blood.
You
only thirst for blood when you’ve lost control.”

“I had a change of heart,” I said
sarcastically as I snatched her shoulders to move her from the door.

G
rabbing my face, she looked at me. “I know what you’re doing! You know you have no business getting involved with one of them outside of this club. It’s not safe, Gavin. What if you can’t control your urge to take her? Do you want to damn us all?”

“I know what I’m doing
,” I said, glaring at her.

I was angry that she questioned my ability to
refrain from taking the soul of a person not marked for us. “I wouldn’t dare harm her like that,” I growled.

“You love her? Oh
, my God, you
love
her? What the fuck? How are you going to fall in love with one of them? You know that’s dangerous. If the Guardians find out, they’ll hunt you down.” Raven was becoming hysterical.

I stared at her. Fear was evident not only in her voice but in her expression.

I let out a long sigh. “They’re not forbidden
, Raven. As long as we don’t take their soul or their life, they’re not forbidden.” My mind went back to the garden. Azaal had shifted shape and took on the appearance of the serpent to tempt the woman. The bright red color of that fruit had been burned into my memory. I glanced back up to Raven.

Her chest
puffed out as she drew in an angry breath, her eyes narrowed at me. “No, they’re not but, you know damn well the Guardians won’t like it.”

“It’s the same as the forbidden fruit – had
the woman only looked at it – had she been able to simply enjoy the texture of it within her palm, man would have never fallen from grace.” My stare pierced through Raven. “It was only when she ate from it that she broke the commandment. I don’t eat from a mortal, and there’s no harm.”

I laughed at her faltering faith in my ability to obey the agreement. “We’re all damned anyway, are we not?”
Placing my hands on her shoulders, I moved her out of my way. “I love her, and I’m fully aware that she can never know what I really am. I know I can’t have her for all of eternity.”

Raven’s
eyes were filling with tears. “Then how are you going to end it with her? At the most you’ve got about ten years before she’ll start questioning why you don’t age. What the hell? I mean, are you going to marry her? They all want children and you know damned well that if you gave her a child she would die. That’s a part of the curse you
can’t
change, unless you make her immortal, and you know you can’t turn her without fulfilling the prophecy.”

I drew in a long breath. Raven was right and I hated it. “I’ll just enjoy her while I can, be it ten years or ten more
days.”

Raven shook her head furiously. “I don’t like this at all. No one’s going to like this
, Gavin.”

I
lowered my head and raised my eyes to look at her. “No one’s going to know about this aside from you,” I said.

P
ulling the door open, I walked into the room and slammed the door shut. The women inside the room jumped. They’d been asleep and my entrance had startled them awake.

I buried my face inside my hands
and my fingers steepled over the bridge of my nose. I knew I was spiraling out of control. I took in several breaths and let out a loud and tortured groan. “You’re her by choice?” I shouted.

One of the women rose from the floor and walk
ed toward me. “Yes,” she whispered.

Grabbing her by the shoulders, I forced her against the door. My mouth quickly found hers and I began to pull in her essence; the rush of the soul leaving her body and entering mine was fleeting. My cravings were becoming more cannibalistic; the rage of knowing that I would one day be forced to let Brooke go consumed me. I’d never truly been able to appreciate anything; how can you appreciate things you know you’ll never lose? Brooke was the first piece of me I knew could be lost.

I
twisted the woman’s head to the side. My lips wandered down her neck and quickly found the alluring rush of blood coursing through her veins. Clamping my teeth down over her skin, her vein rolled underneath my teeth, and my teeth ripped through her warm flesh. The agonizing screams of the woman were drowned out by my thoughts of having to let go of Brooke at some point. The tormented cries from my inner demon made the frantic screams of this woman seem like a faint whisper.

The copper taste of her blood coated my throat as I gulped it down
greedily. I knew I had to release her or she would not have enough blood to live. Loosening my grip, I walked her over to the couch. She was whimpering, moaning from the pain of my venom. I laid her down and stood over her, watching her chest rise and fall. I watched her writhe in pain.

Her hand cupped the wound on her neck. I stared at her
, realizing I had already lost control. The demon inside was taking over. The fire I’d set with Brooke was raging out of control, and I feared it was only a matter of time before it consumed us both.

Brooke

My eyes slowly opened and my pupils fought to bring the world around me into focus. I threw my arm across my face to try and soften the light. There was a soft knock on the half-opened door to Gavin’s bedroom.

“Brooke?” Ashley was standing in the doorway
, peering inside the room.

“Hmmm?” I stretched my arms out and felt the empty place where Gavin had slept.

“It’s ten o’clock.”

I woke up enough to notice that I was still naked and
that my breasts were partially exposed. Reaching down, I pulled the sheet up over my chest. “Okay, do you need to go?” I yawned.

“Gavin’s not here.
” She walked in and stood in front of the bed.

“What?”

“Yeah, I heard him leave like forty minutes ago.”

I
immediately sat up.

Oh hell, I bet he’s gone to murder Dan.

I sat in the bed, stunned. “Oh shit!”

Ashley bent down and picked
my shirt up from the floor. She tossed it at me. “I’m not picking up your panties and throwing them to you, sorry.”

I pulled the shirt over my head and
searched for my phone. “Turn around,” I instructed Ashley.

H
opping out of the bed, I picked up my underwear and slipped them on. I pulled my jeans off the floor and yanked them up, catching my nail in the zipper.

“Shit, shit, shit…” I ran out into the living room. “Where’s my phone?”

Ashley followed me. “What’s going on, Brooke?”

I looked up at her. “I think the stalker’s Dan
. I told Gavin. Dan made some gross comments to me last week and went off about how Gavin couldn’t do anything, that he’d shoot Adam if he showed up at his house —” I glanced over to the kitchen and remembered I’d set my phone on the counter when I grabbed the towel to wrap Gavin’s hand up in. “I bet Gavin went over there.”

Ashley looked at me
, trying to process the load of information she’d just been given.

I picked up my phone and
dialed Gavin’s number. I heard his phone going off in the living room.

Constance came walking
through the hallway. Her hair was messy and mascara was smudged all under her eyes. Her hand was holding the side of her head and her eyes were still half closed. “Why are you running around out here? I’ve got a massive hangover, and thanks to you, I didn’t get good sleep.” Constance pointed at me. “You. Make entirely
too much
noise when you’re having sex. Is all that moaning really necessary? Damn, and when there’s other people in the house?” She plopped down on one of the barstools and slammed her head on the counter. “Does he have any Tylenol around here, or like some Lortab?”

P
ointing down the hall, I said, “Go look in his bathroom. I brought some over the other day.” I placed my elbows on the counter and grabbed my head with my hands; I glanced down in the sink and saw the dent from Gavin’s fist. How hard did he punch it to leave a dent like that? I knew that if he found Dan he was going to do a lot worse to him than he’d done to that sink.

Constance huffed
. “I don’t want to go rummaging through his bathroom.”

I let out a frustrated groan and
went through his bedroom into the bathroom. Opening the cabinet, I pulled out a bottle of Ibuprofen. I found Constance standing in the middle of his bedroom, in awe as she gazed around the room.

I tossed the bottle to her. “There.”

She opened the bottle and dumped some pills out into her palm. Glancing over at the bed, she looked back at me with a smirk on her face.

Just as she opened her mouth to speak
, I heard the garage door open. We both ran back out into the living room. The three of us were standing in the kitchen facing the door to the garage when Gavin opened the door.

H
is stride stopped halfway through the doorway. Gavin’s hand was still on the doorknob, and he looked at us with surprise. “Well, good morning! What a welcoming party we have here.” He took a few steps in and shut the door.

G
lancing down, I saw bags in his hand.

He pas
sed me and put the sacks on his island. As he was pulling items from the bag, he froze. “What? I went and got us breakfast.” He pulled out a white box from a bakery and shrugged. “God, you’re all staring at me like I just went out and killed someone.”

“Oh,
thank God,” I panted. “I thought you’d gone to get Dan.”

“Noooo
,” he assured me as he pulled fruit from the bag. “I ran down to the market. I didn’t really have anything to cook, and since we all slept in, I thought something might be nice.” He narrowed his gaze at me and shook his head. “Trust me, the thought crossed my mind, but I’m not that rash. I’m going to confront him, but I’m going to have my wits about me when I do so.”

A
fter breakfast we dropped Ashley and Constance off at Ashley’s apartment and got Gavin’s car. Gavin insisted that we go back to my apartment so that I could pack enough clothes to last through the week. He made it crystal clear that I was not allowed to stay by myself.

I opened the door to my apartment and we walked in.

Gavin closed the door behind him. “I just wouldn’t feel comfortable leaving you here. People aren’t always what they seem, you know?”

I w
ent back to my bedroom and opened my closet to select some clothes. “I’m not arguing with you. I’d much rather stay with you, trust me.”

Gavin st
opped in front of my entertainment center and looked at the collage of pictures. “You favor your mum.” He picked up the large, awkwardly-shaped black frame. “Who’s the little girl?”

“My niece,
” I called out from my closet. “That’s an old picture. I think she was like, four in that one, she’s nine now.”

“So, when are you going to take me to meet your family? Hmmm?” Gavin placed the frame back on the top of my entertainment center and
came into my bedroom.

S
topping in front of my dresser, he picked up a lacy black bra that was laid across the wooden top. He playfully threw it at me. “Does anyone in your family know I exist?” He smiled and leaned back against the edge of my dresser, crossing his feet over each other.

I glanc
ed up from the bag I was packing. “Of course.” I paused, thinking of how my mother had been harassing me to bring him down to meet her. “Want to go down for the weekend next week?” I asked and put a pair of gray pants in the top of my bag.

“Sure. How long does it take to get there?”

“Like, six hours or so.” I stood up and put the bag on my shoulder.

Gavin reach
ed over and grabbed the strap, slipping it from my arm. “Give me that bag.” Shaking his head, he said, “Honestly, what kind of men have you dated prior to me?” He grinned as he walked out of the room and back through my living room.

“Obviously, the kind that make me carry my
own bags and open my own doors,” I said.

Gavin shook his head
again, this time disapprovingly. “Such a shame.”