My Blood Approves (35 page)

“
Peter’s right….” I managed
breathlessly.

Jack crouched beside me, and I could feel
how devastated and powerless he felt. He started saying something
to me but forcing myself to speak had used up at the last of my
energy. Everything around me fell black and silent.

Slowly and somewhat reluctantly, I felt
myself rising to the surface. I blinked several times, letting my
eyes adjust to the dim light of the bedroom. I had rather expected
to open my eyes and find myself in purgatory.

Instead, I was in the room in the turret,
the bedroom that had been mine. A weird weakness washed over me, as
if I was lying underneath a weighted blanket, and I still had
residuals of the intense pleasure from when Peter had bit me.

I also felt relieved and apprehensive, but I
couldn’t understand why. They seemed out of place with everything
that had happened, but then I stirred a little and found the source
of the emotions.

“
Hey,” Jack whispered. He’d
been sitting in a chair in the corner of the room, but when he saw
me waking up, he came over and climbed on the bed next to me. “How
are you feeling?”

“
Really, really tired,” I
groggily, and when he smiled, I saw there were tears in his
eyes.

He brushed the hair from my eyes, and his
fingers traced down the side of my face, past my jaw line, and
lingered on the trace of the bite Peter had left on my throat. His
expression hardened painfully, so I swallowed and looked away.

“
Am I gonna have to go?” I
asked.

“
You can stay as long as
you want.” He moved his hand from my neck, resting it on the covers
over my stomach.

“
Peter said that I wouldn’t
be allowed to see any of you anymore,” I told him thickly. A deep
pain welled in my chest at the thought of it, and even without
Peter here fogging up my mind, suicide didn’t seem like that bad of
an idea.

“
No. That’s not going to
happen,” Jack said firmly. “I had agreed to it temporarily, until
we could get things sorted out better. Peter was convinced that he
couldn’t be around you, and apparently, that wasn’t far from the
truth.” Just mentioning Peter made his voice fill with a deep
anger, and I felt a jealous protectiveness radiate from him. “After
what happened, we decided that was a horrible decision. So Peter’s
gone.”

“
What do you mean he’s
gone?” I looked at him plaintively, and Jack tried to hide that it
hurt him that I was even asking about Peter.

“
He’s going to go out on
his own for awhile. He’s done it before.” Jack shrugged, like it
wasn’t anything for me to concern myself with. “We all just think
it would be better for him not to be around you, at least not while
you’re still human.”

“
So he just won’t see you
guys for three or four years?” I was tearing their family apart,
and that did little to make me feel better. Admittedly, I wanted to
be around Jack and his family more than I wanted to be alive, but
not at the cost of ruining their lives.

“
No, he won’t see you for
three or four years,” he corrected me. “And maybe me too. But trust
me, I don’t really have any urge to see him.”

“
It’s not his fault,” I
insisted quietly. Jack scoffed and looked away from me. “It’s
really not. I asked him to do it.”

“
He knew better.” He
shook his head seriously. “He knows how much…” Just the thought of
me dying agonized him. “If you had died, I would’ve killed him. It
would’ve completely destroyed everything we had here, and he knew
that.”

“
You can’t kill him over
me,” I said. “I don’t want to be the cause of your family’s
destruction.”

“
Well, then don’t do
anything stupid like getting yourself killed.” He had meant to
sound joking, but it came out more as if he was pleading with me.
“It’s too late, Alice. You already mean too much to us. Dying
doesn’t change that.”

“
How am I still alive?” I
attempted to change the subject.

“
Ezra gave you a blood
transfusion with the blood bags we have,” he explained
casually.

“
He can do that?” I felt
wide eyed. Blood transfusions probably weren’t the most difficult
of procedures, but still, he’d saved my life with one.

“
He can do anything.”
Brushing it off, he smiled at me. “When you’re around for
three-hundred years and you’re life revolves around blood, you pick
up a thing or two about it.”

“
So what happens
now?”

“
You need to get some rest,
because the blood loss makes you tired and weak. And then I’ll take
you home in the morning, so you can go to school.” His blue eyes
looked softly at me.

For the first time, I could really feel how
much he loved me. It was like a warm, safe blanket wrapped around
me, and I tried to ignore the aching pain in my chest that still
went out for Peter.

“
Thank you,” I
whispered.

“
There’s nothing to thank
me for.”

Settling more into the bed, he reached out
and pulled me over to him. Wrapping his arms securely around me, I
rested my head on his chest and listened to the slow, faint sound
of his heart beat.

I felt totally and completely safe with him,
and I wanted to stay that way forever.

Nothing between us had really been solved.
For now, our best solution was simply to send Peter away, but who
knew how long Peter would really be gone for?

Until things were in place, I would just
have to go about living my life as normally as possible. Going to
school because it made my mother and Milo happy and hanging out
with Jane so I didn’t become too dependent on Jack for my happiness
(even though I had a feeling that it was already too late for
that). While I still had the chance, I would spend as much time as
I could with Milo.

But really, it was only a matter of time
before everything changed. I snuggled deeper into Jack’s arms and
tried not to worry about any of that now.

# # #

Read an Excerpt from the second installment in
the
My Blood Approves
:
Fate
– available now:

Summer nights were too short. Vampires spent
more time indoors in the summer, but heat didn’t agree with them
anyway.

Jack lived in beautiful house on the lake.
It’d be a rather conventional square house if not for the balconies
and the turret that connected the house to the garage. As many
times as I had been here, it never really stopped being
intimidating.

We spent a great deal of the summer in the
backyard, either lounging on the stone patio or swimming in the
lake or taking out the Jet-Ski’s. Milo and I spent so much time on
the water that Mae bought us several swimsuits to keep at the
house.

I changed into my suit, keeping the towel
wrapped around me when I came out of the bathroom, and Milo had
already changed into his swim trunks. He sat at island in the
kitchen, munching on some grapes, and helping Mae.

Mae had been the eldest when she turned, at
twenty-eight. Her skin was flawless white porcelain, and her
caramel waves of hair had been pulled into a loose bun. Wearing
only her bathing suit and an apron, her warm, honey-colored eyes
danced as Milo talked to her.

As a vampire, she didn’t eat, and since Milo
was an excellent cook, so he became her sous chef, helping her
prepare all the meals she made for our benefit. I would’ve
protested all the extra work and expense Mae put into it, but it
was obvious that she relished this sorta thing.

“
Where’s Ezra?” I asked,
walking over to the island and stealing a grape. Mae was making
some kind of fruit dip with cream cheese and yogurt, and slicing up
apples, pears, and strawberries.

“
He’s taking a nap,” Mae
informed me in her warm, British accent. “He’s a little jet lagged
from the trip.”

Like the other two boys, Ezra was incredibly
attractive. His eyes were deep mahogany and infinitely warm. His
skin was the same tanned color as Jack and Peter’s, and his sandy
hair had soft blond streaks through it.

The most powerful thing about Ezra was his
voice. It was low and resonated through everything. He had a faded
accent that came from being born in England, but he hadn’t lived in
Europe in over two-hundred years.

Through the glass French doors off the
dining room, I saw Jack rollicking about with his Great Pyrenees,
Matilda. The deck lights revealed the taut muscles of his chest and
back as he rolled around with her. The stones of the patio
should’ve left him battered and bruised, but he’d have nothing to
show from it.

“
Alice, do you wanna try
it?” Mae asked, pulling my gaze away from Jack. She held out an
apple slice covered in dip, but I shook my head.

“
I’m getting pretty chilly.
I think I’m gonna head outside.”

“
I’ll be out in a minute,”
Milo said through the mouthful of the fruit he’d
sampled.

“
Okay,” I nodded and headed
out the French doors into the night.

Jack ventured off the patio in his pursuit
of Matilda, but I saw easily in the light of the full moon. It was
much warmer outside than it had been in the house, but I kept the
towel wrapped around me. I walked down the patio onto the small
lawn that separated the house from the lake.

Matilda caught sight of me and bounded
towards me. She’d knock me over, since she was used to vampires who
could handle her lunging at them, but Jack overtook her and
playfully tackled her. Then he stood up, brushing the grass from
his swim trunks, and grinned at me.

“
Are you gonna go swimming
with the towel too?” Jack teased.

“
Maybe.” I pulled the towel
more tightly around me, and he laughed.

Matilda sniffed me heartily before
concluding that it was only me, and then sauntered off, wagging her
tail slowly behind her.

A mischievous glint caught Jack’s eye, and
after spending a summer getting thrown in the lake, I knew exactly
what it meant. Dropping my towel, I turned and ran towards the
dock. He trailed a few steps behind me, even though he could easily
sprint past me. The sport was in the chase for him.

I almost made it to the edge of the dock
when I felt his strong arms looping around my waist. I squealed and
let him twirl me around once before he released me, sending my
soaring into the air and landing in the lake with a loud
splash.

Jack took a running jump and leap out,
flying over me and splashing way out in the lake. He howled
excitedly, as if he hadn’t made that same jump a million times.

“
Jack!” Mae leaned out the
French doors and shouted out at him. “You’ve got to keep it down so
the neighbors don’t call the police again.” It was after midnight
on a Wednesday, and the neighbors weren’t big fans of the
noise.

“
Yeah, Alice,” Jack
said.

“
Oh, whatever,” I rolled my
eyes. “As if I’m even half as loud as you are.”

Jack laughed, taking long strokes out
farther into the black water. He swam slow circles around me, but I
was content to float on my back, staring up at the full moon and
the stars shining.

I had never really had the courage to swim
too far from the shore when the water was so dark. I always had
these horrible visions of being eaten by some unseen monster coming
up from the depths of the lake.

Milo joined us in the lake a bit later. Mae
stayed inside to continue chopping fruit. She always went overboard
trying to feed us. We were just two people, but she cooked like we
were an army. It only made it more obvious when they didn’t eat
anything, but Milo had only made a few comments about it.

Surprisingly, he hadn’t really caught on
that they weren’t human. Jack had been more discreet about his
paranormal abilities, but Milo was a smart kid. I thought that he
suspected something but let it go, because they didn’t seem
dangerous and they made me happy.

“
It’s a really beautiful
night out,” Milo said. He floated on his back, admiring the night
like I was.

“
It’s been a fantastic
summer.”

“
I can’t believe it’s
almost over,” Milo sighed.

“
Don’t remind me!” I
cringed.

“
It won’t be so
bad.”

School was only three short weeks away. Milo
tried to convince me that it had little effect on my life, but it
changed everything. There’d be no more all-nighters with Jack, and
soon everything would get cold and snowy, and Milo would make me do
homework.

Something grabbed me and pulled me under. I
tried to scream but water buried me. I pictured some evil sea
creature coming to eat my soul. Clawing my way to the surface, I
grabbed onto something strong and soft and pulled myself up.

As soon as I reached for him, Jack pulled me
up out of the water and let me cling on to him. Over my own
frightened gasps, I heard him laughing softly, and I realized he’d
been the one that grabbed my ankle. After a summer of similar
antics, I should’ve caught on that Jack thought it was funny
scaring the crap out of me.

I should’ve slapped him or told him he was a
jerk, but the feel of his arms distracted me. His chest pressed up
against mine, and he had to feel the frantic beating of my heart
that drove him crazy.

I looked up in his soft blue eyes, and I
felt breathless for a whole new reason. His laughter died down, and
his smile faltered as his body temperature started to rise,
smoldering against my skin.