Sunder (26 page)

As his tongue slid into my mouth and my hands slid up his chest to his unruly hair, the blanket dropped to the ground. But I didn’t care. I let him lift me into the air. My mind might have forgotten him but my body had not.

A sharp, stabbing pain like a hot knife slicing across my throat filled me. I moaned into the kiss and tasted his blood.

It started a fever. The sweetness of his blood took over all of my senses. It was like I had starved all my life, only tasting food for the first time. Part of it was the kiss, but the other part was his blood.

He pulled back, laughing. I scrambled to grip to him, but my strength was no match for his. He looked up at the sky, “Seriously?”

I licked my lips, desperate for more of it. He looked at me, his blue eyes glowing. I looked into them, getting lost and found in the same breath.

We had been lying on the grass, when the voice hovered over me, asking me to choose my form. My heart went to him instantly. I chose to be like him. The curse was broken, and as a result, I was allowed one wish. I could become what he was, so I did. I felt with my tongue, wincing when the sharp fang cut me.

His glowing eyes.
Of course.
Briton. He was my Briton. He was mine and I was his and we had chosen to be what the other person had been, desperate to match.

I started to laugh with him, still struggling with the urge to eat him alive. “You picked to be a wolf?”

He nodded. His smile turned goofy. He laughed and ran his fingers along my fangs. “You chose to be like me?”

It all flooded back in. Every detail. I remembered everything. It might have been the blood, but I let it be the kiss that saved me.

He scooped me up, licking the blood from his lip. “No biting. We need rules.”

I winced. “You still have to shift. Do you have any idea how much that hurts?”

He nodded, his blue eyes glistening. “Nothing will ever hurt as much as you not knowing me. If I shift and you suffer from blood lust, we will make it work. Just don’t leave me here without you.”

Tears flooded my eyes as I realized all of the things I hadn’t thought about. “My dad.” The words came out in a croak.

He kissed my forehead, muttering into it, “I am so sorry, Liv. But at least your mom is alive and we rescued her and my brother.”

“Josh’s dad?”

He shook his head. “There was a wolf there, but he was savage. If he was Josh’s, there is no saving him. He was completely wild.”

I sighed into him, savoring the feel and smell and completion of being in his arms. He scooped me into them, carrying me into the house and up the stairs. He put me down outside of my shower and pulled his sweater off of me. I shuddered at the feel of his warmth. “Were you always so hot?”

He laughed. “No. Now you’re tepid and I’m scorching. We may never match.”

I wrapped myself around him as he carried me into the shower. I nuzzled into his neck and let the hot water blast us. “We match. We have the same heart. It can only beat in one chest, so this time it’s in yours. You just have to take good care of it.”

He kissed me, softly spreading his heat throughout my body. “I will keep it safe always.” He kissed again and again. “I can’t believe you’re here. I thought I was going to die when you died. I thought God was punishing me for being an evil vampire. I thought you got to go to Heaven and I had to stay and try to earn my way to you.”

I smiled and looked up at him. His eyes weren’t glowing anymore. “I didn’t die. I was just trying to catch up to you.”

He kissed my nose. “Never leave me again, even if it’s for a few minutes.”

He kissed me and I knew what he had meant—never was there a kiss destined to such an end. It had been an end of sorts.
An end to the suffering of people like us.
But it had been a beginning too. It had been the beginning of us.
The real beginning.
“Briton, this is our story. This is how it starts.”

The two lives we had lived together, the first one as farmers in Iceland in 860 BC, and the one now, meshed together. I felt love for both versions of him. But unlike the version where we had died so young, this time we would get forever.

There was no limit on the amount of time we would share. It would be infinite. And like the time, our love would have no limits.

He cupped my face and kissed me softly. “Then let’s start it off right.”

It felt like the end of the longest journey ever ventured. I had been born over and over, always seeing him or thinking of him or feeling the missing piece of the puzzle. But he hadn’t been born again. The curse had a cost. His father had been a monster made on that field that day, making him born a monster I would spend two thousand years trying to reunite myself with.

But it was over. Finally. I was with him and we were free of the curse. We were free to be together.

I kissed his neck, feeling the fangs spring instantly and smiled. He pulled me back. “We don’t bite.”

I laughed. “How did you resist biting me?”

“I knew my bite would kill you.”

I winced. “It’s going to be harder for me. My bite won’t affect you.”

“It might annoy me. That will affect you.”

I laughed harder.

He kissed me again, gripping to me and kneading my skin. I had never imagined my favorite shower in the world could become even more special. But it did. The walls and windows steamed, and in the mist we got lost in each other and the pleasure we both needed to feel.

Briton

He held her in his arms, kissing her forehead and smelling her. His sense of smell was stronger, which he had thought was already quite good. Thankfully, she still smelled delicious to him.

She was everything.

The image of her lying on the grass, cold and still, lingered in his mind. It haunted him.

He closed his eyes and forced his brain to think about the shower instead. The feel of her body against his had brought back everything else. The life they had had before was closely tied to the one they were living now.

Something strange happened for him just then.

His eyes relaxed and his mind wandered gently.

He saw things he hadn’t seen in a long time, and he felt things he couldn’t recall ever feeling.

His sleep became a journey, a tour through the ages.

Something pinned him down, force-feeding him feelings of both pain and love.

He sat up, gasping for air. It was light and she was smiling at him.

He looked around the room, confused and lost. “I had something terrible happen to me. I was sleeping, but it was a struggle and I couldn’t get out of it.”

She lay back on the pillow and yawned. “You had a bad dream.”

The words rang throughout his head. He had never dreamt before. Well, he had but not since he was a boy. He gave her a look. “Let me guess, you passed right out and woke right up? No dreams?”

She snuggled into the pillow. “No. I had a dream. We were on the beach and it was sunny and we were holding hands. We had a dog. It was a good dream.”

He flopped back onto the pillow. “Whatever your dad did to you, I need him to do to me.”

She winced.

“Sorry.” He offered a weak smile. “I just meant . . .”

“I know. I just sort of forgot about him. I guess we will have to find him today. Jamie is dead. His wolves are dead. My dad is a wolf. It’s a mess.”

He brushed her hair from her face. “Well, you have school so you go to school and I’ll take care of the rest.”

Her bright-blue eyes perked up. “Oh my God. I do have school. It’s like the world ended but it didn’t, you know?”

He chuckled.

She crawled up onto his chest, resting her head. “It’s so weird, you have a heartbeat now.”

He wrapped himself around her. “I know. It hurts sometimes. I think I’m going to have to go out in the field and change before it forces itself upon me.”

She lifted her head, grimacing at him. “Oh dude. It hurts so much. I actually thought I was dying at least twice. So bad.”

“Your heart stopping must have hurt more?”

She shook her head. “No. That was so sudden. The wolf thing is agonizing and brutal and never ending.”

He scowled. “Thanks for sugarcoating it for me.”

She laughed and
lay
her head back on his chest. “Do you think we will just always love each other?”

“Haven’t we always?”

He knew he had never loved anyone like he did her. Never. But she didn’t answer. He pinched her arm. She squealed. “I’m thinking. I was just checking. I have a lot of lives to comb through.”

He rolled her on her back, pinning her to the bed. “If you ever loved anyone, I will . . .“

She rolled her eyes. “Relax, crazy pants. I never loved anyone. I actually never really lived past like twenty-five. Such an odd thing for a seventeen-year-old girl to say.”

He laughed. “I don’t think there is anything normal about either of us.”

“I don’t want to be normal anyway. I just want to be here with you.”

He looked around. “Can we start sleeping at my place though? I feel weird that this house is your dad and Judith’s.”

“Yeah—no. I’m not sleeping at your house with your parents, sorry.”

He sighed. “Can we just get our own house then?”

She frowned. “I’m seventeen. I can’t live with you. We’ve been dating for two weeks.”

“You’re eighteen in ten days, and we’ve been married before and we both remember it.”

She wrinkled her
lips,
making that weird goose-faced look the girls all took pictures of themselves doing. She shook her head. “No. I want to date. I think we need to go back to the start, start over and date. This is the start of our story, remember?”

He laughed, looking down at their naked bodies. “We just had sex, twice.”

Her cheeks blushed, not as bright as they used to though.
“I know. I think we should cut that back and just get to know each other for who we are now. We have eternity. I don’t want to rush it.”

“You say that now? After we’ve made love for eleven days straight, apart from the day where we were fighting for the right to be together?”

She bit her lip and nodded.

He sighed. “Fine. We can take it slowly and date. Whatever. I don’t care how we are together. I just want to be with you forever.”

She kissed his cheek and closed her eyes again. “I wish we didn’t have to get up though. I don’t want to go to school.”

He wanted to get out of the
bed,
he just didn’t want to tell her why. He kissed her, savoring the feel of her lips against his. “Is this permitted, milady?”

She rolled her eyes. “You are such a dork—milady? Please.” She climbed from the bed and started getting ready for school. He didn't like the fact she would be at school, vulnerable and in the open. But he had to trust she could wield her newfound strengths if she had to. He had a much larger fish to fry.

He watched, noticing
he was suddenly obsessed by odd things
. The smells, the sounds, colors. Everything was different. Wolves literally lived a different life than vampires.

He walked to her balcony door and turned to see her pulling on shoes, heels. He shook his head. “See you after school. I’ll pick you up?”

She ran to him, hobbling with the one heel, and threw her arms around his neck. Her strength difference was noticeable. Wolves needed more anger for strength whereas vampires were always strong. She still wasn't any match for him. He scooped her up, nestling himself in her neck. The smell almost drove him to walk back to the bed and do the very things they had just discussed not doing. He pondered if that was her game. Telling him he wasn't allowed to do it made him want it more. Obstinacy must have been a wolf trait. He had already been a stubborn and persistent man as a
vampire,
he felt it worsen as a wolf.

She kissed him and pushed on his chest. “You have to go!”

He nodded once. “I do. I have to go and let all the bones in my body break before the full moon so when I am forced to become a wolf on that eventful day, it isn’t as harsh.”

She winced. “Nothing takes the harshness away. I think it actually gets worse as you go.”

He laughed, pressing his lips on hers once more. She stepped back, blowing him a kiss. He pretended to catch it and winked at her. “And you call me a dork. I dare say
,
blowing kisses is equally dorky.”

She gasped. “You caught it.”

He jumped off of the balcony, shouting up at her. “That I did. I will check on your mother before I go.”

She leaned over the railing, no longer smiling and joking. She realized she hadn’t given much thought to the reality of the world they now faced. “Thank you. I don't even know what to say to her. I just hope she and Judith can play nice.”

“Will you tell Judith?”

She pointed behind her. “I’m going to do it now.”

“Then good luck with that and the whole explanation. I’ll see you after school.” He walked backwards, staring at her as long as he could.