Chapter Fourteen
Jessie sat cross-legged in a comfy seat located in the office behind the lab, holding Canella. The sweet little dog made squealing whiny noises as she played with a stuffed monkey.
Hundreds of photos covered two walls. All were taken indoors or at night. Jessie deduced that a vampire must have been in each picture. She recognized Alice and Maddie in a few.
In the corner sat three giant pots from which large plants grew up the walls and onto the ceiling. One even pushed a ceiling tile aside. The desk held a computer, phone, and several piles of paper. Charts were strewn across the work area as though they’d been studied over and over.
Coming from the lab three voices debated what questions would be asked of her by whom and in what order. It was clear from the tone of Ricard’s voice the entire situation upset him.
Jessie didn’t understand his angst. She hardly knew him, but she certainly could tell he hated Rafe, which seemed an extreme response.
Footsteps approached the room, and she recognized Ricard’s gait. A swell of excitement fluttered in her chest. She hadn’t felt this way about anyone in years, and she liked it. Twisting to the side to see him coming, she smiled, but was surprised to be met by glaring eyes and a scowl.
She turned back toward the desk.
Behind her the door shut. Ricard moved to the chair at the desk. Sitting before her, his hands resting on his legs, eyes scanning the desk in quick motion, he didn’t seem to notice her sitting there.
For what seemed like several minutes they sat in silence, Canella’s happy whimpers the only sound in the room. She was just about to stand and leave when Ricard finally spoke.
“I must be completely honest with you.” He sat back, looking at her. “I have not been to this point, and I believe it is what’s making me crazy.”
Jessie felt an impending doom hang above her head. This was exactly how she felt nearly every time she took Joshua to an appointment. In the beginning there was fear, then hope, then nothing but dread. At this moment dread was all she felt.
Was he about to say he didn’t want her? Did he not care for her as he’d said? It was plausible. Why should either of them be forced to “mate”? They didn’t even know each other.
It was ludicrous to think they should simply spend the rest of their lives together for the sheer fact that some invisible silliness made them feel compelled to one another.
Let’s not forget Jessie had issues. Her family’s ties to Panthera would be nothing but a problem for Ricard, not to mention Jessie was probably wanted. She was probably next in line for the Panthera experimental fun ride. Why would Ricard want to be associated with that? Why should he? She could not condemn him to all this trouble.
“I know what you’re going to say. I understand. I have a lot of baggage.” She sighed and cuddled Canella close to her chest. “It’s foolish for you to tie yourself down with me.”
She stood. She’d walk out with her head held high. She would not let him break it off with her, whatever it really was. She’d always heard you should be the one to break things off rather than be the recipient of the breakup. Apparently, the breaker-upper always felt better than the breakee-upped.
“I love Canella, and thank you for giving her to me. However, I can’t keep her. I can’t have a pup to worry about. So, if you don’t mind, I’m going to leave her here with you. She’ll get better care here than living in my home.”
Jessie bent to place Canella on the chair.
“What are you doing?” Ricard jumped up, hurdled the desk, scooped the dog against Jessie’s chest, and pulled them both down into his lap. “You don’t think I was going to ask you to leave, do you? Because I was not. Let me be direct and without question clear. I never want you to leave me. I know this is weird. This whole thing.” He waved a circle above them with his hand.
“I get it. This vampire-mating thing is peculiar. I agree. It’s not conventional and honestly, as you can see from all the pictures and charts and diagrams in this office I have tried without success to explain it or to at least understand it. But scientifically, it makes no damn sense. It is absolutely illogical.”
He paused and leaned into Jessie’s hair. From the corner of her eye she watched him. He closed his eyes and inhaled. “Raindrops at sunrise. That’s what you smell like. When the sun has barely kissed the horizon there’s a certain feeling in the world. Night has left everyone in slumber, the people, the plants, many of the animals.” He moved his face, and curls rolled along his skin.
The most innocent of smiles curved his mouth. “Those that spent the night awake begin to transition, and a lovely haze descends. That moment when the starry sky brightens and for a split second everything everywhere stops.”
When he opened his eyes, Jessie had all she could do to keep from crying. For years she’d been waking at night, called from sound sleep to witness the last few moments of twilight. “I love that moment. All of time stands still in that one moment. It’s so peaceful, so beautiful. Even in Central City that moment is perfect.”
“Like you,” he said.
Was it possible her soul had been communing with Ricard’s for all these years? Was that why she was drawn to that perfect moment each day?
“This equation of mating is inexplicable. It flies in the face of all modern and ancient theory. There is no way to confirm any basis of rational origin.” He brushed several locks of hair from her face. “I no longer want to explain it. I don’t care what the answer is. But I never want to lose this feeling. I never want to let you go.”
“You don’t have to lose this,” she said.
This man who seemed to have fallen right out of the sky at a time when Jessie needed him most was the one thing in the world she knew she could not live without. She never wanted to be away from him and all his quirky ways. She wanted to lie with him each day and rise with him each night.
There was nothing more in the world that could possibly fulfill her life after Ricard.
“There is so much for me to say. My life was empty for so long before I met you. My world was dark, though I did not notice. I kept myself busy with work and friends but had no idea I was alone.”
Jessie could not wait another second. She understood and believed all that he said because she felt all those things as well. But, she still wondered just how dense her vampire-scientist was.
“Now, you are here, and I must explain things that I had not thought of or even known I knew, which is an interesting, though very confounding fact. You see, Jessica—”
“You do know this is the exact moment when you should kiss me instead of talking, right?” She cuddled in closer. “Like right now. No more words. Just kiss me.”
She did not bother to wait for him to make the move. Instead, Jessie pressed her lips to Ricard’s and relaxed in the perfection of this very moment when all her fears and worries, all the sadness she’d lived with for so long, and her new-found anger and need for vengeance all disappeared.
In this moment, in this kiss there was only Ricard. Everything about this moment seemed magnified into a brilliant display.
The warmth from his body. The wide expanse of his chest. His firm arms holding her tight against him. The way his hands felt, fingers pressing her closer.
His scent, oh, his scent was heavenly, like cloves and the cleansing aroma of incense.
The softness of his lips on hers delivering a needy, wanton kiss. The way his mouth roamed from her lips to her neck, suckling at the skin, silently begging her for more.
Mixed with her own desires was another, one separate of her own and nearly as powerful. It was a hunger so raw, so intense it broke beyond her feelings. It overpowered her and flashed through her mind like a bolt of hot, wicked lightning.
“Do it. Don’t wait. This time, just do it.” Tilting her head back, she held him to her.
Never had she wanted anything more than this. Never had she needed something so badly. Right now she needed Ricard.
She needed him to want her, to have her, to make her his own.
He pulled back from her skin. His hot breath puffed into the collar of her lab coat. “I cannot. Not yet. It’s not right for me to do it this way.”
He sat up, dropping his head back and stared up at the ceiling. “I want it to be special for you, not a moment of bloodlust.” His heart beat strong, and steady, and fast, pounding in his chest against hers. “Once it is done, there will be no way to reverse this, no escaping me.”
Jessie drew in a breath, trying very hard to remain calm. Remembering her parents’ marriage and her mother’s advice, that she only now realized was amazingly sage advice, she exhaled and slowly brought Ricard’s face to hers.
“My mother once, no three or four times, told me that spouses, which is what we are for all intents and purposes…”
“Agreed.” He watched her with an interest no one else had ever shown.
“…spouses must always balance one another. We can and should agree on most things. At times we should disagree in respectful ways.”
“Yes.” Ricard frowned, clearly unsure of where this was going.
“She told me we must recognize when it is appropriate or not to encourage each other vs. recognizing when agreeing is simply taking the easy way out of something to avoid an argument that quite possibly should be had.”
“Are we having a fight?”
“No.” Jessie smiled and ran her fingers through his hair, an act that made him close his eyes and sigh. “But we are disagreeing with each other, and you are going to change your stance immediately or we will have a fight.”
Jessie had been trained by the best how to win an argument.
Ricard’s eyes snapped open. “What?”
Deep within, Jessie saw something churn, something she’d noticed earlier, something she knew he fought to control.
She narrowed one eye. “You’re afraid. I get it. I sort of am, too, but not like you.”
Sitting this close with only enough space for Canella to occasionally pop her furry head between their faces, then wiggle back down to Jessie’s lap, made it impossible for either of them to avoid the other.
“It’s probably the knowing part that makes you nervous. They say that’s what scares mothers-to-be. The first go-round they’re scared, but the second one is terrifying because they remember the first one.” She nodded.
His eyebrows drew together. “How do you know?”
“They know. Like you know. All that studying and trying to figure it out.” She nodded toward the wall of photos, which she now surmised were pictures of mated couples. “Wanting to understand love, because let’s be honest, this whole vampires finding mates and bonding with them is just some weird supernatural version of love.”
Ricard opened his mouth as if he intended to cut her off. Jessie promptly squeezed his lips together.
“I’m not done.”
His lips puckered between her fingers, and he looked down at where she held them shut.
“I’m into it, this whole who-knows-what-it-is…” She shook her head from side to side. “Who are we kidding? Every pair of mates, and half of this pair, knows what it is. Only you don’t know or aren’t willing to admit you know what it is.”
Ricard shifted in the chair.
“Well, the point is I’m in, totally committed, and not just because I think you and your friends are the only way to get revenge on that prick who killed my family.”
Ricard’s eyes widened for a split second.
“I know that worries you. I feel it here.” Not wanting to release his lips for fear he’d interrupt again, she used the finger from the hand wrapped around his neck to point toward her chest, leaning up to make the two connect, which made her fingers slip off his lips.
“Sorry, I need to hold onto these for a second longer.” She pinched his lips again.
“Ow,” he mumbled.
In a three second release she pecked a kiss to his lips, then grabbed them again.
“Now, where was I? Oh, right. I bring up the revenge thing because I get the sneaking suspicion you’re hanging on to the idea that I might be motivated by vengeance, and thus not thinking clearly, not planning, not fully acknowledging the risks associated with us. Am I right?”
“That had crossed my mind,” he said from the corner of his mouth.
“Yeah, well, let it go. Let’s think about this logically, shall we?”
He nodded.
“Whether or not you and I solidify this situation I’m going to do everything in my power to destroy Panthera. I’m well aware that I have no power and thus this will be a suicide mission.”
Ricard’s grip on Jessie tightened, pulling her in closer and causing Canella to take her monkey and jump to another seat.
“As I understand it you all want to stop Panthera, too, and I might have some little bit of information that will help in the mission.” She shrugged. “So you and I can do this thing that scares you into paralysis and improve our chances of stopping Panthera or you can refuse, and I’ll march off to my death.”
The muscle below Ricard’s eye ticked.
“What’s it gonna be?” She smiled.
He pulled her hand down. “You do realize you’re not marching anywhere? There’s no way I’m letting you march off to your death. Your elaborate attempt to blackmail me into…”
“Biting my neck like every vampire wants to.”
“Every vampire wants to bite your neck?” He cocked an eyebrow.
“Well, no. I don’t know. What I meant was neck biting like vampires do. You’ve done it before with others. Don’t act like you’re innocent.” Jessie knew what he was up to, and she would not be dissuaded.
“It’s not simply a matter of me biting your neck. That act will seal our bond for eternity. You will literally be stuck with me forever. There’s no divorce, no changing your mind, no moving out and leaving me behind.”
Ricard glanced toward the wall of photos. The air around them churned, pulsing from hot to cold.
Jessie caught his chin and turned him back to her. “You think I will change my mind? Why? How many mates do?”
“It’s not how many do. It’s that the probability you will be the one doing it, is high. Everywhere in nature there are glitches. Nothing is ever so perfect—”
“Stop. Right now. Stop.” Jessie heard her tone, and if she didn’t know better, she’d have thought she was channeling her mother. “If you assume for even another second that we will be the glitch in nature, I swear as clear as I’m sitting on your lap, I will beat your ass into the ground.”
His mouth dropped.
“Don’t say another word about that. I am not kidding. I have been very patient with your worries. I am trying to be supportive. But, I have spent my entire life dealing with scientists and probabilities and reality. You have spent, who knows how long trying to rationalize love. Do you know how stupid that is?”
“There are things about me you don’t know, and you should know them before committing to me. It’s only logical that you should know as much as possible before—”
“I’m not done.” She pushed back, putting an arm’s length between them. “I’m sorry, but rationalizing love is the most moronic way for a scientist to spend his time. You don’t study something as beautiful and imperfectly perfect as love. You enjoy it. You live in it. You believe.”
Jessie looked away, studying the wall and noticing all the vampires she’d met and a couple men who’d visited her father many years ago were memorialized in pictures.
“I want to be on that wall with you. I can’t explain love and I certainly don’t understand this supernatural love, but I know I love you. I know you and I belong together. I know that if I have to spend another minute of my life away from you, I’ll give up living because there’s nothing left in this world for me, but you.”
She looked at Ricard. “If you don’t love me, tell me. But if you do, you can’t let fear stop you from living.”
They sat for a moment in silence, and during that time a lump rose in Jessie’s throat. She hadn’t started this conversation with any plan to give him an ultimatum. In fact, she’d never given anyone an ultimatum. But, she would not allow Ricard to love her in dribs and drabs.
It was all or nothing. And damn it, it had better be all.