“Stop telling me not to run,” she snapped.
“Did you just raise your voice to me?” I asked.
“No.”
“Good,” I said. “I rather hoped not.”
The rest of the day went by slowly. I went about my business and Kimberly wandered around the office. She didn’t make any moves to run away, and by the time the day was over, she was well ready to eat again. We went into the dining room and joined Raven and Helena for dinner. Michael was there, too, although he was wildly distracted and didn’t seem to notice that Kimberly even existed, much less that she was my mate.
When we finished our food, I stood up to leave, but Helena grabbed my arm.
“You haven’t finished mating,” she whispered.
“I don’t think that’s any of your concern,” I started to say.
“Liam, you know you have to fuck her.”
“I’m not doing anything without her consent.”
“She wants you.”
“She wants nothing to do with me,” I said.
There was no doubt in my mind that Kimberly was aroused by me, but she didn’t want to fuck me. Who wanted to fuck a monster? That was insanity. I had a feeling that she still wanted to kill me and she was just biding her time.
“It doesn’t matter,” Helena said. “You know what happens when a vampire turns. The clock is running out. Stop wasting time.”
I looked over at Kimberly, who was talking quietly with Raven, and I knew that Helena was right. I didn’t want to do what I was about to do, but I also didn’t really have a choice. Kimberly was my mate, and if she was going to make it in the world of vampires, I needed to stop wasting time and start making better choices.
I was the Vampire Lord of Garnetia, after all.
How hard could this be?
7.
Kimberly
“YOU HAVE TO FUCK ME,” I whispered once we were alone.
“What?” He spun around, looking at me. “What are you talking about?”
“So, it’s true?” I could see it on his face. I’d had an entire day to spend with Liam, and it had been nothing like I expected. He’d been...polite. He’d been kind. Hell, he’d almost been gentlemanly.
Something was wrong, though. There was more to this man than met the eye. For the last five years, I’d been trying to find him. I’d been trying to catch him and to figure out where he lived. I’d been in the Grove plenty of times, but somehow, I’d never seen this house. Somehow, something had always happened to keep me away from him, and now I wondered whether that was because I sucked as a hunter or if someone was trying to keep me away.
Now I knew that he’d been searching for me for a very long time. He’d been waiting for the right moment to take me or kill me, and I didn’t know which he had actually planned on doing. In the end, it seemed as though he’d done both, although I’d kind of wandered right into his lair.
“Helena told me,” I said.
“When did you see Helena?”
“When you were getting the plates for dinner,” I said. At one point, he’d stepped out of the dining room, and Helena had grabbed me by the chin and told me to hurry up and fuck Liam. If I didn’t, she warned, I’d not only lose my vampire powers, but my life entirely. I’d die, and if I died a second death, there would be no coming back.
He sighed and sat down.
“I didn’t want to force you.”
“So, you were going to let me die?” I worried that if I’d been left to my own devices, that I wouldn’t fuck him for weeks or even months, if only out of spite.