Chico turned to Paige. “You healed four people who are important to me. I owe you for that. The last thing you have to worry about is being harmed here. You and your friend have our protection.”

Paige swallowed hard, looking on the verge of tears. It had clearly been a long time since she had felt safe. “Thanks.”

I pressed my forehead to Sam’s. “I need to be alone with you.” Ignoring the questions coming from the others, I took us to our apartment. Okay, that was kind of selfish but I’d always be that way where Sam was concerned. I brushed her hair aside to frame her face with my hands. “I don’t know what will happen now that Paige is here, but I don’t want to think about it yet.”

“Me neither. I need to shower. I can still smell rotten fish on my skin from when that vampire dived on me.” If the taint had progressed, the same stench would have been wafting from her.

Cupping her ass, I lifted her, and she wrapped her legs around me. Licking and nibbling on her mouth, I carried her to the bathroom. When she went to undress herself, I shook my head. “Let me take care of you.”

What I wanted most was to be buried inside her, wanted to f**k her hard and release all that fear and anger. But she came first, and the last thing she needed was that. So instead, I slowly stripped her na**d, placed her under the spray, and gently soaped her body. I had to bite back a groan when she started to return the favour, sliding her soft hands everywhere she could reach. When she went to touch my cock, I gripped her wrist. “Baby, you may have noticed I’m hard as a f**king rock right now. It’s already hard enough to hold back. I can’t have you touching me.”

“Why, exactly, are you holding back?”

“I don’t have the control to go slow, to be careful with you.”

She kissed my chest. “Where did you get the strange idea that I need you to be slow and careful?” Her free hand shot out and curled around my c*ck – sneaky bitch. Her strokes were firm, sure, and bold. When I wrapped my hand around hers, halting her movements, she sank her teeth hard into my pectoral.

Groaning, I knotted my hand in her hair, intending to yank her away and stop her feeding. Instead, I found myself pressing her closer to me, encouraging her to take more. I was on the verge of coming, thanks to her Sventé saliva, when she suddenly stopped. There was no f**king way I could resist her then. I took her mouth, dominated it, plundered it, loving that it was mine.

I tugged her hand off my cock, backed her against the tiled wall, kicked her legs open wider, and then dropped to my knees. Her whole body jerked as I parted her folds with my thumbs and blew on her clit. “I love how responsive you are.” I began toying with her clit, alternating between suckling on it, flicking it with my tongue, and lightly nibbling on it. Then I tilted my head and slid my tongue between her folds. “Let me hear you, Sam.” The entire time I ate her out, she groaned and moaned and whimpered. Of course she also cursed me to hell and back for keeping her hanging on the edge.

“Enough,” she croaked, trembling.

“It’s never enough, baby.” I got to my feet, slipped my arms underneath her thighs, and elevated her high. Then I dropped her hard on my cock, making her cry out. Fuck, the feel of her muscles pulsing around me was almost too much. “Is that what you wanted?” I ground out.

She groaned in assent and squirmed, tempting me to move. Keeping her legs balanced in the crook of my elbows, I slowly withdrew before slamming back inside, going deeper this time. But it wasn’t deep enough. “I want you to take it all, Sam.” Once more I slowly pulled out and then, with one smooth, fierce stroke, buried myself balls-deep inside her. “That’s it.” I flexed my hips, making sure I was as deep as I could get. Her face was scrunched up in either pleasure or pain, I couldn’t tell. “Too deep? Does it hurt?”

She nodded. “But not in a bad way.”

“Good because I need to be deep inside you right now.” I needed to know, feel, that she was okay.

“Good because I need you there.”

I hitched in a breath. It wasn’t often that Sam ever claimed to need anything. “I’m here. And I’m going to f**k you hard. So hard. And you’re going to love it. And you’re going to explode all over my c*ck and wring me dry.” Then I was mercilessly punching my c*ck in and out of her. Her irises were glowing mercury with arousal – so f**king beautiful.

She grappled at the wall for purchase, and tried arching into my thrusts, but I had her pinned exactly as I wanted her. There was only one other thing I wanted. I bit into the juncture of her neck and shoulder, groaning as her blood flowed onto my tongue. The syrupy punch to it was too damn good. I drank deep as I pounded into her, groaning again when I felt her teeth sink into my shoulder. Fuck. My pace became frantic, violent, as she completely overwhelmed every one of my senses. “Come, Sam,” I ordered roughly. “Milk me.” She screamed around my shoulder as she came; her muscles tightened and rippled around my cock, wringing every last drop of come out of me, like her body was determined to have it all.

It was a few minutes before I could speak again. “Shit, I needed that.”

Panting, she breathed, “Me as well.”

As I dried her body with a towel, she remained pliant against me. I couldn’t help but smile since Sam being pliant wasn’t a regular occurrence. She was still limp as a noodle when I positioned her on the bed and came to rest next to her, my head propped on my hand. “You okay?”

Her eyes fluttered open. They were pleasure-drunk but also…baffled. “You really would do anything for me, wouldn’t you?”

“You’re only beginning to realise this now?” I gently ran my finger from the hollow of her throat down between her br**sts and further down to circle her belly button. “You should already know that.” My hand splayed possessively over her stomach. “You should feel it here. In your gut.”

“I really didn’t think that you would bring Paige here. Not when it was possible that it would bring trouble to The Hollow and everyone here.”

She thought that I’d ever let her die for any reason? I shook my head, gazing at her with mock sympathy. “I love this place, and I care about some of the people in it, and I consider it my responsibility to keep everyone who resides here safe. But you come before everything and everyone.”

Her brow furrowed as her expression suddenly turned vulnerable. I knew why it was so hard for her to comprehend. No one had ever put Sam first. Not her parents, who had been more interested in running the family business than caring for her. Not her Sire, who had killed someone she cared for and then used her in every sense of the word. Not her nest, who had stood by and watched as she was used that way. Granted, many of them feared Victor and a few of them had tried to help her, but it hadn’t been enough. So even though she could feel how important she was to me, she still couldn’t understand it. She didn’t realise what lengths I’d go to in order to keep her or to protect her.

She snuggled into me and pressed a soft kiss to my chest. “I really am sorry that I put your life in danger.”

I cupped her face, brushing the pad of my thumb along her cheekbone. “Baby, you don’t need to apologise for that. You did your job; you looked out for our squad. I was never angry that my life was threatened. I was only angry that something had happened to you. It wasn’t your fault – I shouldn’t have blamed you.”

“But you could have died.” Her voice was low, pained.

“I was more worried about you.” Confusion flashed across her face. See? She just couldn’t quite grasp that someone would put her first, that they would find her so vital and necessary to them. Making a mental note to try to tell her I loved her more often, I kissed her mouth softly. “Sleep, baby. You’re exhausted.”

“Only if you don’t let me sleep too long. We need to make sure that Evan has the chance to speak to Alora before she leaves.”

“I’ll wake you up in a couple of hours.”

She closed her eyes. “Stay here with me.”

Her plea squeezed my chest. As much as she had tried to hide it, she had been terrified when she’d been bitten – more terrified for me than for herself. I knew from experience that coming extremely close to death had a way of making you realise just exactly how much you had to lose, just exactly what was important and just how important it truly was. It could shake you and your equilibrium in a way that not much else could. And she was shaken. I rested my head on the pillow and practically enveloped her body with mine. “I’ll be right here.”

She drifted to sleep with a smile on her face, and – just like I’d done the time she’d been unconscious after killing her Sire – I stayed where I was and watched her sleep.

Chapter Twelve

(Jared)

When I arrived at the infirmary a few hours later, it was to find that it was empty apart from a still unconscious Evan and Mary Jane. She explained that Max and Stuart had already woken over an hour ago and had gone to their apartments to wash and change. A little worried that Evan hadn’t yet woken, I settled on the chair beside his bed, intending to wait until he did. Mary Jane wanted to linger so she could tend to him when he woke – purely because she liked to fuss over people. But as I knew I’d need to speak to Evan privately, I asked her to leave. Besides, he was healed now, so her help was no longer required.

It was over half an hour later that his eyes finally flickered open. Relief breezed through me. “Hey, shithead.”

Tired eyes landed on me and his mouth slowly curved into an amused grin. “Hey, a**hole.” He looked totally drained and hung-over, but that was a hell of a lot better than how he’d looked a few hours ago.

“Here.” I handed him an orange-flavoured NST. He chugged it down. “Take it easy.” Evan being Evan, he didn’t listen. “I’d hug you, but you still stink.”

He chuckled. His voice slightly hoarse, he said, “You found a counteragent?”

“You don’t remember what happened?”

He shook his head. “I don’t remember much. But I remember the thirst. I remember the hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach.” He gave me the empty bottle and then gratefully took another NST. He drank that one a little slower. “It’s strange…I feel thirsty, really thirsty, but I don’t have awful hunger pangs or anything. Shouldn’t my system want to make up for lost time?”

“Mary Jane put you, Max, and Stuart on a drip of pure blood for the first hour after you were healed when you were all unconscious.”

“That explains it then. But it doesn’t explain how I’m healed, or how I ended up unconscious in the first place.”

“I didn’t find a counteragent. I found someone who, sort of, has the ability to heal.” I told him about Paige West, including the part about Luther’s vision – it turned out that Evan didn’t remember the time I had telepathically told him about it all while he was ill. I also told him about the assignment and about how Sam had been bitten. His eyebrows rose higher and higher as the story went on. “I’m sorry I never brought Paige here sooner, but”

Evan raised a hand. “Don’t be. You were protecting your mate. I’d never want anything to happen to Sam either. She’s like my sister. I’m glad she’s okay.” His face pulled into a frown. “It’s kind of odd that her bite wound healed by itself, huh.”

“Antonio thinks it’s because she’s now a hybrid. Her skin heals unbelievably fast – maybe even so fast that it began to heal before The Call had the chance to fully taint her system and f**k up its healing abilities.”

“Is the ugly mark still there?”

“No, it disappeared once Paige removed the taint from her body.” I rubbed my nape as I continued, uncomfortable, “On a whole other subject…There’s something you should know. Alora’s here.”

Evan blinked. “Alora? Why?”

“When she heard you were tainted, she came here.”

Incredibly perceptive, Evan narrowed his eyes as he said accusingly, “You broke your promise, didn’t you? You let her see me like that?”

“Alora cares about you, Evan. She wouldn’t have come on an assignment and endangered her life if she”

“You let her go on an assignment?” He gaped, clearly horrified and pissed.

Damn, I was just digging a deeper hole for myself here. I pushed on. “Even though she believes you’ll never want her, she came here and asked for permission to stay for a while to help find a way to save you.” I let that sink in for a minute. “She told us everything, Evan. To be honest, I was a bit of a bastard to her in the beginning because I thought she’d rejected you.”

He averted his gaze. “It was me who rejected her. It was a shock, you know. What she told me…I’d never have seen that coming.”

“Me neither.”

He blew out a long breath. “I guess that because I saw her in the vision, I always took it for granted that she’d be mine. That once I finally found her, everything would fall into place, you know? It never occurred to me that there would be other obstacles. And as obstacles go, this one’s a bitch.”

“Was it only shock that made you reject her or is she right and you really don’t want her?”

He ran a hand through his unkempt hair. “We’d never have what you and Sam have.”

I leaned forward in my seat. “Evan, I love being Bound to Sam. If you want the truth, it’s the extra security that someone as f**ked up as me needs. But we were still happy before the Binding, and we would have continued to be happy if we hadn’t done it.”