Lies in Blood (Dark Secrets #4)(128)
Author: A.M. Hudson

“Hoping to find something different to the last few hundred times you’ve read that?” I asked, leaning on the doorframe.

Jase sat up and tucked my suicide letter under his thigh. “I didn’t hear you come in. I’m sorry.”

“Well, that’s because I didn’t knock first.” I pushed up from my lean and wandered into his room.

“You don’t have to knock, Ara. You’re welcome in here any time.”

I smiled and sat down on the foot of the bed. “So, why are you still reading that letter?”

He drew it out from under his leg and flattened the page. “I’m trying to understand something.”

“What?”

“Why you said, and I quote, ‘I love you, Jase. I’ve loved you for so long and, in a different life, we would have been married, had a family, and lived together forever.’” He looked up from the letter. “How can you feel that and then, the minute you’re free from David, deny me the chance to be with you?”

“Jase.” I sighed, flopping back on the bed. “I’m not free. I told you. I—”

“You’re committing to him even if he doesn’t want you,” he said in a mock girl’s voice. “I know. I remember all too clearly. But why? I don’t understand why, after everything he’s done—the way he’s treated you, you can’t see that he’s not going to come ‘round, Ara.”

I thought about it for a second. “Forgiveness takes time.”

Jase laughed. “Ara, David and I are still fighting over who broke the bottle of Port in Uncle Arthur’s study sixty years ago.”

I laughed too.

“He can hold a grudge for hundreds of years—especially against a girl he let into his heart. He’s feeling exposed and damaged in ways even he doesn’t understand and, Ara, if he was capable of forgiveness. . .”

“It would be decades away. I know.”

Jase huffed, and I heard the drawer in his nightstand close, his shadow coming over my face a second later. I looked up into his smiling green eyes.

“If he. . .” He juggled the words in the back of his throat. “He can be mean, Ara. If he wants you to hurt, you can be damn sure you’re going to hurt.”

“I know,” I said positively. “I’ll be okay.”

“Yes, but . . . eventually he’ll do or say something to hurt you beyond repair. And I don’t want this to happen, Ara, but I have no control over it. Just—” He sat back, and I rolled onto my side to watch him. “If the day ever comes where you decide you don’t want his forgiveness anymore, do you think you’d—”

“I promise.” I reached across and cupped his hand.

“Promise what?”

“I promise I’ll marry you then.”

His face split into a wide, pearly grin. He looked up from our hands, making me smile too. “I will hold you to that promise.”

“You won’t need to. If I believe things are truly over for David and I, I wouldn’t hesitate to marry you, Jase. And it’d take hell to stop me.”

“Then—” He kissed my hand. “Until that day, I pray you fall out of love with him, but I hope it’s not for the cruelty he shows you. I don’t want you to suffer that way.”

I flopped onto my back and stared up at the ceiling, softly rubbing my belly. Then, quietly, without warning, the vampire beside me placed his hand over mine. It felt warm and safe and so comfortable I moved my own hand away and let him feel the baby inside me.

“I’m gonna take care of her, Ara. She’ll never want for love a day in her life.”

“So, you’d be willing to take on a kid that’s not yours?”

“Ara, she is a part of you, and that makes her a part of me. As far as I’m concerned, she is of my own flesh and blood.”

I pouted, half smiling. “Sometimes, I wish she was yours.”

He leaned down and kissed my belly, hovering there for a few seconds after. “Me too.”

My gaze left his lips and the soft skin of my belly under them, and moved onto the side of his face. So much had happened between us. His face was one I used to fear and yet, now, it was the one I looked for when everything was falling apart. I slid my thumb down his cheekbone, thinking back to the day I confessed our affair—how I found him bruised and beaten in the cellblock. “Hey, Jase?”

“Mm?”

“Who hurt you the day David had you arrested?”

He looked up, his smile blending with a frown. “He didn’t tell you?”

“Who didn’t tell me what?”

He laughed, sitting back. “Falcon.”

“What?” I sat up. “He did it?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“He . . . he was pretty pissed off. As soon as David left you alone in your room, Falcon came down and made sure I paid dearly for every inch of flesh I ever touched on you.”

“Oh, Jase.” I touched his hand. “I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay. I kinda deserved it.”

“No, you didn’t. And why didn’t you tell me who did it?”

“Aw, Ara, I wasn’t gonna do that,” he said simply. “You love Falcon. I didn’t wanna upset you.”

“But I am upset. I can’t believe he’d—”

“Really?” he said smugly. “You really can’t believe he’d do that?”

I bit my lip, huffing my hair off my brow. “I guess I can believe he’d beat you senseless. But it’s not like him to take the law into his own hands.”

“He wasn’t really thinking then, Ara. You might say he was blind with rage.”

“Wait.” I grabbed Jase’s forearm. “He’s not bound by the Curse of Lilith, is he? Like Blade was—”

“No.” He shook his head, smiling. “He just cares about you and wanted to deck the guy who ruined your life.”

I relaxed a bit then. “Like a big brother?”

“Exactly. Come here—” Jase reached out and tugged my sleeve until I crawled over and laid between his legs, my spine to his chest, his back leaned against the bedpost. “Don’t tell him you know. Just let him have this one, okay?”

“Yeah, okay then.” I nodded. “I just can’t make sense of it, though.”

“Of what?”

“I really adore Falcon, but the Curse of Lilith is supposed to befall any man with a heartbeat who is unlucky enough to be cared for by me—”