Taken Over (The Ravening #2)(52)
Author: Erica Stevens

“Pardon our souls, damn things should just keep quiet,” I muttered bitterly.

“Not helping,” he grated. “You have no idea what it is like to deny The Calling, hour after hour, day after day. No idea what it is like to suppress that hunger, that desire; that need, especially when I am around you.” I stared angrily at him, but I clenched my jaw and bit my tongue on my sharp retort. I had seen that hunger burning in his eyes, I had felt his desire for something more from me; I just hadn’t recognized it for what it was. Hadn’t recognized what it was that he really wanted from me. “The Calling of your soul is so strong, and vibrant, and I want you so badly. I would give anything for just…”

He closed his eyes, his hands fisted as he broke off. For a brief moment ecstasy and then tension and pain twisted his features. “A taste?” I whispered unable to stop the thrill that tore through me at the thought. He wanted me desperately, but he had never touched me in such a way. I was certain of that, I had felt it with Ian, I would most certainly have felt it if Cade had ever done that to me.

“Yes,” he hissed. His excitement and desire were clearly evident in that one simple word. “But I can’t. Ever. At least not with you. Never you.”

“Why not me?” It was a strange question to ask. Especially when I should be happy that he wasn’t going to drain me dry, instead of feeling oddly deflated and rejected by such a proposition.

For a moment he remained unable to look at me, and then slowly his eyes opened and he focused sharply upon me. “Because I don’t think I could stop myself from taking all of you into me. I have never done that before, never drained a living creature completely of their essence. But yours, ah yours,” his voice was soft, almost seductive with yearning. “I want every bit of you inside of me. I want to taste you and feel you until I can’t take anymore, and then I want to keep on taking until I’m completely sated, and I don’t think I’ll ever be sated. Not with you.”

I stared at him in wide eyed astonishment. I thought I should be more horrified by what he was saying, what he was telling me, but instead I was oddly titillated by it. Just what the hell did that say about me? I wondered. Though I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted the answer, I was fairly certain it didn’t say anything good.

“The moment I saw you.” His eyes became distant, almost wistful as he began to pace restlessly. He reminded me of a caged, wild panther. I watched him in fascination, my eyes following every movement he made. “I felt it. I felt the hunger, the burning need, felt The Calling in my veins. I didn’t know what it was. I wasn’t supposed to experience it for another ten years, but it was suddenly there, alive and clawing at me with an intensity that no five year old should have to experience. I am thankful everyday that I didn’t destroy you, then and there, to satisfy my craving for what was coursing through you. What was pulsing through your veins, and beating against my body.”

My mouth went dry; I hugged myself against his words, stunned by the intensity in them. The yearning. “Why didn’t you?” I asked tremulously.

“Because the minute I saw you standing there in that little blue dress, with those golden pigtails, it awakened something else in me. Something more than just The Calling. I’d never known emotions, never known what it was like to care for someone, to want to be with someone, and protect them. And I wanted to be with you every damn day. I never wanted to be apart from you. You were so beautiful to me, so bright and shining and I relished in the newfound emotions you brought to me. Your laugh was captivating, it ensnared me; your smile fascinating.

“I didn’t have it in me to love someone at all before then, not my real parents, not even the Marshall’s. Never mind to love someone as much as I loved you in that moment, but I did and that love only grew with every minute we shared together. Minutes I cherished every day. I didn’t know what the emotion of love was, I was too shocked by its sudden burst into me to completely understand it, but I knew I would spend the rest of my life looking after you, caring for you, and keeping you safe from the danger that I knew lurked outside of this world that you felt so secure in.

“You made me this way Bethany, you created me. You turned me into something that I was never supposed to be. Your essence called to me so fiercely that it awakened The Calling in me and awakened it long before it was supposed to be awakened. You made me feel when I was never supposed to. As far as I know, I am the only one that has ever happened to, but I’m sure if it has happened to anyone else they have also kept it a secret. They would have done everything possible to keep the person they loved safe.”

My heart melted, I could only stand there in stunned silence as I listened to him. His words were so fervent and passionate that I was struck breathless by them. They were beautiful; his love for me was rare and wondrous, even if it was strange and extraordinary. He was beautiful, and even though I wasn’t, I realized now just how beautiful he thought I was. How beautiful he had always thought I was.

“I didn’t know,” I whispered, aching for the fear and uncertainty such a young boy must have felt when it happened. He had been unprepared, all alone, frightened, and hungry. That such a young child had restrained from taking what he wanted, when that was what his kind apparently did all the time anyway, was astonishing. That he had done it for me was astronomical. “I’m sorry you had to go through that alone.”

“I was never alone Bethany, not with you there.”

A sob tore free of me, a wrenching agony twisted through my chest. So poignant, so deep and heartfelt, and yet so lost. “I didn’t realize, until all of this happened, that I had always loved you. That I had from that first moment also. I knew it on some basic, instinctive level that I had buried deep within me in order to keep from being hurt by you again. Because you did go away, you did leave me Cade. You weren’t there. After the Marshall’s died, you only ever came back to me the night of my father’s funeral. And then you never came back again.”

His smile was self depreciating. “I didn’t want you to know what I was Bethany, ever. I never wanted you to know what I was, what I struggled with. I simply wanted you to see the good in me, to love the good in me. The good that you gave to me, that without you I never would have had. I couldn’t bear for you to see the evil in me. I had to go away Bethany, and I couldn’t come back ii I was going to keep you safe.”