Defiant mate lethal lega.., p.12
Defiant Mate: Lethal Legacy Vampire Series, page 12
“I told you that I was being attacked long before that,” she breathed, still sounding and looking shocked out of her mind.
I nodded. “I have no idea why that was happening, but I will find out. However, I need you to understand who we are. Who my brothers and I are.”
She just stared at me as though I had lost my mind.
I sighed but continued with what I thought most pertinent for her to know. “Most dhampirs don’t need blood to survive, but my brothers and I do. It’s probably because we are more powerful and have lived longer. Or it might be because we drink more blood than the others that we live longer.” I shrugged. “It might also be because of the curse that the witches placed on our ancestors, or it might be because of how powerful our father is as one of the oldest vampires in existence. At least those are our running theories.” I fell silent, waiting for her to lose some of the stunned disbelief I saw in the rigid set of her body.
“Do you have any questions on what I’ve already told you?” I asked her quietly.
“Questions?” She narrowed her eyes. “Of course, I have questions. But first I would like to get out of this room, this bed, and sit across a table from you. This”—she waved her hand around in a circular motion, indicating the entire room— “this scenario isn’t working for me. I need fresh air. I need to breathe. And I don’t need my mind still muddled with our previous drama-free interactions.”
I smiled down at her. “I don’t remember it being completely drama-free. In fact, I seem to recall a few times when you tried to kick me where it would hurt.”
She glared, seeming to remember whatever offence I had committed. “Yeah, I’m not thrilled about having a partner who thinks so little of fidelity and responsibility.”
“I’m now beginning to appreciate Luka’s dislike of Luna’s immediate judgment on meeting him. Despite our encounters in our dream meetings, you didn’t know enough about me to reach such erroneous conclusions about my character.”
“I call it like I see it. Literally,” she drawled. “I’m not going to argue the point, Drako. I want this all to feel real. I want what’s between us to feel real. Telling me that you’re some paranormal creature, while we’re supposedly dreaming, isn’t conducive to my believing what you’re saying. This is too surreal! I need clarity of mind and the removal of any doubt that any of this is just a ‘dream.’”
“So, if you weren’t ‘dreaming,’ you would give this a fair hearing? Give me a fair hearing?” I couldn’t contain my amusement at her stubbornness.
“We have been meeting like this for years. It’s been two years since I have been able to see your face and learned who you were.” Impatience laced her voice.
“I noticed that you were upset with me, but nothing had changed for me, so I didn’t get it. What triggered your knowledge of me?” I asked. I stopped pacing and sat in one of the two armchairs on one side of the massive bed.
“You really have no idea who I am, do you?” She narrowed her eyes and seemed to get even more pissed with me.
I frowned in confusion.
“Does September 1st mean anything to you?”
Again, I couldn’t hide that I had no idea what she was getting at.
“Argh!” she raged. “I want out of this damn dream, now! You’re doing something to keep us here. I can feel the constraint.”
I frowned. I didn’t get why she was getting so upset. Something was seriously wrong. My mate was not only pissed but she was also disappointed. I had ignored her being pissed at me before, but I couldn’t ignore tears in her eyes, which she stubbornly refused to let fall, or how she wrapped her arms around her middle as though trying to hold back some internal pain.
“Let me out of this, Drako!”
As much as I didn’t want to, given that we had so much more ground to cover, I released her from her telepathic sleep.
Despite her agitation, she came awake slowly. Glancing at the clock on the nightstand beside the bed, I realized that, although it would have felt like mere minutes in our dream, we had both been asleep for hours.
We would be landing shortly.
I got up from the armchair and poured her a glass of cool water from the wet bar that was always kept fully stocked. The jet also had a fully functional kitchen and hot meals always available for our convenience. I discreetly pressed a button to alert the crew that we would be needing refreshments.
Chapter Ten
Danika
“Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.”
- Steve Jobs
I accepted the glass from Drako’s hand as I tried to process the fact that my husband had just shown me yet another unexplained ability. I had witnessed his strength, his ability to move faster than the wind, his ability to transport me from one country to another, and now the ability to control my sleep state. Yeah, I was running out of ideas on how to continue burying my head in the sand.
And then there were my own abilities, which defied explanation as well. How else could I deny his explanation for it? Was it because I was a mate to a freakin’ vampire? Oh wait, not vampire but a dhampir, whatever the hell that was. All I knew was that whatever he called himself, it wasn’t human.
My life just keeps getting freakier and frickin’ freakier!
I gulped the water down and wasn’t even embarrassed when some water leaked from the side of my mouth, trickled down my chin. and spilled on the front of my dress. I was processing, dammit!
And then I remembered. I was wide-awake now with my gaze locked solidly on the still, imposing figure of my husband and, according to him, my mate, who stood staring down at me. I didn’t like my seemingly weaker position, sitting in the middle of the bed, while he stood next to the bed.
“Who am I, Drako?”
His gaze held mine with unwavering confidence. “You are my mate,” he told me softly. “You’re the woman whose sweetness I have drowned in for the past two years. You’re the woman who will never have a problem I won’t solve and will never have a need I won’t seek to fulfill. You’re the love of my life. Anything else, my beautiful mate, is irrelevant.”
“How can I be the love of your life if you don’t even know me?”
Drako smiled gently. “I understand your skepticism. Believe me. And I have similar worries when it comes to your feelings for me. We’re fated-mates, lyubov moya. Meaning, we are predestined to have strong chemistry or pheromones between us that make it impossible for us to resist each other. I want us to be more than that. I want us to have more than that. Already, what I do know of you, I love wholeheartedly.”
Damn, he was good. He was saying all the right words, and I could see it in his eyes. There was so much emotion there, so much warmth. I couldn’t call it love because that was just ridiculous. Still, how could I stay mad with him after that? I shook my head, just as confused about how to respond to him as I had been before. The dream-state Drako was my love, my solace. But the Drako, the real-life man, my husband, was the asshole who married me by proxy and never even bothered to meet me, even two and a half years later.
“I don’t have that clarity where you’re concerned,” I told him. “Yes, I know my dream guy. You know how I feel about him. I can’t seem to help myself. However, the other me, the me that you seem to think is ‘irrelevant’ to know, knows you outside my dream, and I can’t say that I’m a fan.”
Drako smirked. “I didn’t say that you were irrelevant. I said that the parts of you that I didn’t know were irrelevant to how I feel about you.” His voice deepened to a sexy rumble. “And I’m hoping that over the next few weeks or, if you have mercy on me, days, that you will become my number one fan.”
I narrowed by eyes at his arrogance, an arrogance that I wasn’t finding as unattractive as I should. And why was I feeling some strong vibes coming from him. Something was flowing between us. It was as if I could feel him in my body somehow. I knew it was him. It had his dark taste, red wine, dark cherry ice cream, and liquorice. It had his clean, sandalwood scent.
He held my gaze steadily, his sea-green eyes molten with sexual awareness. He was aroused. Hell, heavily aroused. It didn’t make sense that I knew that.
“I know you feel it too,” he said huskily. “That’s our link. You feel what I feel and vice versa.”
I glared at him because delicious tingles shot through my core to my belly and throughout my body. I tried to hide the fact that his arousal was affecting me so potently.
He dropped his gaze from my face to slowly roam down my body, lingering on breasts, my stomach, my hips, and then my bare legs. His arousal spiked and sizzled. Need soared through me, my breaths coming out in short rapid pants.
Before I had time to consider or to protest, he suddenly closed the space between us and took my mouth in a passionate urgency that took my breath away. Oh God! Within seconds, I was kissing him back, my tongue tangling with him in feverish pursuit with no thought to deny him anything.
I hated that he could demolish my resolve with just a simple kiss. Hated that my body clamored for him and my heart clamored for his love. I wrapped my arms around his neck and held on tight.
He lifted me, and his arms were like bands of steel around my waist.
In his kiss, I felt the same potent need and the same acknowledgement of the inexplicable bond between us. What terrified me most was how much I wanted to forgive and forget everything and let this be. This pure, unadulterated desire for a man who had done nothing but disrespect me, desert me, and dishonor me. I should have been angry, wanting his head on a spike, but that wasn’t the feeling coursing through me. I couldn’t even pretend that it was.
He suddenly released my lips and held my gaze with smoldering, fevered eyes. He was struggling to breathe, struggling to calm this dangerous, raw desire between us.
“There is one thing that I need to know about you…” His emotional raspy voice washed over me.
“We’re in the final minutes of our descent. Please prepare for landing.”
The pilot’s announcement was a jarring jolt back to a reality I wished I didn’t have to come back to. Unfortunately, I had to because his words definitely brought us back to reality, and I only then realized that the jet had been descending for a while. Just then the jet hit an air pocket, which caused an immediate drop in pressure, and the abrupt drop of the aircraft had Drako stumbling where he stood, before he quickly steadied himself and me.
He placed me gently on my feet. “We need to return to our seats and buckle our seatbelts,” Drako told me solemnly. “But first”—he smiled charmingly— “what’s your name?”
A sharp buff of air left me. I stared at him dumbfounded. I mean I’d suspected that he had no idea who I was, but to have it confirmed struck me speechless.
“I can keep calling you lyubov moya.” He kept smiling, blissfully unaware that he’d just knocked me for six.
“My name is Danika,” I mumbled and immediately wanted to smack him because he still gave me a blank look, clearly not recognizing the name. “Danika Petrov…”
“Wait, are you implying that we’re related?” he asked incredulously.
“I’m implying nothing. I’m telling you that we’re related.” My old feelings of bitter betrayal licked through me. This time he was cheating on his wife with me, his mate. I swallowed the bitter bile and tried to speak, but my throat felt clogged with emotion I refused to let spill out. “I’ll never forgive the fact that you’re not even aware of it,” I croaked out finally. I ignored his stunned face and made my way to the seat I had occupied when we left London.
The pilot was approaching the runway when Drako finally slumped down in the seat next to me. I could tell that he wanted to say something but was still struggling to find the right words.
If this wasn’t so tragic, I would be laughing my ass off.
We drove from the airport in clogging silence in a heavily armored, black Rolls Royce with a soft ivory leather interior accented with a chrome finish. Both of us were in our own private hell. I never meant to mislead him into thinking that we were related in some incestual way, but I took a sort of malicious pleasure from the discomfort he was feeling. A discomfort that was of his own making! Let him stew in it for a bit.
I had been so deep in thought that I barely registered the distinct architecture of Athens almost thirty minutes into the drive. What the hell were we doing in Greece? Not wanting to be the first to break the silence between us, I stubbornly refused to ask that burning question.
The Rolls pulled onto a pier and stopped in front of a yacht the size of a mid-size cruise ship. However, the sight of the luxury yacht held my interest for mere seconds because standing on the gangway were four members of my security detail, Burak, one of the eunuchs, Uri, and the two men from my in-laws. I was ashamed to admit I had barely given them a second thought in the past few hours.
Trying to make up for the appalling neglect of my staff, I jumped from the car and stormed toward my crew within seconds of my car door being opened. I charged toward Burak, intending to hug him, when Drako snaked an arm around my waist and pulled me against him. It was as if my back was pressed to a concrete wall and not his massive chest and rock-hard eight-pack stomach. I’d always thought that he was built like a tank; however, it was more like he was built like Mount Vesuvius. Immobile. Impenetrable.
“What the hell are you doing? Let go of me!” I all but growled at him.
“Who the fuck are you?” Drako asked Burak through clenched teeth, completely ignoring my indignation and seeming ready to beat the crap out of Burak.
Burak looked at Drako in surprise. In fact, the other men in my detail moved to flank Burak immediately. They all knew who he was to me. It was inconceivable to them that he didn’t know them.
“Leave him alone.” I turned in his arms and stood on my toes to get in his face. “Burak has been with me since I was ten years old.” I thumped my fist in his chest to make sure he heard me. “You don’t have the right to question him.” I said each word clearly, succinctly.
“When it comes to you, I’m the only fucking man who has the right.” His voice was hard and unyielding.
“We are your wife’s security detail, sir.” One of the huge men my in-laws had insisted on adding to my security detail stepped forward.
God, these men have been with me since my proxy marriage, and I still found it impossible to get used to the sheer size of them.
“What are you doing here, Finn? And what the hell do you mean that you’re my wife’s security detail?” Drako was impatient with barely suppressed angry energy.
All four men looked at me and then at Drako again.
“Sir?” It was clear that Finn had no idea what answer Drako was looking for.
Drako made some guttural sounds of frustration. “If you’re my wife’s security detail, what the hell are you doing here?”
The men again looked at me as though to ask, “What’s going on?”
Again, I fought the need to laugh because my husband not knowing my identity was just too damn tragic.
Drako looked between me and the men, even as they continued their own confused scrutiny of us until Drako seemed to finally get it and hissed, “You’re fucking kidding me.” And then he released me as though burned and stalked toward the largest yacht I’d ever seen that wasn’t a cruise ship.
“Well, that was edifying,” I deadpanned.
I walked toward the yacht with a big smile on my face and with lighter steps than I thought I could possibly have several hours ago. All because I managed to get one over on my arrogant, neglectful husband. “So, how did you guys get here so quickly?” I asked my team.
Drako
“How the fuck could you not tell me that Danika was my wife?” I tried not to yell at my father after he confirmed what I had started to suspect.
“If you had ever bothered to own up to your responsibilities to that girl, you would have found out that she is not only your wife but that she is also your mate,” Alexi told me with cool disinterest.
It took me a moment to process what he was saying, but when I did, I lost what little control of my anger that I had. “You knew?” Damn, I didn’t even know my voice could go that deep, that menacing.
“Of course, I knew,” my dear father answered in the same cool tone as before.
Before I could think better of it, his large mahogany office desk was flying through the air toward my father’s arrogant head. The desk crashed harmlessly into the opposite wall, of course, as Alexi moved smoothly, swiftly out of the way. He didn’t even blink or appear in any way ruffled by my attempt to slap the fuck out of him.
“Because of your bullshit, I wasted two and a half years looking for my mate when you knew exactly where she was?!” Nothing could describe the level of betrayal I felt at that moment. Alexi, more than anyone, knew how important finding my mate was to me. “Why would you do this? Why would you allow me to suffer like that?”
“It is never my intention to make my sons suffer,” Alexi said gently. “When I found Luna, Luka was a good son. He followed my directive, and he found his mate. You, my son, have not been obedient. You suffered needlessly.”
“I suffered because you were busy playing God! What the hell is wrong with you? You knew that if you told me who she was that I would have moved heaven and earth to get to her. You knew how much I wanted to find her. You had no right to play with my life like that!”
“I am not the one playing with your life. You now know that Danika is your wife and your mate, but here you are wasting precious time griping at me instead of doing everything to ensure her safety.”
This time I sent the large sofa and two armchairs directly toward his head. Unfortunately, the sofa made an impressive hole in the wall and had Alexi’s bodyguards entering the room.
