Call Her Mine by Lydia Michaels Read Free Book Online Page B

involve themselves with the personal affairs between husband and
wife—mates. Family law was to be decided by the male of the family and
Christian had always known he preferred tradition to the newer, lackadaisical
methods of family living.
    He gazed at the face of
his scowling mate. She was going to take some work.
    “Do you not care for
your lunch?”
    “There’s meat on it,”
she said snidely.
    He’d forgotten about her
little vegetarian statement earlier. It was absurd for a vampyre not to eat
meat. They survived mainly off of animal blood on the farm. She needed to
overcome this little issue.
    “Delilah, we are Amish.
Our main source of sustenance comes from the animals here on the farm.”
    “That’s barbaric,” she
whispered, her face turning a soft shade of green.
    It wasn’t barbaric. They
treated their stock very well. In Europe there were no such rules. Their kind
simply fed off the hoof meaning they drank from human victims. Here, it was
only permitted to feed from one’s mate, the animals on the farm, and off the
hoof in a pinch. Human blood was suggested to be avoided, although it was much
more potent than the blood of animals.
    Still, they never
drained their donors. They merely took what they needed and left the animals to
run and play. Their livestock was a lot happier than the corralled, tagged,
mass-marketed animals on other farms in the area.
    “It is the cycle of
life. There are merciful ways of surviving off what we need. We do not
mass-produce our supply. We only take what we need to get by here on the farm.
We are not involved with the English world in trade like other farmers are.”
    She slid her plate away
and stared at the floor, sandwich untouched. She needed to eat. She’d barely
taken his blood earlier. Her hunger beat at him and he sensed it was too soon
to make her feed again. His only option was actual food. It was his job to keep
her safe and healthy.
    Christian sighed and
stood. Carrying her plate to the counter he dumped the sandwich into the
rubbish and placed the dish in the sink. In the pantry he retrieved a jar of
homemade peanut butter and jam from the last berry harvest.
    “Do you prefer grape or
berry jam?”
    She turned and looked at
him. The glassy sheen in her eyes gave him pause. Had she been crying?
    He placed the jars on
the dry sink and turned to go to her. Something about her posture made him
hesitate. She blinked her tears away before a single one could be shed and her
expression became guarded.
    “Thank you,” she rasped,
her voice strained.
    He nodded and returned
to make her sandwich. Her gratitude sunk like a heavy weight in his chest. He
ached for her, finally coming to accept that her situation had to be extremely
confusing. At the same time, something warm and fiery bloomed inside of his
chest at the sound of her thanks. He’d done something she liked. It felt very
good to please her.
    He returned to the table
with a new—meatless—sandwich. She picked it up and ate it quickly, sipping from
her glass of milk in between bites. She must have been starving indeed. When
she finished she leaned back in the wooden chair and patted her flat belly. The
press of her decorated nipples showed through the fine material of her shift.
    She sighed.
    “Would you like a bath?”
    Her eyes opened and that
skeptical glint was back in her sharp gaze. “Alone?”
    Disappointment weighed
heavy on his shoulders. Would she ever surrender to him again like she had the
night before? So freely and willing, he’d never forget how she offered herself
to him, how she accepted him into her body, held him to her, and cried out her
pleasure as he brought her to climax again and again. “Yes, alone.”
    She nodded.
    Rather than leave her to
clean the dishes while he filled her tub, he asked her to come upstairs with
him. Christian did not want her running away again. She’d been lucky it was
only his half-brother, Dane, who had seen her dressed in next to nothing.
    Dane was a