Mated by Zoe Winters Read Free Book Online Page B

you’d panic. I should have remembered the claustrophobia. I just thought we’d dealt with that issue. But you were locked in, and I should have known how you’d react if you woke up. I shouldn’t have chanced it. I should have waited until daytime, to go hunting and should have . . . ”
    “Had a bad dream,” she croaked, interrupting the litany.
    “Will you tell me about it?”
    He sat in quiet horror while she recounted the dream and her history. He understood now why he could taste vampire in her blood. He’d been so close to saying something stupid, asking her why she’d fed from a vamp. Though even if she had, it likely wouldn’t have been her choice. He’d been so wrong about her. She wasn’t a vampire groupie; she’d been trying desperately to appease them.
    “I finally worked up the nerve to stake Sedrick. He was sure he’d kept such a close eye on me, but I’d made a stake a little bit at a time when he was doing other things. I had it ready for months before I worked up the nerve to try it. I was afraid something would go wrong with the coffin and it wouldn’t open. I knew if it didn’t, Sedrick was strong enough to open it from the inside.
    “When I staked him, I thought I would die from the smell, but the coffin opened that night, and I got out. He’d spared my parents, but I stayed away. I’d been gone three years and thought I might lead another vampire to them. So I just ran and lived in shelters for awhile. I tried to make sure I was never out after dark. But sometimes I had to go out at night, like when I had a job and had to work later than normal.”
    He’d stretched out on the couch and pulled her back against him, running his fingers through her hair. For a moment she tensed and he stopped, but then she relaxed again.
    “I’m not them, Jane. I know you’ve heard bad things about the werewolves, but that’s political bullshit. I don’t allow my pack to hunt humans.” Even as he spoke, the pool of blood from a few hours before taunted him.
    “I know.”
    He suppressed the growls as she went on to tell him about the next vampire who caught her, and how while that one hadn’t locked her in a coffin, he’d passed her around and whored her out to other vampires. Until Gregory had rescued her.
    “Greg was the first vampire I met who wasn’t a complete monster. After a few years I got comfortable, thought I was safe. Almost felt like a person again. Then the tournament came up, and he wouldn’t turn me. He said he didn’t want to curse me like that. And then he let me go because he said he couldn’t be king with me.”
    She let out a shuddering breath. “He wanted to believe I’d be okay without a protector. But I knew I wouldn’t be, so I latched onto Paul. I thought if I picked the vampire, maybe I would pick someone who wasn’t that bad. Like Greg. But Paul only looked innocent.
    “Almost as soon as Anthony won the tournament, he and Charlee got wrapped up in all the vampire business and politics, and Paul kept getting pushed to the fringes. He started taking it out on me, like the knife marks, and slapping me around because he’d figured out I could take more than most humans.”
    “They’ll never touch you again.”
    Silence stretched between them, and Jane drifted to sleep nestled in his arms, a few of her demons purged for the night. Cole ran his fingers through her hair while she slept, quietly plotting how he’d kill Paul to make it look like a happy accident.
     
     
     
    Chapter Six
     
    Jane woke in Cole’s bed with an arm thrown loosely across her body. She tensed. This wasn’t how she remembered going to sleep. A million thoughts and feelings ran through her. Clearly her body wanted him. Then again, her fucked-up body had wanted the vampire that killed her boyfriend when he bit her, too. Don’t think about that shit. Don’t even go there.
    His arm lifted and retreated back to his side of the bed. “You fell asleep, and I brought you back here where