Possession-Blood Ties 2 by Jennifer Armintrout Read Free Book Online Page B

the womb to be like. I should have been able to drop off immediately, but my brain kept replaying the horror of my circumstances. I didn’t have a clue where Nathan was or if he was even alive. When I tried to communicate through the blood tie, all I got back was crippling pain. Did that mean he was dead? Just imagining it

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    intensified the agony, so I shielded myself from his thoughts…or the void where they once were. All I wanted was to feel Nathan’s arms around me, to hear him tell me that everything would be all right. Instead, I cried, grateful for the mechanical noises that would keep Max from overhearing my sobs.
    I wasn’t sure when I crossed the line between conscious and asleep, so it was quite a shock when I opened my eyes and found myself in Cyrus’s bedroom in his palatial mansion. The mattress beneath me was soft, the linen sheets as cool and crisp as I remembered.
    Clarence has really kept the place up.
    “You’re awake.”
    I hadn’t heard the voice of my former sire, even in dreams, since the night I’d killed him. I’d seen him many times, but always through a murky blue filter. We’d never spoken. Still, I remembered his cloying praise and manipulative words. His gentle tone should have put me on my guard, but I somehow knew I dreamed, so he could do me no harm. I had no reason to resist him. Not that I’d ever been able to in the past. I rolled onto my side to face him. His long, white-gold hair covered his shoulders and the pillow beneath his head. A smile formed slowly on his beautiful mouth, and I ached to touch him.
    “I’m not awake.” I couldn’t force the sadness from my voice. “I’m on a plane. I’m sleeping.”
    He nodded and reached for me. His hands weren’t the clawed nightmares they’d been after five hundred years of living death. They were smooth and strong when he brushed my hair from my eyes. They slid down my neck to the scar he’d left on the night he’d changed me, and a shudder of longing passed through me at his touch. In reality, Cyrus would have been pleased with that reaction. In my dream, regret softened his usually cruel face.
    “You’re right. You’re not awake. But now your eyes are open.”
    I leaned forward and kissed him. There was none of the need for control or power in it that there had been when he was alive. I surrendered completely, willed him to do the same with my mind. In my dream, I could have him again, the parts of him that I’d loved and not feared. The parts of him that had seduced me into questioning whether my humanity was truly worth keeping.
    When I opened my eyes again, I was awake, and a very startled Max was pulling away.
    “I was trying to—to wake you up,” he stammered, rubbing his chin as though I’d hit him. The look in his eyes was just as accusing. “And you kissed me.”
    “Sorry.” I resisted the urge to wipe off my lips. “I was dreaming.”
    “Must have been a hell of a dream.” He slid his hands into his jeans pockets and rocked back on his heels while looking at anything but me. “There was something on the news I thought you should see.”
    In the other room, Max had CNN on the television. The picture-in-picture function displayed MSNBC. I dropped onto the couch. “No porn? This must be important.”
    “Shh, it’s on again.” He gestured to the screen. “It’s been coming on after the ‘top of the hour’ shit.”
    The anchorwoman, who’d previously reported a story about a toilet-trained horse, put on a more somber expression. “Police in Grand Rapids, Michigan, are searching for a suspect in a brutal slaying that took place in front of several eyewitnesses Monday night.”

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    “That was last night—” The words stuck in my throat. I grabbed one of the throw pillows and hugged it tight to my