Enemy Within (Vampire Born Trilogy, #2) (42 page)

“Yes, it’s not difficult. It won’t hurt a bit.” He puts his hand out. “Come on.”

I take it and let him pull me out of the seat. I follow him to the back of the plane to the kitchenette area. He grabs a knife and has me sit in the seat next to the wall.

I put my hands up. “Whoa!” I imagine the stitches tugging at my skin until they tear. It’s an ugly thought.

Mirko pushes my hand down and leans in. “It won’t hurt at all. Trust me.”

I relax.

He pinches the area above my eyebrow and slides the steel under the first stitch. He gently saws at it until the tension gives. He puts the knife down and tugs the stitch until it slides out of my skin. He drops it in the garbage under the sink and comes back to the do the rest.

He’s right. It doesn’t hurt. There’s pressure, but no pain.

“Thank you,” I say as he tosses the last piece of thread in the trash.

He sits in the seat across from me and rests his elbows on his knees. “We have to talk.”

My heart flips over in my chest, and it’s not a good kind of flutter. That sounds eerily like the beginning of the end. He’s going to tell me he’s leaving and going back to The Base. “Are you sure you want to do that now?” I look down the plane at everyone else because there’s nowhere to run and maybe he’ll think otherwise. I hope he hasn’t made up his mind yet, and I can persuade him to stay.

He considers this. “We’ll be quiet.”

I stuff my hands between my thighs and squeeze them. “Okay.” I wonder if he can see how fast the pulse at my neck is pounding.

“Do you love me?”

“Yes,” I say breathily, relieved because there’s hope. “Of course I do. More than anything.”

“All right. Do you want to be with me?” The way he studies me tells me he really doesn’t know.

“Yes!” I glance down the plane because that was louder than I’d intended. “Yes, Mirko. I do,” I whisper and reach across the aisle to grab his hand.

“There is a way we can be together, but you have to be willing to put that above everything else.”

“Well, that’s what I was doing before when we couldn’t let anyone know about us.”

“This is different, and you can’t go back on your word this time,” he says and adjusts in his seat. “If someone wants to kill me because we’re together, you can’t try to save me and change your mind that you can’t be with me. If we’re going to be together, we’re going to be together no matter what. I can’t handle you dismissing me. I can’t handle you turning away from me, or not trusting me.

“There are going to be consequences for us if we’re going to be together. That’s the way it is. This is the world we live in. The way I see it is that we can either live, being together and loving each other, or we can live apart, but from this point on, the choice is made. If you agree, as long as we love each other, we’re going to be together.”

“I agree,” I cut in before he can say any more.

He puts his hand up like he needs to give me all the clauses before he’ll accept my answer, and continues. “I can’t have you trying to save me every time I’m faced with harm. Because of who you were born to be, or because of who I wasn’t born to be. You have to decide right now, Slatki. Is your life worth it? Is my life worth it? I already know my life is worth being with you, because without you, I won’t be living anyway. That’s my decision to make, so don’t ever try to take that from me again.”

I hesitate. Can I really stand by and let someone hurt him because he won’t give me up? I’m not sure I can do that. “Mirko, what would you do if it were reversed and I was the one at risk? I love you. I love you so much, I’d be willing to give you up to save your life.”

“Don’t make that decision for me. If we’re going to be together, you can
not
make that decision for me.”

I huff. “Okay, well, then you can’t make it for me, either.” I eye him in challenge.

“If this is the only way this will work, then all right.”

I smile because I feel like I’ve won. Then I remember where we’re headed. “Let’s just hope there will be an ‘us’ after this meeting.”

“Slatki, I’m not sure how yet, but if they vote to punish you, I don’t care what happens next, I’m intervening. I won’t let them hurt you.”

I study him. He’s always been good on his word, but I think the bar’s a little too high this time. I don’t say it … hope is important. Especially when faced with something as scary as what we’re heading into.

“And one more thing,” Mirko says and leans in, “if you’re mine, no more hiding. Well, of course, we won’t try to instigate hostility by unnecessary PDA, but in your home, in mine, almost anywhere we are, I’m loving you openly.”

He stands up and faces down the plane. “Hey, guys.”

They turn back to us.

He bends over, grabs my face, and kisses me, spreading my lips with his tongue and delving inside the warmth of my mouth.

He’s claiming me as his.

My face flushes when Kaitlynn and Ace catcall and whoop, but I love every second of it. I can get used to this.

Mirko’s mine. Really mine.

CHAPTER THIRTY-E
IGHT

Mirko

Brooke and I stay in the back of the plane for the rest of the flight. I lifted her from her seat, sat down in it, and then pulled her into my lap. We’ve been in our own world in this section of the plane for hours—kissing, stroking each other’s faces, talking. Enjoying the limited time we have left before the uncertainty after landing takes over.

With twenty minutes left in the flight, Brooke asks,
“If I tell you something, do you promise you won’t be mad at me?”

I lean back into the chair and look at her. “How can I promise that when I don’t know what you’ve done?”

She bites her lip.

Yes, she’s definitely done something. “You know you want to tell me.”

“Promise you won’t get mad first.”

“I can’t promise that. How about I promise I won’t punish you over it?”

She considers my offer. “Okay, but you promised … I think I need to feed.”

My forehead creases. When was the last time I fed her?

Before Kaitlynn woke. She should still be all right if she hasn’t been using her powers.

I glower at her. “What did you do?”

She drops her eyes and nervously plays with the titanium ring hanging on the leather strap around my neck. “I flexed in with you when you were talking to my dad.”

“Slatki!” I smack the top part of her ass. She never listens to me. She could’ve gotten hurt.

Her eyes bulge at me. “You promised!”

She deserved it, though. “That wasn’t a punishment. That was a reflex.” I grin convincingly.

She tugs my necklace. “Same thing.”

“Wait, which one of us is the one who did wrong here? Because I’m pretty sure it started out as you.”

“Never mind. I’ll ask Kaitlynn.” She pushes to move off my lap.

I grab her hips and pull her back down. “You already asked me. No way in hell am I going to let you go over there and accuse me of not taking care of you. You’re mine and I always take care of what’s mine.”

She gives me a shaky smile.

I tilt her head down toward my face and nibble her ear. “Don’t be scared.” I’m referring to the meeting. I’m at a disadvantage at this meeting, so of course I want her going in there as strong as she can be. And as brave as she can be.

“Aren’t you?”

My eyes rake over her face and I rub my thumb along her cheek. I can’t lie to her. “I’ve been afraid this whole damn time.”

She leans down and gives me a sweet kiss. The kind of kiss meant to take away my pain. I allow it, although that’s what I’m trying to do for her.

She draws back and I tuck her hair behind her ear. “Let’s go in the bathroom,” I say and look over at Cila. She doesn’t need to witness this.

Brooke hops up and adjusts her clothes.

I lock the door once we’re in the small bathroom. There’s barely room for the both of us to fit in here, but it’ll do.

“We won’t use my wrist. I don’t want to risk anyone at the meeting seeing the bite mark.”

“Where, then?” She surveys my body and stops on my chest.

I point to my pec and flex it. “Here?”

She smiles and nods.

I pull my sweater up slowly, one set of abs at a time, and then over my left pec, teasing her. I tap the area on the arch of the muscle and closer to my sternum. “Right here should be good.”

The only time she’s punctured my skin was when she woke up from her sleep. The other time I did it. I’m taken back by how excited I am she’s going to break the skin with her teeth and know she’s doing it. That she’ll probably think about it later.

She’ll be able to tell how excited I am when she feels how fast the blood pumps into her mouth from my pounding pulse. She may even feel my heart thumping in my chest. It’s okay, though. I want her to know this excites me. “Ready?”

“Yeah,” she says and extends her fangs.

She drops her jaw and bends over. Two sharp points dig into my skin before she bites down and slices the two upper teeth inside me.

There’s a harsh sting when the flesh tears, and pressure where her teeth are and as she pulls the blood out with her mouth, but the whole thing feels amazing. The way her tongue grazes my sensitive skin, the way her warm breath dances across my chest and billows over my collarbone. The suckling sound she makes as she feeds.

This is more intimate than when I bit her. It’s better than any sex I’ve ever had.

I place my hand on the side of her head and push her hair to fall back behind her. I want to see her face, the way her cheeks sink in as she sucks and the way her jaw flexes as she works her tongue.

When she’s done and pulls away, my skin tugs with her fangs until they’re free of me.

Blood pools at the corner of her lip. She wipes her mouth with the side of her hand. “Thank you.”

“Thank you.” I reach behind me and grab a handful of toilet paper to dab the wound.

“What for?
You
fed
me
.”

“Remember what it felt like when I bit you?”

Her eyes light up. “Yeah, no way I’d forget that.”

“Well, that times ten.”

“Oh,” is all she says, but her smile gives her away. She loves the reactions she causes in me. Probably almost as much as I enjoy hers.

“So how do you guys feed? The Zao Duhs and those who don’t have Društvos to feed from?”

I regard her with pride. There was a time when she didn’t want to know anything about our ways, especially when it concerned feeding. Now she’s inquiring about it. “We use Sanjam. But we don’t bite anyone. We use a fang to cut them. We feed, then erase the memory or tell them some other way they got the cut. It’s easier for someone to shrug away a cut than puncture wounds a fang’s length apart.”

“Hunh,” she says.

“What does that mean?” I ask and pull down my sweater, flushing the tissue.

“Well, I always pictured it done with a bite. I mean, that kind of sucks. The bite and that first rush of blood into your mouth is one of the best parts of the whole thing.”

I grin. This is
my
girl.

“It is, but we don’t have any healing agents in our saliva. We actually have some slight numbing agents, though, and stuff that acts as an anticoagulant to keep the blood from clotting while we’re feeding.”