Page 13 of The Midnight Order (The Thorngray Vampires Duet #1)

Silver

Following Jasper to what I can only presume is his room, I tried to keep up with his massive stride.

By the time he reaches for a decanter of something dark, I’m trying to hide the fact that I’m out of breath.

He hands me a glass without asking if I want it, which I do.

“Thank you.”

I can’t help that my body is still thrumming with arousal, and I doubt the alcohol is going to help it any, but I gulp it down anyhow and hand him back the glass.

He refills it without question and hands it back.

He doesn’t speak until he’s downed his second glass. “Please tell me that you’re alright.”

“I’m…” He steps closer, and the same buzzing in my veins I felt down in the dungeon with Asher returns. I clear my throat.

His look of concern deepens as I put my hand up to halt him.

“It’s probably best if you stay over there.”

“I need to look you over. Make sure his bite is healing. I could fucking kill him for this,” he adds, stepping close and tilting my head to the side to elongate my throat.

To me, it only feels like I have another greedy vampire at my pulse point, but I get the distinct vibe that Jasper would never behave as Asher had.

Though I can’t deny the high that I felt with Asher, especially when his fingers were trailing up my thigh and…

“Silver. Please, focus.” Jasper’s gravel tone rakes against my sensitive nerves, and I decide it’s probably best just to take a cold shower and go to bed.

I shouldn’t be feeling how I feel when I’m around all of them. They’re all dangerous, not to mention dead.

I wonder if I’m lying unconscious on the floor at home. Maybe the contractor knocked me over the head with something by accident, and I’m in some kind of fever dream.

In a dream, touching the vampires would be entirely acceptable.

“Silver!” Jasper grates, his fingertip bumping over the raised scabs at my throat.

“I’m sorry. It’s been so long, and then his venom and how his fingers felt…”

“If you don’t calm yourself, I’ll be forced to do things I’ll feel guilty for later.”

Goddamn me, if I don’t want to know what those things are.

“Maybe I’ll just go to my room. That’ll fix it.”

“It really won’t. We can sense you in this house like our own thirst.”

“You should’ve let him finish,” I breathe as he takes his fingers off my skin.

I can’t think any clearer because he’s still mere inches from me, looking down from his towering height, with his red eyes wholly entranced by the same buzzing in my body.

“If I let him finish, you would’ve been bruised and depleted tomorrow. Since it’s the day you go home, I didn’t want that for you. You’ll already be dealing with memory loss when we get you back home.”

“I’m not going home, though.”

He swallows, something dangerous passing over his features. “What do you mean, you’re not going home?”

“Asher said I was his… I forget the word, but he said I passed his test, anyhow.”

“He said what?”

He closes the rest of the distance between us, lifting me beneath my arms and placing me on his desk as he steps between my thighs, pressing them open.

My panties are still pushed to the side, and the air across my aching sex makes me hiss. “He said I was his… fated. Whatever that means. So I’m supposed to go to…”

“Me. You go to me next.”

“Ahh,” I breathe, unable to muster more than that, as Jasper’s steady hands are on my knees, his fingertips trailing upward.

I let out a breath, holding it as the feel of his touch has me bracing for impact.

There’s this call to them, and I wonder if it’s the allure that a predator exudes to lure its prey, or if this truly is some fatal attraction.

Fatal being the operative word.

“Jasper,” I get out.

“Mm.”

“What is this curse? What’s my role? How does it break?”

It’s like I doused him with ice water. His hands stop and fall away from my body.

Fuck.

“I asked Corvin, and he said I have to ask you,” I add when he turns and downs more liquor.

“To tell you that, I’d have to tell you what happened.”

“Alright.” I pull my nightgown back down, even as flutters in my center grow more insistent that they need tending. “I have time, and I know you do.”

He makes a noise in the back of his throat at my attempt at humor. “Her name was Valentina.”

Her?

“And she was a witch,” he says, and my heart nearly stops.

I’m in the middle of Jasper’s bed, sitting as still as possible, so he won’t stop talking.

“We all fell in love with her. It wasn’t unheard of for a coven to share a woman, nor for coven members to fall for one another. It just so happens we had both scenarios in ours.”

I sit with rapt attention, allowing him to go on.

“Corvin and Asher formed a bond early in my bringing him into the coven. When Valentina came along, they both fell for her. Hard. The problem came down to sharing.”

“Asher and Corvin couldn’t share her?” I ask.

“Not so much that. Corvin couldn’t share Asher.”

“Ahh. I can see how that would pose a problem.”

“Valentina tried her hardest to bring us together, for a coven with a central bond, especially a witch, is strong. The thing was that the jealousy ran too deep. It was stronger than the bond we tried to forge.”

“What happened to her?”

Jasper eyes me.

“You said her name was Valentina.”

“Very astute of you.”

“Lowell lost his temper with Corvin, and Valentina stepped in the middle. His anger and pride ultimately led to her demise. With her dying breath, she cursed us.”

“To bond to one woman together.”

Jasper nods. “The masks were on our faces the next morning, marking us as equals. If we can’t find a central bond, love, and share her equally, we’re cursed to live this way.”

“So, when I asked if I could go home after this, and Asher asked if I would want to, it’s because…”

“To leave here, you have to love us.”

“Soliel?”

“She loved us in her own way, but she wasn’t our bond. I loved her as a friend and maybe even a sister, never like she ought to be.”

The sadness in his eyes tells of that love, and I reach for him.

He walks over and sits on the end of the bed, looking at me as I crawl over and sit beside him.

“Why me? Why did the wards let me in? You said the town has wards, right?”

“That’s the thing. Corvin thinks you were let in solely because you were Soliel’s bloodline, which was a loophole. He didn’t even want to test you. Not until Lowell became obsessed with you.”

“Lowell scares me.”

His laugh is loud and moves through the room like thunder. “He’s dark and prickly, but he wouldn’t hurt a hair on your head. Your ass, maybe.”

I can’t help the smirk that tugs my lips up. “How will you test me?”

“The same way Asher did, just without taking your vein.”

My entire body heats in a flash at the idea of what happened in the dungeon, and Jasper shifts.

Lifting my wrist, I ask, “You could just take a little.”

“My venom would dose you and drive this entire manor wild. We’ve been tormented enough tonight.”

I look at my wrist longingly, wondering momentarily who the hell I am that I even offered myself up.

“Or do you want me to test you that way?” His husky tone makes another shiver move up the highway of my spine, and I let it pass.

“I—”

“Before you try to backtrack or lie, let me tell you something. We know when you’re not being honest. We can hear your heartbeat and sense your untruths like we told the lie ourselves.”

“Good to know,” I reply shakily.

His hands are massive as they reach for one of mine, grasping it inside of them and turning it over. It’s as if he’s considering my offer silently as I let the implication of it sink into my brain deeper.

“I haven’t had human blood from the vein in a very long time.”

“How old are you?”

“I was in my thirties when the bubonic plague ravaged England and Scotland before I traveled here. Well, my vessel wasn’t meant for here.”

Just like Corvin, his eyes seem far away as he remembers a time long past.

“When was that?”

“1605.”

His answer nearly shocks the hell out of me.

“You’re… what age does that make you?”

“Four hundred and twenty, give or take a few years.”

I swallow. “Wow.”

“Does that mean you’re impressed, or does that wow mean you think I’m old?”

“Both?!” I squeak.

His low chuckle draws me back to the reality where he’s still holding my hand in his.

“You all have seen so much.”

“We’ve lived nearly a century here in Thorngray, cursed.”

The weight of his admission saddens me. They’ve been looking for a way out of this place for a hundred years. I can’t imagine the desperation of that hanging over them.

Hence, how they’d turned the townsfolk into their own personal detectors.

“To help you, I have to lose my entire life,” I realize out loud, taking my hand back from Jasper.

“You would.”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Yes.”

“It doesn’t feel like it. You used some kind of magic on me, knocked me out, brought me here, and are holding me until testing is done, but what if I am this key, and I don’t want to be with you? What if I don’t want to break the curse for you?”

“Love is rooted in free will; you’ll be free to go. We would continue looking.”

Sadness looms in my chest, but I staunch it down to let common sense rule.

I can’t give up my entire life for a coven of vampires to be happy.

Interacting with them, the little bits that I have, tells me that a love like theirs, a love strong enough to break a curse, would consume me whole and spit out my pieces on the ground afterward.

“I can’t… this is too much.”

Jasper stands, holding out his hand to me. “Come, I’ll show you to your room.”

Reluctantly, I let him take me back to the room, where it’s a little emptier without Corvin and the sounds of Yellowstone blasting through the television speakers.

“Jasper,” I say before he shuts the door.

He turns.

“Thank you for telling me.”

He crosses the room and lingers in front of me. “You deserve the truth. Besides, the curse demands honesty. We’ve learned that over the years.”

He leans down, and I brace for what he’ll do next when he kisses my forehead, his cold lips feeling warm as my body responds tenfold.

“You’re so much like her,” he whispers, pulling back.

I look up into his eyes, wishing like hell I could rip the white mask off his face.

He’s long gone when I realize I might be the only one to take the mask off his face.

And I might be the one to walk away and leave it there.