“I don’t know what she got,” Francesca answered, breath hitching painfully. “That’s what kills me. For years I thought it wasn’t fair I got picked and she didn’t. Then I comforted myself thinking that she probably got a wonderful family after me. But… but then I got older, and I realized I had no evidence for that. I looked. Tried to find her. Couldn’t. And then I thought… what if she didn’t? What if I got the loving parents and she stayed there without me?”
“I don’t understand. If you were so close why didn’t your parents take you both?”
Francesca touched his chest. She found his heart hammering there, a contradiction to the calm face he presented to her.
“Adoption is complicated and expensive and… there’s no perfect way to do it. And I come from a normal family, Luis. With normal limitations. Not like yours. Even if my parents could’ve afforded to adopt two kids, they might not have been able to get approval from the government for another for months, years, if notever.”She shook her head. “And the truth is that they didn’t even know how much she meant to me for a really long time. I was a quiet kid and I was adjusting and I was scared they wouldn’t want me anymore if I complained. I just… didn’t tell them.”
Luis sat up. He’d gone tense, those powerful shoulders and torso tensing. “But they couldn’t have let you keep in touch at least?”
Francesca sat up, too. Wrapping her arms around her chest, she sighed, “At the time there was a strict no contact policy in place. The administrators believed a clean break helped with bonding parents and children.”
“Fuck.” He laid a hand on the side of her head. Thumb brushing her cheek, he surmised, “So you came here looking for her. But why did you need that much money?”
“My parents do need help,” she admitted. “They had to sell their house a while back because they couldn’t afford it anymore. At first I took Easton’s offer because he promised me a few thousand dollars. That would’ve been huge for me. It could’ve paid for a private investigator at least. But then when we found out I was a golden anchor, I realized I could get their house back, too. I couldn’t say no.”
A look she could only describe as self-loathing came over him. “I’m sorry,” he grated. “I’m sorry I never asked. I’m sorry I— Fuck. I’m just fucking sorry, Frankie.”
Feeling lighter than she had in a very long time, she tipped forward until she could rest her forehead on his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around her immediately, cocooning her in warmth.
“You’re forgiven for being a jerk.”
He breathed out a long, pained exhale. “Thank you.”
“I feel bad for all the people who died, but I don’t feel bad that it meant you won.” She peeked up at him through damp lashes. “Does that make me a bad person?”
Luis pressed a kiss to her temple. Rocking her gently, he answered, “Nah. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. We all know the score.”
She curled her fingers in the open sides of his shirt. “I’m sorry about all the crying and baggage. I really am happy. I swear. I really liked it when you bit me.”
“I’m not sorry about the crying,” he murmured. “It means you trust me. That’s better than blood.”
“How was it, by the way?”
“What?”
“My special blood,” she reminded him, a little miffed that it was required.
Luis let out a hoarse laugh. It shook the shoulder beneath her and that gorgeous, deep, hairy chest she loved. “Oh, you mean the greatest experience of myfuckinglife? It was pretty good. Might want to try again. Just to confirm.”
A sly smile tugged at her mouth. “Worth the hundred thousand dollar entry fee?”
“Your blood is the single most delicious thing I can possibly imagine. It’s… indescribable. Igetwhy vampires fought wars for golden anchors now.” His voice trembled again, like the force with which he spoke struggled to come through the words.
Luis let out a hard exhale. “But if I never got to taste you, I’dstillpay whatever it took to spend even a moment with you, Frankie. Your blood is a gift, but you… You’re my everything.”
Whispering into her hair, he promised her, “Someday when I die, that’s the last thing I’m going to think about. Right before the lights go out. I’m gonna remember the taste of you on my tongue.” He guided her head up from his shoulder for a slow, deep kiss that tasted sugar-sweet and a little bloody.
TWENTY-EIGHT
It wasa lucky thing that autumn came on slowly in the south. The nights still clung to the sultry warmth of the day in Cape Charles. With the home being situated on the edge of a nature preserve, the scents and sounds of woodland mingled with that of the ocean on their doorstep.
The town itself was only a twenty minute walk away and offered a variety of restaurants and shops for the nocturnal among them even on the cusp of the off-season. At first Luis was leery of letting Francesca out of the house or off their immediate — and secure — property, but after two weeks of isolation, she began pushing him for a little bit more activity.
Luis was shocked to realize he didn’t actually need it as much as she did. Not since his childhood had he spent so much time in one place doing next to nothing. He’d spent nearly every waking moment since his majority chasing the next game, thrill, scam, dollar, and woman he could get his hands on. Sitting still wasn’t interesting, and it allowed too many opportunities for introspection.
But when he was with his anchor, sitting still was a privilege.
Being with her was everything he’d imagined it would be — and quite a bit more. He delighted in holding her hand as theywalked the length of their private beach and found his heart racing every dusk when he awoke to her curled up into his side. While she cooked her meals, he watched her from his place at the kitchen island, fascinated by the way she moved.