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“Did you find it strange, then, to make love with him?”
The question was deeply personal, but again Hannah didn’t mind. Aside from the fact that enthrallment was in play, she trusted Vojalie.
Still, the question forced Hannah to pause and to think. Had it bothered her to have sex with Jude?
She finally shook her head. “I was only troubled because he’s realm, I’m human, and I’ve never seen myself going long-term with a realm-man. But no, it was easy to make love with him. I wasn’t even nervous. The whole experience was amazing and charged with, I’m not sure how to say this, passion, I suppose.”
“I can sense what your time with Jude meant to you, but I’m also sensing that you’re unaware of the layers of your affection for the mastyr. So let me ask you this: if you’d had this kind of sexual encounter with a human male, what would you be thinking right now?”
Hannah blinked for a moment, her thoughts becoming perfectly clear. “I would start seeing him, I suppose, then see what happened next, see if we had something real, if we could blend our lives, if it could work.”
Vojalie nodded and smiled. “And there you have it.”
Hannah tilted her head. “Vojalie, it can’t be that simple. I mean he’s Jude, it’s the whole blood rose thing, it’s Margetta-the-freak.”
At that, Vojalie laughed outright. “I have every reason to believe she would hate being spoken of like that.”
Vojalie then settled her hand on Hannah’s arm. “Try to shift out of the horror you’re feeling and approach this situation as you would if you were dating a human. Be with Jude for a time. The bond is only completed when you
r mating frequencies engage and lock into place, and not a moment before. And that has to be a decision of the will; it can’t be forced.
“If after a time, you find you can’t tolerate either being with him or being a blood rose, we can address the issue together. For instance, we could devise a number of security measures to protect you from unwanted mastyr attention. How does that sound?”
Hannah breathed yet another sigh of relief. She’d felt so trapped, unable to see any kind of alternative. But these simple, very workable suggestions eased her. Maybe she was a blood rose, but it didn’t mean that she had to commit body and soul to anyone unless she wanted to.
As her gaze drifted over the dark stretch of the Strait that led all kinds of ships and smaller craft into Puget Sound, she suddenly felt a sense of impending loss. Kellcasse was a beautiful realm full of canals, waterways, and small lakes all set in lush woodland.
But Port Townsend was her world, her life. How could she ever leave the Gold Rush to make a life with Jude on Castle Island? The whole prospect seemed impossible.
~ ~ ~
Jude had been to Hannah’s home a few times before and liked the way she’d improved it over the years. The house was essentially a small cottage built on the hillside with a view to the open waters of what he knew to be Admiralty Inlet.
She’d opened up the walls that separated the living, dining and kitchen to create one larger space. Very nice. And she’d decorated with white, lots of black and dark grays then an occasional shot of pink. She had a piece of carved driftwood on the round, solid wood dining table, but other than that, and a couple of paintings of wooded beaches, she’d chosen against a typical maritime look and feel. No rope-bound tables, anchors, or seagulls in her place. Not even one seashell.
Her place was modern and charming.
Even so, his guard-size body seemed to take up too much space, and he thought it a fitting way to describe their present predicament. This vast wave had washed through both their lives, leaving her with unwanted powers, and building within him a lust for her hard to contain because she was a blood rose.
He’d been one hundred years without the influence of a woman in his life. How could he possibly embrace one now? Forget that he’d made a decision to keep away from long-term relationships. Just what kind of life could he even offer Hannah?
He had two jobs. He oversaw the day-to-day running of his realm, staying in touch during his waking daylight hours with all the various city and community leaders. And once full dark arrived, he patrolled with his Vampire Guard seven nights a week.
And Hannah had her bar.
None of this made sense to him. It would be one thing if his blood rose had been a realm-woman, who knew and understood everything about Kellcasse, his role, and who he was as a vampire. But Hannah owned a bar in Port Townsend and spent every waking minute there. Even on a simple, logical level, how would this even work?
When Davido moved onto the porch and waved for him to follow, Jude joined him willingly. He’d hoped to have a chance to talk privately with Davido and was grateful when Hannah had invited Vojalie to the roof deck.
Leaning on the porch railing, the troll smiled up at him, his blue eyes crinkling and the three rolls of his forehead lifting slightly. “So you are the latest mastyr to get struck by lightning, eh?”
Jude laughed. “Lightning. You’ve described it exactly right.” He leaned his forearms on the railing as well and shifted his gaze out to sea. He liked Davido, one of the ugliest trolls in the Nine Realms. But he was ancient, wise, and had tremendous charisma. If he’d been a vampire, he would have been fierce. But his troll height, at least a foot shorter than Jude’s, had forced him to carve out a different kind of life for himself, one that he wore with grace.
“I didn’t know until I fed from Hannah, what was really going on. We’d had a mutual attraction for months, but each of us had kept the stops on. Then a wraith-pair showed up at dawn outside the Gold Rush and Hannah saved my life by burning the mated vampire.”
“Sweet Goddess! You didn’t mention this when we pathed together this morning. How did she burn him?”
“She’s harnessed fire in a way I’ve never seen before.”
