Dangerously Yours Till Eternity

He did just that, he took care of her.

Feeling better after a while, she laid on the sofa, sipping from her mug of warm ginger tea that Chris had prepared for her, while he finished up in the kitchen.

When she saw him come back from the kitchen, she asked him the question that had been bothering her a while ago, while he was taking care of her.

“Doesn’t it affect you, the blood, because, you know….”

He chuckled softly, “No.”

Then he settled next to her on the chair, “feeling better.”

“Huh-uh,” she nodded. “Thanks to you.”

Silence settled between them, the voices from the TV fading away into the distance of her mind, before she finally spoke up, bringing up the heavy questions that she had been trying to convince herself for so long that they didn’t matter.

But they did, she knew, and she had to ask them now.

“You said I claimed you. Did I…?” Her voice paused as she placed the now empty mug on the side table, then she leaned back into the sofa. “Does this have anything to do with your entire destiny being bonded to the person? I’m really confused.”

“You have been reading a lot of things online.”

She wasn’t looking at him but she could picture that intrigued look on his face.

“I just want to know,” she said, her gaze fixed on the TV but not actually looking at it.

“You deserve to know. Some of what you’ve read are true. Like the obvious fact that we need blood to survive. We aare super fast.”

She nodded along, still looking at the TV, while he listed their supernatural abilities, and the times when they had displayed them no matter how subtle or slight played in her mind.

“Claiming does have to do one’s entire destiny being bonded to another.” He finished lightly.

“What?!” Her gaze turned to him immediately, her eyes widened in shock.

“Am I that bad?” He chuckled, a little hurt.

“No— I— I’m… How does it work?”

“Well claiming is like marriage, just far stronger and more real.”

Her heart did a little leap at the word ‘marriage’ for a reason she was too bothered to think about right now.

“When two Vampires claim each other, they make a verbal declaration and make an imprint on each other. For humans, it is the same, only that the process is more time lenient. The verbal claiming comes first, then the imprint might come at a latter date when the human is ready.”

“Ready for what exactly? What is the whole imprinting thing about?”

He turned fully to her, leaning closer, as his fangs slid out slowly from the corners of his lips.

“This,” he pointed to his fangs, “sank into that,” he pointed to one side of her neck, “an imprint. It finalizes it all. A point of no return.”

She instinctively drew her covers closer in protection. That was the first time she had ever seen him up close with his fangs out. His peaceful and playful demeanour seemed dangerous immediately. Also his words weren’t so comforting at the moment.

It felt overwhelming.

She sat up slowly and the fangs snaked slowly back out of sight.

“Don’t be scared. I won’t hurt you.”

But she was and she couldn’t hid it. When she spoke again, the words tumbled out of her mouth, shaky and fast with a sense of desperate urgency.

“You could have just rejected it. Why didn’t you?! If you knew all these things I was getting into? Why? I don’t understand. I just— I wanna understand you but I don’t! I don’t get all these!”ConTEent bel0ngs to Nôv(e)lD/rama(.)Org .

He leaned away from her immediately, seeing how his closeness was affecting her negatively.

“Ivy, listen to me please.”

She kept quiet, trying to catch her breath.

“I would never do anything to hurt you,” he stated, an emphasis on every word. “You are safe with me. Always.”

She nodded, taking in then letting an out a long breath.

She was thinking about all the things that had happened that night, suddenly all the signs that they were different became obvious in her mind.

“Why didn’t you reject it? I read it somewhere that you could.”

He chuckled, looking anywhere but her, “these sites are quite informative. Might have to pull them down. They already know too much for my liking.”

His dismissiveness didn’t faze her though.

“Why didn’t you reject my claim?”

“No woman like you had ever claimed me before.”

Woman like h–? Was he using the flirting game on her right now?! She wanted to tell him that it was lame and hadn’t expected it from him but she had more pressing questions.

“We had sex right after. Does that have any effect?”

He stared right at her at that and she felt even more vulnerable with how intense his gaze had gotten.

“It does, very much.”

“But it was just sex,” she said quietly, like as if she was trying to convince herself that was what it had been but it wasn’t working.

She had heard him say the word “Yours” a couple of times that night and she had counted no meaning to it. How was she to have though?

“Well, it wasn’t just sex. It was sex that came after a Verbal Claiming, which is mostly a step towards Imprinting.”

Her hand flew to a side of her neck, “Oh my goodness, did you…”

“No!” Then his voice became apologetically low. “I didn’t. I’m a gentleman, I wouldn’t do such a thing without your consent.”

“You mean gentle Vamp,” she chuckled despite herself.

His gaze turned to that of amusement, “how you always manage to find everything funny is beyond me.”

“It is how I cope,” she shrugged.

“I understand that this might be so much for you to process at once, I can wait and we can continue this later.” He said, sincerely. “Any latter time that you are comfortable with, of course.”

“No. Now is good.” She looked at the TV again before looking back at him.

“So you didn’t imprint on me because you are a gentleman?”

“That and some other reasons,” he said with finality but the look of expectancy in her eyes made him go on. “Because you didn’t know what you were getting into and there were, still are, other complications to it.”

Her forehead furrowed in confusion.

“What other–” she paused.

He had said no woman like her had ever claimed him before.

Remembering what she had read in one of those articles, she might have misinterpreted that statement.

She asked her next question carefully. If it was as important as the article had made it sound, then this would determine everything.

“Christopher, am I your soulmate?”

The air in the room seem to have grown heavy.

“No.”