Quinn and I were sitting at my kitchen table, finishing our lunch while we held hands under the table, still craving contact with one another.
"So... this imprinting thing..." I began as soon as Amelia left for work. "It's like a shifter version of a blood bond, right?"
"No!" he exclaimed. "No, no. It's not a mystical bond at all, it's just a time when you adapt to a new mate really easily, nothing more. I would've told you by now if this was gonna attached part of your soul to me!"
I stared at him in horror. "Is that what a blood bond is?" I finally asked, my voice weak and wavering.
"Sure, how do you think Eric knows where you are and what you're feeling all the time? You're joined to him at the ethereal level of your being, which for humans and shifters is pretty much the same as your soul."
Eric owns part of my soul? I felt like my mind was on the teacup ride at a funfair, spinning around so fast I wanted to vomit.
"Didn't you know?" he asked, seeing how horrified I was. "Didn't he tell you any of this?"
I shook my head sadly.
"Sorry, I just assumed he talked to you about it, or I would've told you sooner... What do you know about the blood bond?"
"Other than the stuff you told me yesterday about all the laws around them? Just that it messes with my feelings, makes me feel angry when he's pissed off, makes me feel happy and safe when he's nearby, makes me feel horny when he wants me to be, confuses what I feel about him, and I can't break the bond and get my own feelings back without killing him. I don't know if I'd love him at all if it weren't for the bond."
"It shouldn't make you love him, although it'll make whatever feelings you already had more intense. It's only meant to make you find him irresistibly attractive and feel compelled to obey him, but neither of those seemed to work on you," he grinned.
"What do you mean?" I sure found Eric irresistible, always had, even if I didn't feel any need whatsoever to obey him.
"You should've stopped having feelings for me entirely the instant the bond with him was formed, it's a pretty big thing that you didn't. It's how it's supposed to work, you're meant to want him and only him. But you went to bed with me the next morning, and even though we didn't do anything, you still seemed to find me attractive."
"I did," I confirmed.
"And he tried to glamor you that night to make you hand over that bomb you wouldn't let either of us take from you." He was still annoyed by the whole incident, thinking I should've let him protect me. "He shouldn't have had to glamor you, you should've felt compelled to do whatever he wanted, without him even asking. Maybe it just didn't work. He didn't seem to get any of the power over you that he was meant to, although his own rejection of the bond wouldn't have helped that at all."
"What do you mean?"
"Saying you were bound too tightly for his liking... I'm no expert on the mystical ins and outs of these things, but I've performed a bunch of bonding ceremonies for vampires. They'll tell you their blood does all the work, but they get so hung up on the ceremony being performed just right that it must be a lot more important than they want anyone to know. A vamp really isn't meant to say they dislike the bond when it's still settling; they're not even meant to mention their own sexual enjoyment of the whole process," he spat out darkly, remembering the tableau he came upon when I'd just been bonded to Eric. "There's this whole long speech they're supposed to make, accepting a human as their bonded and honoring your lifelong commitment to them. I mean, the big formal ceremony's only done when they bind a mate, which isn't often, and never with a human, but I've sent people out to help with serf bondings plenty of times, too. Even if it's done very quietly, they still want to get it right."
"Uh huh." It was too much for me to take in all at once.
"You sound like you find the bond with him really painful. Didn't he teach you how to use it?"
"Use it?" I wondered, unable to think of any scenario except tracking when a blood bond would be remotely useful.
"I'll take that as a no then. You were supposed to get lessons to help you adjust. Even serfs usually get one or two lessons, and they're meant to have their own personality overtaken by the bond. The joining is pretty tough on humans, so the vamp's meant to make sure you're taught how to have them in your head without going mad. Maybe he just assumed it wouldn't bother you, since you have other people's thoughts in your brain all the time."
"Not the same," I muttered.
"So you feel his feelings differently to anyone else's?"
"Yeah. Other people can't drown me out entirely, and they only get into the wordy part of my mind. I have to let shifters in a bit deeper to read them fully, but even then... it doesn't feel like their feelings are coming from deep inside me, the way his feelings get in and take over."
"OK, so the blood bond's been pretty awful for you, and you're worried that being mated to me will be just as bad."
I nodded and he continued.
"I'll get you some help with the blood bond, so it doesn't hurt you so much." He tucked a stray wisp of hair behind my ear tenderly as he spoke, then stilled himself to look deep into my eyes. "As for the imprinting, I don't think it's possible to stop it now, I've never heard of it being paused partway through. But it shouldn't hurt you the way the bond does, because it's something that's come from within you, not something that's been done to you. I know it must be hard, this happening to you without warning, but it really should work out OK. Shifters can only imprint like this because it's in our nature to mate for life. When we find the right person, we want to imprint to them, so all our mating instincts are directed towards them. On some level, that must be something you want, too, to have someone who's yours as long as they live.
"I already knew that I feel that way about you before this started, but for it to be happening at all, you must feel it towards me, too. The imprinting can't trigger naturally unless it's mutually wanted, so even if you weren't consciously aware of it, on some level you must've seen me as someone you could be with for life." His eyes searched my face, looking desperately for some confirmation that I felt for him what he felt for me, but I couldn't work out how to give that to him. "If there's anything about me that makes you think this won't work, now is the time for us to deal with that. I'm pretty sure I told you yesterday how the imprinting can change a person, how it can make subtle physical changes as well as all the psychological adaptation that happens, and if there are things you want to change about me -"
"No!" I shouted, horrified he could even think I would do that to him. "No, it's not like that, I just... I'm just freaked out by how much I need to touch you right now, is all. It's compulsive, and I don't like that. I like having a choice."
All morning, while Amelia tried to train me, my need to touch him was both a hassle and a nuisance. She was teaching me an important lesson - teleporting bricks around, as a first step to learning to teleport other people - but it was interrupted every ten or fifteen minutes because I couldn't go any longer without touching Quinn again. Each time, I found myself sitting in his lap before I had even realized I'd tuned out and started edging towards him. After I rubbed my skin against his for a minute or two, I was OK to continue with her lesson for a while, but the constant interruptions were annoying.
I still managed to learn how to teleport a stack of bricks with me, but I was also meant to learn to send a brick somewhere just by touching it. I lost a lot of them through inattention, and I could only hope I hadn't hurt somebody when a stray brick reappeared somewhere unexpected. I didn't like feeling so out of control; didn't like the involuntary urge to touch him that the imprinting had created in me. I also worried that it might be permanent, that I might keep doing this for the rest of my life.
"I'm really sorry about that," he apologized. "It's only this intense for the first week, then it'll ease off. I should've told you what would happen before we completed the ceremony, and I tried to hold back, but when you told me to say it... I wasn't sure if you knew about imprinting, but I want you as my mate so much that I couldn't stop myself." He radiated shame as he said it; mortified at what he had done. "I wanted to believe you were choosing me that way, so I just went with it, and now you feel like I've forced you into this. I'm so sorry."
I could feel his heart breaking in his chest as he said it; he somehow managed to sound steady and even, but on the inside, he was distraught. He wanted me to choose him willingly, and hated himself for taking my choice away - even though he hadn't.
"It's not like that, either," I admitted softly. "You haven't done anything wrong. When you told me about imprinting yesterday, how it makes mating for life easier by making two people adjust to one another and only want each other, it didn't sound bad. It sounded, well... perfect."
"Really?" His face lit up and he bounced in his chair a little, like a delighted child. "You could be OK with this?"
I nodded. "I told you to say it because I could feel that you were holding back, that there was some part of you that you hadn't given me yet, and I didn't like that. I wanted all of you. I was greedy and I got more than I bargained for, which I guess makes this all my fault," I half-joked, trying to lighten the mood.
"If this is all your fault," he replied intensely, "I'm going to thank you for it every day for the rest of my life."
Then he was all over me, his lips bruising mine, his arms holding me tightly, his body pressed against me, a hand tangling in my hair. It was exactly what I wanted, exactly what I needed. I was moaning and rubbing against him instantly, hungry for him. My whole body tingled, shocks of magic running through me whenever we touched.
Instincts I never knew I had screamed at me to accept him, to take the great gift he was offering me.
I pulled back from his lips and tossed my hair over my shoulder, then lowered my head to one side to offer him my neck.
"My mate," I whispered, bringing my throat to his lips.
He whined a little as he pushed away a stray lock of hair, giving him complete access to my neck. Then he was kissing every last inch of exposed skin, sending shivers of delight right through my body. The instinct that told me to do this had me expecting the feel of his teeth against my throat, pressing into my skin to show his power over me. His choice to kiss me instead told me I was his to love and pleasure, not his to command. When it came time to mark me, he sucked hard on my tender flesh to pull it into his mouth, bruising it gently. I had somehow gotten out of my chair and into his lap, my legs wrapped around him, and I found myself grinding against him, extremely aroused by his choice not to assert dominance over me.
"I won't mark you permanently unless you ask me to," he breathed as he finally pulled away from me. Then he did exactly as I had, offering his neck to me. "My mate," he repeated hoarsely, pressing his throat to my teeth.
My instincts told me this was unexpected, perhaps even unprecedented, but they also screamed at me to accept him. I leaned forward and started repeating what he had just done to me, planting soft kisses all over the tender, vulnerable flesh he offered me, but it wasn't setting us both on fire the way it had when he did this to me. Somehow, this wasn't what either of us wanted.
"What do your instincts tell you to do?" he asked, bringing his lips to my ear briefly.
I pulled back to look him in the eye. "Bite you," I answered. "Something's screaming in the back of my head that I should bite you, but it means something bad if I do that, doesn't it?"
He shook his head. "The tiger in me needs to be accepted as your mate, too."
It was all the permission I needed, and my mouth was back against his neck immediately. I nipped him playfully and suddenly everything was right between us. My gentle bites provoked the same delighted response in him as his soft kisses had in me, and I realized I was just giving him the tiger version of this, not asserting dominance over him. I was getting more and more excited by the feel of my teeth on his neck, and so was he.
When it came time to mark him, something bubbled up inside me, something bright and natural I'd been looking for all my life, without ever knowing I was. I opened my mouth wider and bit down more firmly, telling him that he was mine. I was shocked when my teeth slid right into his flesh, filling my mouth with his blood. I hadn't bitten down hard enough to break his skin, I was sure of that, and I certainly hadn't wrenched and torn his flesh the way I would have to, to draw blood like this.
His arms were tight around me and he was grinding against me, silently screaming yes, please, more. Part of me found it all hard to fathom, but instinct kept me frozen there, my teeth embedded in his flesh to hold him to me. We were grinding together furiously, and improbable as it seemed, the heat and wildness of his blood had me as aroused as I had ever been. He was growling and snarling in my ear, and I felt his shifter magic coming to the surface, as though he might change at any second.
When he moved one hand to my breast and squeezed the nipple roughly through my clothes, heat ran through my body and I knew I was about to come, just from grinding against him so furiously. Those same powerful instincts told me he had to get there at the exact moment I did, and I sent the silent command to him, come now. He did, taking me right over the edge with him as white-hot pleasure seared through both our bodies. I could feel the tendrils of magic snapping out into the room as shifter magic and fairy magic mixed, concentrated in that single focal point where my teeth held his neck, because everywhere else, fabric kept us apart.
My teeth felt hot and bright, sending powerful energy burning into his neck as my body spasmed and shuddered on top of him. How the nerves in my teeth could be making me orgasm as surely as the ones between my legs were, I didn't know, but I was enjoying it too much to think any further. I could feel how intensely he was coming underneath me, and that brought me another level of pleasure entirely. It was over in barely a minute, but I knew I would remember that climax for the rest of my life.
My head jerked back involuntarily as I finished, pulling my teeth from his neck. I stared in astonishment as his wounds healed before my eyes, much faster than a shifter would usually heal, and then my instincts told me to lick his neck clean. I lapped up his blood happily, and even though the human part of my brain told me this ought to be gross, I found his taste too pleasurable to stop. When I cleaned the last of it away, I instinctively pulled back to admire my mark.
There at the base of his neck was a clear, even, perfectly healed scar, exactly where my teeth had been a moment ago. White against his olive skin were two semi-circles of puncture marks. Each one was almost perfectly round, and they were spaced apart from each other as though there was a clear gap between each tooth.
It was a fairy bite.