Page 5 of Don't Bite the Botanist
And the bit of fun she’d been clinging to for years was about to get exponentially more enjoyable now that she had Ethan to join her. It was like Lilith knew she’d been crawling the walls going crazy lately, so she dropped this incredible gift straight into Tressa’s lap.
Surveying her mate lying in the bed, Tressa allowed her mind to run wild with thoughts about what kind of guy he was. Maybe he would be gentle and kind. He certainly didn’t look like a jerk or the type of alpha male that would be possessive and domineering.
She noted a pair of wire-rimmed glasses sitting beside the bed and smiled. She’d always thought glasses looked sexy on a guy. Maybe her mate was a professor? Or a scholar? His chart said he was a botanist, but she had no idea what that meant other than something to do with plants. She turned his hand over and grazed her fingers across his skin. He had a few calluses lining his upper palm, but there were no scars or bumps on his knuckles. So he worked with his hands to some degree but was definitely not any kind of fighter.
A thousand possibilities spiraled through her brain, presenting her with scenario after scenario about what her mate was like. And all of itserved one very important purpose—to distract her from that nagging thought in the back of her brain. The one that whispered…
What if?
What if he didn’t want her? The mate bond drew you toward the other person, but it wasn’t a guarantee they would actually be interested in pursuing anything romantic. And it definitely wasn’t a guarantee he would want to become a vampire. What if she found her mate only to lose him in a few decades?
Nope, that possibility got buried deep inside with the rest of the things she chose to ignore.
Focus on the positive, she reminded herself. He was her mate, and they were destined to be together. You don’t reject destiny.
When Ethan’s hand twitched in hers and his eyes began to flutter, she released her hold on him and pushed the chair back slightly so she wasn’t hovering. Brushing her skirt down over her thighs, she mentally prepared herself for the first conversation she would ever have with her mate.
She pasted on another of her patented smiles and took a few deep inhales to force her shaking hands to steady.
Calm, cool, collected. She could do this.
All she had to do was convince him that becoming a vampire was a gift unlike any other. Surely that would be easy enough after whatever injury he recently suffered. Who wouldn’t want to be strong and healthy for centuries?
Chapter four
Ethan
I need the pain back.
It was the first coherent thought that drifted through Ethan’s brain as he struggled against the fog holding him under.
He’d been back there. Back with that… thatthingagain. Staring into the soulless depths of its eyes.
Then it sank its fangs into his neck once more and vanished. With the vampire gone, he was trapped between the real world and the dream world. The more he fought his way toward reality, straining to open his eyes, the more he realized there was no pain. Only a faint buzzy feeling throughout his body.
There should be pain. Pain meant reality. Pain meant he wasn’t trapped in that never-ending nightmare. Pain was something he could latch onto as evidence that he was alive and awake. Pain was something he could remember.
And he could remember so many things. The agony of sharp teeth tearing into his neck. His bloody hands clutching at the wound and stumbling away on shaky legs as the creature laughed at him. Crashing into a table of beakers and microscopes, shards of glass stabbing intohis hands and arms as they shattered under his weight. But the worst part was that he could remember sliding off the bloody table and landing on the floor next to Jake’s body. For too long, he stared into his best friend’s vacant eyes, savoring the pain that he was due.
Then everything went black, and he could remember nothing aside from the nightmare.
With a last effort of will, Ethan managed to pry his eyes open and drag a heavy hand up to block the bright lights above his head.
“You’re awake.”
The voice startled him, and most of his confusion dissipated between one blink and the next—high alert mode activated. His pulse raced, and a cold sweat broke out across his forehead as he snapped his head to the corner of the room, his gaze landing on an attractive woman watching him intently. There was something familiar about her, but he couldn’t place where he’d seen her since his brain was still half lost in a bloody fog of screams and fangs. Glancing to the side, he found his glasses and settled them on his face.
Maybe I did die,Ethan thought as he took in the goddess perched on the edge of the chair. Her long black hair glistened like she stepped straight out of a cheesy shampoo commercial, and her smooth bronze skin had the kind of glow that normally only photoshop could achieve.
His eyes drifted lower as he took in her outfit. The pale yellow sweater popped against her darker skin, drawing him in like a beacon of light, and the matching short skirt slid up her enticing thighs when she crossed her legs. To his dismay, the image had something twitching under the thin hospital sheet that probably shouldn’t be awake. Not when he was still trying to ascertain the where, what, and how that landed him in a hospital to begin with.
He should be dead.
“Are you a doctor?” he croaked out, his voice hoarse and scratchy as if he’d been screaming for hours.
A grin spread across her face at his words—a strange response to a legitimate question. Or maybe it wasn’t legitimate given that women as gorgeous and glowing as her only worked in hospitals on TV shows. Every doctor he’d ever seen looked like they might slice him open and sell one of his kidneys for a cup of coffee or a twenty-minute nap. And he’d spent more than his fair share of time with them.
When the woman’s smile faded and she hesitantly approached his bedside, flashbacks of his mother’s illness pounded on the door of his mind. Nothing good ever happened when hospital staff addressed you with caution.
