Page 21 of Guarding the Athlete
“No, not at all, but I’ll always put your needs and desires ahead of my own. You’re my mate.”
“That doesn’t sound right,” I argued. “Why should my needs be more important than yours? Shouldn’t this mate thing be a partnership?”
Cassie looked confused. “I guess?”
“Well, I don’t want a different bodyguard. I’m not sure how I feel about all this mate stuff, but I know I feel safer and more… at peace I guess, when you’re around.”
“Okay.”
We drank our coffee in silence for a few minutes before I spoke again.
“Do I have a choice in this mate thing?”
“Of course you do,” Cassie said quickly. “I don’t, but you do.”
“No pressure,” I joked. “Let’s say I agree to be mates, what does that mean? From a practical perspective?”
“Well, official mating would involve me biting you,” she said. “Briefly, just enough to seal the bond and leave a mark that all other supes would see and understand as a claim. I don’t totally understand how it works, supes say the claiming is magic.”
I winced. “Will you drink my blood?”
“Not the way you’re thinking, no. I will likely ingest some of your blood when I seal the bond, but that would be minimal.”
“And then we’ll be what? Married?”
“Mating is similar to human marriage,” she explained. “But there’s no divorce. Once we’re mated officially, once I bite you, neither of us will ever have a desire to leave the other. And we’ll be able to sense each other’s emotions in a way that you can’t do as a human.”
“And are you going to age? Like am I going to be some wrinkled eighty year old woman and you still look like this?” I asked, waving a hand in her direction, my eyes taking in her unlined skin and perky breasts. Looking at her now, you’d never guess that Cassie was ten years older than me.
“My kind ages a little slower than humans do, but we do age.”
“I’m going to need some time to think about all this,” I said. “Figure out what it means.”
“The only thing you need to think about right now is staying safe.” Her voice was firm, her expression more serious than I’d ever seen it.
“It’s not you, you know,” I said softly.
“What’s not me?”
“It’s not that I’m unwilling to commit to being your mate. But I need time to process. I mean, I passed out watching you drink blood. That’s not really an auspicious start to being a vampire mate,” I explained. “And I need some time to get to know you. We’ve known each other less than twenty-four hours.”
“I understand.” Her voice was sad.
“You know, I was never one of those girls who grew up dreaming of getting married someday. I always dreamed of being a soccer star. Soccer takes all of my time and energy right now. I just don’t know if I’ve got room for anything else in my life, especially a serious relationship.”
Maybe it was weird that I didn’t want a long-term relationship, at least not at this point in my life. I’d grown up with two parents who were very much in love and still were totally into each other. Maybe seeing their perfect love had made me scared to take a chance, because it was hard to imagine any relationship I had measuring up to the relationship my parents had.
Then again, I’d never given it much thought either way. I mean, I dated. I’d had a few girlfriends, but never for too long. I likedhaving a date for events, and I certainly loved having sex on the regular. After all, I was a healthy thirty year old woman. But soccer was my whole life. It had been since my parents enrolled me in a pee wee league when I was three years old. Thinking about adding a life partner was a big change, and it wouldn’t be an easy one.
If my words bothered her, Cassie didn’t show it. “We don’t have to make any decisions about anything today. Finding your stalker is our first priority. While we’re working together, we can get to know each other, and if, when we’re done with this case, we both agree, we can date and go from there.”
“Date?”
She shrugged. “Humans like to date. Even though they feel the pull of the mating bond the same way we do, it’s not as strong and you’ve all been so conditioned that love at first sight is just a fairy tale, you don’t trust it. But I’m not going anywhere, Ruby. I can be patient. Wait for you to decide how much – or if – you want to see me again after this.”
She winced as she said if, her arm banding around her stomach. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” she gasped. “My vamp is clawing at me.”
