Leave it to a vampire to not soothe her in any way regarding her fears. Not once had Rush said anything about how he wouldn't harm her or that she would be safe here, but that was because she wasn't and he was on a hair trigger to kill her. Plus, she was his property, so her feelings likely didn't mean much to him. Now she was supposed to be on the bed with him for a conversation, and she couldn't join him even if she wanted to. Before now, Rush had set her on the bed, and with its obnoxious height, the best she had done was hop off of it.

Rush's eyes darkened when he realized she was not coming to him, but it wasn't like that was her fault. "What do you fear?" He whispered into her ear, and she turned to him kneeling next to her.

Not interested in that sort of closeness, she moved away and pressed her back to the side of the stacked mattresses. The touch of his hand on her face doubled her heartbeat as he ran it down the side of her face, over her shoulder, and then to her side. Mer was petrified of his hand moving anywhere else, and she gasped as he moved her onto the bed. Well, tossed. Rush tossed her on the bed.

She barely lifted herself onto an elbow before Rush crawled over her, and falling onto her back was the only way to get away from him. Rush's knee locked her in on one side and the other pinned between her legs. With the headboard above her, she was unable to escape. She raised her hand to push him away as he leaned his face down, but she flinched her hand back to her chest before she made contact.

What if she hurt him again? Wouldn't that make this much worse?

"Meredith, this is a problem," Rush said into her ear before he lifted his face.

What was? Was she not allowed to recoil?

"You're afraid to touch me, to hurt me." Rush pulled her mind into a completely different direction with her words. "Why?"

Why? The last time she'd touched him she'd blown up his arm, he'd beaten her family to near death, and then he'd almost ripped her throat out. If she harmed him again, she was not likely to survive.

"It would be easier if I could bring myself to kill you." Rush let out a slow sigh, and a shudder ran down her. "I'm not going to hurt you." Rush's voice was and expression were calm, and as remained still, she breathed in a few times and her heart slowed. "It's not normal though." Rush stared into her eyes so deeply that it made her nervous, but with his hands planted firmly on either side of her face she couldn't look away.

"I'm not really normal." Me's grumble had Rush smiling, and the soft expression further easer her frantic nerve. For being an in the face vampire with zero social skills, he was at least patient.

"Can I kiss you?" Rush asked abruptly, and Mer froze. Since she'd woken, he'd yelled at her twice, smothered her with a pillow, thrown her from the bed, and called her a cobra.

Why would he want to kiss her? Either he was nuts or the biggest masochist she'd ever met.

"I..." Mer found no words, and Rush didn't mind filling the silence with the touch of his hands.

As if to convince her, he ran a finger down her face with the barest of touch until he found her chin, and then he trailed his thumb gently over her lip. The contact was sensual and terrifying at the same time, a soft caress yet soaked with dark magic. Aside from his lapse of judgement in his slumber, he'd only recoiled away from her. Rush had pulled his hand back as if she were on fire when he'd realized he'd touched her bare chest.

"Why?" Mer gathered the courage to ask, and he smiled, though it was almost a smirk.

"Because I want to."

Mer narrowed her eyes. That was not a reason. While her knee jerk reaction was to spit no in his face, she remembered the way his hand had moved down her back with desire, and his lips had crawled from her neck, to her chin, and then to her cheek with kissed that had been gentler than a feather's caress. None of it had been unpleasant, and she reddened as she met his waiting expression.

"Fine," Mer gave in, and his eyebrows rose to near his hairline. "What? Did you expect me to decline?"

"Yes," Rush said the word into her lips before he closed the small space between them.

Rush's lips on hers were just as soft as they'd been when he was half asleep, a gentle pressure, inviting but not demanding and very unlike what she expected from him. It was hard to breathe when he wound his hand into her hair and tickled her lips with his tongue. If she opened her mouth for more breath, he would most certainly steal his way into her mouth, but she couldn't help wanting to know what it felt like. Nothing about Rush was frightening right now, and she gave in to Rush's coaxing, and parted her lips.

The moment she gave in, Rush's tongue reached for hers and wrapped it as possessively as she would expect a vampire to. With just that touch, dark energy flowed into her body like she was absorbing him into herself, but it wasn't painful like the sun. Rush took over her body and soul as they melded together, and she lost herself so completely in him that she was reluctant and panting as he pulled back.

His cool green eyes and flat expression killed the lingering passion, and she leaned back wondering if she'd made the right decision to kiss him. Rush showed nothing on his face, and she had no way of knowing if he'd felt anything from kissing her. It was shameful, yes, but she had felt something, something more than just absorbing him into her. Always nice to have some Stockholm syndrome with your coffee in the morning... or night.

"Do you want to marry me?" The abrupt question from Rush's mouth had her breath stuttering.

It was hard enough to draw breath without him throwing something like that at her. Especially with that tone of voice that said he wasn't serious at all. Leave it to the guy with no tact to throw around things like that as if they were a joke.

"I don't even know you, and you definitely don't know me," Mer sputtered back.

"Well, if you don't intend to kill me, what is it you want?" Rush seemed bent on this, and she tried to roll around him, but he kept her pinned to the bed.

"What is it I want? I'm your prisoner."

"Yes. Does a prisoner not loathe their keeper? Why did you not kill me? I assume it has to be because you like me in some manner, but I am unsure. As I have said, I am not great with emotions."

"Kill you when? Do you mean your arm? That was an accident."

Rush stared silently. "Do you not remember?" Rush released her from the cage of his arms and legs, and she let out a breath as he flopped on his back.

"Remember what?"

"I intended to kill you." The statement drove a hole into her chest, and she pulled herself up on one arm to inch away from him. "The injury you inflicted on me was too grave for me to heal without draining you of every drop of your blood. It wasn't the injury itself but the amount of energy you forced into my body. It was eating me from the inside, and the only way to extinguish it was to extinguish you."

"Why am I still alive then?"

"You really do not remember."

Remember what? Passing out under his fangs as he went to kill her?

"You are of one of the strongest mage family's direct bloodlines. Meredith. You are powerful and dangerous. I am your enemy, a vampire, not someone you should think of as anything else. You are my prisoner."

"I understand that." Mer growled as she sat up, but he remained relaxed on his pile of pillows.

What was Rush trying to get at? He wanted to know why she hadn't killed him, but she didn't remember having that option.

"Meredith, do you know why you are not shackled?"

Mer had wondered at least once since she'd been conscious. Considering how he loved to shackle her, it had been surprising to wake up free.

"You've been asleep for two days, not one."

Wait what?

"I thought you were going to die. I took too much blood from you. I was sincere when I said I had intended to kill you. I had no choice. Prior to you injuring me, I had never intended to take blood from you in such a violent manner." Rush paused, eyeing her almost possessively, but the tilt of his brow seemed wary of her. "I will not do that to you again." Rush's tone was strange, as if he had not wanted to rip open her throat, but who was she to know what he thought or didn't? "Meredith, when I went to kill you, while I was draining you to death, you blew your shackles off."

"Well, at least I'm consistent." Mer whispered to herself more than Rush.

"Your power overwhelmed them, and shards of spellbound metal went straight into my chest. You reached for my damaged arm, and I couldn't remove my fangs from your neck. If I had, I would have died from the light eating me from the inside." Rush paused and sat up more to meet her gaze directly. "Meredith, you could have killed me there. I was vulnerable. It would have been easy. You should have. You didn't."

"Wait." That meant that while she had been hallucinating, she had not been hallucinating.

"Meredith, I'm not done." Rush continued, extending his hand to trail the side of her face and lift her chin. "You didn't just not kill me, Meredith. You did something no one should be able to do. You infused light magic with dark magic to heal me, a creature of the dark."

She had healed his arm? That would explain the plaid sweater at least.

"If anyone, let me stress anyone, knew that you could do that..." Rush sighed with more exasperation than his normal shows of annoyance. "Meredith, the mages would kill you, and every vampire house would want to obtain you."

Kill her? More great news for the weekend.

"You don't know your father's fate." When Rush, a vampire, had the audacity to mention her father, she snapped her anger at him in a look that could melt flesh. "Don't," Rush said, likely trying to get her to stop sliding magical aura daggers into his chest, but she was beyond that. "The acolytes, the mage houses, they all say we killed him. We did not."

Mer froze on those words. Of what actually had happened to her father, she knew very little, but it had been the consensus that vampires had killed him and her mother.

"Darc Aurion was the strongest of the mages, but he was so powerful because he couldn't fight with light magic. Darc's body refused it entirely. Able to only fight with the magic of dark creatures, it drove the man mad. Dark magic is not for humans. It rips their soul apart from the inside and turns them into something sinister."

~~~~~~~~~

Word Count: 1967