Beyond The Fangs

Chapter 29

IZEL

My heart jolted when I woke up. 

I was in the arms of a vampire, and we were both half-naked. The skin-to-skin contact was on a whole other level. His arms were wrapped tight around me and—

Jaeger cleared his throat. The action tensed his stomach and I could feel the outline of his abs against my stomach, which sent sparks down to unmentionable places.

"I know you're awake now," he said, "I felt your breathing and pulse change."

Were we that close that he could feel that? I quickly removed my hands from around him and brought them against his chest to push myself away from him, but he didn't let me go. My hands were still on his chest, ripples shooting up my arms as I tried to push away from him. Rather than moving away from Jaeger, I suddenly found myself against him again. He had pulled me closer, securing his grip around me so I couldn't escape.

"What are you—?"

"You still want to kill me?" He asked, cutting me off. "If I remember correctly, you said you would wake up before me, and kill me."

"So?" I questioned, trying, and failing, to get away from him.

"I've been awake for almost an hour now, so you failed on the waking up before me part, and as for the killing... how's that going?" I could hear the amusement in his voice.

I growled, squirming, trying to free myself from his hold.

"I wasn't trying to kill you," he said. "I saved you."

"You threw me off a cliff!"

"I did, but I did that to save you."

"I could have saved myself," I snapped, "I'm a Vanquisher, one of the best."

"Yeah well, you were against a Quearus, one of the best. You had no weapons, your hands were tied and it kept trying to come to you. Do you know how hard it was to pull her back with a hand that was almost cut through?"

"I...don't...care." All I cared about was pushing away from him. I was warm enough but I just kept getting hotter the longer he held onto me.

"You wouldn't have been able to do anything weaponless and with your hands bound. The Quearus was relentless so the only way to survive was to—"

"Throw me off of a cliff?!"

"Precisely. You would have died if I hadn't."

"I could have died because you had!"

"But you didn't. I jumped in after you."

"So what? Do you want a thank you? You're a vampire so a fall like that wouldn't have killed you anyway. It's not like you risked your life for me or anything."

"I—" he paused as if being careful to choose his words. "I still jumped in, I could have just let you fall on your own, but I didn't."

I stopped my efforts to get out go his grip. He wasn't wrong. Would he have done that if he had been trying to kill me? Would he have made sure he hit the water first if he had been trying to kill me?

"I didn't want to kill you," he repeated, his voice surprisingly soft.

"Why'd you save me then?" I asked him. "You didn't have to jump in after me, so why'd you do that? You could have just left me to die so you'd know you wouldn't have to deal with me anymore. It probably felt good to toss me anyway, so why did you save me?"

He paused for a moment and I felt his breathing change, "I don't know," he finally said.

"What do you mean you don't know?" I asked.