Time After Time (Cora's Bond) Read online

  “I am led to understand that such parties at times have ended in arrests,” he said dryly.

  I angled my head to look up at him. “So why were you okay with it?”

  “Because I trusted you,” he said. “And besides, Clarissa came along, if her help was needed. And the guards.”

  I giggled. “When Clarissa is the person you send to keep people out of trouble, I think you may need more reliable friends.”

  He hugged me against his body. “But there are two Clarissas. Don’t you know? The cleverly dangerous one, and the dangerously clever one.”

  The limo from the week before was waiting for us at the curb as we stepped out of the club, Jenkins standing at the door. Dorian handed me into the car, and I scooted across the bench to make room for him.

  “All things considered, though, I’d rather have you,” I said.

  He swung into his seat and plucked the veil from my head, discarding it on the floor of the car. “It’s a good thing, because I’m the one you have.”

  I leaned over impulsively and planted a peck on his lips—or at least, what was meant to be a peck, because as soon as our lips met, it turned into anything but that.

  “Privacy screen,” I muttered against his mouth as Jenkins got into the front of the car. Dorian reached beside him and hit a switch, and the divider slid silently up.

  The trip to Dorian’s house wasn’t half as long as I wish it had been.

  Chapter Ten

  The music swelled around me as I flipped through the Instagram pictures from the bachelorette party. The photos were somehow vaguely disappointing in their interchangeability. There I was, complete with paper crown, tiara, and Bride shirt, holding various mixed drinks that I’d hardly sipped as my friends mugged for the camera with varying levels of ridiculousness.

  It looked exactly like thousands of other bachelorette parties, which I supposed had been at least a part of the point. And yet I still had the feeling that it had had something special, something unique about it that couldn’t be captured by phone cameras and retro filters. It was the end of an era for me, a transition to something that was more meaningful than what the snapshots could reveal.

  It had also been the scene of the most epic mechanical bull ride ever, even if I hadn’t been the one on the device’s back.

  Christina and Chelsea had littered all the pictures with comments and hashtags already, and both Sarah and Hannah had replied to a few. Lisette, who was usually quite the social butterfly, tended to be a bit less active on Instagram—not the least of which was because her sister and brother both followed her and would happily rat out anything that she did that was in the least bit questionable to their parents. But she was oddly quiet even for Instagram, and a quick hop over to Facebook showed no activity on her account since the party last night.

  I frowned until I remembered the big finance exam we both had the next week. Lisette had a lot more self-discipline than I did, and when a test was coming up, she went into social media lockdown until she was confident that she was ready for it. That could account for it—after the party, she must have felt the need to hit the lockdown early.

  I texted her anyway, asking her what time she’d gotten back to the dorm. Whatever kind of social media fast Lisette went on, she never stopped answering—and sending—text messages.

  There was a knock on my bedroom door just as I hit send, and I flipped over to the house app to check who it was just as the door opened.

  Dorian, of course.

  “You could have waited until I told you to come in,” I said.

  “I could have,” he agreed. “But I didn’t.”

  “You won’t,” I retorted. “I wait until you answer, you know.”

  “I don’t know why. This house is yours as much as it is mine.”

  I snorted and leaned back in the chair, stretching my feet out on the ottoman in front of me.

  “So what is that?” he asked, sitting across from me and nodding to the sounds coming from my phone.

  “Listening to our wedding music,” I said. “Jane sent the rest of Tan Dun’s composition. Of course, it’s all computer-generated right now. The real orchestra and choir are still in rehearsals. Lisette always jokes that her life should have a soundtrack. She won’t, maybe, but our wedding will.” I held up a finger playfully, as if to forestall some comment that Dorian didn’t actually seem inclined to make. “And two bands to play classical and popular standards, Jane tells me, once the reception begins in earnest.”

  “Is that what she says?” Dorian asked. “And what do you think about that?”

  I allowed myself a smug smile. “I think it’s pretty awesome. I think our whole wedding is going to be pretty awesome.”

  “One week away,” Dorian said.

  “I know. I find it hard to believe. A week, and then...I’ll be Mrs. Dorian Thorne.” I smiled a little self-consciously. “You know, I haven’t really thought about that. Taking a new name, I mean.”

  “If you wish to keep your own—” Dorian began.

  I shook my head. “My name comes from my father, and I never met him. My Gramma’s last name was Lowden, and she’s the one who raised me. Of all the things I’ve done that I’m most afraid might cut my connection to my friends and my past, that doesn’t even rank in the top fifty.”

  “And what are those other things?” he asked, more seriously this time.

  I set my phone next to me, letting the slightly tinny music from the speakers keep playing. “Well, for one, there’s marrying a blood-sucking vampire rather than a nice human boy with a white-collar job who wants to live with me in a twenty-first century marriage of equals as we both pursue our careers.”

  “Ah, yes,” he said. “That.”

  “Minor detail, I know,” I said. “And then there’s the fact that I’m not going to go to the graduate university of my dreams.”

  Dorian didn’t move. He didn’t even blink. For one long moment, all he did was look at me, his blue eyes so sharp I thought my soul would bleed. Then one dark wing of a brow twitched, and he said, “So what are you going to do instead?”

  “I have acceptances from University of Maryland and Georgetown,” I said. “UMD’s supposed to be a bit better, but I guess I’ll tour Georgetown after spring break and talk to the professors there before I choose.”

  “Cora,” Dorian began, but then he stopped himself. He gave a chuckle—not a knowing one, not the usual one, thick with sexual intent, but a short, self-effacing laugh. “I don’t know whether to say thank you or I’m sorry.”

  “You’re not forcing me,” I said. “As you said, it’s my choice now what I do with my life...within limitations, and most of those limitations weren’t put into place by you. We have to face reality as it actually is, as you’ve said so many times, not as it might be or I’d like it to be. So that means that I’m not going to University of Chicago.”

  I glanced over at my phone, which was playing the theme for our first dance. “I haven’t even fully decided that I’ll be going anywhere. I don’t know what I’m going to do with my life, to be honest.”

  Dorian stood up and crossed over to my side. “You’re going to be with me. Isn’t that enough?”

  I tilted my head to look up at him. “You are the most insufferably arrogant man that I’ve ever met.”

  “That’s not a no.” He extended a hand to me, and warily, I took it. He pulled me to my feet, and somehow in the same motion, his grip transformed into a dance hold, and he began to maneuver me across the rug.

  “Oh, Dorian, I can’t,” I said, stumbling over my own feet.

  He stopped, but he didn’t loosen his grip. “Do you trust me?” he asked.

  I licked my lips nervously. I didn’t trust him. Not entirely. I knew what was inside him—and what was inside me.

  As if he read my mind, he said, “For just this. One dance. Will you trust me? Will you let me in?”

  “And change things,” I said.

  His arms tightened around me. �
�Only for the time that our fingers touch. And then—it will be gone. Like mist in the midday sun. Or you could spend the next week taking dancing lessons. Up to you.”

  I wondered what part of him was posing that question—the dark part or the light. But it was so easy, too easy to surrender. I knew that he didn’t have to ask and yet he was anyway, and he was also giving me an opportunity to opt out of a week of dance lessons, which, knowing my two left feet, probably wouldn’t do much good anyway....

  “All right,” I said. “You can show me. This once.”

  “Once now, and once again on our wedding day,” he corrected.

  “Fine, on our wedding day,” I agreed. I could feel the power of him around my mind, like a strong hand cradling the most fragile egg.

  “Then just...trust,” he said.

  And with that, his power washed over me, lightening me somehow and flowing down to my feet. He stepped with the music, and I moved with him, my body attuned perfectly to his.

  Once before he had done this for me—or rather to me, against my will. But this time, my agreement made his power in harmony with my will, and only the faintest flutters of unease ran through me, which were easily borne away on the surge of the music.

  I floated across the room in Dorian’s arms as if I’d been made for them, our feet stepping in perfect time until the very last note, at which he spun me out softly and then back in, to his arms.

  “Let go, and it will be broken,” he said softly, bending to my ear.

  I didn’t want to. Instead, I wanted to explore all the other things that Dorian could do with this rhythm that he had created between us.

  Just then, my phone rang, cutting through the music. I stepped away from Dorian, and the spell was instantly broken.

  “Sorry,” I said as I grabbed for my phone.

  It wasn’t Lisette but Christina. I frowned at the phone and hit the button to answer it. “Yes?” I asked.

  “Hey, Cora,” she said. “I was just wondering if you might have picked up that bamboo bracelet I was wearing.”

  Dorian’s eyebrows shot up, and in his gaze I read his unspoken question: You answered the phone for this?

  “No, I’m afraid I didn’t,” I said, waving him off.

  “Damn. I was just hoping.... Well, I borrowed it from Lisette, actually, because it went really well with those shoes that I was wearing. And I remember taking it off at the table at the last club, and I hoped that one of you had picked it up because I called the club and they said they didn’t find it.”

  “Did you ask everyone else?” I suggested.

  “That’s the thing,” she said. “I did ask everyone else except those girls I didn’t really know. And Lisette, of course. Because I didn’t want to tell her I’d lost it if I could find it first.”

  “Well, maybe you should ask her,” I said.

  Christina sighed. “God, I screwed up. Okay. Put her on.”

  I froze. “What did you say?”

  “Put her on,” Christina repeated, more slowly this time. “I don’t know why you just invited her back to Dorian’s place with those other girls. The rest of your old friends would have liked to join the after party, too, you know. But I guess she’s your best friend, so I kind of understand—”

  “But she’s not here,” I said. “Nobody’s here. I mean, nobody you’ve met except for Dorian and me.”

  “But you texted us all,” Christina said. “You wrote, ‘We’re going now.’ And Sarah and Hannah said that they saw you and all your new friends head for the door.”

  “They were going home,” I said. “In their own cars. When I left, Lisette was with you. I waved to her. She was standing there, talking to a curly-haired guy—”

  Suddenly, my brain caught up with the words that I was saying, and I said, “Got to go. I’ll call you, okay?” I tapped to disconnect the phone and then jumped to the pictures that I’d stored on it.

  Party, party, party, party. I paged through them frantically. And then I found it, and I stopped and stared: a picture of a guy with light brown curly hair. Except that he wasn’t talking with Lisette. He was shoving a piece of paper under my windshield wiper.

  And with that, the whole world dropped from under my feet.

  “What is it?” Dorian demanded. “What’s happening?”

  I held the phone up, and he stared at it uncomprehendingly.

  “It’s the Kyrioi,” I said. “They have Lisette.”

  The story continues in the FINAL book of Cora’s Bond...

  World Enough and Time

  Cora’s Bond – Book 6

  Aethereal Bonds

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  My shifter novella serials usually come out on the first Tuesday of every month. Start with Taken: The Alpha’s Captive #1.

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  I live near Washington, D.C., with my family—the usual husband and kids contingent, with extended relatives who pop in and out of the house from time to time. A proud geek, I love fantasy, romance, science fiction, and historical fiction. I’m a compulsive dreamer, and I feel spoiled to be able to be able to make a career out of imagining things!

  Table of Contents

  Book Description

  Aethereal Bonds

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Afterword