Blood Bound- Book 1 of the Bonded Series- Complete

Chapter 16

"Blood Bound"

2011 Copyright All Rights Reserved

Chapter 16

“What?”  Shelby asked, staring up at Leo pensively. 

 “Come here,” he repeated softly, his inky black eyes trained solely on her.

  

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” she replied, shaking her head from side to side and taking a cautious step backwards.

  

Leo followed her every move with his concentrated stare.  In so many ways she was still such a mystery to him. Even after watching her grow up, he thought he had her all figured out but now, with her standing here in front of him and her chin held up defiantly; he realized that there was so much more to his little Bride than meets the eye.  She had strength;  a strength of the likes that he had never imagined and that was a good thing. He just needed to figure out a way to get her to trust him, wholly and completely.

 “First off,” he started holding one finger up in the air, “You challenge a shifter, pretty much taking him down with simplistic ease.”  He held up a second finger in the air. “Then you storm in like an avenging angel and threaten an aged vampire which is basically suicide for a fledgling like you-  but now,” he said; arching his brow and holding his hand out in a grand gesture, “You look like a scared child when I ask you to come to me.”

  

He smiled knowingly at her,  “Now my sweet, what is wrong with this picture?”

 Shelby shrugged her shoulders, dropped her head and answered him meekly, “I dunno.”  When he put it like that, it really did seem outlandish but she couldn‘t help the things that she felt when she was around him.

 Leo took a step forward, closing some of the distance between them.  “ I believe you do my sweet,” he cooed.  He took another step so that he was now standing in front of her and pushed forward.  “I believe you’re scared Shelby; not of the many scary monsters that creep and crawl through the night but of what you feel here,” he told her, gently pressing his hand to her chest.  “You are terrified of what you feel for me.”

“No,” she whispered and closed her eyes, not wanting to talk about this right now.  It hurt to hear the truth.  She was having enough trouble sifting through her emotions on her own; she was by no means ready to talk about them with the very man the incited those feelings inside of her.  “You’re wrong.”

 Leo cupped her cheek with his large hand.  “No Shelby- I don’t think so, not this time.”  He held his hand there against her skin restraining himself from looking into her mind.  He wanted her to come to terms with the way that she felt for him once and for all and as stubborn as his Bride has proven to be, the only way that she would do that would be on her own. 

 Battling the riotous emotions simmering inside of her, Shelby fisted her hands by her side.  “Don’t you dare try and tell me what I feel and what I don’t feel Leo.”  She tried to step away from him, but he held her in place with a tender but firm grip of her cheek, “You don‘t even have a clue.”