Immortal Desire Read Online Free PDF

out there , then. “If we don’t get this sorted out, you’re right. You’re going to die.”
    * * *
    Bailey pressed the heels of her hands against her temples. Surely she’d heard him wrong. A quick glance at his face said otherwise. The only surprise was that she wasn’t entirely surprised. She’d been waiting for this moment. The fear he’d given voice to had painted a patina of dread over her life as her symptoms grew worse.
    Several weeks ago she’d broken down and talked to her doctor. He’d run a battery of tests. Nothing more than a few oddities—higher than normal hormone levels, a raised baseline temperature, slightly elevated blood pressure—showed up. As a precaution, he’d referred her to a reproductive specialist. She’d accepted the referral. Then she’d skipped the appointment. She hadn’t been brave enough to reschedule. Not yet. Not when she might be empowering a stranger to take something irreplaceable from her again. Not when she didn’t have anyone to trust her fears to. Bailey was alone and had never more reminded of it than in that moment.
    Hot fingers brushed over her cool skin and startled her.
    She moved to the sofa with short, jerky steps and half sat, half fell into the deep leather cushions. “Dying?” She shook her head. “You can’t know that.”
    “Look, Bailey, you’re a—”
    “You can’t know that,” she shouted. “You’re not a doctor, you’re not a...a...you own a freaking bar! Unless you’ve got a magically diagnostic dick, you’re not qualified to tell me what’s wrong.”
    Griff shoved his hands in his pockets and widened his stance. “I’ve been where you are, gone through exactly what you’re experiencing. I’d say that makes me pretty damned qualified.”
    “You can’t understand.” She looked out over the city. So alive. It fed her need to feel connected to something, anything. She’d been alone so long. The thought that Griff might be right, that she could die in her small apartment with no one to hold her as she faded, tripped every fear response she had.
    History caught up to her when Griff’s phone rang. His voice registered, low and slow, as memories abused her in vivid color. She was suddenly four years old all over again. Staring blankly at hands at once so capable and so ineffectual, she shuddered. These were the hands that had held her mother as she died in a dingy efficiency apartment as the phone rang incessantly.
    Bill collectors. It had probably been bill collectors.
    Death’s magnitude had been beyond her comprehension as she waited for her mother to wake up. For two days she stayed with her mother’s body.
    “Bailey?”
    The phone kept ringing. She finally answered, pleading with the only adult she could get to listen to help her. Police arrived. She was taken from her mother, stuck in a broken system of ever-changing homes. Alone. Forgotten. Abandoned.
    “Bailey.” Griff’s voice swept through the fragmented memories, anchoring her in the present.
    Griff. She knew him better than she’d ever known her mother, knew what he looked like when he smiled, knew how he sounded with laughter tickling his words.
    Her fingers shook violently as she traced the numb contours of her lips. Impulse drove her to press hard enough to split the fragile skin against her teeth. The copper tang of blood hit her tongue. She prodded the wound, hungry for the pain and the proof it afforded. Dark red stained her fingers. Proof I’m alive.
    “Listen to me, Bailey.” Griff dropped to the sofa. Cushions sank under his weight, and she slid toward him. He gripped her wrist. “I can get you through this.”
    She curled her fingers over the bloodstain and looked up, searching his face. “I don’t even know what ‘this’ is.”
    His fingers tightened. “Do you know anything about your parents?”
    “Not really. I never knew my dad. My mom died when I was little, so I was handed over to the State’s foster care system.” The scars of time