by A. M. Hudson
“This won’t work.”
His hands left my waist, moved down and lifted my ankle, then rolled the boot off my foot and peeled my sock away.
“Mm. Sexy,” I joked, with a giggle.
“Well,” he said, hooking his fingers into the back of my jeans again, “now that part’s over—”
Hiding giggles behind my hands, I lifted my hips, letting him shuffle the sticky denim down my thighs—stopping to push my underwear back in place as the jeans dragged them down, leaving me cool and shivery—covered only in little bumps of angst and a pair of wet underwear. Wet, totally unfashionable, old-and-comfy undies.
“Look at you.” He shook his head softly, his deep, whispery voice filling my heart with its presence. He smiled then, standing up, tinkering with the button on his jeans. “You may be half emaciated, Ara, but you are still very beautiful.”
I pinched my hip, still able to grab a little bit of flesh. “I’m not emaciated.”
“No.” He landed beside me, his hands taking his weight as his almost completely bare flesh touched my quilt. My quilt. Finally. “But I don’t ever want to see you this thin again.”
“Yes, Boss,” I said, and as much as I didn’t want to, I had to shift away from the spot we were laying, inching up the bed to the pillow—away from the moist circle of left-over lake, hoping David would follow me.
As I rolled my cheek into the pillow, smoothing an itch away, David appeared beside me, comfortable and relaxed. We laid nose to nose, our knees tucked up, touching, our hands gathered to our chests.
“I missed you,” I said.
He nodded. “I know.”
The cold took hold of me then, opening the door to exhaustion. I sniffed and snuggled closer to my vampire, raising a hand to trace the side of his body, stopping on his jocks. “How did you get these dry?”
He smiled. “I put new ones on.”
“I didn’t even see you do it.”
“I know.” His smile became wider for every second we stared into each other’s eyes; months of separation becoming rolled into so many thoughts driven by our desires over that time. My breath mimicked those thoughts, flooding me with heat and a tight tingle, centering at the core of my body. But, as he obviously read the desires playing out in my mind, a dense cool replaced the smile in his eyes. “Stop thinking that way, Ara.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“Because of the spirit bind thing?” My small fist pushed me up to sit.
“Yes. You have to move on one day. If you’re bound to me, you will never be capable of it.”
“Is it not possible that I’m already bound to you? That maybe I don’t need to make love to you first?”
He shook his head, staying calm under my rising air of infuriation. “Not like this. If you let me have you, you won’t want to live when I leave.”
“Then make love to me,” I breathed, closing my eyes and rolling back on the bed. “Because if we can’t be together, forever, then I want to be dead.”
“Oh, how I missed your melodrama.”
“Time’s changed things, David. It’s no longer just melodrama. I mean it. I’ll die when you leave.”
“Die, or kill yourself?”
“I don’t know.” My lips turned down with thought. “Why don’t you just make love to me, then kill me yourself.”
“Ara!” He lifted my head delicately, his sparkling eyes wide. “Please don’t say things like that.”
“Why?”
“Because I love you. The thought of you not existing in this world is too much for me. I can’t die, and I can’t go on without you. Please, just live—just be happy, for me?”
“No, I can’t. I tried that—I wasn’t living.”
He laid back, pulling me onto his chest; every limb that could possibly touch entangled like a mess of twisted vines. It felt so right. Which made it so unfair that it couldn’t be for forever.
“Can we please not fight about this?” He seemed to be talking to a distant me, like I wasn’t in the room; his eyes, his touch, somewhere farther away. “Can we just pretend like we have forever?”
I was too tired to argue. I let it go without another word, choosing, instead, to memorise every imperfection on his chest. Under my fingertips, his skin rose with little bumps. I didn’t know vampires could even get goosebumps, and it made him feel so human, so normal, that I half expected to hear his heart beat.
Suddenly, David held a quick breath and cupped my hand, stopping its motion. “What?” I looked up at him.
“I need to eat.” He appeared by the bedroom door.
“Really? Now?” I motioned down at my near-nakedness.
“Yes. Either I get blood, or I eat you,” he joked, but his eyes widened for a second.
“Then eat me.” I sat up, holding out my wrist. “Save a life—drink my blood.”
The light outside made everything more visible in the darkness of my room; the morning was near, and though I was exhausted from lack of sleep, the idea of David drinking my blood made me feel like the night was new.
He hesitated, in all his perfectly-toned loveliness, by the door.
“David, you know you can do it without killing me. You know you want to.”
Strong, cool hands slid along the base of my back before I saw him appear. He lifted me into his lap, wrapping my legs around his hips as he sat on the edge of the bed. An image alert forced my eyes to close as he looked into them—the scene of the night his brother kidnapped me and held me this same way appearing on the backs of my eyelids.
I breathed in deeply, then out. It’s not the same. He may look the same as Jason, hold me the same, but it’s David’s breath brushing my collarbone, his hands clutching my hips and his skin I can feel beneath my legs. And I feel safe.
The tension in my shoulders dissolved.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah.” I rested my brow to his. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Do you need to talk about it?”
I could see the concern in his eyes, but it was deeply masked by his obvious hunger, and I knew he was struggling to play the caring boyfriend under the strain of the instinct-driven vampire.
“I’m fine. Are we going to do this or what?”
Ignoring my feistiness, he swept my hair delicately away, revealing my shoulder. “If I drink from you—” He swallowed. “I’d need to take a fair bit. It will drain you—leave you weak.”
“Okay.”
“But, you could drink from me after...” his tone sung with suggestion.
“You don’t even need to ask.”
He smiled. “Okay then. Try not to scream.”
“Right. I remember, it excites the monster.”
“Right.” He inched forward, his eyes, his lips hesitant, his tongue searching the boundaries of his teeth as he lingered at the curve of my neck, his hands taut with nerves or fear around my hips.
“Do it.” I closed my eyes, pressing my skin to his mouth. “Just bite me.”
His ribs expanded with a breath, his fingernail racing to my neck, slicing deeply before his lips encased the skin—forming a seal. Searing tension rolled up from my curled toes, tightened my thighs, creeping up through my twisted stomach, into my fingers, which clutched his back for every breath he stole from me with his bite.
Sharp teeth parted the wound viscously; I squeaked, but the ecstasy of the tight pull and the shiver of nerves—nerves of pleasure—seeped down my rigid body, relaxing my arms, my fingers, my legs. I sunk deeper into his hold and rolled my cheek away from his ear, opening my throat to him, trusting him, this dangerous predator, with my life.
It was as if I could hear my own heart beating; two beats, then stop. A breath held. Two more beats. One more breath. I wanted more. The pleasure of his lips after so long was like an insatiable hunger. But he bit so softly, playing games with my desires.
“Bite me harder,” I breathed, fighting an inhuman urge to throw him down and bite him back.
> He shook his head, his silky tongue caressing my skin, the muscle in his throat shifting with each gulp of my life.
It just wasn’t enough.
Lust or hope or happiness or anger, I wasn’t sure, raged inside me. I needed, wanted, craved more from him.
The good girl in me surrendered to the beastly urge and I pressed my fingertips to his jaw, forcing his lips off my neck.
“Ara? What’s wrong?” He breathed heavily, his lips seeping with red, like the thick juice of berries.
I couldn’t speak. My playful side emerged; I forced him onto his back and mounted his hips, my hair hanging in his face as I leaned close. Blood trickled from my stinging, gaping neck, over my collarbone, onto his skin—each drop running over the ridges of his chest, staining the sheets beneath. The whole room seemed to turn beige then, the colours of the night seeping away with the rising sun, making the walls, the white sheets and the air feel warm, closed in, romantic.
But inside me, the addiction burned stronger, chased here by the weakness of lost blood, unbearable, intangible, a sordid feeling I didn’t even want to control. I felt more like David, like I belonged with him, for once. Like I could take life and not regret it.
His black eyes watched me, changing again as the green consumed the hunger within him. He tried to sit up; “What’s wrong, Ara? Did I hurt you?”
I held him down, a flat palm to his chest.
“I didn’t use my fangs,” he promised.
“I know.” I leaned closer. “But I’m going to.”
His fingertip slipped between me and my eagerness, slicing an exit point for his blood, approving its leave from his veins to enter my own, to fuel me, fuel my addiction, to be a part of me as only a vampire could.
The cold taste of sweet sugar burned the back of my throat before my lips felt his skin. My tongue beat my teeth to his flesh and revelled in the smooth, soothing milk of his blood—making my mouth’s water pool up under my lips.
Nothing in the world tasted like this—not even Eric.
David’s blood was made for me.
I sucked hard against him, forcing my teeth together.
“Ara, my love.” He rolled his head back, tangling his fingers in my hair at the base of my neck. “You have the softest bite.”
He’d probably never before felt human teeth, prising open his flesh as his blood spilled past. It must be a lot rougher, more animalistic to do this with two vampires—both the predator, both the fighter. And I imagined, as the breath I exhaled dragged a rise of exhaustion with it, that vampires must last that little bit longer, too.
I flopped down on the pillow and David rolled up, resting his body between my legs.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Mm-hm.” I nodded, smearing blood across my cheek rather than wiping it away. “But, you shouldn’t lay there if you’re not going to make love to me, David—it isn’t fair.”
“Yeah?” He gave an easy smile, tracing a line down the centre of my body. “But then I couldn’t do this.”
The muscles in my legs stiffened pleasantly as he scrolled his fingertip along my inner thigh. It tickled so much I almost wanted to crawl away.
David gave an entertained chuckle, doing it again. “I like touching you here,” he said. “It’s nice that you’re so comfortable with me.”
“Guess that kinda comes naturally when you let someone drink your blood.”
“Yeah,” he said, his lips gently kissing my upper thigh between words. “Or when you’re in love.”
I rolled my head to let out a breath, and my cheek meshed against a sticky paste—reminding me of the gaping laceration on my neck. But the sting was nothing now, with the pleasant sear of his blood coursing through my veins and the thrill of ecstasy forcing my every thought to desires a good girl would never let herself imagine.
I hardly even worried about how pale my legs might look or the fact that I hadn’t shaved them today. Even as the warmth of his lips, which were cool before, touched the border of my underwear, the only thought in my mind was of us; chest to chest, lip to lip, connected the way I’d wanted for so long.
“Ara?” he said, and I looked down at him. “Can I—” He ran a fingertip over the scar on my inner thigh. “Can I bite you here?”
I hesitated, but only for a second. “Yes.”
A wave of butterflies rolled through my stomach. I drew a quick breath as his teeth sank in, reopening the skin his brother had once before. But, even though, in my mind, I couldn’t remember the actual pain of Jason biting me there—only remember that it hurt so badly I wanted to die—when David pressed his teeth to the scar and the skin popped open under them, I felt only tight pressure, like a longing kiss.
Eric was right. The lust, the magic of the vampire kill felt only pleasurable. I wanted to feel his fangs though. I could feel the strength of his bite and it made me hot inside just thinking how safe I was with him; how he’d never deliberately hurt me, never let me get hurt. He was strong. Stronger and more capable than Mike, and his teeth, though they could make me feel a pleasure that would see me hate myself in the daylight, could also do great damage to anyone who wanted to hurt me. Of that, I was sure.
So I laid back and let him drink from me, from a place I had never willing let any man be near before. And it felt so right—for at least until the morning rose completely.
With a soft, vocalised exhalation, David’s lips moved up my inner thigh, over the joining bone to my hip—I’m so glad I waxed there at least—then softly, with his blood-wet kisses, followed the contour of my waist to just below my ribs. He sank his fangless bite in again, forcing a lusted breath to escape my lips as I arched my back, pressing myself closer the same way the girl in the tent at Karnivale did.
I could feel it, the way she would have felt. Safe, wanting, loved. She knew she shouldn’t feel that way, but, at the same time, like me, she also didn’t care. She wanted to die at his hands, and my thoughts were just as sick as hers.
“Are you okay?” David asked under his breath, his voice coming across with an undertone of a smile. When he looked up at me with liquid-red lips and jet-black eyes, I rolled my head back and smiled.
“I like you like this.”
“Ha,” he laughed softly, sliding his body over mine until he came to rest against me. “You always were a little sadistic.”
I studied his bloodied lips, considering them long before I said, “Kiss me.” And he did. Human blood and vampire blood once again mixed in my mouth—salt and sugar—making a new memory for me to hold onto when I breathed his sweet, chocolaty cologne. I traced his fang with my tongue then drew his lip into my teeth, and bit down.
“Ow,” he muttered into my mouth.
You’re so cute when you feel pain. It made me laugh so much it was hard to keep kissing. I moved my lips to the other side of his neck and scraped my nail over his skin. “Let me try to bite you?”
“You know, you might actually be able to,” he said thoughtfully. “I barely needed a scratch before to break it.”
“Why? Why are you so weak?” I kept tracing the skin, imagining cutting through it.
“I’m weak, this is the first blood I’ve had in nearly a fortnight.”
“Ouch, that must have hurt to go so long without food.”
“You might say I felt I deserved it.”
I offered a sympathetic tilt of my head to his bashful smile. “How ‘bout I hurt you instead—with my teeth. I think that’s a better punishment.”
“I have to say, I agree.” We both laughed.
My jaw stretched and my tongue pulled to the back of my throat as I drew cold air before the bite, practicing the best theatrical version of a vampire I could manage. My eyes bulged, my mind racing as his skin cracked open, splitting under my teeth—like bitting into a cling-wrapped sandwich. Each tiny, straight bone made it through, deeper where my own puny fangs sat. His blood filled my mouth again, and I released the tension of my jaw to draw back the liquid.
It
felt good, a deep kind of good, like that pasta you’ve been craving all week; when you finally get it, you have to rush it down so you can fit it all in.
My tongue guided each drop to the back of my throat as it entered my ravenous lips, and David squeezed my thighs with his strong hands—wanting me, loving me, inviting me.
A warm tingle rose up from my stomach, making my heart thump unnaturally, bringing a new kind of sensation, almost like being ultimately full with hot cocoa—your feet warmed by the fire, a soft pillow on your lap, and a few melted remains of marshmallow on the corner of your lip. I turned my head away from his skin, dizzy and breathless, yet so strangely energised, my limbs racing with an almost electrical charge.
David rolled onto his back, folding my floppy, overly-relaxed body against his chest. “Are you okay, my love?”
“Mm-hm.” I nodded, taking a long, deep breath. “Eric was right.”
“About what?” David’s arm tightened around me.
“Lust.” I could barely stay awake long enough to form words. “The kill is an act of lust, he told me. Blood lust...desire.”
“Yes. It’s not supposed to hurt. Like my brother’s...” he said the end bit more quietly, probably not intended for my ears, but I heard it anyway.
“No. It was nothing like Jason’s. Yours was like...magic.”
“Yes.” He swiped my hair back and kissed my head. “Just like magic.”
“I like your magic,” I whispered, taking the hand of the Sandman as he led me away to the world of restful dreams.
Chapter 9
The daylight felt unwelcome in my room, even the song of the birds, usually able to bring me a smile, had intruded on dreams too early. I wanted more of the night with David—more blood, more of...him.
I inched an extended arm close to his body, tipping my fingers backward to trace a gentle line along him under the sheets. Still there. Not a dream. Real. I pushed up on my elbows, feeling stiff all over, like I’d just slept for two days, and looked beside me to the pillow that was usually cold and bare in the morning. My angelic vampire, laying on his back, his arm still shaped to hold my body, his deep breath coming softly between loosely parted lips, looked completely relaxed and so, so human. Trust—implicit and unguarded.
