by A. M. Hudson
Gulp. “Em, it was David who overruled him.”
She shrunk, her mouth simultaneously getting rounder and bigger; she hugged her knees, looking down. “David?”
“He just saw you as a human—nothing more.”
Emily slid her tongue between her lips, taking a breath that made her spine straighten. “Damn it.”
“What?”
“Damn David. I have a right to be mad. I want to be mad, but God dammit! I get that! I get why he didn’t help. It’s not fair. He always escapes me being mad at him.”
I laughed. “I know. He does it to me all the time.”
“God. Well, now I’m mad that I can’t be mad at him.”
Oh, I know that feeling too well. “So, how does that feel?” I said. “To wake up and just suddenly not care about us anymore—to lose all human compassion?”
She smiled to herself. “It was...relieving.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Until I saw Mike, and I’ve never, ever been in so much pain in all my human years. Jason’s bite, breaking up with boys—none of it hurt anywhere near as much as falling in love in that one moment; losing yourself completely and then having it all ripped away when he...when he...”
“When he refused to acknowledge your existence.”
She nodded, hugging her knees tighter. “I know now what David’s gone through—loving you. You should feel what I go through loving you, and I don’t even love you in that way.”
I laughed, rolling my head back.
“So many things have been fitting together since I found out David’s a vampire,” Emily said. “I had barely any time as a human to process it, but, I mean, all that weird behaviour; the popping up unexpected thing, the knowing what I was thinking.” She shook her head, smiling. “Do you know how many times he answered thoughts I hadn’t said?”
“He did it to me, too,” I said with wide eyes emphasising my frustration. “He told me he had to bite his tongue every time I’d have one of my, what he called silly thoughts about not being good enough for him. He said he nearly picked me up and shook me so many times.” We both laughed.
“Yeah. You were pretty silly.” Emily took my hand and traced my new engagement ring with her thumb. “That boy loved you from the minute he saw you—there was never any doubts about it.”
“Do you still love Jason now? Now that you know about him?”
“No.” She shook her head with certainty. “I did. Even while I was with Mike that first night. But now I know what he did to you—what he’s capable of…”
“I feel sorry for him.” I flicked the safety chain on Emily’s sliver padlock bracelet.
“Really?” She looked at me, her lip turning up in disgust. “Why?”
“I don’t know. I can’t say it’s rational. But he saved me. He hurt me, yes, but I understand what the monster in him is, and that the part of him that’s truly Jason...never wanted to do that.”
“Whoa, Ara,” Emily said. “How can you even say that?”
I rolled onto my back and rested my hands behind my head. “He’s David’s brother. I feel for him. Kind of...as if he was David, too—an extension of him. I don’t know, it’s like we have a connection.”
“A connection?” she said, but her tone screamed really freakin worried here!
“Don’t worry, Em. I’m not about to go be his friend or anything. I just find it hard to hate him.”
“So, you forgive him then?”
“I wouldn’t go as far as to say forgive—but understand?” I shrugged.
Emily’s eyes widened and she opened her mouth, her words stopping when Mike popped his head in the door. “Em, you coming for a run?”
She leaned down and kissed my forehead, suddenly standing in front of me. “Congratulations, Ara. I hope I get to be a bridesmaid again.”
“Definitely.” I grinned.
As she walked out of the room, I listened to the quiet hum of my little family talking and laughing by the front door. This is nice. Finally, after so much heartache and loneliness, I feel I truly have a place in the world.
Chapter 17
“So you told her anyway.” David leaned on the doorframe, breaking my reverie. “Even though we agreed you wouldn’t.”
“Yes. And you knew I would. Eventually.”
“She hates me now.” He appeared on the bed where Emily had been. “She won’t forgive me for making Jason leave her.”
“Wanna bet?” I raised a brow at him. “She’d forgive you if you were the one that turned her.” Besides, what’d you care?
“I know,” he said, obviously missing my thought. “I just feel bad, that’s all.”
“Hindsight.” I shrugged. “Twenty-twenty.”
“Shame about that. Things would be easier if I could predict the future.”
“Things would be easier if I could read minds, but—” I didn’t have anything to add, leaving the but as an end to my statement.
“Trust me, it’s not as fun as you’d think.” He folded his fingers into his lap, crossing his ankles at the foot of the bed.
“I think the bad is something I’d be willing to live with—to have the good.”
He smiled broadly. “Is that an undercurrent I hear in your sentence, Ara-Rose?”
“What, me—hinting on a greater meaning?” I scoffed. “Never.”
His ran his thumb down the tip of his nose, a human move reserved for awkward situations. “What is it, Ara? What’s eating you?”
“You mean aside from the obvious?” I smirked at his teeth.
“Yes, aside from me, what’s eating you?”
I stared him down, my lips twitching with internal dialogue—dialogue he couldn’t hear. “Will I want to kill you when I’m Lilithian?”
His lips pursed. “So that’s what you two were talking about.”
I nodded.
“No. You won’t, Ara. It doesn’t work like that.”
“Then what are you worried about—why don’t you want me to be Lilithian?”
“It’s not that, sweetheart.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s many things.” He sat tall and turned slightly to look at me. “I don’t want you to go through the pain of transformation. I don’t want you to struggle to find food, I don’t want you to feel the hunger, the lust for blood, and I don’t want your human innocence, your purity, to be destroyed because of me—a creature who has no real right to exist.”
I exhaled. “Does a lion have a right to live?”
“Huh?”
“Answer me. Do you not marvel at the lion, do you not awe the speed, agility, expertise of his attack? You’re no different, David. Humans are, for all intents and purposes, parasites. How long did you think it would be before we dropped a rank in the food chain?”
He smirked, obviously liking my direction.
“What you do,” I said, “what the lion does, what you are, doesn’t make you unworthy of existence. It’s horrible, but you’re still good.”
His eyes became small. “You hate it when I think otherwise, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I love you.”
“And if you love me, then there must be something wrong with you.”
“I never said that.”
“No, but you’re justifying my existence so you suffer no guilt for loving me—being that your feelings, obviously, in some distorted way, condone my actions.”
I went to retaliate, but bit my tongue. “Maybe. I’ve never really analysed my human emotional inner-workings. I’ll ask Vicki,” I said with a certain amount of enthusiasm.
David laughed. “I can just see that conversation unfolding. Rather amusing.”
I flopped down on the pillow beside him, my ear against his upper arm, my hand in his, and we laid that way for a while, the house quiet around us with Emily and Mike off for a run. “Hey, David?”
“Yeah?”
“Since we’re getting married and, y
ou know, we’re gonna be together for eternity, do you think...”
“Whoa!” He held up a hand and rolled onto his side to face me. “I know what you’re about to say.”
“You do?”
“Yes.” He blinked, letting out a breath. “You want to have sex.”
I smiled. “Well, yeah, but, for a reason.”
“Other than wanting to have sex?” The humour in his voice made me smile.
“Yeah, kinda. It was more that I wanted to feel what it’s like to be spirit bound, you know, to not feel things for Mike anymore, to not think of him.”
David frowned.
“Emily said that when she woke up—as a vampire—it was a relief not to feel anything for us humans anymore. I just...I wanted to know what that feels like before I become a vampire.”
His face showed visible signs of anguished and carnal thoughts ticking through his mind. “Really?”
“Yeah.” I nodded, breathless. I think I broke the barrier. The idea of us—together—had me hot, all over.
The secret smile curled around David’s lips. He slid a hand beside my face, cupping my jaw, his thumb making gentle strokes over my ear. “I can hear your thoughts when you’re hot like this, Ara.”
My smile mimicked his. “Good.”
The poised vampire was knocked back for a second, showing a winded, unrestrained David. “Ara, just...just the thought of having you, I...” His breath quickened, his eyes alight with thoughts I offered him—thoughts I imagined only too many times—enough to perfect them, as if they were a movie.
“I don’t want this to be just thoughts anymore, David.”
“We’re getting married in a few weeks, Ara. Why not just wait ‘til then?”
Oh, there was absolutely no persuasion in his voice then. I beamed. “Why wait? We’re here, in bed, I’m willing, you’re wanting.”
“Stop it.” He smiled, rolling onto his back, releasing my face.
“No way.” I laid alongside him, the heat flooding though my body forced me to touch him—no longer satiated by nearness. “I’ve got you now. I can feel you caving. One push and you’re all mine.”
“Such a brave girl.” He cupped my hand tightly, stopping my touch. “What if I don’t want to do this?”
I laughed, a little nervous. “I know you do.”
“But I don’t, Ara.” He rolled away and stood up, leaving me to fall down a gaping vortex, obviously in my own world—again. When he looked back, his face softened. “Oh, Ara. I’m sorry.”
I sniffled as his hands fell along my face, lifting it to meet his gaze. “Why don’t you want me? Am I too plain for you?”
“Please, Ara, don’t say such things. I am craving your skin. I want desperately to make love to you.”
“Then why won’t you?”
“Because I’ve never done anything in my life the right way around. I just—I just wanted to do this one thing.”
“But that’s not fair on me. I don’t see sex the way you do. I don’t care if it’s before or after marriage. I just want you, and I want you to want me.”
“I do want you,” he said, his brow against mine, agony filling his fingertips.
I pushed them off my face. “Coulda fooled me.”
“Ara, please.” He turned to face me as I stood and leaned against the wall—away from him.
I shook my head, folding my arms. “I don’t get it. I’m not asking you to give up your life or murder people. It’s just sex. That’s it. Sex.”
He sat on the edge of the bed and pressed his palms together, breathing into them.
“David. We’re not in the nineteen hundreds. Grow up!” The heat of lust dissipated from everywhere below my belt, turning into humiliation as it left; I turned to storm out of the room, but a hand caught mine.
“Don’t go. Please.”
“Why not?”
“Because I—” His shoulders dropped. “I want to do this. You just—you don’t understand.”
“Then tell me.” I stepped into him, tilting my head up to look into his eyes. “Make me understand.”
He gently grabbed my arm, his fingers binding, and stared at it. “I’m hungry.”
“What? No, you’re not. You went hunting with Emily last night.”
He shook his head. “No. I went, but I...I didn’t eat.”
“Why?”
“I don’t’ know.”
“So, go eat now. I’ll wait.”
He smiled, his lips wide, his affronted laughter breathy. “You want me to kill someone, then come home and make love to you?”
I winced. “Ur, yeah, that is a bit gross, I suppose.”
Even he nodded.
Man, what is happening to me? “I’ve been hanging out with vampires too often, I think.”
He nodded again, his eyes widening for a second.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Don’t be sorry.”
“Sorry.”
“Ara?”
“Sorry.” I laughed. “I mean...argh! Stop it.”
Strong arms encased me against his chest; they felt tight, like a ribbon of anguish and indecision. His chest shook with his gentle laugh and I breathed deep the orange-chocolate scent—faded with the absence of human blood in his veins, making the powdery cloud of soap stronger.
Without need for words, he whispered his desires, the air changing around us, his hands sliding down my back, each fingertip pressing my spine under the rim of my shirt. It felt as if our hips were swinging—a dance—but we stood so still. Both of us frozen with anticipation.
The ball in his throat shifted when he swallowed. “Ara?”
“Yes.” I dared not speak too loud.
“You’re right.”
“I am?”
He slid his fingers further under my shirt and touched my ribs, inching just under my bra. “Yes. We love each other—want each other. There’s no reason to deny what we both need.”
Slowly, stiffly, my hand rose, inching up his chest until I cupped the back of his neck, brave enough to raise my other hand only when he slid both his under my shirt, slipping his thumbs under the clasp of my bra—releasing it. The feeling of freedom made me draw a quick lungful of air, my skin exposed, cool, open.
“So soft,” he whispered, his breath hot and shaky against my hair.
I traced the top of his spine with my thumb, scratching from his hairline down to his collar, nervously, repeatedly, softly, then rigidly, becoming faster, digging deeper as his hands inched my shirt up my ribs, revealing my stomach, my shoulder blades and finally, as I lifted my arms, everything else I wanted to show him.
His stare lingered too long; I tucked my elbows into my waist to cover myself, taking a small step back from him.
“Don’t,” he said, pulling my hands gently away.
My skin tingled all over; nerves and desire filing me up with that pleasant heat again. The vampire stepped into me, reaching down to my jeans. I closed my eyes.
There are places he’ll go in just a few minutes—places no one has ever touched me. What if I’m not good enough, what if I can’t make him happy, what if—
“Shh.” He hooked his finger under my chin and tilted my face upward; I opened my eyes to the black pupils of the vampire-David. “You’ll be fine, Ara.”
“But I...I don’t know how to, I mean, or what to—”
His lip pulled sharply on one corner, his eyes sparkling. “It’s okay. I do.”
I nodded, crossing my arms over my bare chest.
He took my wrist and pulled me a step closer. “I’ll take care of you, okay?”
“I know,” I said into his skin, my breath coming back hot, mixed with an almost sickly-sweet scent.
“Just remember, you are beautiful. Don’t be afraid.”
“Okay.”
He slowly, so slowly untangled his hands from the hair at the base of my neck and slid them down my back, guiding his own descent to his knees. The heat sunk through my body, making me jump slightly when I felt a ru
sh between my thighs. David tinkered with my button, releasing it with a small pop, then slowly, with one hand holding the base, slid my zipper down, stopping just where my thighs met.
My skin crawled all over my body, shifting in circles around my elbows, of all places. His cool, skilful fingertips traced a line for his lips to follow, winding from my navel to my ribs and down the midline of my lace undies.
Outside, headlights lit the room up; I caught a flash of the pale girl in the mirror, covering her chest with her wrists, a man kneeling in front of her, his dark, tousled hair becoming grey until the light disappeared and the room was cast in darkness once more.
And the darkness made me brave enough to take a breath, which only circulated the intoxicating rush of lust around my body again, intensifying when David slid his hands around my waist, between fabric and skin, then slowly pushed my underwear down, jeans and all, keeping his chest, his chin, his eyes right in line with my body. As my pants reached my ankles, David leaned down to help me out of them, his breath brushing the nakedness between my thighs as I lifted each leg, opening them at the knees.
I saw him rocket so slightly forward with a pulse of obvious desire, his eyes closing. And I wanted him to do what I knew was on his mind; I could see him looking at me, see his hands tremble as he had the same ideas. I wanted him to kiss me there, wanted it so badly my knees tightened.
Instead, I slipped my fingers through the collar of his shirt and he stood in front of me, his clothes scratchy against my completely bare skin. In one slice of his nail, David removed all the buttons on his shirt. It fell to the floor, his shoulders flexing as he released his wrists and came back to wrap me in his arms; skin on skin. My warmth, his tepid coolness, mixed with so much affection in that one embrace.
At some point, the playlist on my iPhone had progressed from John Mayer to Jeff Buckley; the haunting call of his melody adding only a surreal kind of charge to the room—making everything ghostly, as if we were in some ultra-hot film—nothing actually real. A script, a story, one that could not rightly happen, because no one could ever truly feel this way.
David’s golden muscles, warm and shadowed in the soft light, split the illusion, bringing me back, breathless. I either needed to fall down or start crying. Sweet, orange-chocolate filled the air as he kissed my cheek, his lips barely touching my skin, flowing gently over my neck, my collarbone. “Are you ready for this?” he asked in a deep whisper.
