I reached out through the link, gently caressing Daiki’s mind and showing him how much I would miss him. I felt an answering caress. Where in Japan?
Kyoto, he replied. It’s where my father grew up.
I’ll miss you, I sent through. But at least we can still talk.
I can see you, he replied. His voice was a little hesitant, as if he were worried about how I would react. I was confused before I realized that I was in the shower.
Pervert, I replied affectionately.
You’re so beautiful, he sent through.
I reached out through the link, trying to get a picture of him like I had that afternoon. Images filtered into my mind – odd, half-imagined thoughts which gave more of an impression than a clear picture. A misted mirror, a cream shower curtain with mold growing around the bottom, a strand of wet, dark hair on a warm cheek. I could see him in my mind’s eye, standing in some hotel shower with water cascading down his back. There was an angry red burn on his leg.
I imagined running my hands down that firm, tanned skin. He arched his back and gasped and I pulled away sharply, creating some distance between his mind and mine. Then I pressed harder.
“Skye,” he said out loud. I could hear him echoing through the link, even though all I could really see was his mouth opening and his eyes closing. I felt the sensation of lips ghosting over mine and a wet leg slipping between my thighs.
I could see that he hadn’t moved. He stood in the shower, reacting to my manipulation of the link, but remaining still and letting his body react. But I could feel him. His legs tangling with mine, his lips and tongue pushing insistently against mine, his hands in my hair. I wasn’t the only one pushing my wishes through the link. There were two of him: the Daiki in the shower, and the Daiki in the link, touching me the same way I touched him. His penis was red and proudly erect in the shower as his ghosting hands teased my breasts, sliding down my back and thighs. I realized that the Daiki I could see – the one in the shower with the hard-on – was grinning. Smirking, actually.
Oh, you think you’re so clever? I thought at him. It should have been frightening to know that he could manipulate my body like this, but I could feel his lust for me blazing through everything, warming me from the inside out.
I imagined the feeling of sliding my lips over his penis and the Daiki in the shower immediately reacted – bucking his hips and grabbing onto the curtain rail. I imagined running my tongue up and down the shaft and felt his answering groan in my blood as his ghosting hands slid down my body. In reality, he could never touch me like this while I was sucking him. He wouldn’t be able to reach. But this was not reality.
I wanted more. I wanted to feel his real hands on me, his real penis growing harder and thicker in my mouth, and his real lips peppering my neck with kisses, but this was an acceptable substitute. In fact, I thought as his ghosting hands tweaked my nipple as I tongued the sensitive underside of his shaft, I could get used to this way of doing things.
Daiki seemed to share the sentiment. His ghosting fingers ran down my body and slid against my core, teasing the warm bud with wet nudges.
“Don’t stop,” I said out loud. I pressed my hands to the wall of the shower as I felt, rather than heard, Daiki moaning with me.
His fingers pressed inside of me, pumping slowly as if he could tell what would feel best – which he could, I realized in the midst of my pleasure. He could give me everything I wanted, because this was a beautiful dream shared through the link. With that thought, I doubled my efforts. I kissed, licked and sucked until those ghosting fingers did something very right and sent a bolt of pure pleasure through me.
My breathing came faster as I thrust my hips forward, grinding on fingers lay deep inside me, allowing Daiki to have his way with my body as I had my way with his. Sharing control while we were fighting had been wonderful, but this. This was nirvana.
For a tense moment, our bodies stood poised on the edge. The Daiki in the shower tensed his muscles, holding onto the shower rail like his life depended on it, while I felt the warm water beating down on my back at the same time. Then, in that one moment of vulnerability, Daiki let me in completely. The link between us opened and, like a lightning bolt or a burst of flames, I could feel it all. Everything he felt for me, everything he wanted for us, stronger and more beautiful than I’d thought possible.
He loved me. Daiki loved me.
Without warning, my body spasmed, sending me toppling over the edge of an orgasm so intense that I fell to my knees on the slippery shower floor. Daiki cried out as I poured that sensation through the link, forcing him to feel what he’d made me feel. Every ounce of love I had in me went out to Daiki. I saw him in my mind’s eye as he released a heavy load of semen down the shower drain.
His knees gave way and the shower rail snapped. He yelped as he fell hard in a tangle of limbs and shower curtain.
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. He looked so adorably confused when he untangled himself and rubbed his ass where he’d landed on it. I laughed so hard I almost couldn’t breathe.
Are you okay? I sent through, even though I couldn’t really hide my giggles.
He grinned sheepishly. Yes, he replied. I don’t think the railing was designed for that.
You’ll have to explain it to the concierge.
Sorry sir, I was having telepathic sex with my girlfriend and I needed something to hang onto. They should really make these sturdier.
Yes, it’s the shower rail’s fault.
We were both laughing. I could see his smiling face as if he were right there in front of me. It made me unbelievably sad for a moment. Although my body still trembled with the force of the orgasm he’d brought me to, feeling the ghostly touch of his hands through the link just made me want to hold him for real.
But I couldn’t. Not yet.
Soon, he sent through as if he could read my thoughts. Which, I realized, he could.
Soon, I answered. I turned off the shower and shivered in the cold air for a moment, reaching for my towel as Daiki did the same.
I love you, he sent through. As if it were the simplest, most obvious thing in the world.
And I replied: I love you, too. Because it was.
Epilogue
When I’d finished showering and dried myself off, I walked naked through my bedroom and stood in front of the half-finished portrait of Daiki. I wondered if I would ever get around to finishing it. The Institute wasn’t exactly creatively stimulating.
Without giving it much thought, I sat down on the edge of my bed and pulled my laptop towards me. The cool evening air was making me shiver but I didn’t want to put on clothes just yet. Daiki’s ghosting touches lingered over my body.
Pulling up the search history, I remembered what Ichiru had said when I’d first met him – about New York City being a challenge to overcome. I had to wonder if the challenge was worth it. There was nothing tying me to the Art Institute beyond a dream I’d had as a child. A dream I’d dreamed before I’d had the chance to properly understand what dreaming was.
I pulled up the site for Kyoto school of art, read through their program a second time, and then went through the student testimonials. All of the English-speaking students listed painting as their favorite subject.
Daiki Hamada was not a part of my New York dream, but meeting him had shown me a new dream. One where he and I got to be together, and I got to study what I loved.
I found the International Student Application form and clicked Download.
THE END
Vampire Romance
Silver and Sleek
Secret Blood Gate World Series Book One
Natalia Hunter
Vampire Romance: Silver and Sleek
Chapter One
Eliza glanced at her phone while waiting at a traffic light. Her twin sister had sent her a series of texts inviting her to join her at various bars that night. We’re at Bogies. Come out! Then an hour later, Reggie’s on Bob Pettit. There are some really h
ot guys here. Get over here, gurrrl! And then moments ago, Headed to Northgate with Ivan. He’s been all over me. I think we’re going to hook up, followed by a string of inappropriate emoticons.
Eliza scrunched her nose in disapproval, and took a swig of the cold coffee that had helped her get through her late night study session at the library. She changed the radio to an easy listening jazz station Rachelle hated, and then replied with one simple phrase, emoticon-free. It’s Wednesday.
On weekends, Eliza sometimes humored her sister by joining her at a bar or two. Despite Rachelle’s claims that they would stay up and watch the sunrise together, she inevitably became engrossed in a conversation-slash-make out session with whichever hot guy she had just fallen deeply in love with. She would then forget that Eliza existed, and Eliza could make her exit, straight home to a warm shower and a good book.
So? Rachelle texted back. You’re such an old biddy.
Rachelle and Eliza weren’t identical, but they looked a lot alike. Their parents were of different ethnic backgrounds, their mother black and father white, so they both had creamy dark skin and big green eyes. They shared the same full lips and long lashes, but Rachelle used hers much more frequently—batting those lashes and constantly smiling or giggling. Since they looked so similar, Eliza didn’t have the luxury of blaming Rachelle’s greater popularity on something superficial like looks. It had to be personality. Rachelle was simply more likable. Although Eliza preferred a quiet life, she had to admit that stung.
Rachelle then texted a photo of a beautiful dark skinned man who winked at the camera, presumably beckoning Eliza to join them. Eliza threw her phone in the back seat, tired of being distracted by the insane chirping of the text message alert. The guy in the photo looked like one of Rachelle’s disposable boy toys. Eliza didn’t understand why Rachelle would waste energy on a man she planned on just throwing away right away.
Eliza only cared about the real deal. If she was going to be married within a year of graduating law school as planned, she needed to find a serious boyfriend soon. After all, they needed to date for two years before he proposed. Then she needed a year to plan the wedding. Rachelle acted like she had all the time in the world to settle down, but she wasn’t doing the math. They were young now, but if Eliza wanted to marry and give birth to two children before thirty—preferably two daughters named Josie and Faith—she couldn’t mess around.
Lost in images of lacy white dresses and tiny pink socks and the gentle rhythms of Miles Davis, she didn’t see it coming. As Eliza passed through an intersection under a green light, another car barreled toward her through the red light on the cross street, probably headed back from the Northgate bars. Eliza had the feeling of being suspended in time. It had to have been less than a second before the hit, but it felt longer. Her body froze in terror and she felt disconnected from her body, watching the scene as if watching a movie. If only that had been true…if only she could have floated above the car, safe from the blow.
However, there was nothing for her to do. The car careened into the passenger side of Eliza’s Jetta at high speed. She felt a painful jolt in her spine and heard a metallic crunch over the sound of Blue in Green, and then everything went black.
When Eliza woke, it took her a while to figure out where she was. She heard a familiar beeping sound and couldn’t place it at first. She smelled an also familiar, but sickening medicinal smell, and another smell that didn’t match—the smoky smell of a bar. She heard her father’s deep, gentle voice calling her name. The sound of his voice helped her place the beeping. It was the same beeping she had heard after her father’s emergency gall bladder surgery. She remembered watching him sleep, looking far too grayish yellow in the harsh light of the recovery room.
Eliza opened her eyes carefully. She had in fact determined her location from smell and sound alone. This had to be the exact same recovery room where she had prayed for her father’s survival--the place where she had felt more terrified than she ever had in her life. After all, her father was the only parent she had left. Was this a bad dream?
“Eliza,” her father said again. “Are you awake?”
His green eyes looked watery, but his voice sounded calm. That was what made him such a great father. No matter how bad things were, he could say that everything would be okay in his comforting low rumble of a voice, and she would always believe him.
“Lizzie,” said her sister, who Eliza realized was grasping one of her hands, some of her cheap bauble rings cutting into her already sore flesh. Rachelle seemed far less calm, with black lines of make-up running down her cheeks. Her usually supernaturally smooth hair now frizzed like Eliza’s usually did. Eliza realized the bar smell had been coming from Rachelle, a slightly sickening blend of cheap beer and cigarettes. No, not beer. Whiskey. A whiskey sour. How in the hell could she guess her sister’s latest drink from smell alone?
“Do you hear me, baby?” her father asked.
“Yes,” Eliza said. As a matter of fact, she heard him surprisingly well. His voice was so clear that it might have been coming from inside her head. She thought she could feel her eardrums vibrating. And she could hear more than just his voice. She could hear the air pushing in and out of his lungs. She could hear his heart pumping…more quickly than usual. It had to be the drugs. She didn’t know what they had given her for pain, but it was trippy.
“You’re going to be okay,” Rachelle said, although her tear soaked words contradicted the statement. Rachelle kissed the back of Eliza’s hand and then held it against her cheek. Since Rachelle couldn’t give her sister a full-on hug, she seemed to settle for just the hand. Eliza had the strangest sensation of feeling like she could count the skin cells on Rachelle’s cheek. She could feel the tiny blood vessels under her smooth skin, each one pumping away gently in elegant rhythm like her body played its own kind of gentle jazz.
Yeah, she’d never been a fan of getting high, and she didn’t like this either. Once they released her, she was going back to nothing stronger than Advil.
Chapter Two
Eliza stayed in the hospital for a week, which felt like an eternity. The nurses and doctors kept marveling at how fast she healed. In the car accident, she suffered a concussion, four broken ribs, and internal bleeding. And after only a week in the hospital, the doctor said her rib fractures had healed. As this wasn’t possible, the doctor suggested that perhaps they’d made a mistake with their original diagnosis. But Eliza didn’t care why, she just wanted out.
Rachelle had flatly refused to bring Eliza her laptop. She had said, “I know you’re just going to use it for schoolwork.” Well…yeah, what else would I use it for? They were in the middle of fall semester and she couldn’t just disappear for a week. Her life schedule didn’t allow for a skipped semester. Spending the week doing nothing was torture. She hated watching daytime television and the nurses constantly telling her to get her butt back in bed.
She didn’t feel like she needed rest, and that wasn’t just the bull-headedness that she had inherited from her mother. She felt great. She thought she could jump out of bed and run a 5K, no problem. And the world seemed even more worth jumping in to than it had before. She noticed everything. She knew they were cooking meat loaf in the kitchen before they sent her a menu—because she could smell it wafting up from the first floor.
And when the man two rooms over died, Eliza knew even before she heard the alarms. One of the heartbeats around her had silenced, leaving only a cold absence in its wake. She had no idea how she could hear a heartbeat from two rooms away, and assumed she must be imagining it, or maybe there was more than saline in her IV.
When they finally gave her the release papers, Eliza took a moment to look in the mirror closely for the first time since she’d been admitted. She still had mild bruising on the side of her face, but that wasn’t what made her look twice. She looked…different.
She didn’t like much about her frizzy, high-maintenance hair, but she did like the color. A touch of red fro
m the Irish on her father’s side had mixed with the black, making her hair a unique reddish brown. If she looked at one single hair, it looked red, but as a group, her hair looked dark brown. And when her hair got frizzy, the tiny strands formed what her father called her little halo. He said it always looked like the sun shone behind her.
No drop of dye had ever touched her hair. She didn’t want to mess with her halo. But it looked like someone had given her highlights while she was asleep. She certainly couldn’t blame the change on sun bleaching, as she’d been stuck inside for a week. Her sister was strange enough that giving her highlights against her will was within the realm of possibility, but it still seemed like a really weird thing to do. And was her skin lighter? That couldn’t be possible, right? Eliza decided that it must be a trick of the lights. Or maybe the florescent lights above her bed had permanently damaged her eyeballs.
Eliza gathered her things and headed out of the hospital confidently. She technically wasn’t supposed to drive herself home and if they caught her running out, they might stop her. But she felt great, and she needed a moment of freedom—away from the hospital and away from her doting sister and father. She knew that as soon as she got home, they would stick her right back in bed, and she couldn’t stand one more minute of it.
When Eliza turned the ignition in the rental car, she couldn’t help but smile to herself. The car smelled like dust and cigarettes, but she was free. In her drug-addled state she had moments where she truly believed that she would never get out of the hospital. Just the idea of going to class, drinking coffee, and listening to jazz on the radio seemed too wonderful to be true. However, now that she was outside, going back to her old life didn’t feel as tempting.
BILLIONAIRE ROMANCE: The Unforgettable Southern Billionaires: The Complete Collection Boxed Set (Young Adult Rich Alpha Male Billionaire Romance) Page 84
