"Obviously not, or I would not be here," he amended again, stroking my face.
"She was dead already. I looked for your daughter, but her name was not on the hospital register. THE
The only thing I could find out was that she had moved to Rio de Janeiro. It was like
look for a needle in the haystack.
The story sounded familiar to me ... So I asked,
"What was that lady's name?"
"It's been such a long time," he said, trying to ignore me.
"Curiosity," I insisted.
- I think it was ... Olga. That, Olga Berligieri.
"Were you looking for my grandmother?" "My suspicions have been confirmed, leaving me
shocked
"Olga Berligieri was your grandmother?" He exclaimed, even more incredulous than I was.
"I do not think there's a namesake that died the same way."
- I do not believe this! How ... How can it be? I did not see that last name on your resume ...
"It's just that I have my father's last name, since my mother cut the Berligieri when she married
due to some resentment I had towards my grandfather, being only with the surname of the
husband.
"But ... But how can it be?" He repeated, expressing a sudden anxiety. - Tried your
and I did not feel anything different about him. Although I do not ...
- Whoa! Stopped there! I cut off his nervousness. - You hear me? You have proved mine.
blood? When?
He dismounted that worried pose and burst out laughing. Then he answered with that look
malicious that I had already learned to recognize.
"You do not want to know."
"Ah, I will ..." I assured him. "Was that the day I hurt my wrist?"
"No. There, I had to wash my hands in a hurry. Her blood smelled so attractive and there was
other people in the bathroom.
"When, Richard?" I pressed.
"When ... you fell off that ladder and had to bring her here." He was amused now,
remembering - It was just a few drops. I licked the blood from your forehead to help heal the wound.
while she changed her clothes. I've never done anything so exciting in my life before. That is, before yesterday, it is
clear! He held his mouth to keep from laughing.
- You ... asshole! I threw the armchair cushion at him. "And here I am, thinking that you are a
serious doctor!
"And I am," he assured her. I just never considered you my patient. So I thought those rules did not
would apply to you. He coughed purposefully, trying to hide his laughter.
"That's called sexual harassment, you know. I accused. "What if I did not want to be with you?"
- I do not know if I would be very comfortable with this possibility, but anyway ... At least it would take
a very good memory of paradise for all eternity! He rolled his eyes and sighed.
"I should have you arrested!" - rebati enfezada.
Richard stretched out his arms and wrapped his wrists in front of me.
"You can arrest me right now if you want." Our room even has a grille ... at the head of the
bed. He could not stand it and laughed again.
- You sick! I grunted, pushing his wrist back.
- In love. It was your diagnosis, "he corrected. "Besides, you'll accuse me that for me
to catch I did not do anything, I did not even touch him ... I just changed his clothes to let him breathe
right or die suffocated, you were already turning purple! If you watch right, you will realize that the
clasp left even red marks on your back! Also, why did you decide to wear such a ...
fair? Okay, I will not deny that she looked wonderful in that dress, a true goddess Aphrodite,
only that I had the obligation to remove it and could not do it with my eyes closed, could I?
"I bet you do not," I said mockingly.
"I swear I tried to close them, but please excuse me, I did not ..." he confessed. And neither do you.
she was a normal person, the woman she'd dreamed of for months, lost in passion. I am
doctor, but not iron! The real tortured victim in this story was me. If he were still human,
he would have already suffered cardiac arrest. He opened his eyes for a moment, dramatizing.
I could not say anything in front of that whole scenario. I just folded my arms, waiting for the
outcome.
- Come on now. If you really wanted to report me, what would you say? "Your delegate, a
sadistic vampire licked the blood from my forehead while I changed my dress, "he said, plagiarizing
my voice. "They would have interned her, yes!"
"Yeah, I should be hospitalized for liking a crazy vampire like you!" - I agreed,
completely angry. "At least the taste of my blood is good?"
He stopped and meditated for a few seconds.
"I can not remember." I think my brain just stopped working. You could also ... -
She closed her eyelashes, showing her perfectly aligned teeth.
- And then the funny one here is me! I complained irritably.
"Nice-and beautiful, from head to toe!" He whispered. "Now, seriously. Shook the
head to scare away the thoughts and changed the tone of the voice. - I'll need to do some exams on your
blood just for precaution.
"I see no point in that. Do not even think about this crazy story of killing yourself!
Richard stunned me, shutting me up with a long, intense kiss, of those breath-taking
any human being.
"It's just the opposite, you fool," he whispered in my ear, letting me notice the change.
Suddenly the color in his eyes. "I want to live and you live a lot too." I'm not crazy to give up on
nights like yesterday's for nothing in this world.
"You're ... compulsive, you know that?" - I blushed. - You should do a psychoanalysis.
- Compulsive? I? Do you think it was easy to wait for you all this time? A century does not pass in
one month, no ...
"You do not ... a century?" You're just kidding!
"Stephanie, stop making that debauched face because I was not chaste when I was not human, okay?
The difference is that when we become vampires, all physical and physiological needs
disappear, except thirst, of course. I am not ruled by hormones and much less can I sweat, urinate,
cry, feel cold, heat ... It is a curse that takes away everything that makes us feel alive and dominates the
whole body for the purpose of obtaining a single kind of pleasure: blood, "he explained. - I just found out
now that this kind of condition could only be modified as a result of this mysterious feeling
which is love. Must be why the poets say that the love of everything transforms, because I
transformed I was not joking when you said you made me feel strange. Stay warm,
to feel pain ... This has never been part of my vampire life, including this crazy desire that I feel for
you. I am not to blame for any of this. The cause of everything is called Stephanie. Ended up waking up the
monster, and now he's going to have to put up with me, "he teased.
"The way you talk, I'm feeling guilty about the devastation of the entire planet."
noticing his nose inspiring my neck.
"Hmmm ... And you should ..." he returned, looking more intoxicated. - You think you can go
coming, destroying the hearts and the sanity of the others and then getting out of thin air? Negative. Will have
that you treat me. And, on second thought, until I liked the idea of psychoanalysis. I can put a couch right there. -
He pointed to a corner of the room. "I have not forgotten the dental analysis you promised."
"You do not forget anything, do you?"
/> - Never. And let's go, you're late for my appointment, I'm getting nervous-
he said, getting me up in a hug and climbing the stairs.
For reasons of force majeure, the conversation had to be postponed. It was necessary to hold a
psychoanalysis before my patient fled.
Chapter20
When the day dawned, the first thing that crossed my mind was the strong desire to stay the day
or at most leave at the end of the afternoon to get to know the
city, but I ended up reminding myself of the duty scale.
"Richard, what time is it?" I asked, opening my eyes tightly.
He waited patiently in an armchair beside the bed. Certainly parked there
because he knew that once his body cooled he could not go on so close or I did not
I could get more sleep. After all, São Paulo was not as mild as Rio in winter ...
"Seven, why?" He replied, already standing next to me.
- Seven? My God! I'm late for the shift!
I scrambled up, being brought back by a sudden jerk in the arm.
"And who said you were going?"
- It's getting very funny for my taste, but you can not keep up with the joke now
do not. I need to get to work.
"You will not," he said flatly. - I've already told you that I'd leave your certificate there
afternoon. He got a few days off.
"Am I the sick one now?"
"It's not a serious acute illness just like mine, but until you have some similar symptoms-
muttered, shielding me from the cold with a blanket and positioning me on his lap as if I
were a baby, ready to be nursed.
- Did you decide to underestimate how I feel?
"You can not even compare.
"Okay, I'm not going to stay here discussing the sex of the angels, but now, seriously: I can not
lose that job, Richard. My family depends on that salary.
"They will not fire you, my love. You can rest easy, "he assured her. I'm not
preventing you from working, you would never do that. It's just ... I wanted to be at least a week or more
to enjoy this new phase that I'm living, understand? After more than a century working without
interruptions, I think I deserve this. And if you want, I can get you or even require you to be the
my auxiliary nurse in the other hospitals where I work. What do you think of the idea?
"I do not know ... I'm going to end up getting sick of myself, and I'll risk being accused of
buy false diplomas on the black market, or even worse: from killing some patient through negligence,
malice or recklessness, "I said mockingly. "I'm far from your standard of
perfectionism.
He laughed.
"You're such a fool." Could not you see that I did all this on purpose, just
because I wanted you to give up on my shift? Who told me to get out of control?
- I? But what did I do?
- What did you do? Do not you have the slightest notion? He smiled again. - Now you go
understand ... Do you know what I felt when I first saw you? He asked. - An irrational impulse of
kiss your mouth, right there, in front of the patients. She could even imagine the taste she had,
only looking at the rosy, full-bodied look, the sensual chick at the corner of her lip ...
- Sensual? This birth micro-tag stuck in my mouth? I grumbled.
"Yes, too sexy, an exorbitant little scrub of dedicated physicians. And you seemed
who wanted to tease me even more, when he got into that elevator with his hair down -
he added, offering me a sweet kiss.
Before I let out any irreverent remark on the subject, he went on:
"At first I thought it was just a strange immediate excitement, though, as I had said before,
this would never have happened to me after I was transformed, "he revealed. "Only I was wrong.
All you had to do was get close to me to make that attraction grow even more, becoming almost uncontrollable.
As if that were not enough, I realized that I was being fascinated by her qualities: besides being beautiful, you
she was professional, responsible, shy, humble, loyal, stubborn, sensitive ... and intelligent.
So much that she was the only nurse who had the courage to face me.
He paused for a moment.
"That day you dropped the coffee on the floor ... It was a pain!" I had to repress all of them
the shapes. His face was too close to mine and his scent almost drove me crazy, I was forced to
stop breathing Do you have any idea how much the scent you exude bewilders me? I even felt sparks coming out
of the hand that touched his skin, and for the first time since I became a vampire, I became feverish-
he confessed.
How funny ... His perfume also destabilized me to the point of being dizzy ...
"Then think about it," he went on. "What attitude did you have to take?" A vampire gets involved with
a human? For me, this could never work. No one would accept me the way I am and
the less he wanted to condemn her to such a sacrifice. Then I thought there was no other option: I had to
away from me. Saying goodbye would not be the case, your resume was very good and also could not be
unfair. The only plausible alternative left was to provoke her to do it herself for
me.
- And you did it.
Richard stared at me with a melancholy look.
"What I got was a mixture of regret, agony and despair," he said. - How is it
I could bear without seeing her, if in my heart I was already dreaming of the next shift,
all the forces that would come to be mine in that absurd way? I ended up having to pack several
reasons to attend the hospital, always with the justification that this would be the last time
that he would see her. And of course it would not be. It would never be. I was even worse when I saw that tear coming down
of your eyes. It may sound cheesy, but I suffered more on that day than in a hundred years. It was there that
I became aware of the mistake I made, the part you played in my life. What I never felt
it would change, "he said, as he wrapped a lock of my hair in his own wrist.
"So when you went to talk to me that day ..."
He had decided he would no longer fight the heart. I needed to try, even running the
risk of being rejected. I even thought it was too late for the hurt way you reacted to my
remorse, and so I recoiled.
I held out as much as I could. I could not understand why you hated me so much.
"Hate ..." he muttered. "I could not bear to pretend any longer! By the way, I do not understand until now.
how you did not realize what I felt. It was practically stamped on my face! I just did not kiss her
on the eve of the party because that her friend nurse spoils pleasures upset!
- Iris?
"I suppose I do, I do not remember a nurse's name."
"You kept mine," I said.
- And I would not know the name of the woman who took my sleep and that the imbecile here had the unfortunate idea
to push her away, just to make me even more obsessed?
- Well done! I teased. "Who told me to try to separate myself from you?"
"You're an evil witch," he accused me, smiling. - And still confesses, in the biggest club face,
who bewitched a vampire with some magic potion. I knew this could not be human.
"I hope you never find the antidote to the potion I threw away," I teased.
- You're in luck. The garbage man has already collected the garbage for a long time. I suspect your potion will have a
irreversible character.
- Great. This will leave me more time to enjoy m
y victim. I inclined my head to reciprocate
with another kiss. "And speaking of a victim, what do you intend to do today?"
"Hmmm ..." he thought for a moment. "Why do not you take me to meet your family?" -
suggested.
- That would be perfect.
"Are not you afraid to introduce me as your boyfriend?" - Your question showed a
suffering.
- Of course not. Why would I stay?
"Not at all," he wanted to disguise, averting his gaze. - How about telling me a little of your parents?
before? Looks like I just talked about myself yesterday.
- Okay. What do you want to know?
- Do not know. Say what you want.
"Well, let's see ... My mother is one of the most beautiful women I know. Have you even been
magazine cover and has a huge talent for the arts.
"The way you say, maybe I'd better not meet you."
- Because?
"I'm in love with her, too ..." he insisted.
- Dããã! Beware of me or sneeze my blood on you - I threatened with humor.
"If I accept, there will be no return." He grimaced. "But do not roll, tell me more.
- Curl? It was you who distracted me! I reminded him. - OK. So ... I have a little brother.
youngest. I mean, he's actually my brother only from my mother, since my parents split up
when I was little. Juninho is the cutest, smartest, most ...
"You love them very much, do not you?" He interrupted me. - You can tell by the way you talk, your eyes
they come to shine ... In the way, I think I'll like them too.
"They'll like you, too." Who would not like? I reached out to caress his face.
Richard looked away again with an empty expression. It is obvious that I doubted what I
just said
"Stephanie, I wanted to ask you a question, and I'd like you to respond in all honesty.
"Manda," I said encouragingly.
"What would you do if your parents found out what I am?" - He showed in the physiognomy
an ancient anguish.
"Do not confuse me with Juliet, Richard. She would not abandon him, let alone denounce him. I Think
I've given enough proof of what I'm saying when, even scared to discover your secret,
I had the nerve to tell anyone about it. And besides, I'm an adult and own my own nose.
No one would be able to change or prevent my decisions, not even my parents.
"Sorry, I did not want to look like you were against the wall." It must seem like a tremendous
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