“I can’t lose you, too, Mike. I can’t lose everyone I love just because they might hurt me.”
“Ara, that’s a perfect reason to lose someone.”
“Not in the world I live in. It’s a world of murder and blood and damage beyond repair or comprehension. There’s bound to be a bit of pain, and I can take the physical pain, Mike, but this?” I placed my hand over my heart. “This I can’t take.”
He rolled his shoulders back and sighed. “And what about next time, huh? What’s my excuse going to be then?”
“Mike, you’re not one of those guys. Don’t you see?”
“I disagree.”
“Mike, please. If you leave… if you…” My voice shook. I just wanted to burst into tears for the frustration. I hated when he’d make up his mind—there was never any changing it.
“It’d really hurt you if I leave? You really care that much?”
My teeth clenched slightly. “Mike, I love you. Of course it would hurt.”
He gently wrapped his strong, broad fingers around my upper arm, drawing me closer. “You love me, huh? Even after I hurt you?”
I nodded.
“What kind of love?”
“The wrong kind of love.”
He looked at my lips and said, “This kind?” then pressed a firm but delicate kiss there. I nodded, wrapping my arms all the way around his neck so my entire body, wet clothes and all, pressed inch-to-inch against his.
A burning surge of anger and lust shuddered through me—an accumulation of desires suppressed for too long—of Jason’s touch just now, and the need I’d had all week to feel David inside me. No thought mattered more to me than the need to quell the pulsing, so when Mike pushed me back against the tree and lifted my soaking tank top, pressing his thick fingers down my spine, I didn’t stop him. It felt so confusingly right, so much that I begged him under hot, jagged breaths, to go further.
“Make love to me, right here, right now.” I needed someone to touch me, caress the craving from my skin and take the pain away.
We breathed the heavy, heated air from each other’s lips while our hands searched frantically over places we’d always only dreamed to touch. His shoulders reminded me of great mountains, round and broad, a place my hands couldn’t walk but could only journey to—rolling up over them, past his shoulder blades, down the caved indent where the muscles wrapped his spine. And I felt safe and loved and so wanted in his arms, knowing everything he was thinking, because I knew him better than I knew myself. We’d both wanted this since we were old enough to know what this kind of wanting felt like, so when his thumbs hooked the band of my underwear beneath my skirt, I did nothing. Again. I didn’t reach down. Didn’t stop him. But the half-dried lake made my skin sticky, bunching my undies around the top of my hip.
“Okay, that won’t work,” Mike said, abandoning that route, lifting me up so my legs wrapped his hips. A small hollow formed between us, his stomach drawing in to reveal his ribs, making room for me to reach in and pull the zipper of his jeans down.
“And there it is,” I said, grinning when I saw that part of him for the first time.
He untucked himself, and we both let out a breath when his smooth skin finally touched me, brushing against my inner thigh after so many years only imagining it.
“Baby,” he whispered against my neck. “I love you so much.”
And I loved him, too. I knew that in my heart—felt it in every drop of hot blood making me want him.
He reached down and shifted my underwear aside, his fingertip grazing uncharted territory for a second.
“Mike, wait.” I cupped his hand a second before he owned my virginity.
“You okay?” He repositioned his hips to keep me up where I started to slip down the scratchy surface of the tree.
“No. I mean, yes, I’m fine, but… shit. We can’t. I can’t do this to David.”
Somehow, I’d complete forgotten David even existed. How was that possible?
The hot breath of Mike’s smile moved my hair over my face. “Shit.”
“I’m sorry, Mike.”
“Oh, baby. Don’t be sorry. I’m sorry. I got carried aw—”
“Ara?” A voice, liquid with cold hurt, broke the intensity of our near connection.
“David.” I looked past Mike’s shoulder, my butt scraping the bark all the way down the tree until my toes touched the ground.
“He has really bad timing,” Mike whispered to me, smiling as he fastened his jeans.
The weight of my breath drowned me, even as the intensity of desire rushed away, leaving a rigid twist of panic in my gut. Frozen, I waited for David to react.
He turned and, with clenched fists, walked at human pace back in the direction he came.
“David. Wait?” I called, running after him.
“Ara. I can’t talk with you right now.”
“David, please. It wasn’t—”
“Just don’t.” He stopped, holding a finger up in my face. “Don’t give me the automated responses.”
“It’s not her fault, mate. I kissed her, she—”
“She can control herself.” David turned away. “I expect better of her.”
“David?” I burst into tears.
He froze, keeping his back to us. “Crying won’t grant you my pity, Ara.”
“I stopped myself,” I yelled. “I stopped. I wasn’t going to do it.”
David turned and looked at me carefully, his eyes moving over my hairline, my face and down my shoulders, stopping on my arm before flicking to Mike. “That’s two strikes, brother.”
“Look, I—” But his words ended in a grunt, his feet leaving the ground in a spin, with David’s fist center to the cause.
“David!”
Mike hit the ground with the force of a hammer and just laid there, face down. Even David looked a little shocked at his own rage.
“Mike?” I edged forward, my heart in my throat. “Mike. Please get up.”
Just as David took a step toward him, Mike groaned, clutching his jaw as he rolled up to sit. “Shit, that stings.”
“Are you satisfied?” I yelled at David, squatting beside Mike.
“Actually, yes.” He smiled, his fist loosening as he turned away.
“Well, I’m glad my pain brings you satisfaction.” Mike shook his head, using a tree to struggle to his feet.
“If you ever”—David stomped toward Mike, a finger of caution aimed at his chest—“touch her again, for any reason, I’ll turn you into a vampire then torture you for eternity. Got it?”
“Duly noted,” Mike said, almost laughing.
“Excuse me!” I dropped my hands to my hips. “You don’t get to decide who I kiss and who I don’t. You don’t own me.”
“Right now, while I’m here, I do. And that was more than just kissing.” David walked away again.
“I’m not your girlfriend, David. I did nothing wrong.”
“By whose standards, Ara?” He kept walking.
An eye-narrowing infuriation raged in me, stiffening my jaw. I bent down, picked up the nearest rock and, before Mike could react, launched it at David’s head.
“Ow!” He jolted forward, cupping a hand to the site of impact. “You little brat.”
The twisted grimace on my lips slipped away as David started after me—at human pace. I squealed and hid behind Mike, who blocked David’s reaching hand.
“Back off, mate,” Mike said, but his tone was playful.
“Give her to me, Mike.” David stopped and waited. “I’m not going to hurt her, you know that. Now give her to me.”
Mike studied him, his eyes focused, then the bastard stepped aside!
“Traitor,” I cried as David grabbed my arm, making me feel so small beneath his towering height.
“Now you listen to me, missy,” he said, an impetuous grin hiding in the corners of his lips. “I love you more than anything on this earth. I am here because of that, and will not tolerate this friend business any longer.�
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“I don’t care what you want.” I made myself taller. “Either you stay permanently, or we’re just friends.”
“Fine.” He dropped my arm. “We’re friends. But I don’t ever want to see you in the arms of another man. Do you understand me?”
“No,” I pushed, knowing how deeply this would get to him, hoping it would make him stay. “You’re leaving. Why should I have to spend my life alone just because you don’t want me?”
David shook his head. “You’re so stubborn, Ara.”
I straightened my clothes. “And you like me that way.”
A smile crept in under his angry eyes, an odd moment of warmth in a ghastly situation. “Mike seems to think we should share you.”
“Mike?” I thrust my arms to my side, turning as his palms rose.
“I never said that.”
“No, but you thought it.” David walked away.
“It was a fleeting thought—a joke.”
David, keeping his back to us, said, “No, it wasn’t.”
“Okay, maybe it wasn’t.” Mike scratched his upper lip. “But what else can we do, David? We both love her.”
“What about Emily,” I said.
“I—” Mike looked at David. “That’s over.”
“Because she’s a vampire?” I said.
“No, because she’s dead.”
“Mike? How can you be so mean?”
“It’s not mean. It’s just how I feel.”
“God!” I threw my hands up. “She still has a heart, Mike. She still has feelings, you know. Feelings for you.”
As Mike closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead, my disapproval softened; his face was bruising pretty badly now, the fist imprint along his jaw rising up under the remains of the scratches Emily gave him.
David, I turned to him, give him blood. He’s hurting.
“No, he can suffer,” David concluded. “I’m going home. You two can figure this out on your own.”
“Figure what out—what’s to figure?” I grabbed his arm.
“Which one you want to be with, Ara.” David walked backward, shaking his head. “Let me know when it’s clear.”
Alone, in the cool cover of shade from the trees, Mike and I stared at each other for a while.
14
With David on the couch and Mike hiding from Emily in his room, the house had lost the warm, happy feel it usually had at this time of night; no chatting over dinner, no piano and sing-along—just tension, quiet, and no one saying what they really wanted to say. I went to bed early, without telling David I’d met Jason, and without mentioning that we might have as long as three months left together.
David was right. I looked up at my ceiling, as if my thoughts were easier to piece together on a white, plain surface. I did need to sort out what I wanted, because I did still want Mike. Not like before, though. Not like when I was seventeen. I wanted his love, and Jason was right, I wanted the touch, attention… safety.
But I still loved David more than Mike. More than anything. When we laid together on my bed yesterday just talking about nothing, as if maybe we would have forever together, I could see our bodies where they connected—my legs over his, our hands tangled, shoulder to shoulder, brow to brow—but it felt like there was no border, like we were two people holding hands, but only had one soul. Take that away, and the hole was so empty and so great I did feel the need to fill it with something. And, yeah, Mike filled that hole—a little. I knew it was wrong, and I didn’t want to admit how I felt. But… well, it was how I felt.
Deep inside, I just wanted David to love me enough to fight to stay with me forever, despite death and imminent torture standing between us. Was that so much to ask?
With no clearer head than when I first laid down, I jumped up and headed for the shower, stepping into the blast of cold water in the hopes it might shock some clarity into me. It didn’t. And by the time I hopped out, shivering and wet, I was too emotionally drained to even bother with anything more than a tank top and undies.
My bed greeted me like the sympathetic friend it had always been, and as the chill in my skin caused the shivers from hell to exhaust me further, I dropped into a sound sleep, finding a dream among the senseless images.
A meadow opened up before me, its wide grassy pastures turning whitish-blue as they swayed under the silvery light of the moon. I walked toward the great tree at the center of the open space, running my fingers through the tips of the long grass. There were no stars tonight, and the clouds, hanging low—like my mood—glowed kind of blue. Even the boy at the center of the field had a silvery glow to his body, his dark hair reflecting the light.
“Ara,” he whispered from beside me suddenly, forcing my heart to start again in my throat.
“Jason, you scared me.” I touched a hand to my chest. “Where are we? Is this a dream?”
“Not quite.”
“What is it then?”
“It’s a mind-link: a kind of meeting place.”
“Am I asleep?” I looked around the tranquil, breezeless space.
“Yes.”
“How is this possible?”
“The mind is capable of many things, Ara—this is just one of them.”
“So what is this, like, an illusion, or are you real?”
He smiled, offering an upturned palm between us. I looked at his hand. “Go on”—he nodded—“touch it.”
Slowly, with a slight tremble in my fingertips, I reached across and placed my hand against his. “It’s real? You’re real.”
“As real as your mind wants me to be.”
“So, is this something only you can do, or can David—”
“No, he hasn’t the skill.” Jason looked away then, squeezing my fingers firmly.
I pulled my hand away. “Can you hurt me here?”
“Not any more than I can when you’re awake.”
“So, yes. You can.” My body tensed a little.
“I have no desire to.”
“Why did you bring me here?”
“You wanted answers. We can talk privately here.”
“Where is here? Is this a made-up place, or somewhere real?”
“This is your dream world, Ara.” He motioned around the open field. “Of course, it’s usually daylight here, but I guess you’re feeling sad tonight.”
“Usually daylight? We’ve done this before?”
He smiled, walking forward. “Yes, but I never let you remember.”
I stood motionless, watching him blend into the shadows beneath the wide, eagle-arm boughs of that strange old tree.
“So, when do we meet?” I moved then, eager to find him again. “How long has this been going on?”
“A while.” He slid down the trunk into the long grass, propping his back against it.
“Then how come I don’t remember?”
He laughed. “I erase it from you.”
“Why do you need to erase it? What do we do here?”
A smile crept onto his lips—a secret smile. “We talk. Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
“You kissed me last time.”
“What! I would never—”
“But you did.” He reached up, offering his hand.
Somewhere inside of me, despite how it made me feel, I knew he wasn’t lying. Which made me very curious. I slumped heavily on the ground beside him, ignoring his hand.
“Why did I kiss you?”
“You’re falling in love with me.”
“I am not!”
He offered no argument, just a kind of timid smirk. “I knew you’d say that.”
“Yeah, because you’re lying.”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
“Right, and I’m supposed to just take you at your word.”
He shook his head, wedging his hands between his knees. “Look into your heart. You’ve been curious, haven’t you, as to why you trust me so much; why you can’t seem to hate me?”
“Yes, but—”
“I
t’s because you’ve come to love me—love who I am now.”
I shook my head, sitting back against the tree.
“You see?” he said sweetly. “It’s true. Even your heart knows.”
“How long?” I couldn’t breathe then, couldn’t swallow, couldn’t understand what this raw feeling in my chest was that conflicted with the hatred my mind screamed for him. “How long have we been meeting like this?”
“Since Karnivale.”
“And how long have you suspected that I…”
“That you love me?”
“Yes, that,” I said, swallowing the golf ball in my throat.
“Not long. Maybe only a few days.” He sat quietly, waiting for me to say something, but though my mouth moved I just couldn’t form any words. “I’m sorry, Ara. I know this is hard for you to comprehend,” he added.
“Hard?” I scoffed. “Hard is walking uphill carrying two buckets of water. This is…” I rubbed my head, sitting further forward with each word. “Insane.”
“Insane but true.”
“Why would you do this to me—to David?”
“Hey! I haven’t done anything, Ara.” He gently guided my spine back against the tree. “You fell for me. I only ever came here to talk to you, and you kissed me.” He pointed to his chest, looking so human and so vulnerable with his glassy eyes. “Besides”—he sat back again—“I don’t care much for my brother, you know that.”
“Well, I would if you’d let me remember!”
Jason said nothing; he simply exhaled, looking down.
“Let me remember this one? Please?”
“Out of the question.”
“Then why did you ask me to come? What good is meeting like this if I can’t even remember doing it?”
“You can’t now, but I will return the memories to you when—”
“What?” I cut in. “Next time you bring me here; next time you sneak into my brain and create a world where we—”
“I don’t sneak in. Ever.” He sat forward, his elbows on his knees. “I always ask you.”
“No. This is the first time you’ve ever—”
“This is just the first time you remember me asking you.”
His soft voice and that playful tone rung in my ears for the few moments of silence I needed to collect my thoughts. “So, you erased that as well—our meetings in the real world?”
Dark Secrets Box Set Page 98
