Mitch sat at the kitchen table. Rage filled every bone in his body. How could she do that to him? How could someone that claimed they loved him, just decide to die and leave him? It wasn't best for her, and it certainly wasn't best for him.
The sun had set only minutes before. He knew they had to get back on the road, but he couldn't be around her. He had his back to the basement door and he heard it slowly creak open. He closed his eyes and shook his head as he sighed. He could feel her eyes on the back of his head like he'd felt them in his apartment only two days before, when he hadn't known she really existed. He wanted to pick something up and throw it against the wall. No, what he really wanted to do was get all three of those guys that had lied to the police about him and beat all of them to a bloody pulp.
"Mitch?" she said quietly.
He stood and turned on her with fire in his eyes. "Not now, Ciera."
Her breath hitched as it caught on a sob. "I'm so sorry." She begged and pleaded with him to understand how sorry she was. She hadn't known how much she needed to feed. She had never let herself get so parched before. She should have known how dangerous it would be. She had actually lied to him when she told him that it had only been a few days since she'd fed. It had actually been closer to five days. God, she was stupid, and she told him that. "I was stupid, Mitch. I can't apologize enough for what I've done to you." She paused. He'd turned back around, and was no longer facing her. "Just talk to me. Please."
He whirled around to face her again. "Talk about what, Ciera? You want to talk about how you told me only hours ago that your close friends had punished themselves by depriving themselves of blood, and you were doing the same damn thing? If your intentions were to just kill yourself, why the hell did you ever come into my life? Damn it!" He picked up the kitchen chair and hurled it through the air. It crashed into one of the end tables in the living room and broke into four pieces.
She jumped at his outburst. Her hand covered her mouth as tears threatened to fall from her eyes. She could see the hurt and anger in his eyes. She removed her hand, struggling to fill her lungs around the large lump in her throat. She stared at him. He was still standing there rigid, with his fists clenched tight hovering by his waist. He'd chosen not to look at her again. His jaw was set and unyielding. She wanted to hold him and comfort him, but he couldn't, or wouldn't, understand that she didn't do this intentionally.
"I've just been so busy with trying to find the Rogue. And the last couple of days went by so fast that it didn't occur to me how long I'd gone without feeding. I…I'm sorry, Mitch. Please don't hate me. I wasn't trying to kill myself; I promise you that I wasn't."
He looked up at her in the dim lighting of the room. It was steadily getting darker because he hadn't turned on any lights, and he wasn't going to. He didn't want anyone to know that the house was occupied, and a light on in the house was sure to alert the nosey neighbors of that fact. "If you ever pull a stunt like that again," he took in a deep breath to calm himself a little. "I will make it real damn easy for your family to find me." He met her eyes with a hard stare. "Do you understand what I'm saying, Ciera?" The only response he got from her was a tear racing to the kitchen tile. "If I don't have you, I don't have a reason to be here anymore." He took a few breaths and looked away from her. "I don't hate you, Ciera. You scared the living hell out of me. I would do anything for you, and that includes being your blood donor." He walked to the key hook beside the door to the garage, retrieved the keys to his mom's Tahoe and turned to look at her. She was still standing in the same spot. She had a lot of his blood on her face and clothes; they couldn't go out with her looking like a cannibal. He shook his head when he realized that she sort of was a cannibal.
He shoved the keys in his pocket and walked to her. Taking her hand in his, he led her back to his mother's room and master bathroom.
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Chapter 18
It wasn't as hard as he'd imagined it was going to be to walk in his mother's bedroom, but when he opened her closet and the smell of her wafted into his nostrils, his heart skipped a few beats, making him take a step back. I can do this, he thought, then quickly rummaged through the clothes to find five or six shirts, and then the same number of jeans. His mother had been a very small woman, and he prayed she had been Ciera's size. She had only been forty eight when she died, and she kept up with the latest fashions, so the garments weren't old lady stuff or anything. She sold insurance, so most of her clothes were business suits, but she had some casual wear clothes, and that was what he picked out for Ciera.
He knew the shirts would fit, but he glanced on the tag of a pair of American Eagle jeans he held in his hands. "What size do you wear in jeans?" he said loud enough so she could hear him from the bathroom. He knew it was rude to ask a woman's weight or clothes size, but she was so small that he didn't figure it would matter to her much. He thought only big women went by that rule anyway.
"I can wear a two or four," she shouted back.
The sizes were so different for men and women in jeans, but the little number on the tag said they were a two. Perfect. He folded the clothes, except for one shirt and a pair of jeans, then laid them in a neat stack on the foot of the bed.
He walked in the bathroom. She'd already removed all the blood from her skin, but what had him staring awestruck, was that she stood in front of the mirror in only a very nice lacy black bra and panties. Her body was a work of art, she was so perfect. She didn't shriek and jump that he'd caught her in her underwear. She only looked up and smiled appreciatively as he struggled to lay the garments on the vanity without physically shaking. If he had been angry with her earlier, he couldn't remember what it had been about.
She took the shirt off the top of the jeans; he almost groaned aloud when she slipped it over her head and covered the top part of her body. His best friend below his belt gave a hard kick against his slacks. He grunted, then turned to leave the big room that was getting smaller and smaller by the second. If he stayed in here any longer, that shirt would be coming back off. And if she'd been serious about being a virgin, it wasn't a good idea for him to be near her right now. How the hell could she be a virgin? She was over three hundred years old…unless vampires didn't have sex. He could understand that maybe three hundred years ago her still being a virgin at the age of twenty-five would have been normal. It wasn't uncommon for kids to lose their virginity at fourteen or fifteen nowadays. Of course, he thought they married that young back then. He shrugged his shoulders to himself, maybe he was wrong. He stopped outside the bathroom door and spoke, without turning to look back at her, "I got you some things to wear out of my mom's closet. I'll put them in my duffle bag with my clothes. I'm going to take a quick shower, then I'll wait for you in the kitchen. Take your time. You're free to use my mom's shower if you want."
He walked, very uncomfortably, back to the basement. He had clothes in his closet, and he was still the same size he had been in high school. Well, about the same size. He wore the same size jeans that he'd worn his senior year, but his t-shirts were bound to fit tighter. He'd put on about thirty pounds of muscle since back then. His shoulders were a lot broader now. He looked in his drawer and grabbed a pair of boxers, then went to his closet and grabbed a few t-shirts and jeans. He needed to take a shower. He didn't know if they would be able to come back here after they left tonight. He stuffed all but a change of clothes in the duffle bag with Ciera's clothes.
He took the stairs two at a time, then went through the bathroom door adjacent to the basement stairs. He closed the door, but didn't lock it. He wasn't worried about her coming in here, he would actually welcome it, but maybe he was right in guessing that vampires didn't have sex. It would totally suck to look at her beautiful body every night and day and never be able to do what his best friend below his belt clearly wanted to do with her. But he would do it, and enjoy every minute of it. He loved her, but sex would be a huge bonus.
God, he couldn't get the mental picture to leave his
mind now that he'd seen her in so little, and evidently his boy below his waist had the same mental photo in his head as well. The thing sprung up like a catapult being released when he pulled his boxers down. He looked down and sighed. "I'm sorry, boy. It looks as though you are going to be out of commission for a long while." He didn't have the heart to tell it that it may never get back in the game again.
Mitch turned on the spray and stepped under it before it was warm. "Shit!" he shrieked. His teeth chattered, but there was one good thing about it, his hard-on was going away.
"Mitch, are you all right?" He froze under the water that was just beginning to get hot. Evidently, hot water and her voice and that damn mental picture, was enough to revive his boy below. Damn! He sighed.
"I'm all right…the water was cold, that's all," he said.
She giggled, and it sounded like she had come further into the bathroom. "I hate when that happens."
His eyes grew wide. She was definitely in the bathroom with him, and it sounded like she was sitting on the toilet beside the shower. He looked down at his boy and begged silently for him to go back to sleep. He couldn't get out of the shower, even with a towel wrapped around him, and hide this. He growled at the thing when it only looked up at him and smiled, if you can imagine a penis smiling. Traitor, he thought, and reached for the body wash.
He would just pretend that she wasn't in here, and maybe by the time he finished washing his body, his pecker would get bored and go back to sleep. The thing was so hard; it was like he had taken a handful of Viagra. He ignored it and her too, and soaped up his body. Washing the lower half of his body was completely and utterly out of the question. He grunted and turned to face the hot spray to rinse the soap off.
"Are you sure that you're all right, Mitch?" she said, and he could tell there was amusement in her voice. Did she know how she was torturing him?
"I'm fine," he managed to get out without biting her head off. He was sure he'd been unaware of his death, and was currently in his own personal hell. This was torture. He cleared his throat, and forced his voice to come out more polite. "I was having trouble reaching a spot on my back, but I got it. All is good now."
"Are you sure?" His head turned swiftly at her voice behind him. She was in the fucking shower with him. "Because I could help you reach all of those hard to reach spots. That is…if you needed any help." Oh, God, how he needed help.
His gaze moved from her face, slowly down her naked body. Her breasts were average size, but perky, and very, very perfect. His eyes kept moving of their own freewill, over her flat abdomen, and then finally stopped on the most intimate part of her body. It was bare, and as naked as the day she was born. He almost lost it right there. It had been over seven months since he'd even seen a naked female, but he had never seen one as perfect as her.
His boy was delighted that she was in the shower with them, and it was clear that he was going to make Mitch miserable later if he didn't let him play with her.
He closed his mouth, because he was sure there was drool oozing out. He had to ask her, or he had to get the hell out of the shower. "Do uh … does your um ... do vampires have sex?"
She smiled as she stepped closer to him. He had put his arm on the wall in front of him and he was looking back over his shoulder at her. He tensed as she touched his back. "Yes."
He closed his eyes and let out the breath he hadn't been aware he was holding. He didn't open his eyes as he asked his next question. "Have uh…" He could do this. He could ask her this; he didn't have a choice. "Have you ... ever?" There, he'd done it.
"No." She slowly ran her hand around the front side of his body and gently gripped his sex in her hand.
He gasped, and went very still under her touch. Well, everything was still except for his boy, who was clearly thinking this was a good time to do jumping-jacks. The thing was bucking against her hand so fiercely that his hips were moving.
"But I was kind of hoping you would be my first," she whispered in his ear, and Mitch didn't need any more invitation than that.
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Chapter 19
Mitch held her in his arms, with one hand on her back, and the other went up the back of her neck into her hair. He was wet, and the long strands clung to his skin. He was panting heavily from wanting her so badly. He didn't know how he had ever lived without her. In his impatience and disorientation, he turned a one-eighty and moved her under the spray. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back; a soft moan escaped her throat as the water rushed down her face and soaked the rest of her body.
The sight of her, with the water sparkling over her skin from the overhead light, was exquisite. How had he gotten this lucky? He felt as though he had won the lottery, or someone had given him something priceless. The water was still pouring over her face as he leaned in to capture her lips with his own. She responded with eagerness. The water rushed down his face as he teased and taunted her lips and tongue, and pulled her body firmly to his. The feel of her naked skin was better than he'd ever imagined in his dreams.
He had to take this slow. He had to keep reminding himself of this. This wasn't a Gracie Potter kind of girl. She was over three centuries old, but she was innocent, and he needed to take that fact with extreme precaution. With that thought in mind, he pulled away from her lips, then kissed her cheek and neck softly. It was such a beautiful neck, and for an instant he had the urge to bite her and swallow the warm, sweet blood from her veins.
He pulled back and shook his head; he blinked a few times. Why the hell had he wanted to do that? Blood wasn't sweet anyway; it tasted kind of like a copper penny or metal. His own mouth had filled with blood several times while boxing in high school.
"What is it, Mitch? Did I do something wrong?" Ciera said, almost in a panic. She really wanted this to happen with him. Maybe she had been too forward when she'd touched him.
He put the thought out of his mind and smiled at her. "You haven't done anything wrong. I just had a very weird thought, that's all." He went to kiss her again, but she pulled back and looked in his eyes when they opened in confusion.
"What kind of weird thought?" she asked.
He laughed lightly and tried to kiss her again, but she held him away from her mouth effortlessly. He sighed and shook his head. "I don't know. When I kissed your neck, I had the sudden urge to bite you with fangs that I don't have and drink your sweet blood." He shook his head and laughed lightly again. "It's ridiculous though…blood isn't sweet."
Her eyes grew bigger with every word that came out of his mouth. He caught the expression on her face and gave her a questioning glance. She was beginning to look a little uncomfortable.
He laughed nervously. "What is it, Ciera? It was just a silly thought."
"My blood is sweet, Mitch. How could you know that?"
He shrugged. He really didn't want to have this conversation right now. He had other things on his mind, and he wanted to get this talking over with so he could get to doing those things. His buddy below his waist wanted them to shut up as well. "Am I turning into a vampire now that you bit me?"
Her eyebrows drew together. He was so calm in asking that question. He couldn't possibly want this life she had. She shook her head. "No…you would have to drink a substantial amount of my blood to become like me." He smiled, but she didn't miss the look of disappointment in his eyes. It was impossible, unheard of to want this kind of life, and she was only fooling herself in thinking that he did. Her eyes were playing tricks on her. He couldn't be disappointed that he wasn't turning into a vampire.
She went very still when she heard a noise outside the house. A car had pulled in the driveway.
"What is it?" Mitch was still smiling when she looked up at him, but it was a nervous smile.
She heard a car door shut quietly. She was out of his arms and out of the shower before he even lost his smile.
When he pulled the shower curtain back, she wasn't in the bathroom any longer. Had she heard something? He shut th
e water off, then grabbed a towel and quickly dried off. She was back in the bathroom and breathing heavy as she threw on her clothes. Noticing the panicked state she was in, he hurriedly put his on as well. She'd heard something, and from the speed she was dressing, she had seen something as well. Well, that was one way to get rid of a hard-on, he thought as he slipped his shoes on.
She put her finger to her mouth to let him know that he needed to be quiet, then turned out the bathroom light and took his hand. "Wait…" he whispered. He picked up his slacks and rummaged through the pockets until he had retrieved his cell phone, wallet, and the keys to his mother's Tahoe. The house was completely dark now. She led him out into the hall. He picked up the duffle bag that contained their clothes, and followed her to the kitchen window.
There was a patrol car in the driveway, but no one was in it. The door bell rang and Mitch went very still beside her, then realized that she'd made them both invisible again. Even the duffle bag he was holding was invisible. He didn't have time to think how cool that was, because she was pulling him in the direction of the garage.
She opened the door, then asked for the keys in a whisper. He held them out and felt her hand close over his to take them away. The door to his Tahoe opened, and he crawled through to the other side without being asked. His heart was beating ninety to nothing. He hadn't bothered to open the garage door; it would take too long for it to rise, and that would alert the police officer. It was a good thing that he had parked behind the garage door that the stolen car was pulled in. If they had to bust out of here, hitting a police car would slow them down a lot.
Ciera didn't start the engine right away. She waited and listened to the movements of the police officer. She heard him ring the bell again then talk on his radio. "215 to dispatch."
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