Trusting Eternity (The Sullivan Vampires, Volume 2

by Bridget Essex

  I reached out to steady myself with a hand against the corner of the wall. Not because she was beautiful in a way that made my knees weak—though she was—but because, in the space between us, a…line seemed to pulse. It’s the best way I can describe it.

  It was as if a glowing thread was tied around my heart, stretched across the distance between us, and was tugging at Kane’s heart, too.

  I knew without a shadow of a doubt in that moment that we were inextricably linked. Connected, utterly.

  If Kane felt that connection, that bright pull from that invisible thread, I couldn’t say…because it wasn’t me that her powerful blue eyes found.

  Kane’s eyes found Mags and pinned the woman beneath her gaze.

  Mags stopped speaking to her male companion. Across the crowded room, she lifted her champagne flute to Kane in a mocking sort of toast and drained the contents dry in a single swallow. She kept her eyes trained on Kane’s as Kane stalked her way across the room, threading herself between the assembled vampires—or maybe they parted for her so that she could move easily and quickly across the crowded room—to reach Mags.

  I couldn’t hear what the two women said to one another as Kane inclined her head toward Mags, as they stepped so close to one another, it looked like a fight was about to begin, their stares so hard and intense—nose to nose. Both Kane and Mags’ eyes were flashing as Kane turned, indicating the corridor with a quick hand. Mags didn’t look at Kane as she sailed past her, nose up, fangs bared in a snarl.

  And Kane and Mags left the room together, speaking heatedly and quietly as they both stalked down the corridor.

  Was Kane talking to Mags about…me? Maybe it was absurd to think that I mattered so much to Kane—after all, hadn’t I been discharged from the Sullivan Hotel without any interference from her? But there had been something in the clenching of Kane’s jaw, and the dangerous glittering of Mags’ eyes…

  I thought that, yes, maybe they were talking about the incident that had garnered Mags’ “punishment.” Though I did not—and still don’t—think leaving the Sullivan Hotel for a week is an appropriate sentence for attempted murder. Maybe vampires simply think about things differently, I mused as I stood there, one hand still against the wall, the other over my heart to quell its incessant beating. How much did one human life count to a being who considered us…dessert?

  But that was unfair. Kane had never thought of me that way, I knew. Though I wondered, then, if what I’d felt between us had really been that special, after all. I was trying to heal the hurt in my heart. I knew better. But I was trying to convince myself otherwise.

  But how could I explain that pulsing connection between Kane and me that I had just felt? Honestly, I’d never felt anything like it before in my entire life. It was otherworldly, that tug that had compelled me to lean toward her amidst the crowd. It was nothing I could explain—but it had been there, all the same.

  Across the room, then, I saw Melody. Her bright red hair was unbound and hung down around her shoulders in satin waves. She was wearing a red dress with a plunging neckline—so plunging, in fact, that the neckline itself ended somewhere around her navel, her breasts hardly concealed by scallops of red fabric. She was laughing at something a dark-haired woman was saying, the woman bending her head to speak into Melody’s ear. And as Melody lifted up her gaze, ready to retort something to her companion…she saw me.

  She looked surprised and genuinely confused for a heartbeat.

  And then unmistakable rage passed over her face, contorting her pretty mouth into a snarl before she turned away, lowering her voice and speaking again to her companion.

  This wasn’t a good idea.

  I didn’t want a scene; I didn’t want to be made a fool of in front of all these people. I probably shouldn’t have come back to the Sullivan Hotel, but Tommie had been convincing, and…I had no place else to go.

  Tommie was at my elbow, then, her sure, strong fingers gripping me gently, curling over my skin. “Let’s go up to my rooms,” she said in a low voice, her lips close enough to my ear that I felt them brush against my skin. I shivered at that unexpected touch. But there was a thin shiver of delight that raced through me, too.

  I turned to glance up at Tommie. Having just seen Kane, having just felt that bright thread of connection pulsing between us…I knew that I didn’t have that same sensation with Tommie. Between Kane and me ran an electric thread. It was something extraordinary.

  But there was a deep attraction between Tommie Sullivan and me, and there was absolutely no denying that fact.

  Still, it didn’t matter. None of this mattered. Because now that we were back at the Sullivan Hotel, I could find Gwen, and she and I could figure out how to get me back to New Hampshire. Where I’d start my life fresh, free of a strange, glittering, beautiful life full of vampires.

  “What about your friend?” I asked, nodding in the direction of Francesca, whose head was bent to a beautiful female vampire with jet black, straight hair who was whispering into her ear. They looked intimately acquainted, the way this vampire laid a hand on Francesca’s pink-clad hip.

  “There’s time enough for that—and anyway, she looks…occupied,” said Tommie with a shake of her head. Then, her fingers still wrapped strong and gentle around my arm, we walked down the corridor, in the opposite direction that Kane and Mags had taken.

  “I need to speak with Gwen,” I told Tommie once we’d reached the bottom of the spiral staircase; we’d gotten here, walking the entire five minutes, in silence. We paused next to the first wide step of the staircase, and I gazed up at Tommie’s face. She had a carefully schooled expression of neutrality as she shrugged.

  “I don’t know where Gwen is right now. Why don’t you call her?”

  I blushed, biting my lip. “My cell phone is dead,” I told her.

  “You can charge it in my room—and you must be hungry,” Tommie noted, her head to the side. “I can get food for you, bring it up to you. I don’t want Melody to see you,” she murmured, stepping closer.

  “It’s too late for that,” I murmured back, glancing over Tommie’s shoulder at the empty corridor behind us. I shivered a little beneath her intense gaze, her green eyes flashing. “Melody already saw me—at the reception.”

  “Well,” said Tommie, working her jaw as she glanced up at the staircase. “Let’s get to my rooms. Just…in case.”

  “In case of what?” I asked, another shiver moving over my skin.

  Tommie paused, her foot on the first step, her fingers still wrapped around my arm. She let me go. “Melody isn’t really…how she used to be,” said Tommie, shaking her head, not meeting my gaze. “She’s not how she was when I knew her. Before. She’s…very different.”

  The words sounded so forlorn, so remorseful. I paused for a long moment, watching Tommie climb the steps.

  “You knew Melody before she…died?” I asked her, then. My words sounded strange to my ears as I began to climb after her.

  “We all did,” Tommie answered, walking slowly up the steps, her long fingers trailing on the railing. “Some…better than others.”

  Now her words sounded bitter. I tried to put the pieces together. Tommie’s shoulders were rigid, and she hadn’t been sarcastic once since we’d entered the building.

  “Did you see Kane—” I began, but Tommie rounded on me, glaring down at me for a long moment with a shake of her head.

  “I saw Kane with Melody,” she whispered, the words low and growling. “Together.”

  For a long moment, I stood very still.

  And then it dawned on me.

  “Were you in love with Melody?” I asked.

  Tommie paused on the steps, her back to me. Her shoulders relaxed.

  “Yes,” she said simply. I caught up with her on the wide staircase, and we both shared the same step, somewhere between the second and third landing. Tommie cast a sidelong glance my way, and her eyes were shining in the half-light. Bright with tears, I realized, as she shook her
head, breathed out, biting her lower lip and glancing up at the landing. “I loved her very much,” she said then, her words soft and vulnerable—so unlike the wry, assured Tommie I’d experienced in the short time I’d known her. She sighed, not wiping the tear away as it leaked out of her right eye, tracing a line down her face. She stood straighter.

  We climbed the rest of the steps, and Tommie took her landing with a long stride, her hands deep in her dress pants pockets. “It’s not as if it was some sweeping love story,” Tommie choked out, rolling her wet eyes. “I didn’t have a chance with Melody,” she said over her shoulder, her mouth twisted into a grimace. “Kane and Melody… That was a connection that nothing could break. I didn’t have a chance, but sometimes you love people you know you can’t be with, because you’re just powerless against it. That’s how it was with Melody and me. I was powerless against it. Against her. I loved her, and I couldn’t stop loving her.”

  It was a poignant, beautiful speech—and I could understand it on a human level. But I thought about the Melody downstairs, the Melody I knew. It was hard for me to believe that anyone could love that woman so much, let alone the two women I’d been attracted to at the Sullivan Hotel. How could Kane and Tommie love her so much and so fiercely? Kane and Tommie were very different, it was true, but they had some things in common. They were both incredibly self-assured and knew exactly what they wanted. They were strong, independent and fierce… What could women like that possibly see in petulant, cruel Melody?

  As if Tommie could hear my thoughts, she shook her head as we walked down this new corridor, her shoes clicking against the blood-red and black tiles. I hadn’t been paying attention to which landing we’d gotten off on, but I figured we must be on the floor on which the Sullivan Vampires had their quarters. The doors were ornately carved, and the windows had heavy, black curtains drawn over them.

  “Melody wasn’t always like this. How you know her,” said Tommie softly, quietly. “She wasn’t like this at all,” she whispered. “She was…” Her voice trailed off as she paused before a tall, mahogany door carved with grapevines. She fished her key ring out of her pocket. “She was very kind. Very gentle. She made you forget everything dark and terrible that you’d ever seen.” Tommie was gazing at the door as if she could see right through it, her eyes unfocused…gazing back on the past. “She had a laugh that was bright, like sunshine. She was thoughtful. She remembered things you said—little things, things that weren’t of any consequence, and she’d do something about them. Fix them. One time she learned that I’d lost my hat in a fall from my horse. This is way back in the day,” said Tommie, her mouth quirking up at the corners as she remembered. “She went out and bought me a new hat, and brought it to me. ‘Just like the ones you love wearing,’ she said. I remember that. It…touched me,” said Tommie, her voice going low again as she gazed down at the doorknob while she fit the key into the lock. “Honestly,” said Tommie, then, over her shoulder, “Melody reminded me of you.”

  Startled, I stood there for a long moment in the corridor, closing and opening my fists. I thought about what Tommie had said. It would have been the most terrible of insults if Tommie had compared me to the Melody downstairs.

  But the Melody she’d known once…she didn’t sound like the newfound Melody.

  Not at all.

  “Isn’t that strange,” I offered, following Tommie into the room as I glanced about. “How time can change someone so much.”

  “That’s like a line from ‘Unchained Melody’, isn’t it?” said Tommie, her mouth quirking sideways as she took a hat off the elaborately carved coat rack by the front door and plunked it on her head. It was a fedora with a black satin ribbon looping around it. She sprawled down in a plush blue chair by the unlit fireplace as she stretched overhead.

  The rooms I now found myself in were what I might have described as masculine if I hadn’t known a woman lived in them. They were very sparse and furnished with only a few choice pieces of furniture. There was the main room, with a couch and chairs, a smaller room to the left that looked like a miniature library, the walls lined with mahogany shelves filled with messy rows of books, and then the bedroom to the right. All of the walls in the rooms were covered with the same blue wallpaper and were mostly bare. Coupled with the few, modern-looking pieces of furniture, Tommie’s living quarters gave me a Spartan feel, as if every object within them had to have a purpose or would not be permitted within these rooms.

  The bed in the room to the far right was the only beautiful thing here, a sprawling king-size bed with a headboard and footboard made out of a dark, well-polished antique wood carved with vines and flowers. The bed looked tall enough that you might need a stool to climb up into it.

  “Impressed?” Tommie remarked, her mouth curling in a wry smile as she caught me glancing into her bedroom.

  I was appalled to find myself blushing as I shook my head, turning away from her and hoping my hair covered my red cheeks. I suddenly realized that an incredibly attractive woman—who I was incredibly attracted to—was lounging in a chair very close to me. The blush deepened as Tommie stood, her mouth now grinning wickedly as her gaze raked over me.

  “Are you comfortable here, Rose?” she asked then, her voice neutral but low and sultry enough to send a shiver down my spine.

  “Yes,” I told her, which was a sort-of truth. I glanced up at her quickly, taking my purse off my shoulder. “I…I have to plug in my phone,” I stammered, trying to open the zipper on the purse and fumbling with it. I quietly cursed myself at being so clumsy.

  I wasn’t special. Heaven knows that Tommie would probably have put the moves on a female statue. It wasn’t particular special that she leaned closer to me then, her fingers curling around my waist…to take the purse from me. She grinned deeper as I let out a sigh while she brushed past me, her hip bone grazing mine with a soft nudge as she took my phone and its charger out of my purse, tossing the purse back onto the chair she’d vacated. She crouched down next to the side of the fireplace, plugging the charger into the wall.

  “Thank you for helping me, Tommie,” I whispered.

  Tommie glanced up quickly at that, shaking her head as she plugged my phone into the charger. It beeped but didn’t light up in her hand.

  “It’s no trouble,” she said tiredly, setting the phone down onto the floor as she placed an elbow on one knee, glancing up at me. I was suddenly aware of how stunning she looked, kneeling on one knee like someone preparing to be knighted. I audibly gulped as she rose smoothly, shaking her head. “It’s the least I can do, really,” she told me, putting her hands in her pockets after a long moment, leaning forward toward me. She straightened a little, shaking her head. “Anyway, I can go get you food—you must be hungry. I’ll have to leave you here. And you’ll have to stay out of sight, sadly, what with Melody and Mags—”

  “Tommie.” I don’t know why I thought of it at that moment, but I’d been wondering, and, given that this would probably be my last night here, I might as well ask. “Are you and Mags…” I trailed off, remembering Mags’ passionate kiss upon greeting Tommie.

  “We’re friends with very few benefits,” said Tommie, then, one brow up. “Does that bother you?”

  “Of course not,” I told her quickly.

  “Ah. Well,” said Tommie, striding smoothly in front of me as she curled her fingers over my hips again. Two hands against my hips held me snugly against her as my heart hammered, as I stared up at her open-mouthed. “Why did you ask?” whispered Tommie, her bright green eyes staring down and into me.

  She felt strange against me. Her body was hard in a way that Anna’s had not been, harder than Kane’s. Kane had fit against me in all the right places, and Tommie didn’t exactly do that—we didn’t join, curve to curve, effortlessly. But do you need to? Isn’t connection, a body against a body, enough?

  I was so confused as I looked up at Tommie. I wasn’t entirely certain if I wanted this. We can be attracted to anyone and everyone, but acting
on that attraction is another matter entirely.

  But it’s not as if Kane and I were together, or would ever be together, now that Melody was in the picture. I wasn’t cheating or doing something wrong if I kissed this woman. And I did desperately want to kiss her, to put my arms around her, to drag her down to me and taste her. The attraction, the want, burned through me like my blood, rushing and moving much too quickly.

  Still, I knew, in that moment, that what I did now would matter.

  And that made me pause.

  I was angry at myself. I wasn’t with Kane. It was over. I should just kiss Tommie, should let things go wherever they were headed. I wasn’t like this, usually, but I was hurt, and I needed something soft and nice and lovely. And Tommie didn’t fit that longing entirely—she wasn’t soft or nice, but she certainly was lovely. And she was nice to me, I supposed. That counted for something.

  I wanted to stop thinking, to stop weighing everything, the good and the bad, to stop wishing for something that would never be.

  So I closed my eyes as I lifted up my face, as Tommie bent down to me. And as effortless as breathing, our mouths connected.

  She was cold, her mouth chill against my lips as I kissed her, but it was a pleasant chill, the kind that sends a shiver down your spine, the kind you can taste, like bright mint or the taste of the first snowfall, slightly metallic. Almost immediately it was a hard kiss, a desperate sort of kiss, as I wrapped my arms around her neck, and her fingers dug into my hips, hard.

  Then somehow, terribly, there was a knock at the door.

  Tommie didn’t pause in her kiss, only pressed me harder to her, but I took a step back, my hands on her chest now as I glanced backward.

  “Leave it,” Tommie growled softly, almost inaudibly, as she stared down at me with bright, savage eyes.

  “Miss Sullivan? I’m sorry to disturb you. It’s me—Gwen,” said Gwen on the other side of the door.