by L. R. Potter
Finally, cried out, and emotionally drained, she washed her hair and body quickly under the now cold water. She toweled off roughly and slipped on one of Ian’s old football jerseys. It made her feel oddly close to him… the big dummy. She slipped her weary body under her covers and placed her still wet head down on her pillow. Within seconds, she was asleep… hard, dreamless – and glimpsing-free – sleep.
She’d been asleep for only a couple of hours when a jarring sound woke her. As exhausted as she was, it took her a moment to realize what it was. Finally, recognizing her cellphone’s ringtone, she snatched it up automatically, trained from all the years of waiting for Ian to call.
Sitting up, she answered without trying to read the display. “Hello?”
“Ara, it’s me,” Drew said.
She blew out a breath. “Drew…” she began, as she brought her knees up and put her forehead against them. “What’s wrong?” she asked tiredly.
“Ara… I can’t go on like this. I hate this. I love you. I’ve always loved you.”
Pain, anger, and frustration stabbed at her chest. “Drew, I don’t know what to say.”
“She meant nothing to me. You have to know that!”
His words were like a cold blast of water in her face. Coldly, she said, “Funny, when her mother slapped me in the face today after Ian’s funeral, she said exactly the opposite!”
“Oh, God, Ara! I’m so sorry. Oh, baby, I wish I could just go back and redo it all over… do it differently.
“Me, too,” she whispered.
A sob broke through the line and she closed her eyes tightly, “I loved him, too. You weren’t the only one who lost him today. You have to believe I’d never let him knowingly drive in that condition. I’d just stupidly left the keys in the ignition when we moved to…” he trailed off as his words hit him.
“When you moved into the backseat with Maggie?” she finished emotionlessly.
“Ara,” he sobbed, “neither time meant anything…”
Her body froze at his words. “Neither time?” she questioned quietly.
“What? No, oh, God, what I meant was that I’m just so sorry,” he rambled.
To find out Drew had something actually going on with Maggie and that it’d not just ‘happened’ as he’d initially told her, made what he’d done a thousand times worse. More tired and cold than she could ever remember, she slowly pulled the phone away from her ear and clicked it off. Her chest burned with his betrayal. She jumped when the phone immediately began to ring again. She stared down at it, focusing all her torrent of emotions on it, substituting it for the cause of her pain. She threw it as hard as she could across the room. It hit the far wall, causing the battery to fall away from the phone, and the annoying ringing to stop. Arabella dug her fingers into her hair and pulled at her roots. The asshole, she thought to herself.
“Arabella?” she heard Lynx question from the doorway.
Without looking up, she mumbled, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t. What’s happened?” he asked in his cultured voice.
She tilted her head and looked at the gorgeous man at her door. He was bare-chested and his lean muscles rippled as he moved to lean against the door’s frame.
She gave a small shake of her head. “Nothing… Drew… he just…,” she began, then clamped her lips closed. There was no way she’d admit to this beautiful man that she’d been found lacking by another.
He gave a small smile. “He is… how you say…an asshole.”
Her eyes snapped up as he’d basically read her mind. Her lips began to twitch, then she chuckled, then she began to laugh hysterically, falling onto her side as laugher took her over. She knew she was being ridiculous, but she couldn’t seem to stop. After several minutes, her laughter ran out and she lay looking up at the ceiling, her arm draped over her stomach. Remembering Lynx at the door, she turned her head back to him. He must think she’d lost her mind… and maybe she had. But he just smiled at her.
“Thanks, Lynx. I needed that,” she said.
“Do you think you’ll be able to sleep now?”
With her head, she indicated the small television across from the bed on the dresser, “I think I’ll watch a little TV, then I will. I’m fine. You can go.”
She sat up as he straightened at the door. “Call if you need anything,” he said as he turned to leave.
A sense of loneliness filled her, not for the first time. “Lynx?”
He turned back with a questioning lift of his eyebrow.
She fanned her hands out in front of herself. “Do you… would you like to watch it with me?”
His forehead wrinkled at the question. “I…” he began before she cut him off.
“I just don’t want to be alone…just for a little while,” she pleaded quietly.
He gave a small nod of his head. “Okay.”
She scooted over to one side of the bed and grabbed the TV remote and began to click through the channels. Lynx climbed onto the bed, leaned back against the headboard, and stretched his long legs out in front of him. She glanced down at his bare feet. How could she find his feet sexy? She shook her head at herself.
“So… what’s your pleasure?” she asked as she scrolled through the channels.
“Oh, I don’t think you’ll find it on the TV,” he said, tongue in cheek.
She twisted her lips wryly and shook her head. “You might be surprised. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between regular TV and the porn channel.”
“Oh, do tell,” he said with a grin, leaning to prop himself up on his elbow to face her.
“Oh… how about not!” she said with a laugh.
He leaned over and grabbed a clump of her hair, and ran its strands through his fingers. “So… tell me what did good ole’ Drew have to say.”
Her lips tightened. “Again, how about not!” she grumbled as she tossed the controls to him. “Here, you choose something.”
He caught the controls in one hand but continued to study her closely. After a minute he said, “Arabella, you are not to blame for any of this and you are not responsible for the actions of your brother or Larkin.”
She stared at the blank TV screen. “Maybe not directly,” she finally said.
He continued to rub her hair between his fingers. “Not in any way.”
“Maybe if I’d made different choices…” she began
“No, if they’d made difference choices,” he concluded.
“There’re things you don’t know,” she said looking down as she pleated the bedspread between her fingers.
He gave a bow of his head. “I’m sure there are, but I’ll tell you what I do know, Arabella,” he brushed a finger along her jaw-line as he spoke her name in that way of his and she shivered. “You weren’t in that car; and you didn’t put the drink in your brother’s hand. Of these, you are innocent. Guilt… my beautiful Arabella, is a dangerous emotion on which to cling. If you allow it, it will wrap around your soul and squeeze the very life right out of you.”
Her chin wobbled as she contemplated his words. She swallowed past the emotions which threatened to clog her throat. She lifted over-bright eyes to his, “I want my life back… the life before the accident… the life before I knew the truth,” she whispered.
He brushed his thumb over her trembling bottom lip. “Ahh, Arabella, you know the saying… the truth will set you free.”
“Do you think that’s true?”
Pressing his lips to her brow, he sat back against the headboard, his stomach muscles rippling once more. “Let me ask you...if you could really go back and not find out what Larkin had done, would you really want that? Because we both know, if it happened once, it would have happened again… if not with this girl, then with another.”
Mimicking his movements, she scooted up to lean against the headboard as well. “I don’t know… they say ignorance is bliss.”
“If we’re going to sit here exchanging cliques, how about; k
nowledge is power?” he said with a grin.
She held up her hands in defeat. “You win, you win. Now, pick us a movie… nothing scary or filled with blood and gore, or I’ll never get to sleep,” she said with a grin.
His lips twisted wryly, and in his best Dracula imitation, he said, “I want to drink your blood.”
She burst out laughing. “That was bad… really bad!”
He grinned at her smiling face, and slowly his grin faded away. With a shake of his head, he turned away from her and with remote in hand, he flicked through the channels, finally settling on an old black-and-white movie from the forties. She wondered what had wiped the smile from his face. Sighing, she squirmed down and watched the flickering screen of her TV until slowly, her eyelids grew heavy and closed.
~X~
She was dreaming, and for once, she was happy in her dream. She was standing in an alcove outside the Night Owl waiting for… someone, she didn’t quite know who, but she knew she was excited about seeing him. It was raining, with just a smattering of clouds up above. She looked up and the moon was as big as she’d ever seen it. It seemed so close that she might actually be able to reach up and touch it. It’s light so bright, she could almost see each individual raindrop as it fell. She reached out a hand and the rain pelted against it, stinging and cold. She found she like the feel of it against her skin.
She glanced down at her sheer, white dress. And even though she knew it would basically become transparent in the rain, she stepped out into the falling water. She stretched her arms out to each side and threw her head back. She opened her lips and allowed the rain to pelt her face and fall into her upturned mouth. She licked against moisture.
She felt someone come up behind her and wrap their strong arms around her waist. She smiled and lowered her head. She felt cool lips press tenderly against her neck and she shivered at the sensation. She lifted a hand to wrap into the long, dark locks… but the feel was wrong. The hair was short and bristly against her fingertips. She started to jerk away when she felt the stranger behind sink his teeth into her exposed flesh. She whimpered and struggled to get away, but he was too strong for her.
Suddenly, Lynx appeared in front of her. She sobbed his name and begged him to save her. He ran his hands over her shoulders and arms and hugged her close to him, while the maniac behind continued to suck wildly at her neck. “I’m here,” she heard Lynx whisper into her ear. “Just hold on to me.” Trusting in his words, she clung to him… even as the man behind kept her securely clamped between his teeth… even when the pelting rain began to feel like acid against her skin… even when she knew she should let him go. She clung to him and slowly her mind freed her and she slipped far away from that place and into one where she was safe, warm, and protected.
Lynx had long since given up pretending to watch TV, and had instead begun watching Arabella as she slept. She’d turned toward him in her sleep, with her hands folded underneath her cheek. He reached over and lightly brushed her tousled hair from her face. She was so exquisite. How could any man chose another over her? It was beyond him. Larkin was indeed a fool. That he’d hurt her terribly was obvious.
He inhaled deeply and her scent filled him. With his animalistic hearing, he heard the blood as it rushed through her veins to her slow-beating heart, then back out again. He wondered if it were possible that it tasted as good as it smelled? His lips tightened that another knew the answer to that question. He cocked his head to one side. He was jealous. The emotion surprised him… and bothered him terribly.
But he couldn’t help but be drawn to her. She had that one elusive quality that men and kings, worlds over had fought to protect… she was pure. While other people’s motive could be questioned, he knew she could always be depended on to do the right thing. He studied her elfin features, the shadows under her eyes that she’d carried for days still clearly visible. He hated those shadows… hated her brother, Larkin, and the vamp which had placed them there. He ran a finger gently against them and she turned into his touch as if she knew she could trust it.
He stilled at the thought. But she couldn’t trust it… shouldn’t trust it. If she knew the truth about him… about what he was, then she’d run away screaming. No matter how strong she tried to be, what he was would always be between them. Celeste had decided death was better than living with the truth. Why would this woman think any differently?
She smiled a faint smile in her sleep. He wondered what she was dreaming about. It seemed to make her happy. It wasn’t long after, however, when she began to twitch and thrash about. She whimpered and slurred his name… calling to him. Blood, her glorious blood, began to trickle from her nose. He inhaled sharply and his stomach clenched as he fought his desire to feed from her. It took her anguished words to draw him back to reality.
“I’m scared, save me… oh, please, save me,” she whimpered.
He ran his hands soothingly over her shoulders and down her arms before gathering her into his chest. “I’m here. Just hold onto me.”
That seemed to calm her and she nestled into him, trustingly. He murmured soothing words softly into her ear as he stroked her back, up and down. His chest burned at how much he wanted to protect this woman from the monsters of the world… how much he wanted to protect her… from himself. When she settled back into sleep, he leaned over and quickly grabbed a tissue and wiped the blood from her face.
Chapter 8
Arabella woke slowly and for once she wasn’t afraid. In fact, she couldn’t remember a time in recent days where she woke feeling so rested. She moved to stretched and became aware of the powerful arms wrapped around her, holding her close. She stilled immediately. Lynx was perfectly still behind her as well. The jersey she’d worn to bed had risen up during the night and she could feel her pantied-bottom nestled against his hard shaft. She couldn’t help but wiggle a little bit more snuggly against him. It was nice to wake this way.
She felt him tense behind her and hold still for a few seconds. Then he increased the pressure of his arms around her, drawing her even closer against his body. Her heart rate picked up and almost immediately, he buried his face in her hair and inhaled deeply. With feather-light caresses, he kissed her neck, sending goosebumps all over. She shuddered against him.
“Arabella,” he whispered into her ear. As always, the sound of his voice as he whispered her name did strange things to her body. She wanted him in the worst way.
But insecurity coursed through her. She’d only ever been with one man in her whole life and she was sure he’d been with hundreds of women. “Lynx, I…” she began.
“Shhh,” he said against her ear as he nipped it with his teeth. A sharp shaft of pleasure whipped through her at the sharp bite. He slid his hand up from her waist, agonizingly slow up under her shirt. She gasped at the feel of his fingers brushing against her breasts. She caught her breath at the touch of his cool hands on her as he gently tugged against her suddenly sensitive nipples. He nuzzled her neck and pressed slow kisses against her skin, calming her with his gentleness.
“You smell so good,” he murmured against his skin.
Slowly, he allowed his hand to slide across her belly down to her panties. With a gentle touch, he slipped under them and placed his hand over the most intimate part of her. He seemed to hesitate and stilled both his hand and his kisses.
She swallowed hard. “Don’t stop,” she begged quietly, feeling his complete withdraw.
He stayed perfectly still for so long, she thought he was going to ignore her. But with a growl, he flipped her onto her back, and crawled over her. She felt his pulsating hardness against her mound. “Please, Lynx,” she whimpered, when he buried his face into her neck again. She was so desperate for him. She was consumed by such overwhelming need. It was as if her body longed to be joined with his… as if her very soul needed to be joined with his.
He rose up, his dark hair fluttering down to almost hide his gorgeous face, looking wild and untamed. “Oh, Arabella, what are you doing
to me? Huh? You have to be sure this is what you want. You have to understand, this is what we will have. I’m not looking for a relationship. You have to agree to that upfront. Once we start this, there will be no turning back. If I do this, you are mine until I say otherwise. You understand? There can be no others. You will be mine… for my pleasures only… for as long as I say. Yes?” he bit out.
She blinked at the harshness of his words. But it seemed nothing could dissuade her. She wanted him desperately… wanted him now… needed him now. “Yes, yes, yes,” she murmured.
He contemplated her steadily for a long moment then with another growl, he lowered his lips and ravished her mouth - that was the only way to explain it. He tasted her as if he couldn’t and wouldn’t stop, no matter what. She went up in flames, just from the kiss and his words. Words that for some reason held a great meaning for him.
He rose back up over her and studied her once more with his dark, sultry eyes, looking like the devil incarnate. He rubbed his body suggestively over hers and she begged him, “Please, Lynx.”
“Just this once, I will do it your way… as it pleases me.”
With those words, words that shouldn’t have satisfied something deep within her, but did, he snatched her panties roughly from her body. “Are you ready for me?” he asked with a devilish grin.
“Yes,” she whimpered as she shifted her hips impatiently beneath him.
“Spread your legs,” he demanded, as he unfastened, then kicked off his slacks and boxers. She complied and was immediately rewarded when he slid his massive length slowly and smoothly inside her. She groaned in pleasure. “Oh, my God,” she whimpered. She was finally whole… complete… one. Tears slid from her eyes at the ethereal peace which fell over her.
