by D. C. Gambel
“Ahem?”
We broke apart at the sound of someone clearing their throat. Jade stood at the edge of the pool. “Wow. You guys were really into it to not hear me. I mean my heels were clicking against the concrete and everything.”
“What do you want Jade?” Sebastian snapped. I figured his anger was from her interrupting us. After all, the last time he and I had been fooling around and Jade walked in, I stopped everything, even after she left.
“Me?” She gestured to herself. “Not a damn thing, except maybe a woman to make me as hot as you made Gaby. I can practically smell the pheromones.” She waved her hand through the air like she was wafting at the smells.
“Jade!”
“Right. Damien’s back. I suggest you both get dressed.”
“He wants to see us both?” I asked a little more shocked then I meant to sound. I noticed Sebastian stiffen at his words.
“What? Lover boy didn’t tell you?” She looked back and forth between Sebastian and me. “Of course he didn’t otherwise you two wouldn’t have been on each other like two dogs in heat. Yeah, Damien wants to see you both, but it’s really you, Gaby, that he wants to see. He found something of yours.”
“Of mine?” I looked to Sebastian seeking answers, but his eyes refused to meet mine. Did Damien find some evidence that Sebastian and I had been fooling around. Maybe the news article of us kissing. If Damien finding out was what Sebastian was worried about changing things between us, he didn’t need to be. I still didn’t want Damien knowing, but having him know wasn’t going to make me call things off with Sebastian. I tried to open my mouth to explain that, but Sebastian was already getting out of the pool still refusing to look at me.
“I’ll see you down there,” he mumbled, leaving me alone in the water.
“I can’t believe him. Damien talked to him earlier and he thought he’d try to get in your pants one last time,” Jade spoke once Sebastian was gone. “Although,” she watched me as I got out of the pool, making me a bit uncomfortable. “I can’t say I blame him when you’re looking like that.”
“It’s not his fault,” I ignored her last comment as I wrapped myself in my towel. “He tried telling me it was a bad idea, but I wasn’t hearing him.”
“Yeah, but did he tell you why?”
“If it’s because Damien knows now…”
“Oh, don’t fool yourself. Damien’s known since before either of you did. He’s that good. But I’m not going to be the one to ruin the surprise they’ve both created for you. There’s a changing room just over there. Hurry up. You’re not going to want to miss this.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
I followed Jade wearing my jean cutoff and spaghetti strap shirt. I felt a little self conscious since I wasn’t wearing any underwear. My plan had been to either dry off in my bikini before slipping my clothes back on or have Sebastian dissipate me home. Since both of those were no longer options and letting my bikini soak through my clothes just seemed ridiculous, going completely commando was the only choice.
“Aren’t we going to Damien’s office?” I asked as we passed by the door.
“Nope.”
“Then where are we going?”
“To the common area.”
As we turned the corner I saw Damien and Sebastian standing side by side. I let my eyes linger on Sebastian for only a moment longer than I should. I noticed his hair was already dried. Men had some things so much easier. He was back to looking like his usual perfection and I was looking like a wet rat.
“Gabriella,” Damien held out his arms to me. “I heard that no one let you in on the surprise.”
“Nope, not even after I asked nicely.”
“That would be my fault. You see, I was not sure if my suspicions were correct and if they were, I was not sure I would be able to, how do they say, pull it off?” I nodded. “It seems I was correct on my suspicions.”
“And what were those?” I asked.
“Why don’t you see for yourself?” I looked one last time to Sebastian. This time his eyes met mine and he looked devastated.
When Damien opened the door to the common room, I turned my gaze from Sebastian and gasped. I stood paralyzed holding my hand to my mouth. It couldn’t be. A man stood in front of the window looking out at the city. His clothes were tattered and dirty, along with his skin. His hair was longer than normal, but I wouldn’t let myself believe it. My mind had to be playing a cruel trick on me. I pinched myself just to make sure I wasn’t dreaming again. I couldn’t let myself have that hope and let it be snuffed out. Then the man turned. His gray eyes locked with my blue ones and I felt my knees give out, before I could hit the ground he was there holding me up.
“Grayson?” I whispered in a sob.
“It’s me Gaby. It’s really me. I’m really here. It’s not a dream.”
I shook my head and his brow knitted. “I saw you die.” My eyes moved to the spot I remember seeing the stake at. All I saw was a hole in his shirt that was stained with blood. The skin below it showed no sign of the wound.
“Yeah, this,” he gestured to the same spot. “Turns out I’m harder to kill than your average vampire. I think I have you to thank for that.”
“It makes sense,” Damien said, reminding me that there were others present, since the sight of Grayson had me unaware of anything other than him. “Angels are almost indestructible. With Gaby being half angel and Grayson being an almost identical copy, it would make sense that you both are probably pretty indestructible.”
I vaguely heard Damien’s words; my eyes were busy taking in Grayson. His shirt was mangled, covered in dirt and blood, not just from his initial injury. There appeared to be more.
“What happened to you?” I asked, not able to hide the pain in my voice.
“We’ll talk about it at home.”
“You’re coming home with me?” It came out anxious.
“Of course,” he smiled gently, but his brow furrowed as well. I saw him glance to something behind me and his soft expression shifted for only a fraction of a second. In that moment, his face became hard. I was glad that his glare wasn’t aimed at me. When his eyes fell back on me, his face was gentle once more. “Unless you don’t want me there.”
I shook my head. I hadn’t meant for him to get that impression. It should have made sense that he would want to go home, that we would go together, but the place I had shared with Grayson hadn’t been home with him gone. Everything was just happening so suddenly. He was alive. We were going home. It was like the last two months hadn’t happened, even though they had. “Of course I want you to come home with me.”
“There’s a car waiting downstairs to take you anywhere you want to go or if you’re in a hurry, perhaps Sebastian could…” Damien didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence before Grayson cut him off.
“The car will be fine. Thank you Damien for all that you’ve done.”
Grayson helped me stand. I felt a little silly thinking that I should have been the one helping him, not the other way around. I suddenly became self-conscious about how I was dressed in my cut off jeans and spaghetti strap shirt with no bra. I knew it was silly. Grayson was still wearing his tux from the night of Damien’s party. It had been two months since I’d seen him and I wished I looked nice for him. My eyes shifted to the three who stood behind us. Damien and Jade gave us soft smiles, but Sebastian seemed busy studying the ground. His eyes met mine for only a second as we passed. His lips pulled into a tight lipped smile. His expression told me everything he was unwilling to speak. He had been right, but wrong at the same time. Everything between us was different, but it changed the moment I saw Grayson, not the next day.
Once we were in the elevator, Grayson’s condition became more apparent. He had been trying to put on a strong face if front of everyone, but when it was just the two of us, he let his mask fall away.
“How badly are you hurt?” I asked. Grayson had released me and was hunched over holding on to the metal bar that wrapped arou
nd the small cubicle.
“I’m just weak.”
“You need blood.” I thought about it for a moment then spoke barely a whisper, “You can feed from me?” My cheeks flushed. We both knew with the blood exchange, hormone levels would rise and after two months of being apart, the draw to be intimate could be intoxicating.
Grayson gave me a knowing smile. “It’s not that I don’t want to, but I’ve fed from vampires earlier tonight. Men,” he quickly clarified. “I think it’s human blood I need.” I nodded. If vampire blood hadn’t done the trick, I believed Grayson was correct. He had to be badly injured and probably starved although I didn’t know how badly.
We moved from the elevator, this time with me supporting him. Once we were in the car, I spouted off Shawn’s address.
“Gaby, I want to go home.”
“Right,” I shook my head at my mistake. Shawn’s place had been home for the last several weeks. I corrected myself and gave the address to the apartment I shared with Grayson.
I remembered as the car pulled onto the street that if there was blood there, which I severely doubted, it was bad. I dialed my phone without explaining more than a name when Grayson looked at me quizzically. “Shawn.”
The phone rang twice before I heard, “Gaby?” in a British accent.
“Clive is Shawn there?”
“Hang on,” he sighed. I knew I was interrupting date night.
“Gaby? What’s wrong?”
“I’m not on speaker phone, am I Shawn?” I knew I wasn’t, but that didn’t mean that Clive couldn’t overhear if he was close. This way Shawn knew he needed privacy. I heard him move then the whoosh of the door closing behind him.
“What’s going on?”
“I’m sorry to do this to you and on date night…” I left the rest unsaid.
“Don’t worry about it. Just tell me what’s going on. Is it Sebastian?”
I looked at Grayson from the corner of my eye. He appeared to be looking out the window, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t heard it. “No. I need you to bring the blood bags in your fridge to Grayson’s apartment.”
“Grayson’s? What? Why?”
“Please! Just do it. I’ll explain later.”
He let out a long breath. “Alright baby girl. You better. Clive is going to be so pissed.”
“I know. I’ll find some way to make it up to him.”
When we hung up, I looked over at Grayson.
“You didn’t tell him,” he stated.
“About you?” He nodded. “If I had, he would have never let me off the phone.”
“So Shawn and Clive are still together? I honestly thought they’d fizzle out. I’m glad I was wrong.”
I nodded. “They seem happy, but you’re not the only one surprised. I know how Shawn is with men. Clive must be something special.”
The car pulled up to the apartment some time later. I helped Grayson into the building. He seemed to be struggling the more he moved. I was glad when we were finally in the apartment.
“It smells stale,” Grayson said as I settled him on the couch. We weren’t home long before there was a knock at the door.
When I opened the door, I saw Shawn standing there with a grin. “So how was it with…?” He cut off his own words. His eyes widened and looked over my shoulder searching for something. “Gaby? Is that…” I nodded and pushed him into the hallway closing the door behind me. “How?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I just found out earlier. Damien rescued him.”
“Did Sebastian know?” he whispered. I hoped with Grayson’s current condition and Shawn’s lowered volume that maybe Grayson didn’t hear him.
“I’m not sure how much he knew,” I whispered back, “but he knew something.” I was trying not to get angry over how much Sebastian did or didn’t know, or how far he would have let things go that night knowing that Damien was off trying to rescue Grayson. I had told him to let tomorrow’s Gaby deal with it, but still... “Anyways, I can’t talk about that right now.”
“You haven’t told him?” he gestured to the door.
“No. He’s in bad shape and needs my help.”
“What about afterwards? Are you just going to go back to the way things were and pretend the last two months didn’t happen?”
I shook my head. I honestly didn’t know what I was going to do. So I told him that. “All I know is I’ve prayed for this everyday for the last sixty days. Now that my prayers have been answered, I don’t want to risk losing him again.”
Shawn sighed, “You know he’ll find out sooner or later and it would be best coming from you. I mean the entire city knows.”
We talked for a few more minutes before Shawn handed me the blood bags and left.
“He didn’t stay?” Grayson asked when I closed the door.
“No, he wanted to give us time. You know Shawn. He’ll be back to see you soon.”
I busied myself in the kitchen opening blood bags, pouring them into a pot to heat. I startled when I saw Grayson standing on the tile.
“I’ll take it cold.”
I didn’t argue. I knew he must be starving. I watched him devour bag after bag. Once he was on the last one, I excused myself to go start the shower for him. Standing in the bathroom, I debated on a bath. Even though it would let him soak his aching muscles, I didn’t think he’d want to sit in the dirty water, so I started the shower. Soon the room filled with steam fogging the mirrors. I waited for Grayson. When he walked in, my breath caught in my throat. I didn’t know how long the shock of him being alive would last, but for the moment I was grateful for it.
Not knowing what to do with myself, I watched him start to unbutton his shirt. I moved to leave when I saw him wince from the effort he was exerting and I halted.
“Here,” I moved in front of him replacing his hands with mine. I tried not to think about what I was doing. I didn’t want my mind running away on me. He was still Grayson, still the man that drew out passion from me. Coming back from the dead hadn’t changed my feelings towards him, but at that moment he needed help, not my lust fueled thoughts. I shoved the shirt from his shoulders gently and gasped. His once smooth chest was now covered in puckered skin with rises and dips. It didn’t make sense. Vampires healed. Even if the items had been left in and his body healed around it, the scars left behind would have been barely noticeable. But these…
“Oh my god! How?” I asked with my fingers tracing the marks.
Grayson looked down at the ground. “Cursed items.” He lifted his eyes to meet mine before continuing. “When they realized they couldn’t kill me, they thought one of their items made by a witch would do it. When it didn’t…”
“I’m so sorry, Grayson. Did they tell you why?”
He shook his head. “I think it had to do with Anton and Ava.” With that one sentence, guilt flooded me. Of course it was my fault. It seemed everything bad that had happened to him was because of me.
He seemed to struggle talking about what happened, so I went back to trying to help him undress. When my hands fell to his pants he stepped back abruptly. “I’ve got it.” I didn’t know why he stopped me, but I didn’t argue. Naked, he stepped into the stream. I stripped down and followed him in. “Gaby…I…”
“I’m just here to help you.”
He just nodded. If I thought his chest was bad, it was rainbows and butterflies compared to his back. I had to bite back a cry when I saw him. No wonder he was struggling even with blood.
I washed his body. He even ducked down to let me wash his hair. Once he was clean, he handed me my shampoo. “Your turn. Wash the pool water off.”
“How?” I was curious how he knew about the pool.
“I can smell the chlorine on you.” I shifted uneasily. Grayson tilted my chin up. “I just want you to smell like Gaby, not the pool.”
I was busy tending to him that I’d forgotten about me. When I was done, Grayson turned off the water. I stepped on to the mat before wrapping a towel around each of us
. Heading into the bedroom, Grayson paused at the threshold.
“It looks exactly the same as it did the night we left to Damien’s party.”
“I haven’t slept in here since you…” I didn’t know how to finish it. Did I say die, even though he hadn’t? Did I say missing, like the city thought he was?
“Where did you sleep?”
“At first in the spare bedroom, but even that was hard so I’ve been staying at Shawn’s.” Seeming content with my response, Grayson nodded before heading to his drawers and pulling out sleep pants. He struggled, but had them on before I could help. I dressed in an old shirt and panties. I didn’t know the sleeping arrangement, but after his reaction to me trying to undress him and his reluctances to let me in the shower, I figured he’d want to be alone and I didn’t think I could handle him asking me to leave, so I headed towards the door.
“Gaby?” Grayson called out as I stepped from the room.
“Yeah?” I turned to face him.
“I’d like you to stay, if that’s alright.”
I smiled softly. It seemed Grayson didn’t know where we stood either. “Of course it is.”
We made our way into bed like old times, but this occasion we didn’t cuddle into each other. We each stayed on our own sides leaving the middle of the bed between us. My hand found his resting in the center of the bed. I threaded my fingers between his and was grateful he didn’t pull away. He surprised me by bringing our entwined hands to his lips and placing a single kiss over my knuckles.
“Goodnight Gaby.”
