by DD Prince
“I’m not letting go,” he whispered, as if reading her mind.
She didn’t know what was happening to her. It was like he was all she could hang onto, like she had to hang on otherwise be sucked away into an abyss of pain. The fear slowly subsided as he comforted her with his hands and his lips, stroking her and showering her face with soft kisses on her eyelids, her nose, her chin, her lips.
Finally, she felt like she was turning to mush in his arms and just melted into him, feeling totally relaxed, feeling safe. The sound of his breathing, the warmth of it, the beat of his heart, it comforted her. She felt like she would float away if he wasn’t anchoring her. He was hard again. She leaned back and looked into his eyes again and their hips connected. He slid into her and she held him tight as they found a rhythm; looking directly into her eyes and in that instant, she felt whole.
“Bite me, Tristan. Please,” she whispered. She grabbed his shoulders and then raked her fingers up the back of his neck until they caught in his hair.
He obliged and as he drank from her throat, she detonated into an instant sweet climax, feeling fire spread through her. She felt protected, felt safe, felt connected to him somehow. She was so relaxed, so light and airy. She floated on a cloud; he was the cloud. After he climaxed, he stayed inside of her, holding her, and she started to drift off to that place between sleep and being awake, and just floated.
Then, after a long time, she could hear his phone buzzing. She didn’t know where it was coming from, but it started to pull her out of wherever she was, back to here and now. He ignored the phone and kept stroking and massaging her back and arms. It kept buzzing. Finally, she tensed. She pulled back and looked at him. He blinked a few times like he, too, was coming back from somewhere else.
She couldn’t fathom what that emotional meltdown was about, but all she wanted throughout it was him, to hold her tight, to keep whispering in her ear, she wanted to feel him, to smell him, to get inside of him. She’d never felt such an intense outpouring of emotion in her entire life. Never grabbed on this tight to anyone before. Never felt so safe; never felt a sense of belonging like she did right now. When he drank from her, it was like he was inside of her in every way, like she could feel inside of him. It didn’t make any sense whatsoever, but it felt so amazing. ‘This is it’, he’d said. This was what, though? Had she fallen under his spell?
He let go of her, except for one hand, which rested on her stomach, and leaned over toward the floor and fished his phone out of his jeans pocket. He stared at the screen for a split second, then he dropped the phone on the floor carelessly and reached for her again. He pulled her to his side and wrapped his arm around her, her head fell onto his shoulder.
I have totally lost my ever-loving mind. I can’t believe I begged him to bite me.
He stroked her hair, staring at the ceiling. She studied his face, wondering what he was thinking. Finally, she rolled off to the side and balanced on her elbow and planted her head on her palm. She broke the silence, “Tristan?”
He smiled at her and touched her face, showing dimples.
“Hi,” he whispered, and his eyes sparkled.
“Hi,” she said shyly, catching her bottom lip with her teeth.
He touched her lips with his.
She felt joy bubble up inside her. “I’m staaarving,” she whispered shyly and then inexplicably pressed her lips to his chin.
Tristan kissed her on the bridge of her nose and then snapped up to a sitting position. “As you should be. I can remedy that. 20 minutes.” He got out of bed like a man with a mission and speedily got into his jeans, commando. She watched the muscles ripple on his stomach, his arms, and his legs.
He left the room and she flopped back onto the pillows. While he was gone she just lay there, feeling peaceful, relaxed, her mind almost blank. She knew it was odd, but for once didn’t want to prod deeper, talked herself out of delving deeper. She just enjoyed the feeling of weightlessness and euphoria; it was as if she’d been drugged.
The ceiling fan above her sent a gentle breeze over her skin and she absorbed the sensation amid the cool sheets. The phone buzzed again, and she looked down at the floor. It was ringing with the name ‘Dawn’. She ignored it until it stopped buzzing.
Two missed calls from Dawn? Who was Dawn?
She curled back into the covers and let her mind wander to where she could see his dimples, feel his strong hands, feel his eyelashes tickle her cheek, his stubble tickle her inner thighs. She felt butterflies, Jell-O knees. A goofy grin spread across her face and made her cheeks hurt. She ignored the nagging little voice telling her to get a grip. She didn’t want to analyze things, for a change. Didn’t want to get a grip. Wanted to feel this. It felt so good to just… float.
He was soon back, with arms full. He placed a steaming bowl of pasta on the table and fetched the bottle of wine from under his arm and put it on the table. He opened the drapes further. It was now dark, but her eyes were adjusted well enough that she could see what he was doing. He fiddled with things at the long dresser and produced two glasses and a corkscrew from one of the cupboards below. Kyla climbed out of bed with the top sheet and draped it around her nakedness and padded to the bathroom.
She looked in the mirror at herself. Wild curls tumbling down her naked back, swollen lips, body littered with bite marks…
Holy Jumpin’ Dracula, Batman!
She had bite marks in three places on her neck as well as on her left shoulder. Her cheeks were pink and rosy, and her eyes were glistening, looking wet, the green vivid like sparkling emeralds. She shook her head and rubbed her eyes, barely recognizing herself. She leaned toward the mirror and examined the most prominent mark on her throat. Then she felt a tingling roll through her body almost like a warm wave had gently washed over her. Wow.
That was the only word she could muster, and she was pretty sure she’d said it aloud. Her stomach rumbled loudly, so she finished up and got into the shower. When she was done and back in the bedroom she saw him putting a lit tray of tea light candles on the table. He walked over to her.
“Mademoiselle?” He stood by the door and held open the red silk robe for her. She dropped the towel she was wrapped in and put her arms into the robe. He wrapped her with it and planted a soft kiss on the top of her head. His actions were so endearing, it was totally disarming. (Clearly, she was disarmed as she’d just dropped a towel covering her naked self in front of him!)
He signalled to a plate of food on the table and then sat across from her. He was gorgeous. Rock hard body, bright blue eyes, sexy bedhead, and he had just cooked food for her after making sweet love to her and helping her through that emotional… whatever that was.
“You aren’t eating?” Kyla asked.
“I’m quite full, as it happens,” Tristan said, smirking, cheeks dimpling, eyes sparkling like bling that had the light shone on it just right. He lifted his wine glass and dipped it slightly in her direction and then drank from the glass.
She felt the heat rise in her face and a swish of moisture between her legs. She clenched and shuffled uneasily in the chair and sipped her wine.
Kyla devoured a plate of linguine in a rich sweet tomato and wine sauce. It was heaped with mushrooms and peppers and meatballs and the sauce tasted like it had been cooking all day.
Tristan poured her a second glass of wine. She barely looked at him throughout the meal, just focused solely on the food, which she must have desperately needed due to lack of much to eat in the past 2 days and a whole lot of calories expended. And blood lost.
He smiled at her as she sipped the second glass of wine and put her fork down.
“Thank you; that was delicious.” she said.
“You’re delicious. To your health.” He clinked her glass with his. “All this must agree with you. You have an appetite, colour in your cheeks, you’re beautiful, Kyla.”
She blushed.
Agree with me? Imprisonment? Vampires?
Kyla felt whatever ease and ha
ppiness she’d been feeling the last few minutes drain out of her. She suddenly felt empty. Gutted and empty. She put the glass down.
No. No, this is all so wrong. I can’t just let myself get caught up in this. This isn’t me. This isn’t right.
His expression dropped. He quickly reached across and covered her hand with his,
“Wait, don’t do that, don’t…”
Kyla snatched her hand back and picked up the wine glass with both hands. She downed the rest of the wine. They sat in silence for a moment. It was suddenly beyond awkward. Tristan looked like he was getting ready to say something, but then his phone started to buzz.
He rose from the table, “Be right back.” He fetched his phone from the floor and swiped at it as he left the room, his head down, shoulders slumped.
She sat quietly for a moment, contemplative. Then she refilled her glass and took it into the closet and turned the light on and began to rifle through the box of clothes. She found a pair of cheap black thong flip flops, her favourite flip flops. She sighed, remembering buying them at a beach kiosk last summer on an outing with Daisy and a few other neighbors from the building. They’d all chipped in and rented a van and spent the day on Wasaga Beach, the night at the midway, eating junk food, drinking beer and vodka coolers, and people-watching, and then they camped out at a campsite near the beach. It had been one of the few carefree days she’d had in a very long time. Could she have more days like that with bumper cars, cotton candy, and giggles? Probably not; not if she lived with a vampire and wasn’t allowed to leave his bedroom.
She put the $5 flip flops on and stepped out onto the balcony with her wineglass. Everything was dark, except for a few dim lights around the pool. It was a starry night and the aroma of all the flowers in the courtyard together with the near quiet, just the sound of the pool pump, was relaxing. She inhaled the scent and tried to clear her head. Across the way she saw a light go on in a room directly opposite her.
It prompted a light bulb moment. The balcony wrapped around ¾ of the courtyard’s second floor. She knew that just this suite and the other bedroom were in this wing of the house, so it stood to reason that there was at least one more way to the staircase off the rooms on the other side. Maybe that entrance was not gated. If she got over there when he was asleep, maybe she could get out of the house.
She narrowed her eyes, sucked on her lower lip, and drummed on the balcony railing with her fingertips, wondering if the terrace doors on that side were unlocked. There were a few sets of them at each of 3 junctions of the inside of second floor balcony. She expected that they would be, given that this door and the guest room’s terrace door had been unlocked.
She thought of his face as they’d looked into one another’s eyes in bed a little while ago. She thought about all the emotion that had oozed out of her. She felt a stabbing pain in her chest and a longing.
For what? Him?
She shook herself back to reality. No. This couldn’t be; it couldn’t be her reality. Pleading with a vampire to bite her? Obviously, she must be slipping in and out of hypnosis. Moments of clarity and then moments of weakness? Back and forth like a seesaw. It was the only thing that made sense.
She had to go. Regardless of how he’d made her feel earlier, she couldn’t just succumb to this fate, this blood slave prison. Surely, her life had to be about more than the physical attraction with him. Eventually he’d get tired of her. What then? How would he make sure she wasn’t out there with his secret? She already felt like she was losing herself, knew she was doing things that didn’t make sense. She had to make this end before it ended badly for her. She had to get her head back on straight. Getting away from him would probably be the key to that and if what had happened earlier tonight was an indication of the power he had over her she’d better get out of here soon before she totally fell under his spell.
Every time he was near her, Kyla’s common sense seemed like it disintegrated. Princess? Calling her that hit a trigger for her, a big one, that being the nickname she’d dreamt of being called since a little girl, since before she’d become so skeptical of love, by whatever man would be her soul mate. She couldn’t let her common sense vacate like this. She had to try to get out of here.
She dashed back into the closet to see if there might be running shoes in there with her belongings. Ten minutes later, she’d rifled quickly through all the boxes and hadn’t found any other pairs of shoes. She was no Imelda Marcos but she owned several pairs of shoes. So where were they all?
She took a pair of yoga pants and a black hooded sweatshirt and stuffed them under the bed with her flip flops and then changed quickly into a pair of pink cotton Hello Kitty sleeping shorts and a pink tank top that had been with her things. It would be better than sleeping naked beside him, unless he ripped them to shreds like her other clothing, and would serve as underclothes when she left with the sweats. She climbed into the bed, her heart thudding wildly. She felt like she was doing something awful, like she was about to make a mistake. But she had to try to get out of here. She couldn’t just be a victim. Staying would be allowing herself to be a victim.
Right?
She growled in frustration. Almost everything inside her head told her that she had to run. This wasn’t her world. She wasn’t even meant to even know about its existence. If she weren’t some freak of nature she wouldn’t be what he’d called lucid, wouldn’t have a clue. She’d be back home, living her ‘not much of a’ life.
She’d never have remembered feeling those intense blue eyes burn through her, never felt those teeth on her, and never felt these feelings inside of her. A part of her wanted to say fuck it and see where this thing with them could go. She’d never felt like this about anyone. This feeling, this connection, this attraction --- she couldn’t reconcile it in her head. It had to be wrong. It had to be. She shook the feelings off with another frustrated “Grrrr.”
Yep, this was emotion at its finest; it fucked you up and made you weak. It had never equated to anything positive for her. But then again, it had never felt quite like this before, either.
She hoped that he would be back soon, fall asleep, and then she could try and get it over with and find out if the balcony was, truly, a way out.
She tried to calm herself down, taking a few deep breaths. She found a TV remote on the side of the bed Tristan favoured and flicked on the television that was mounted over the fireplace directly ahead. She needed something to zone out with and just quiet her anxiety down for the next little while.
She flicked through mindless late-night TV for a few hours, not able to lose herself in any of the storylines. They all seemed beyond ridiculous, irritating to her, even. She used to love to zone out in front of the TV for a few hours after her shift at the bar, but not now. It all seemed too trivial given her present circumstances.
She’d watched about an hour of news and there were no missing persons reports about her, of course. She felt so restless. She really wanted to try to see if she could get through to another part of the house, but knew it would be foolish to try now when he could very likely be over there in that room where the light had gone on.
What if those were Joe’s or Sam’s rooms, if they lived here? What if there were others in the house, too? She pushed the thoughts out. She had to at least try, but would wait until Tristan was asleep. She got up and glanced out the window again. The light across the way was still on.
She’d pretend to be asleep when he came in so that he would hopefully ignore her and just go to sleep. What happened earlier still nagged at her, but she kept pushing it back, not ready to put any more thought into what had happened, what she’d felt.
She still felt so raw after falling apart and decided to push all of that to be reviewed later. She didn’t want stay stuck in her own head, in her angst, analyzing all of that. She was more than accustomed to pushing feelings away. Hopefully soon, she would be out of here with no need to review all of those emotions at all. Ever.
It felt like
an eternity before she finally heard the door opening. She quickly turned so that her back would be facing his side of the bed and pulled the blankets up so that they shielded most of her face from view. She tried to keep her breathing as steady as possible.
She heard Tristan go into the bathroom. During the time he was in there, her heart felt like it pumped in her throat. She heard the shower and after a few minutes, heard shuffling of him getting in beside her. He moaned and pulled her back against him, spooning her. She ignored that her heartbeat was picking up tempo and tried to feign sleeping. It wasn’t easy. He smelled like shampoo, but also like toothpaste and chocolate, creating a mint chocolate chip aroma. She could feel his erection against her backside.
Not again.
His mouth was on the back of her neck and he was inhaling her scent, burying his nose into her hair. His hand was on her stomach. He whispered her name and told her she smelled so good.
She intentionally stirred, pulling away to try to make herself seem like she was in a deep sleep and annoyed by his touch. She could feel his breath on her neck, could smell how sweet it was. He pressed his pelvis against her backside and gyrated,
“Baby…”
She squirmed away from him and tried to make her breathing sound heavier.
He moved in closer again. “Can’t get enough of you.”
Why wouldn’t he just…STOP? She wanted to scream. She was on the edge of the bed and felt like she was on the edge of madness. There was no place to fucking go.
