by Elena Lawson
We would be back in the road at sundown, and by then he’d be ravenous. It was possible he wouldn’t be able to control himself. “Didn’t you bring blood bags with you?” I asked after the only response he gave me was to clench his jaw and seethe quietly.
“I can go a week—sometime more without feeding,” he said. “I trained myself to do it from the start.”
My eyes widened. Impressive for a vamp that was barely more than a year old. “But you’re injured,” I said, willing him to admit to me how badly he needed to feed.
I saw the blackened flesh had healed already a bit around the edges, but it was eating up all the life and energy he gained from drinking human blood and leaving him starved and weak.
“I can help you, Frost,” I said in a gentle voice, not wanting big bad Frost to feel emasculated or like I doubted his abilities. I pulled my cellphone out of the purse I’d fetched earlier from the truck and stood to find a signal, lifting the device high into the air as I watched the bars blink into and out of life. I had one bar—maybe one and half. It would need to be enough.
“What are you doing?” he asked, watching me warily from his nest of hay.
The second bar lit up and stayed steady near the back of the barn and I stilled, pulling up google. Hospitals near me. But the nearest one was over an hour away and there was no way to know for certain if they had any fresh blood on hand. The nearest blood bank was even further.
“Would animal blood work?” I asked, thinking I’d need to up my crossbow game if I was going to be able to catch or kill anything of a decent size for him. And that was assuming there were wild animals in this barren wasteland. There weren’t even trees here. I’d have to drive several miles to even find an ecosystem that supported the kind of animals I would need to feed him. We were surrounded by dry dirt and highway at the height of drought season.
Godfuckingdamnit.
“It might stave it off long enough,” he said—the closest thing to admitting what he really needed.
I tried to think of other options—but there seemed to be only one that I could think of. I shut off my phone screen and gripped it tightly, lowering it, cursing under my breath.
Maybe we could wait. Maybe Frost was right, and he could hold off until we could get to some place with blood that wasn’t in a human body—or my body.
“Doubt you’d find anything around here, though,” he said, mirroring my thoughts.
I went back to the hay-sealed stall and sat with him again, putting an extra couple feet of space between us than there’d been before. Frost noticed—a muscle in his jaw twitching. But he said nothing, sitting in stony silence as we waited for the sun to set.
10
It was only three hours before I started to worry in earnest.
“Damnit Frost,” I exclaimed after returning from a bathroom break in the shrubbery behind the barn.
He was positively white. Like ghost-level pale. He was breathing hard in and out of his mouth, and his hands were clenching and unclenching at his sides. The wound in his neck was almost fully healed, which meant he was likely almost completely depleted of the life-source he used to continue on.
He needs to feed.
The thought was both an admonishment and a horrified scream rebounding in my skull.
“You should leave,” he growled, straining. Sweat beading over his brow—his incisors slipping out from his gums. “I can’t,” he started, but couldn’t finish the sentence.
Couldn’t look at me, either. He was in pain. And not just the physical kind. Self-hatred and loathing were what he was feeling. I could tell.
It was the same look he had after beating up little Billy Barnes in grade eight. Billy was a bully—he’d punched a girl that day near the end of the school year, and it wasn’t the first time he’d done it, either. But Frost hadn’t meant to go so far. He hadn’t meant to break Billy’s ribs.
And for him to spend the summer healing in bed rather than out doing what teenage kids wanted to do over summer break.
In my mind—Billy had deserved it. In Frosts, he was in the wrong. He carried the guilt of his actions through that whole summer. He didn’t raise his fists again for months even though there was plenty of opportunity. He had the same look he had now.
Like he hated himself.
Like he was a monster who should be feared. Left to be alone.
I wasn’t having it.
“You told me you could control yourself,” I said, remembering last night with a growing warmth between my legs and a squeezing sensation low in my belly. “And you did.”
He turned to me, his body heaving with the force of his breaths. His eyes dark and bloodshot. His fangs out fully now.
Fuck.
I couldn’t fucking believe what I was about to say. What I was about to do.
“Drink from me,” I blurted before I could change my mind. Immediately I wanted to cram the words back in and coughed to cover the slight gag threatening low in my throat.
Frost looked at me like I was insane, but I didn’t miss the way his swallowed hard and deep, like he was salivating just to have heard me say it. “No.”
What?
“I can’t have you attacking the first person we come across when the sun finally sets. I won’t allow it.”
Hands on hips, I stomped across the barn, planting myself in front of where he was sitting, back hunched, elbows on knees. He hissed, shoving himself back as far as he could before he hit hay. “No, Rose. I won’t do it.”
What was it people said about wanting something more once you’ve been told you couldn’t have it? If this was reverse psychology, it was working. My stubborn ass self was rising to the surface, taking over.
“Oh yes you will,” I snarled back.
“Please—”
“Just fucking do it, Frost. Get it over with. Just don’t take too much or you’ll have to drive, and I suspect you adhere to the road laws,” I said the last part with a roll of my eyes, trying to make him think I didn’t care at all about doing this. Nope. Totally cool. This was totally ok.
“It’ll take us an extra day to get there if I let you drive,” I added after he still refused to respond, sitting there like a damned child who was pretending not to listen.
Ok. Fine.
He wanted to play it like that…I could play dirty, too.
Hardening myself, I worked to slow my pulse with a forced aura of calm. This is a business transaction. It’s not really me—I can pretend I’m someone else.
I only have to do this this one time, and then I’ll never have to do it again.
My mouth went dry as I knelt in front of him, brushing my long black hair back from my neck.
“Rose…” he said, his voice a plea.
I tried not to look at his fangs—not to show any trace of disgust.
I leaned in and tipped my head to one side. He shook.
I planted my hands on his legs, pulling myself in closer between his legs. Not giving him any option for refusal or escape.
“Rose…”
I kept my nails filed sharp and painted matte black. I did it so I would always have another sort of weapon on me. I never imagined I would be using my polish-hardened black daggers on myself.
Then again, I never imagined a lot of things that’d happened in the last forty-eight or so hours was going to happen. Sooner or later, I’d have to stop being surprised by the shit life had a habit of throwing my way when I least expected it.
If this was the start—I couldn’t imagine what sort of insanity awaited me when we got to the guys and I finally agreed to hear what they wanted from me.
My fingers were steady as I punctured my flesh, dragging the nail down in a vertical slit until the sting of air on the small open wound made me suck a breath through my teeth. The warm wetness of my blood as it bloomed and dribbled down to my collarbone made me wrinkle my nose in momentary disgust.
“Do it Frost,” I ordered, and he broke. The monster he hid deep within came out in a fl
ash of hunger crazed green eyes and bared teeth.
With a speed that I couldn’t ever match, he had me, one hand clutching at my ribs and the other a fist in my hair as his teeth came down on the soft skin of my neck. His teeth tore into me and pain exploded from the bite.
It took everything inside me not to draw my stakes against him. To keep myself there and let him drink from my artery. But…the pain was fading fast, I realized. And it wasn’t until I heard the moaning sound that I recognized it as my own voice. That I was moaning.
It felt…good.
Fuck, it felt so damned good.
My body was reacting to the bite in ways I never could have anticipated. My breasts hardened and a delicious ache was spreading through my belly, moving out to tickle all my extremities. I found myself touching Frost, trying to draw him in closer. Wanting his fangs in deeper. Harder. Wanting him to take all of me.
His grip on my ribs loosened and I almost cried—wanting—no, needing him not to stop. Instead of allowing him to let go, I snatched his hand and moved it lower, beneath my skirt—to the burning ache there that desperately needed sating.
I was slick with silky wetness when his fingers brushed against me and my hips bucked as he fingered my opening, biting down harder. The pain mixing with the pleasure in a hot crescendo of sensation that took my breath away. His responding growl told me he was feeling what I was feeling, too.
The desire burned more brightly than anything I’d ever felt before. I knew in that moment if I didn’t have him, I would die. Right there in the barn among all the hay and dirt. My heart would just stop beating if I didn’t sate this need.
His fingers thrusted into me and my body arched again, my hands finding the bulge of his cock beneath his jeans. When I opened my eyes for a brief second, trying to find the buckle of his belt, my vision swam.
My fingers were sloppy as they attempted to undo the buckle.
There was a weight on my chest—crushing my lungs. My pulse pounded hard and fast in my ears. I was weakening.
Dying.
In a moment of clarity, I tugged away, and Frost’s fangs broke free of my skin.
“Fuck,” he exclaimed and fell back as though burned. “Fuck, Rose. I—”
But my body was already working to replace the blood that was lost. Healing itself. The cells multiplying and splitting and multiplying again, as though it was prepared for this.
As my vision cleared and the wound healed, I noticed two things. My pulse still pounded, and the intense wave of desire that had taken hold of me still wasn’t sated. Dulled, maybe, but my sex throbbed with the absence of his fingers and my skin prickled with yearning.
“Shut up and take your pants off,” I said between clenched teeth.
“Wha—”
“Take. Them. Off.”
“But you’re hurt—”
Showing him I was far from hurt, I stood towering over his sitting form without even a hint of stagger or sway. I flipped my hair back, revealing my neck to him. The itch of the flesh knitting back together had stopped, and I knew the flesh would be closed, a bit pink if anything at all.
“Now take off your pants, Frost.”
The hunger was back in his eyes. Mingled with relief. He did as he was told, unbuckling the belt, and then drawing down the fly, setting his cock free.
I didn’t waste a minute, tugging my shirt up over my head and tossing to the floor. My bar followed a second later. Then my skirt. And my panties. I stood there bared to him, nipples rock solid and hair raised with anticipation.
His cock twitched as he took me in, appraising me as if I was a work of art. It was almost as though I could feel the touch of his gaze on my skin. Like phantom fingers. Awakening me inch by inch. Setting my skin ablaze.
I leaned forward and ripped the jeans from his legs, tossing them somewhere behind me before I was kneeling again, this time over top of him, my knees pressing into the hay and concrete as I straddled him.
He shook his head; his hands moving to cup my ass and lift me from the floor until my sex was level with his mouth. My hands found a handhold on a metal ring beneath the hay a few feet above his head. I gripped it with white-knuckled fists as he squeezed my cheeks and took my sex into his mouth.
I shouted, unable to contain the sound or all the roiling heat bubbling up from deep within—threatening to spill over. His tongue flicked against my clit and I felt the press of his fangs against my lips. It was all I could do to hold on to the metal ring and ride out the waves of pleasure radiating over me.
He moved one of his hands between my legs and plunged two fingers inside, adding exquisite pressure to the constant flicking of his tongue. His fingers picked up speed and vigor, plowing into me again and again until I was on the cusp of my release.
“Please, Frost,” I begged. “Please.”
With a roar he clawed me down from the metal handle and sheathed himself inside of me, my knees slamming against the floor. I cried out, but not at the pain, at the still-building release. At the nearness of it as he thrusted in and in and in. Lifting us both from the floor with the force of his fucking, arm around my middle to hold me in place.
His eyes met mine and suddenly the fangs didn’t matter anymore. I bent down to taste him, pressing my lips to his hard enough to feel the fangs hidden just inside. The tip of one skated across my lip, drawing a bead of blood he gently sucked away as he continued to drive into me.
Oh god.
Oh god.
I was coming undone. Derailed. A fucking freight train was coming and there was no stopping it now.
“Frost,” I choked out a second before I splintered into a thousand pieces of myself, crying out his name. Spiraling down in a tangle of limbs. Of mingled breath, warm flesh and blood. Of spent energy and single heart beating enough for the both of us.
11
We lay still save for the rise and fall of our breaths. Me utterly spent, sprawled over his chest. Him, arms lightly wrapped around my naked body, holding me against him.
“I had no idea,” I started, licking my dry lips. I really needed to start keeping a big ass bottle of water with me for these kinds of emergencies. “I had no idea it was like that.”
The rush of pure, unfiltered desire that came with his bite. I knew vampires liked to fuck—a lot. It was practically the only thing they did aside from sleep and feed—or at least as far as I’d seen that was the case. Now I knew why. If they got horny like that every time they bit someone…
How could they not?
Frost nodded, his chin rubbing against the top of my head. I craned my neck to get a better view of his face. “I didn’t know, either, until the first time I fed. It’s not like that with blood bags or animals. Only live human or vampire blood causes that reaction.
I pursed my bottom lip. “Vampire blood?” They fed off each other?
Yet another fact I’d neglected to learn.
Frost looked at me strangely. “You know you’re a pretty shitty vampire hunter, Rosie. Seems like you don’t know your prey at all.”
I swatted at him. “Oh, shut up. Why would I care?”
“That sort of information could be useful.”
I couldn’t think of how, but I didn’t bother arguing, waiting for him to answer my question.
“Yes,” he breathed, relenting to the prod of my silence. “We can feed from each other. Trading blood is yet another way to stave off the cravings. We can share for a long time, drinking from each other for as long as several weeks without needing even a drop from a bag.”
It struck me that he was talking about himself…and the other guys. We.
Ethan, Blake, and Frost.
They fed from each other? I thought about them being intimate like that with one another—it was hard to imagine—maybe because I hadn’t seen the others in so long it was difficult to picture them. But the warmth flushing my cheeks and the deep squeeze in my belly told me that the idea turned me on a lot more than I thought it would.
For them�
��for us—that sort of thing seemed natural. An eventuality even if they hadn’t been turned.
“Wow.”
He snorted but made no other comment. “The sun is setting,” he added suddenly, and I realized he was right. The barn had darkened, and what remained of the reddish glow of the sun bleeding in through the cracks in the old wood was dying out. I climbed off his chest and ran my hand over the hay looking for my skirt and dug my phone out of the slim pocket when I found it.
“Another eighteen minutes or so and we should be good,” I said.
When Frost didn’t respond, I spun around to find him staring unblinking at my bare ass.
I snatched up his jeans and threw them at his head playfully, a small part of me inside still shameful for what I felt for him. You’re getting awful chummy with that bloodsucker, it said, distaste in its tone.
The truth was I’d been helpless to fight it from the very first moment I saw him. This was Frost. And there wasn’t any possible way I could have killed him. Or denied what I felt for him. It was there now, stronger than ever, the bond that’d started forming that first day of grade six when he bounded down the walkway of the little brown house next door, backpack slung over one shoulder and a swagger in his step. I’d never forget the first words he said to me after we’d locked eyes at the bus stop near the mouth of the cul-de-sac.
It was the same thing he said to me now, and it melted my heart then as much as it did right now. Tearing down layers of frost and steel I’d worked to build over the last ten years. To protect myself from more heartache.
“You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
12
We left from Nashville a bit later than planned. The both of us worn out from too many hours spent driving during the night and fucking during the day. I couldn’t get enough of him. He refused to bite me again even though, in a moment of fevered desire and weakness, I’d asked him to.
I almost lost control, he told me. If you hadn’t pulled away when you did, I don’t know if I could have stopped myself.
