Thirty-Four
I lay on the bed with my fingers on my chest, feeling the rise and fall of my chest, the frantic beating of my heart underneath my fingertips. My whole body was flushed a rosy pink, spent and sated.
Could he hear my heartbeat from the bathroom? Did he know how wildly it pumped for him?
It was an effort to calm my breathing, to slow my pulse. I didn’t want to move. My limbs were tired and my core ached. Every breath only pushed the leftover dregs of lust throughout my body. It was perhaps a good thing Vince had separated himself from me, because I was sure if he hadn’t stopped kissing me, I would be stuck in that bed all evening.
I had only just resolved to roll over when he emerged from the bathroom, still naked, his lean body on display. The toned muscles of his arms flexed as he made his way to me, his broad shoulders and chest shadowed by the dim lamp lights. His eyes found me first, his pupils back to normal. He had tried to fix the mess I’d made of his hair, clearly having run his palms over the dark waves.
“Have you caught your breath, darling?”
My mind wasn’t my own. I resisted the urge to offer myself to him again, pulling the robe around me once more. The soft fabric did nothing to cool me down. “Almost. Will you let me rest?”
He laughed. “You say that as though I am insatiable.”
“Maybe you are,” I hummed, sliding off the bed.
He stopped before me, close enough to touch, but he kept his hands at his sides. “I want to show you something.” And though he tried to direct both our thoughts elsewhere, I caught the way his gaze lingered on my thighs. “The roof.”
“The roof?”
His eyes snapped back up to mine. “Yes. We must dress.”
“I thought you said I could remain naked in this house if I wished it,” I said, even though I slunk around him toward the wardrobe.
“ I wish it,” he said behind me. “But I’ve grown selfish. I’m not sure I’m ready to share you yet.”
I looked over my shoulder. “Yet?”
His eyes darkened. “ Ever .”
We changed into our nightclothes—him in only a loose pair of pants, and I into a longer nightgown that reached my knees, thicker than my usual fare, to stave off the chill evening wind. We both donned our robes, but before we left, he sat me down on a cushion in the closet .
“Wait,” he commanded. He rifled through a drawer before producing a thick pair of knit stockings. He knelt before me.
Without words, he lifted my ankle, setting it upon his thigh, and gingerly pulled the stocking over my foot, up my calf. He sent zings of pleasure up my legs with every brush of his fingers. And he knew, judging by the look he gave me.
“We can’t have you freezing,” he said, voice low, gaze catching on the creamy skin of my legs.
“No,” I agreed, holding my breath as he tied the stocking, then switching feet.
He handled me with such care, those strong and brutal fingers barely touching my skin, yet deftly warming me up all the same. They were luxurious stockings—everything in the closet was new, never worn, made of the most expensive fabrics, from the most famous tailors and dressmakers—and I knew it was just one drop in the hat of his attempt to seduce me again.
I did not think Wright would ever spoil me the way Vince did, the way Vince was trying to make up for lost time.
When he finished, he leaned forward, his lips pressing a kiss to my knee. He never broke his stare. I couldn’t help biting my lip as I grinned at him.
He stood and offered his hand. “Shall we?”
“I’m not going to have to climb the side of the house, am I?” I asked once we were in the hall, remembering how he’d climbed the side of my family’s house, showing up at just the right time. Right when I needed him most.
Like he knew exactly what was going on between Lucas and me that evening.
“We’re not animals,” he laughed. “We’ll take the elevator. ”
“You have an elevator ?”
“Of course,” he said, like it was the most obvious thing. He pulled me down the main hall, away from his quarters, and toward the massive library. Our steps against the polished marble were dampened by our slippers.
He held my hand, our fingers interlocked, but the fit was strange, the way it is when you only just hold someone’s hand for the first time. But he seemed not to notice and turned a corner down a more narrow hall. At the end, a set of double doors.
“I had it built into the house,” he explained. “The architects recommended installing another in the foyer, if I was going to have so many guests, but I was quite partial to the elegance of the grand staircase. Clunky machinery would only make it ugly.”
But when we stepped inside, I couldn’t hear a whir or any clanking from the engine running the elevator. There was no operator, and there were only three solid walls, as extravagant as the ones in the hall, and an iron gate for the fourth.
“Does anyone use this?”
“It’s mostly for us.” He looked upward, like he could see us rising toward the sky. “Though we do have a smaller crowd of guests on occasion.”
“The… blood parties.”
His eyes flashed so quickly I must have imagined it. He nodded. “Yes.”
The elevator stopped, the doors ding ing open a moment later. He pulled me into the small space outside the elevator doors, not much more than a landing to step out onto, and another less ornamented door to the outside.
“And?” I pushed .
But in moments, we were on the concrete roof, the deep blue of the evening sky spread over us like a blanket. The stars shone through the haze from the city lights in the distance. I could see the tip-tops of some of the skyscrapers, blinking red and white amongst the clouds. The roof didn’t extend across the whole house, just amongst this one wing of the manor. There were walls at the height of my hip that created a barrier from falling, though low enough to look over.
The wind grabbed at my hair, twirling it around my head. I was thankful he had the foresight to bundle me up, because the breeze this high bit through my clothes.
I came to a stop at the wall, the stone rough beneath my fingers. Other parts of the roof, from above, appeared lackluster. It was like a whole new place, the glamor having worn off, to see it at this angle. The grounds sprawled out below us, seemingly on for miles, up to the Sound, the driveway a thin gray snake, the gardens a child’s sandbox.
There were views in the city you couldn’t see anywhere else that stole your breath.
And then there was the view from the top of the manor, never-ending, like Vince was a king. This was his palace, and I was the lucky consort.
I sensed him stop a foot away from me. When I looked at him, he was gazing out on his lands, eyes squinting against the breeze which tousled his dark red waves. He was looking toward the city, unblinking.
The city we both hailed from. The city that harbored dreamers and criminals, silly little girls hoping for their Prince Charming and young men waiting to be struck by the realities of humanity. The city in which we’d met, the city we both ran from. It stood like a fixture of the earth, unmovable, a mass of iron and glass, twinkling with electric lights. And there it was, so small, reduced to a few tall buildings in the distance.
It transfixed him, until I realized his face had transformed nearly into a scowl, contempt for the contents of those skyscrapers clear on his face.
I did not blame him. I knew the life we came from, the struggle he’d endure growing up, a struggle I hadn’t had to experience myself. I knew how hard it was, how he’d hoped to make a living if only to help feed his family. No plans to leave, just to work, to print his papers and pamphlets, to just barely make it. To survive.
And here he was now, so completely altered.
Did he even think of his family?
I touched his arm, and he softened.
“I thought you might like it up here,” he said, gaze still trained on the distance.
“It’s quiet,” I said, voice barely above a whisper. If I spoke too loudly, it would feel like a shout.
“Too quiet.”
I leaned on the half-wall, hugging myself against the cold. That nagging feeling was back, a sourness in my stomach. I swallowed it down.
“I never really liked the silence this far out,” he murmured.
There were complications to returning to the city, living so close to everyone he’d known. Everyone who’d thought he was dead. And to have to make a name for yourself amidst that greedy crowd was difficult—I knew, because of my father—especially if you did not know the rules .
At least the manor was secluded enough, the nearest neighbor a little less than a mile away.
“I could not make myself return to the incessant noise of the city,” he finished. He thought on it for a moment, then his eyes slid toward me. “I couldn’t do it, not after I’d spent so long away.”
Six years away.
Six years of believing him dead.
He took a breath as though to prepare himself, then braced his palms against the wall, his smallest finger brushing against my hip. “I’m going to tell you more about me, about my Sire, but I don’t want—” A tick in the muscle of his cheek. “I don’t want you to think that, because I’ve come from someone so terrible, I will do the same things.”
I linked our fingers.
“He was the only one I knew for the longest time.” He paused a moment to let the words settle, to steel himself against the memories. “When I awoke, I saw only… him , or the poor unfortunates he brought to—to feed me. Villagers close enough to the battlefields, people that hadn’t fled. There wasn’t anywhere for them to go, so they were stuck like we were, hearing the guns all night. The screams. And if they disappeared…”
I found myself deathly still, scared even to breathe. I tried to imagine myself there, to put myself on the battlefield. In the trenches. But I couldn’t.
He continued, “My Sire wouldn’t kill them, so he’d come down into the cellar—yes, he kept me in a cellar—and throw them at my feet. Yell at me to take them or die.” He moved like the weight of his memories bowed his back, shifting on his feet .
“I didn’t have a choice. And they didn’t understand, of course, that we were monsters. I looked like another victim in my bloody soldier’s clothes, grime all over me, but they didn’t know, underneath the filth, I was healed, I was living—undead.
“And no matter how much I resisted that first year, no matter how much I tried to ignore the smell of—of their blood, to drown out the sound of their hearts with my own screams, I would still do it. My body would move on its own, drawn to their pumping blood, the smell of their fear. My teeth changed, and my hands grabbed them like I was some puppet, and I was forced to eat them. To watch myself drain them. It was a hunger that took over every part of me. And only after months of his feedings, of him pulling me away from empty corpses, before I was able to stop on my own. To tamp down the hunger just enough, so that I could hear a faint heartbeat after I stopped. Impossibly slow, like mine.”
My hand had crept toward my throat.
When he looked at me, his face was hard, some mask having replaced the softness of his skin. “I tell you this so that you know what I am.”
“I know what you are,” I breathed.
He shook his head. “You only think you know.”
Hesitantly, I put myself before him, blocking his sight of the grounds, of the city behind me. “Then tell me.”
I reached to brush a strand of hair behind his ear, but he suddenly gripped my wrist with brute strength. I knew all it would take was a flinch, and he’d crush the delicate bones in my hand. But he placed my hand against his cheek, turning so his nose brushed the inside of my wrist. Smelling, breathing in deeply.
“I couldn’t come home,” he said, eyes shut, “because if I returned before I could control myself, control my bloodlust, then I’d find you. I wouldn’t stop until I did, and everyone would be dead.” His tongue darted out, deep red between his lips, licking the spot where my pulse fluttered against my skin.
“Do you understand I am a monster?” he asked. He pulled my arm, jerking me toward him. “Do you get it? That I would kill anyone for you?”
I couldn’t speak. He held me fast, tight, his grip caging me to him. He leaned in closer so our breath mingled in the air between us.
“I want to kill for you,” he said, sending electricity down my spine. “I would turn myself into a demon for you. And I wouldn’t be sorry. I’d be glad to do it, to rid the world of every last person, just so I could have you.”
My eyes slammed shut. His words were vile curses against society and everyone we knew. They were crazy words, damning.
But they felt so good, hearing him say them. To know how much he wanted me.
“You are...” I began, but my voice caught in my throat.
“ Yours ,” he murmured, once more running his nose over my jaw, my neck. I shivered. “I’ve made myself yours. I’ve always been yours.”
“I wish I had known,” I whispered, because if I tried to speak aloud, my voice would break .
“I would’ve stolen you away years ago, if I could have. I would’ve come to you in your bed, and shown you just how much I longed for you, before stealing you away from him .”
“He doesn’t matter,” I said. “Just show me who you are now. Show me your new world. Everything. I want to know everything .”
He kissed my neck. “You must know how difficult this is for me. How much I’ve wanted to show you, but how much I feared you’d run.”
I held his face in my hands. “I’d never run from you.”
He shook his head again. “I am not who I once was.”
“And I’m still here,” I insisted, resting my forehead on his. “I am not the same, either.”
“I will show you,” he said with conviction, his fingers tightening around me. He pulled away enough for me to see his pupils dilate once more. “Tomorrow. I will introduce you to all.”
To the vampires that come and go. To those who attended the blood parties.
He kissed me once, smashing his lips to mine, forcing his tongue between my teeth, my knees buckling.
He pulled away just as quickly, and my head swam.
“I want you to wear these,” he said, reaching into his pocket. He pulled from it a small velvet box. The name of the store was something foreign, scrawled in gold script upon the top. A name that harkened a massive bill. Such money he was ready to throw away, to spend, for me.
When he opened the box, two red rubies shone in the moonlight. In the shape of teardrops—drops of blood, glinting like his teeth. Shining like they’d been forged in the sun. Maybe even one-of-a-kind.
“Wear these, and they will all know.” His voice hardly above a whisper. A promise. “You will see it all, and they will be sorry.”