Transfusion (Transfusion Saga #1)

Chapter 4

Eternally Loved

“Okay, so what about this one?”

I asked holding up yet another dress from my closet, wondering why I had even agreed to let Ben in my bedroom, let alone to help me pick out what to wear.

Well, maybe help wasn’t exactly the right word to use…no, maybe to boss me around and basically make me feel like I had a collection of dustbin bags or shabby out dated hand me downs from eighty-year-old ladies in mourning! Yeah, that was it.

I swear that he was the most over critical gay man I had ever met…okay, so he was the only gay man I knew but still, he was worse than Wendy on her period!

“Oh, that’s fine…”

he finally replied.

“That’s great…”

I sighed in relief which turned out to be premature as he quickly added,

“…If you’re going to a funeral.”

I let my head fall back and silently asked the Gods for patience, knowing there must be at least one up there who specialized in the field.

“Fine, then what would you pick?!”

I snapped, making him smirk.

“You gonna wear it if I do?”

he tested in a sneaky tone.

I shrugged my shoulders, moved aside and said,

“Have at it, Skippy,”

I said, naming him this as he was always nicking my peanut butter, which just so happened to be the best brand EVER in all the history of buttery goodness.

Well, it was my favorite anyway and I really would have to love someone to share it, considering my mum would send it in her monthly packages, which also included some of my other American favorites.

However, my fellow Americans were really missing out not having crumpets to smother it on as, if you asked me, it was a match made in heaven.

“Alright, but you have to pinky swear you will wear what I choose.”

“What are we, six?”

I asked with a frown, making him chuckle before holding out his little finger and replying,

“If it gets the job done, then yeah, now put it there Emmie girl!”

I rolled my eyes, which admittedly was a habit of mine, and gave him my pinky swear, knowing there wasn’t much to worry about seeing as it was a closet full of my own clothes that I would be seen dead in… and living for that matter.

“And this job that needs to get done, is what exactly?”

I asked after plonking myself down on the bed.

Ben started rummaging through my closet with a concentration that almost looked painful or that he was close to needing a bowel movement.

I would have laughed had he not answered my question at that moment.

“It’s called cherry popping and usually happens well before you’re in your late twenties.”

I swear I nearly choked.

“And what makes you think I am still a virgin, huh?”

I asked in a high-pitched voice that should have sounded way cooler if what he just said was as false as my question claimed.

“I have lived opposite you for years and not once seen you bring a man back to your flat.”

“So? Who’s to say we don’t just do it at his place?”

I argued making him chuckle.

“His? Oh honey, I doubt you have even seen another man’s bedroom other than mine,”

he replied making me suddenly blush crimson and that was because he was wrong.

I had been in another man’s bedroom and the memory made me want to squirm.

Just like I had done that night under a pair of steel grey eyes that had the ability to undress me without even touching me.

I couldn’t help but close my eyes for a second as I felt a shiver penetrate the base of my spine.

“Now, that look tells me all I need to know, so come on, spill, who is he and what’s his name?”

Ben asked me sounding excited and clapping his hands, making my eyes snap open the second he did.

I swear it was as if the memory of Lucius had just been real for a moment and the end of it had been him clicking his fingers in front of my face to get me to snap out of it.

“He is a no one…not anymore,”

I told him allowing my tone to say all it needed to, and Ben was a good enough friend to let it drop, but not until after giving me a small sympathetic smile in return.

“Alright, it wasn’t easy, but I would say we have found a winner,”

he said after another moment of rummaging through my closet.

Then he cast aside a shopping bag I didn’t recognize making me frown, wondering where it had come from? But this question died in place of another one, when Ben held up what he expected me to wear.

“Oh, hell no! No way, no how, just no,”

I said making him adopt the bitchy, I am not impressed look that consisted of a hand to the hip and a pout that could have rivaled any supermodel on the runway.

“You pinky promised me,”

he reminded me, making me shake my head in denial.

“What is this, first grade?”

I asked him, throwing my hands up in the air and being just as dramatic as a first grader.

“No, but it will look like it when you see how bad my man paddy can get, so just do me a favour and suck it up and put it on.”

I released a sigh and said,

“You get that I am supposed to look professional at these things…right?”

I said in my defense to the sexy garment he had hold of.

“Oh, I am sorry, I thought the point of it was to get rich men to open up their wallets and fund yet another pointless dig in the desert just by getting an eyeful of your feminine bounty.”

“Hey! They are not pointless! And really…feminine bounty, what are you this time a gay pirate?”

[sh3]I said making him chuckle and smirk as he held up his hands to make a box with his fingers.

Then he looked at me through the finger made small screen like a director would do and said,

“Perfect! Now just say that again only wearing this and you could make a mint for the next discovery of some dried-up dead guy who didn’t know immortality really meant having his crusty carcass displayed behind a glass case for the rest of eternity,”

Ben said making me first try and scold him for taking the piss out of my work, only for me to end up in a fit of laughter.

“Come on Emmie, just try it on…for me, yeah?”

Ben asked now trying with the pleading route, knowing I was a sucker for doing what people asked of me.

The word ‘no’ was usually one that just stuck in an invisible speech bubble over my head, just waiting there for me to get the guts to pop it and make good use of the word.

Of course, this never happened, and I usually just ended up going with the word ‘yes’ instead.

“Fine, but I can guarantee it will not suit me,”

I said getting up and grabbing the dress with a humpf, one that lacked the impetus of being pissed off.

“I very much doubt that, as you would look hot wrapped up in toilet rolls, trick or treating in the rain.”

I laughed once before needing to ask,

“And I would do that because?”

“Because your parents had no money at the time of Halloween and toilet rolls were on offer and forced you to be a mummy, whereas half an hour later you came home covered in white mush thanks to the rain…I think I blocked the drains for a whole week after that,”

Ben told me making me howl with laughter at the idea before giving him a kiss on the cheek, telling him,

“Aww, I bet you still looked cute though.”

He rolled his eyes and replied,

“Yeah, yeah, go get your sexy ass in that dress already before I tell you about the time they dressed me up as wolfman.”

I smirked, as I grabbed the dress and went into the bathroom.

“Let me guess, you were allergic to the costume and broke out in hives?”

I asked through my bathroom door.

“No, think tights, glue and a bucket of hair clippings collected from our local hairdresser’s and you will have a small idea of the nightmare that was my upbringing.”

I laughed again and shook my head just trying to picture it.

“Hey, I bet wolfman was rocking all those different colours and streaks!”

I said making him chuckle.

I loved hearing stories of Ben growing up, always making me laugh, no matter how bad my day had been.

I also happened to know for a fact that Ben adored his parents and visited with them often, but it still didn’t stop him from joking about them.

I listened to Ben as he continued to make me laugh and chuckle through the ordeal of dressing in something so revealing, making me fidget just thinking about walking out of the bathroom wearing it.

Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t as if I’d never dressed up or wore tight clothes before.

It was just that I had grown up with an overly protective family that consisted of a lot of dominant males who still viewed me as a little girl.

I wore dresses and even went to prom, but I think my father would have locked me away in his Scottish castle had he seen me wearing something this low cut.

Which gave me an idea.

Had that been half the problem? The fact that my dad had never been given the opportunity to see me as a grown woman instead of his little girl? I had to wonder then that if he saw me wearing this tonight would that be enough to change his view of me?

Well, maybe it was worth a shot, as what was the worst-case scenario here, he gets pissed off and demands me to march back home and change? Well, yeah, that did sound a bit embarrassing, but it didn’t mean that I would have to do it.

I looked at myself in the mirror and turned to the sides trying to take it all in.

Ben had already done my hair in a classic soft up-do that was a cascade of soft curls gathered to one side and resting across one shoulder.

He had also helped with my makeup, making me wonder if he’d taught himself or learned off a ‘how to’ You Tube video or something, as he was certainly skilled.

I even told him that if he ever wanted to branch out from the world of art, then he could get paid a lot of money to do this professionally.

I think I even made him blush. But it was more than worth the compliment I gave him as he had created a smoky affect that would go with any black dress I had picked, or more like he had picked, the sneaky bugger! It wasn’t that I couldn’t do my own make-up, as I did daily, still finding myself with the skin of a hormonal teenager whenever I was due my period. But doing my make-up dramatic, was something new for me.

And now, the more I looked at myself, seeing most of my legs on show, the more I thought why the hell not.

I was a grown woman and it was time I started dressing more like one and less like a teenager.

Yes, I had professional clothes for work, where I would wear black trousers and some smart knitted jumper, or a shirt and blazer, if we had anyone important in that day that needed to be impressed with our work.

But never once had I worn something like this to an event.

Making me now wonder about the smart business wear I usually reserved for these occasions and seeing it in a different light. Had I always been too conservative?

Well, now I vowed to change and the first chance I got after tonight, I was going shopping and this time, I was thinking sexy! And why not, as it wasn’t as if I was hideous or anything.

My legs were slim, if not a little short, but a pair of black heels would usually do the job nicely.

I also had been blessed with a flattish tummy, no matter how many donuts I ate and one that tonight, because of the style of dress, gave me an hourglass figure.

This was thanks to the band of black material that pulled my waist in before the skirt part flared out due to the hidden pleats and added under layer.

The length of the skirt came well above my knee and dipped longer at the back, so at the very least, I wasn’t self-conscious of showing my ass cheeks all night.

But it wasn’t really this part that worried me the most, as the top was the main foundation of my concern.

It was black beaded lace, cut in a halter neck style that dipped low at the front and showed a revealing amount of cleavage.

It cupped my decent C cup sized breasts and pulled them in, creating a bountiful show of pale skin.

This was yet another thing I had inherited from my mother.

That, as well as my blue eyes, only mine were less grey than my mum’s and I had unusual flecks of violet running through mine that brightened when in sunlight and darkened when I was upset and crying.

This, combined with my dark midnight black hair I had obviously inherited from my father, was said to make for a startling combination and made for some cute baby pictures...Or so my aunty Pip thought anyway, and she should know considering she still had a collage of them on her and my uncle Adam’s wall.

These were framed in fluffy fairy lights, cut out glitter paper hearts that we made together when I was five. Oh, and not forgetting my favorite part, our painted hand prints from when I was three and she had lifted me up onto my uncle Adam’s shoulders so that I could slap my rainbow hands everywhere.

But even with my pale skin and blue/violet eyes, I still looked more like my dad than my mum.

For one, I wasn’t as curvy and also didn’t have the same shaped face as my mother.

Some even said that I looked more like my Aunty Sophia, due to having the same coloured hair and shape to my eyes.

Eyes that I had decided to frame not with glasses this time, but with contact lenses I rarely wore.

Not unless I was going swimming, or it was an unusually bright sunny day out and therefore sunglasses were needed.

I ran my hands down the taffeta skirt, liking the small strip of deep red satin that could be seen peeking out of the bottom from the underskirt.

Also meaning that it went well with the ruby red lipstick Ben had painted on my full, heart shaped lips.

I looked like a completely different version of myself and I was starting to like it.

It was time to show both of my worlds that I wasn’t the unsure, awkward geek or the over-protected princess, a certain someone had accused me of being once upon a dark time.

I was my own person and made my own decisions based on my own happiness, so if wearing a sexy dress for a party was what I wanted to do, then so be it.

I nodded to myself in the mirror and stepped out to face my first judgement, which I knew the second I heard the wolf whistle, that it wouldn’t be a judgement at all but more like a blessing.

“Wow…just wow, Emmie,”

Ben said after he had finished making a dramatic fuss and causing me to blush, which was something I rarely had occasion to do.

But then again, when was it that I ever had reason to blush? I used to watch my father manage to do it on a daily basis to my mother and now that I was older, I absolutely did not want to know what it was he was whispering in her ear to achieve the reaction he did…because as sweet as it was to witness such a loving relationship between my parents, what they did behind closed doors will always be…well, quite frankly… eww.

But when I had been a child and thought his actions as nothing but playful, then I had always asked what it was he had said.

Most of the time it was something one of them would make up, ‘Oh, he thinks my dress is pretty’ or ‘He thinks we should tickle you’, sweet endearing things like that.

But now as an adult I knew better.

But, unbeknown to me at the time, just how much witnessing my parents love for each other would end up shaping my views when it came to finding my own ‘true love’ were now forever rooted in my soul.

And, as nice as Peter was, I knew that it would never be him.

Love was, after all…

Eternal.