Chapter 16 Dimitri
DIMITRI
The taste of blood woke Dimitri.
It was more than the faint, coppery hint of a bitten lip. He was actually tasting blood as if his lip had been split, and for one confused moment, he thought he'd been punched in the face again.
He sat up, and then he saw it on the pillow. A tooth.
A swipe of his tongue confirmed that his left upper canine was missing. It was sitting on the white pillowcase in a small smear of dark red, looking absurdly ordinary for what its falling out meant.
Dimitri probed the empty socket. The gum was swollen, tender, and already beginning to close. The new tooth wasn't out yet, but he could feel something beneath the surface, a hard ridge pushing down from inside the bone.
Not a tooth, a fang, and the right one would probably be coming out soon as well.
He looked at Mattie, who was still asleep, curled on her side with her bandaged hand resting on the blanket between them. Her breathing was slow and even, her lips slightly parted, a strand of blonde hair falling across her cheek. She looked peaceful, which made one of them.
Dimitri slid out of bed as quietly as he could, grabbed the tooth, and crossed to the bathroom. He closed the door, turned on the light, and leaned over the sink.
The face in the mirror looked like it belonged to a man who had just received very bad news.
He opened his mouth and examined the gap.
The socket was swollen, and when he pressed his tongue against it, he could feel the hard point of the emerging fang just beneath the gum line.
He hadn't felt it before. Could it be that it was growing so fast?
How long would it take for it to fully come out? Days? Hours? He had no baseline for comparison, but he had a feeling it wouldn't take long.
He spat the blood into the sink and rinsed his mouth. The bleeding had already stopped, but his mouth was coated with it, and it took two more rinses before the taste was completely gone.
The right canine was a little looser than it had been the day before, and as Dimitri tested it with his tongue, he felt it shift, not much, maybe a millimeter, but enough. Now he was certain that this one would fall out possibly today, or tomorrow at the latest.
Two missing canines would be impossible to hide. Any immortal who saw his mouth would know immediately what was happening, and the news would reach Losham in no time.
Staring at his reflection in the mirror, Dimitri groaned.
He needed a plan. But what? Stay in his room and fake being sick?
If the fangs didn't take too long to come out, he might get away with it.
After all, they looked almost like regular canines when not elongated, so without stimulation, they would remain dormant.
He would just have to avoid aggression, which shouldn't be a problem because he had never been the kind of guy who got into fights.
Except, his new immortal body came with some troubling predatory traits, and he wasn't sure he would be able to keep his fangs from elongating in response to triggers that he would have ignored as a human.
Then there was Mattie, and what would happen during sex, but that would be in private, so he didn't need to worry about being exposed that way, though he worried about the biting instinct and how she would react to that.
Supposedly the venom bite was intensely pleasurable, but Mattie didn't seem eager for his fangs to come out, so she probably wasn't eager about experiencing that either.
A soft knock sounded on the bathroom door.
"Dimitri?" Mattie asked, her voice thick with sleep. "Are you okay in there? I heard you groan."
"Yeah."
He opened the door and found her standing there in his oversized T-shirt, her hair spectacularly tangled, her eyes half-closed against the bathroom light, and her bandaged hand cradled against her chest.
"What happened?" She squinted at him. "You look like someone died."
He held up the tooth.
It took her a moment to realize what he was showing her, and then her eyes widened, the last traces of sleep vanishing from her face.
"Oh no. It wasn't supposed to happen so soon."
"It did." He retreated into the bathroom, and she followed.
"Let me see."
He opened his mouth obligingly, tilting his head toward the light.
"The other one is loose too," he said around her fingers, which she had pressed against his lower lip to get a better look.
"I can see. The gum is swollen on that side too." She withdrew her hand and met his eyes. "How fast will the fangs come in?"
"I don't know. I have no information on this. The immortals on this island transition at puberty, and I'm more than twice that age. Not that I know how fast it happens for them. I could ask Dave, though."
She frowned. "The fangs are not really noticeable in their dormant state.
They only elongate in response to triggers, which you might be able to avoid, but the problem is the in-between.
You can't walk around with missing teeth.
" She chuckled. "If it had happened right after the fight, we could have claimed that they'd gotten knocked out. "
He shook his head. "Adults don't regrow teeth. How would I have explained having new ones?"
"Right." She smiled sheepishly. "I don't know if they even have a dentist on the island, although I assume that they do. You could have asked Dave to compel the dentist to tell everyone that he pulled your teeth and you're waiting for implants."
"Well, that's all hypothetical because the tooth didn't fall out during the fight."
As Mattie leaned against the doorframe and chewed her lower lip, Dimitri rinsed his mouth again and spat.
The bleeding had stopped, and the socket was already shrinking, but the phantom taste of blood remained.
"We need to keep you out of sight," Mattie said. "At least until the fangs are fully in. It shouldn't take more than a few days."
"I was thinking the same thing. I could claim to be sick and stay up here in the room. Humans get sick, so it would reinforce the perception that I'm still human."
"It might take more than a week."
"Then I'll have to be very sick."
"That will look suspicious. Nobody stays in bed for a week with a cold without someone sending for a doctor." She paused, and her eyes widened. "I have the perfect solution."
"What?"
"A surgical mask. My friend Adele wore one when her crown fell out, and she couldn't get a same-day appointment with a dentist. People just assumed that she was sick and didn't want to infect anyone. You could do the same."
They had plenty of good masks on hand for when he and Petrov were handling chemicals that they needed to avoid inhaling.
"We have masks in the lab, but I usually don't wear one all day."
"You do if you have a cold." She straightened up, her eyes brightening.
"You can tell everyone you've caught something, and you're worried about infecting Petrov and me.
My immune system is probably compromised because of the trauma I suffered, and Petrov drinks so much that he probably has the constitution of a damp sponge. "
He laughed. "I'll tell him that you said that."
"Go ahead. It's true, right?"
"Normally, yes, but Petrov is incredibly resilient. I don't remember him ever getting sick."
She laughed. "Maybe all that vodka kills any virus or bacteria that dares to get near him.
Anyway, back to the mask. You wear one until your fangs are out and look like normal teeth.
Just remember to sneeze and cough occasionally to reinforce the effect.
The best part of it is that it makes you look more human, not less. "
The simplicity of it was brilliant.
"You are a freaking genius, Mattie." He pulled her to him and kissed her.
It wasn't the careful, gentle kisses he'd been giving her since the attack. This was hard and urgent, born from relief and admiration.
She made a surprised sound against his mouth, and then her good arm came up around his neck, and she kissed him back with an enthusiasm that suggested the conversation about his dental emergency had just dropped several places on her priority list.
When they broke apart, her eyes had that particular spark in them, the one that raised his core temperature to dangerous levels.
"You know," she said, her voice husky, "since we're both awake, and it's still early…"
"Mattie."
"I'm just pointing out that the timing is convenient."
"Your hand—"
"My hand is attached to my body, not the other way around. We've been over this." She pressed closer, and the thin fabric of the T-shirt she was wearing wasn't much of a barrier. "I've been patient, Dimitri. Very patient. But patience is not my strong suit."
He wanted to. God, how he wanted to.
The kiss had triggered the same cascade of heat that their shower encounters kept building, and the way she was looking at him right now made every rational objection seem irrelevant.
But her hand was still held together by splints and willpower, and the memory of her wincing in the shower when she'd bumped it against his arm was enough to cool his blood by a few crucial degrees.
"Tonight, we'll figure out the logistics. I promise."
She pouted. "You've been promising to figure it out since the attack, and you haven't come up with a solution yet. I'm at the end of my rope, Dimitri."
He snorted. "You're a fiend. I'm the one who is supposed to be the immortal with the uncontrollable urges."
"But you are vying for sainthood. I'm not." She pressed herself against him again. "You are sin personified when you are standing here like that without a shirt, and I'm a sinner."
She was killing him.
He would rather fight those immortals again than spar with Mattie when she was bent on ignoring her injured hand and risking making it much worse for a delight that could wait.
Was he the only one who understood why it was crucial for her hand to heal properly, fully? Or perhaps she understood it as well, but she was not thinking straight because he was tempting her with his partial nudity.
Talk about an ego boost.