Chapter 22
The air between us softened, charged with unspoken understanding. We were two people who’d found solid ground amid the chaos, and in that moment, the world around us faded, leaving only the connection we shared—fragile, precious, and more real than anything I’d ever known.
I wrapped an arm around his waist. “Come on, Zee. I’m taking you home.”
“Home,” he said softly with a wistful smile that made my heart twist. “I like the sound of that.”
Nasir, Cécile, and Darsh were with Silas tracking Troy. That left Sachie working the night shift.
A sugary anticipation danced through me at being alone with Ezra.
When we got back, I herded him into the lobby instead of going directly up to my condo. “I showed Cherry to Keira and Olivier, and they reacted in the way I feared most.”
“I’m so sorry, Avi.”
“It’s okay. Well, no, it was horrible, but I lived through my worst nightmare and I’m still standing. I’m done running scared. I’m allowed a private life, and if the Authority or Natán don’t like it, tough shit.” I laced my fingers through Ezra’s and tugged him out the front door, “Hey, minion!” I yelled into the night. I held up our joined hands. “Take that back to your boss.”
“That was incredibly…” He shook his head, an unreadable expression on his face.
“Stupid?”
Ezra slammed me up against the wall and kissed me breathlessly. “Brave.”
I rose on tiptoe for another kiss. “It was rather.”
My night got even better with the discovery of an envelope addressed to me on the dining room table. Inside was a beautiful card with a handwritten heartfelt apology from Olivier—and a gift card to the Fluevog store.
“What’s that?” Ezra said.
I smiled. “Sachie making sure that her boyfriend treats her bestie properly.”
The delighted expression that bloomed across Ezra’s face when I slipped on my favorite sleepwear—the crimson sweater he’d knit me—made my heart do a little flip.
I ran my fingers over the careful stitches at the cuffs, remembering how many nights I’d done this while missing him.
We stayed up talking, the two of us curled under my covers, with me in the crook of his arm. Mostly we chatted about fun inconsequential things, but as the hour grew later, our discussion grew more serious. I told him about my new magic trick detecting demon artifacts without needing Sire’s Spark, and he shared where things were at with the quest that had driven his every action.
“All these years of searching for why my mother walked into the sun that day,” Ezra said, “and I still don’t have an answer. Maybe it’s time to stop looking. It’s not like it’ll bring her back.”
“True.” I traced my fingers over the tattoo on his left pec. Cuando era nino sonaba con conquistar el mundo. When I was a kid, I dreamed of conquering the world . It was a reminder to him of the rest of the quote: ahora me doy cuenta que tú eres mí mundo y me has conquistador. Now I realize that you’re my world and you have conquered me.
Not gonna lie, I got a little thrill every time I saw it. “What will give you closure? To keep searching for answers about your mother or to stop?”
“I don’t know. I’m worried I’ll end up feeling worse about what I find.”
“How so?”
“I tracked down the rabbi who led the Sephardic synagogue that Mamá and my father attended when they were human. He had some things to say about her that I’d never heard before.”
I frowned. “He broke the confidentiality of his position?”
Ezra coughed into his shoulder. “The man was very old and may have believed he was speaking on the phone with Natán.”
“You’re terrible.”
“Then you don’t want to know what I learned.”
“Oh no. I’m terrible too. Tell me everything.”
“It turns out Orthodox Judaism doesn’t prohibit artificial insemination. My parents went through all the hardship of trying to conceive, but my mother suffered a miscarriage.”
I squeezed his arm. “What a tragedy. I’m so sorry.”
“Imagine going through that, only to get pregnant with me a year later and then be turned into a vampire partway through the pregnancy.”
It was too awful to contemplate. “Still, she must have been overjoyed when she got pregnant with you,” I said. “Her miracle baby.”
“By all accounts she was. My father was too.” He paused. “Does it make me incredibly selfish in the wake of their loss to think about how I might have had a sibling?”
I stroked his arm. Ezra had grown up so alone. “Absolutely not.”
“Learning all this just makes it harder to understand how she chose to die instead of stick around for her kid. And to do it in front of me?” His voice cracked with pain.
“I wish I could say something to make it better or help you decide,” I said. “But whatever you choose, be it learn why or let the past stay in the past, that decision is valid and right. You get to do what’s best for you, Ezra.”
“I know. I’ve just been searching for so long that…” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “New topic.”
We jumped into a discussion of what Ezra had learned about half shedim. Not all had physical demonic features like Maud and me. Some had a heightened resistance to magic attacks, kind of like an inherent shielding device.
“That tends to only happen for half shedim who are White Flames,” Ezra explained. “Whereas some Yellow Flames heal faster.”
“What about the downsides?” I rested my head on his bare chest. “My Eishei Kodesh magic lets me illuminate weaknesses in people, but my shedim side likes to exploit that and push it as far as I can, even if it means hurting them.”
“Hmm. I’ll ask.” He idly massaged my scalp, the stress of the day falling away under his sure touch. “But you all have an extended lifespan.” He paused. “I know you think about outliving Sachie and your mom, but you’d still have Maud.”
“And you and Darsh and Silas.” I shifted to look up at my ceiling, blinking away moisture. “I try not to dwell on it and just appreciate the time I have with the regular people I love.” I rose on my elbow and looked at him. “Is that why you’ve packed so many skills into your life already? Knitting, multiple languages, skiing, rock climbing… Because you’re going to be around for a long time?”
“I didn’t see it that way,” he said. “I just enjoy learning new things, and I’ll have a lot of time to do so. As do you.”
“I never considered what I wanted to do with my life beyond be a Maccabee and further my Cherry agenda.”
I’d read this article about college admissions interviewers discussing how they met all these kids with perfect GPAs and tons of volunteer experience. But when these students were asked what they did for fun, they looked at the interviewers blankly. When your world revolved around achieving perfection to move your life forward, it didn’t leave any room for hobbies.
I’d had fun, sure, but if my life was a pie chart, how tiny would the wedge of my outside interests be?
“Well, it’s definitely something to consider now,” Ezra said. “Maybe we could learn something new together?”
“I’d like that.” I yawned.
“Get some rest,” he said.
“You can sleep too, or at least do your catnap thing. Sach won’t be home tonight.”
“I’ll try,” he said.
The thing about a vampire boyfriend was that I couldn’t exactly fall asleep to the sound of his breathing. He offered to give it a go, but his Darth Vader impression only made me laugh. I tumbled into dreamland with a smile on my face.
What felt like five minutes later, I half woke up, sprawled on top of him.
“Go back to sleep,” Ezra said.
“Mmmm,” I mumbled, pressing a drowsy kiss to his mouth.
Moonlight filtered in through a gap in the curtains, casting a gentle glow on his face as he nuzzled closer to my neck.
I sighed contentedly, feeling the warmth of his breath on my skin and the soft brush of his lips against my collarbone. His hand trailed up and down my side, tracing patterns that kept me caught in this dreamy state of half-wakefulness.
Ezra nipped lightly at my earlobe. “I love how you taste.”
I turned in his arms, my lids still closed, and nestled into him like a puppy.
He kissed me, just the barest tease before deepening it, his hand sliding up to cup my breast through the sweater. His thumb brushed over my nipple, circling it gently.
I pulled him closer and wrapped my arm around his hip.
“Got me where you want me?” He trailed tiny bites and nips down my jawline.
“Not quite,” I said with a gasp as he hit the spot in the hollow of my neck that drove me wild. My body woke up with a zing, and I leaned over him, my eyes wide open.
Ezra’s heated gaze had Cherry sit up and take notice, her excited spike making me shiver. He pushed a knee between mine, slowly drawing my legs apart.
“Presumptuous of you,” I said.
“You’re right,” he said. “I probably shouldn’t do this either.” He ran his hands up my arms, pushing me onto my back and locking my wrists above my head with one of his hands.
“Definitely not,” I said, squirming. The world could have ended outside my bedroom door and I wouldn’t have noticed. Here, under his hands, I was finally where I belonged.
“Noted.” His tongue grazed my lower lip. “This is likely right out, then.” He pushed my sweater up and caressed the stiff peaks of my nipples.
I pressed closer to him. “Totally banned. We wouldn’t want more of that.”
“Hmm. Would this be less presumptuous of me?” Ezra crushed his mouth to mine, pinning my hips to the bed with his. His rock-hard erection demanded my attention.
I slid my hand under the waist of his boxer shorts and gripped that velvet steel, stroking him.
Ezra growled and pressed me deeper into the mattress.
My chest rose and fell raggedly with each breath, my body demanding more of his touch, more of him. I bit down hard on his lip.
Ezra pulled back, the silver in his eyes mercurial, and his pupils dilated. “Now who’s being presumptuous?” His voice was raspy with desire.
“Want me to stop?” I rubbed my thumb over the slit in his cock.
He flared his nostrils. “I’ll try to power through it.”
“Big of you.”
He bucked his hips, his dick hardening even more. “Oh, sweetheart, you remember.” I laughed and he gazed down at me with a tender expression.
I caressed his jaw. “I missed this.”
“Me too. Okay, enough small talk.” He slapped my hip. “Get naked. I’m going to fuck you.”
“You charmer,” I said, already pulling the sweater off.
He pitched his boxers in the corner and made a big show of positioning himself on top of me. “Ready?”
“Ready, Coach.”
Ezra grimaced. “How about ‘Ready, tiger’?”
“Get reaaallll…” My words turned to a breathy sigh as Ezra thrust inside me.
“All good?”
I shrugged. “I’ll try to power through it.”
“That sounds like a challenge to me, sweetheart.”
“I double dare you.”
He rocked against me, watching me moan with a delighted grin.
I dug my hands into his curls, my breathing shuddery and uneven and my body spiraling higher and hotter with need.
Ezra gave a hard, fast rock and I forgave him his smirk. That said, I also shamelessly rubbed myself against him, making him lose his freaking mind.
His fangs grazed the skin on my neck and I moaned, pressing my bare throat against the points, my pulse thudding and my chest rising and falling in a ragged motion.
“Bite me,” I demanded. I’d wanted it again since that first time a couple months ago.
He hissed a “Yeesssss” and swiftly bit down. Two sharp points blazed on my skin. He lathed the spot with his lips, but the pain was already fading, replaced by a euphoric high that sent a zing down to my toes.
I surrendered myself completely to it, reveling in the thrill that surged through my veins.
Ezra kissed the bite, then shifted onto his knees, grabbed me by the hips, and jerked me toward him. His eyes were two brilliant orbs, captivating me, while his strong fingers kept me anchored under his unleashed passion.
I shattered, stars exploding across my vision.
Ezra followed with my name on his lips.
We lay there in happy silence.
He ran his fingers along my arm. “I always meant to count the freckles on your body.”
“There you go,” I said, trying to untwist the tangled covers with my feet. “Something we can learn together.”
Ezra smoothed the sheets out. “You’ll just be shoving your feet out of the blankets in another five minutes and messing them up again.” He did an ab curl, half sitting up for a moment. “I never noticed your pinky toe is crooked.”
“I fought a coffee table when I was a toddler and lost.”
“Poor baby. I hope you got back at it later?”
“I did actually.” I chuckled. “I spent years banging my toes against that stupid monstrosity. Then one weekend, when Michael was out of town for work, I must have been sixteen because Sach was driving her mom’s car that year, we decided to make crème br?lée.”
“Doesn’t that involve a blowtorch?”
“A baker’s torch, but hush. You’re getting ahead of things.”
“My bad.”
“We spent the entire weekend making batch after batch to get it right. We finally perfected it, but we were really tired, so we flaked out on my sofa bingeing this show while the ramekins cooled in the fridge.”
Ezra stared at me with a half fascinated, half horrified expression. “The show matters, why?”
“You have to understand that it was a really good program. We didn’t want to pause it for a second, so we decided we’d torch the desserts right there on the coffee table.”
Ezra groaned.
“The new one that Michael came home to was much nicer.”
He patted my head. “Good spin.”
“Thanks.”
“Aviva?”
“Yeah?”
“Will you make me crème br?lée sometime?” He sounded so hesitant, like a little kid scared to ask for what he really wanted.
I hugged him. “Of course, Zee.”
“Aviva?”
“Yeah,” I said with a smile.
“Will you change your hair color back?” he said with studied indifference.
I sat up, the sheets pooling at my waist. “Are you saying you were two percent less attracted to me just now?”
“I mean, I wouldn’t go that high.”
I swatted him and he laughed. Truth was, I wanted to look like myself again as well, but I snuggled into him with a humphed “We’ll see,” and let sleep take me.