Chapter Two #2
He would love that. In a heartbeat, he wanted to say.
Except for the curious impact of her heart beating hard against his silent chest.
And a little voice whispering, “If you killed again, you’d lose this chance.
This girl. You’d just be a lonely creature—again.
You can live off animal blood. You can never go ‘home’ again.
Marietta will find you, eventually, and make you pay.
You could have something nice for a little while—for the first time in a century. ”
“I don’t want to be lonely again,” Brax whispered. In New Orleans, Miami, and all the places he hid, he never made real friends. He might make a casual acquaintance, he realized, but here— here people tried to get to know him. Asked him over. Made him uncomfortable, made him think.
Made him a man again, instead of a demon.
“It’s hard to think of trading power for something softer,” he whispered.
“Yeah. I bet.”
“I don’t know what to do with myself in a place like this.”
She nodded, head under his chin.
“I’m supposed to be some tough demon, and all I want.
.. All I want at this second is to stay curled up and warm with the beautiful girl who lives next door, who never gives me a smile, barely speaks to me.
But tonight... things are different. I feel different.
I kind of want it to last. Penny? Do you think it might last? ”
There was a long pause as body temperatures adjusted for the better, hers dropping and his rising. Brax was just thinking that the arrangement was oddly nice when her head lolled back, and the form in his arms started to slide down. “Penny!”
“I’ll get it!” Penny gasped, waking up. “Did I fall asleep?”
“For a second.”
“My head is too big. So much too big. How does my hair still fit?”
Brax bit down a smile and let out another sigh. Back to Loony Toon land. “It’s not literally bigger, Pen, it’s just the fever talking. How’s the throat? Still feel swollen?”
“Wants something cold. It feels like it’s scalded. All of me feels scalded. Can I have an ice pack? Oh, wait. I have you.”
“You can’t swallow me.” Well, she could. Images of her warm mouth slipping up and down his cock as she moaned in relief and he moaned in pleasure, culminating in freezing drops that she’d be glad to receive— Shit. He went hard without a second’s thought.
Penny blinked up at him myopically. “Is vampire blood cold?”
“Uh, mine is right now.” I guess her mind went to a different liquid.
“Is vampire cum cold?”
Maybe not so different.“What?” He fell off the bed and scrambled back up, wide-eyed.
“I’ve never been with a vampire! How would I know? Is there some vampire sex manual in the Pine Ridge library?”
They both stared at each other for a second.
“Actually...” Penny began.
“Probably. It’s warm. Enough,” Brax answered hastily, wishing to get the hell off of this subject.
“Would yours be, right now? Because you’re so cold?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never nearly frozen to death since I’ve been dead. Or when I was alive, come to think of it.”
“Poor you.” Penny patted his head and sat herself in his lap, bare thighs to his jeans. She shifted uncomfortably and then growled. “It’s not as good like this.”
“What? Face-to-face is better?” Damn it, that turned to sex in my head. It was perfectly innocent when I started, I swear!
Penny shook her head and yanked her hair off her neck. “With your pants on. Your clothes aren’t as cold as your skin. Pants off, please?”
“Sweetheart, again with the fever and you not havin’ a damn bit of sense.”
“I do so too have sense!” Penny petulantly told him.
“I am sick. Possibly supernaturally sick. I need a supernatural cure. I need an ice bath, and maybe someone who can stop me from going outside. Was I outside? My mother texted me to stay inside. I was outside, that’s how I met you.
Anyway...” Her hands were suddenly squarely on his shoulders.
“You are helping me. You do that. You do that more and more. I like that. I don’t know if I like all of you, but I like parts of you.
Right now, I like your skin. And you have to play fair.
I’m in my underwear, so you get in yours. ”
There was an acre of babble that needed sorting, and what did he choose to say? “I don’t wear ‘em, Penny.”
“What? Not at all? Like, never?”
“Not at all. Ever. Although, believe me, earlier today I wished I had the warmest woolies in the universe. Would have worn eighteen pairs of thermals if I’d had ‘em. Not that it would help. The wind out there, that ain’t normal wind. It cuts through flesh like a silver blade.”
“Pretty words, poet words,” Penny leaned back, tugging on his pants again.
“Hey! We just established that—”
“I’ll take mine off, too!” Penny said peevishly. She muttered to herself, but the words were coming out of her mouth, “Stubborn vampire can’t understand simple things. Skin equals better for both. Ergo, more skin.”
“Don’t!” Brax gripped her hands hard as she moved to follow through on her idea.
The position they arrived in was compromising.
Speaking of warm and woolly, her tight little panties left nothing to the imagination.
Must be made of spider silk. He could see a dark triangle of curls, a thin line between lips, even the obscured color of her pink flesh as she rocked back, thighs still spread over top of his.
“Is it because I don’t love you?” Penny asked. “You want me to love you so that we can be like this? Because I respect that. I think too many people have naked stuff without love.”
“Hell, naked stuff, is it?”
“You know what I mean!” she whimpered, shaking him off and nearly falling backward. He grabbed her again, and she gave up the struggle, his cold fingers soothing her hands, which she’d said throbbed with pain as well as fever.
“Oh, no. Look, contrary to my vampire playbook, I’m actually keen to help you.
I’d do anything to help you. I’m just not sure us rubbin’ our naked bodies together would help you in the long run.
I’m pretty sure that later you’d hate my guts, more than ever, an’ worse, hate yourself.
” But really, this is more about avoiding a lethal round of “Stake the Vampire.”
She pushed off, fell, and rolled to her hands and knees, whimpering as her fingers bore the brunt of her weight.
She crawled away, off to the vanity where Brax had left the magazine and pen.
She started scribbling while talking aloud.
“I do solemnly swear that I’m sane enough to understand that people don’t usually get naked together, but I think I’m going to boil over inside, and you feel good, and I promise not to hate you unless you—” she stopped and looked nervously at him.
“What?”
“Are you afraid that I’ll think you... did stuff to me while I was fever gal?”
“Yep. In one. And then you’ll yell at me that I should have stopped it, that I should have known better, that I let it all go wrong, and then—poof. Dust Buster-one, Brax-zero.” He mimed an explosion of dust from the heart out.
“What if I loan you some of my underwear?”
“In my opinion, the only man who can properly pull off ladies’ lingerie is Tim Curry.”
“Damn. My fever is worse. I can’t understand what you’re saying now.” She rubbed her head, then tried squeezing it. “No good. Won’t shrink. Stupid, puffy brain.”
“I’ll translate. No thanks, you keep your pretties.”
“Shirts off? I’m all nice and toasty?”
Okay. All right. Can’t rightly get into too much trouble with my shirt off. Or hers. “Sign the paper. Give me the pen, and be quick.” He yanked his shirt over his head, and she squealed.
Maybe he expected it to be an unexpected explosion of passion.
It was more like being humped by an overeager puppy. She slid her chest to him with a thousand thank yous and then spun on her back, putting her spine against his sternum with another warble of delight. “You feel so good! Are you feeling better? Am I making you feel good?”
“I feel better,” he admitted tersely, trying not to put fevered words into a sexual context. No good. His imagination had a little tropical vacation while his body was stuck in Siberia.
Topless Penny, writhing, wrapping around him, moaning in his ear, breathlessly panting as she wrapped her hot body around his, hearing imaginary breathless moans that related to sex, not shivering, “Is it good for you, Baby? Am I making you feel good?”
Of course, she sounded nothing like the siren in his head, but his imagination took over his mouth, letting him reply in a decidedly passionate tone of voice.
“Ohhh, yes. So good.” Bless her fevered brain, she didn’t seem to mind or notice.
He wasn’t trying to sound like that. Not trying to sound like he was about to come all over himself, trapped in these too-tight jeans, skin burning in that painful way as feeling returned to frozen flesh. Actually—“Ow.”
“‘S wrong?” She rolled back to face him, head directly over his. When had they ended up lying down, not sitting?
Wait, how did I end up flat on my back? More importantly—pain.
“Arggh, fuck, frostbite’s a bitch. You can’t feel it until you’re out of it, you know.
Least I don’t have blackened bits. I hope.
” It occurred to him he hadn’t checked the contents of his trousers.
He wouldn’t have unzipped for anything short of, well, short of
Penny, and now he wasn’t unzipping for that, either. “I’m having a very effed up day. An’ so are you, sugar.”
“What do you do for frostbite? I don’t think they covered that in high school health.”
“I don’t know. I never even got a chance to have a high school health class.
Or go to high school, come to think of it.
I worked in the ports. French Cajun father, Greek mother.
‘Poor child of immigrants’ me. But strong and good-looking.
New Orleans used to be quite the port, quite the dramatic destination, and I got to see it all. ”
“That sounds exciting.”
“New Orleans is an exciting place, all right. Full of magic, that’s for sure.”
“So, do you know what to do about the witch upstairs and the spell?”
“I don’t even know what the spell is!” Brax huffed. “All we know from Mr. Mouse was that she wasn’t happy with the weather and she was trying to mess with it. Maybe make it not-too-hot, and not-too-cold.”
“And instead she made it majorly too much of both, freezer-burned you and broiled me?” Penny asked, propping herself up on her elbow, which happened to be in the vicinity of Brax’s forehead.
Brax jabbed her pointedly in the ribs, mouth muffled and unwilling to open, lest he be accused of trying to suck on her nipples—which he was trying very, very hard not to do.
She looked down and gasped. Brax’s face was nestled between her breasts, and he looked at her with tortured eyes, as if to say, “How much temptation do you expect me to resist in one day?”
“Sorry,” she mouthed, sitting up. As soon as she removed her warmth from him, he shivered again, and she felt the raging burn set back in. “I’m not better yet. Also, my throat is killing me. Killing me.”
“Well, stop talking,” Brax ordered sensibly.
“No! Everything is very, very clear when I’m sick, when I’m not delirious.
” A break from the blistering temperature had cleared her head enough to put some things together.
“I think the witch upstairs wanted to make a spell to combine hot and cold, but instead, she goofed, and separated them into extremes.”
Penny poked her finger at his chest, tapping his sternum, then leaving her hand splayed there, eyes closed in bliss from the cold.
“Can’t argue with you there,” Brax almost moaned aloud as her hand began to stroke across his chest. Blissful warmth. Sweet, soft touch.
Humans who knew what he was didn’t drop their guard around them. There was nothing sweet. Or soft. It was all seduction, then realization, fear, and hate. Regret, sadness, anger, loss.
Never anything eager or welcoming. Sweet. Soft.
Something in him ached, and not from the cold.
“So, all we have to do is combine the two things she poured the hot and cold into, and we’ll be fixed!” Penny concluded in triumph. She gave a painful swallow. “And if that doesn’t work, we beat her up.”
“You beat up, I’ll cheer from the sideline and bring Gatorade.”
“Sounds good.”
“Well, we’re combined already. I’m holding you against me,” Brax pointed out. “It doesn’t seem to be doing—”
“No science classes, either? Two things touching are not combined. You have to know chemistry. You have to put two elements together, mixing them until you can’t tell one from another.”
“If this leads to us having some sort of Frankenstein-esque event with your sewing machine and a kitchen knife—” Brax warned.
“No! I think I just need to swallow you.”
Brax didn’t dare to move. After a second, he whispered, “What?”
“You know. Your cum would be in me. Cold into hot. Hey, presto. Plus, I just really want something long and cold in my mouth.”
“Jesus Christ.” Ow. Saying the name of any holy being hurt him—but the sting was surprisingly muted tonight.
“I mean, we could pray that it works...”
“Penny, I’m not going to—”
“Don’t worry!” Penny swung herself off the bed and grabbed the paper again. “I’ll just add it to the list!”
“But, sweetheart, listen to me. Listen to what you’re asking for.”
Penny shook her head. Her green eyes were losing their clarity the longer she held herself away from him. “Make me colder. Help me think. I’ll help you, too. What do you need?”
Her. I need her. No, I want her. What do I need? Blood. Warmth. To stay alive. “Blood, but that can wait.”
A long, slow, solemn nod. “I don’t have any. I mean, in me, yes, but you shouldn’t bite me.” She blinked. “You’d get hurt. It’d feel like a big shark bite or something.”
“Are you telling me that the only reason you’re not feeding me is to protect me from my own curse?”
“Pretty much.”
“But if I wouldn’t get hurt, and I didn’t take much—”
“You need it. The truce is about what you need.”
“I can live without food for a bit. I need to warm up. There. That’s what I need.”
“I can do that.” She held out her arms to him. He hesitated, then let himself be cuddled into her embrace.
“Good job. Nice, cold vampire. Pretty spider vampire.”
“Pretty? Spider?”
“Shh.” She absently kissed his ear and nuzzled her cheek into his.
“I think we should wait to try your suggestion. Maybe just a kiss would work,” Brax whispered.
“We can try. Can you just hold me for a little bit? My brain’ll clear up, and maybe my head will even shrink back down to normal.” She massaged her hands into his back, more for her pain relief than his pleasure.
Could hold you forever, especially if you do that. “That I can do.” What the hell? He kissed her neck and sat down under his mostly-nude hot water bottle and nuzzled her right back.