CHAPTER 16
Iro
Her meetings were usually in one of her offices, which all had very thick, tinted windows that protected her from the bulk of the sun’s harmful rays, but occasionally, Iro needed to meet people elsewhere during the day, or, like in this case, a member of her executive team had requested a team-building activity outdoors in a park.
She hadn’t planned on going, often choosing not to attend things like this because no one actually wanted the boss there, but her team was a small one, and so many of them were new because of her recent move to the city.
She hadn’t wanted them to think that she didn’t support them, so she had paid for the park rental, the food, and the games, and she had walked around smiling and thanking everyone for coming.
A few hours after the event had begun, it was thankfully over, but the damage had been done.
The day had been too sunny, and she needed the Moon to recharge, which would be out soon.
Still, after she had already not been behind her protective glass as much as she normally would be, choosing to take Arwen to lunch and pick up flowers for her along the way instead of hiding behind the UV-protective barrier, Iro was exhausted.
She’d had a few meetings outside of her own office as well, so she knew she should postpone her date with Arwen.
Even more than that, she knew she should let her go.
With Cassia in town, wanting Iro to end their estrangement, Arwen was in danger.
Her building wasn’t exactly secure, and while Iro didn’t think Cassia could break down that door with four locks, Arwen was only on the second floor, and locks on windows or windows themselves wouldn’t keep Cassia out if she wanted to get in.
Iro needed to either stay away from Arwen altogether or help convince her to find a more secure place to live, and soon.
She’d walked by Arwen’s apartment building to check on her after seeing Cassia in the street, hoping that Cassia hadn’t followed them all the way to Arwen’s apartment on the night of their first date.
There was a chance Cassia didn’t yet know where Arwen lived, and while she could find that out easily enough these days, that wasn’t Cassia’s style, so Iro felt like she had a little time.
Of course, she knew she should end things with Arwen to avoid her getting hurt.
Cassia had never been faced with the reality of losing her before.
Iro had always promised to return, and she had.
This was the first time she had told Cassia that they were finished for good, and the look in Cassia’s eyes told Iro that she wasn’t just going to give up and walk away.
While it was true that she and Arwen had only been on one official date, outside of their meeting at the bar and their lunch, Iro knew she couldn’t let her go.
She wanted this. For the first time since Mary, she really, really wanted this because even though she’d been with Cassia for hundreds of years, she’d always felt so alone.
“Hi,” Arwen greeted her with a wide smile when she opened the door.
“Hi.”
“Okay, I am running out of space for all these flowers you keep getting me.” Arwen took the daffodil from Iro’s outstretched hands. “And should I be worried? You started with a rose. Then, it was a tulip. Now, it’s a daffodil?”
“I stopped at a newsstand, so it was either this, a newspaper or a magazine, a pack of gum, or some cigarettes. Did I choose poorly?”
Arwen laughed and said, “No, although I do love magazines. I tend to read them on my phone to save paper.” She tilted her head toward the living room. “Come in.”
“How long have you lived here? I meant to ask last time.”
“Years. I’ve been here since I moved to DC. Why?”
“Is it rent-controlled or something?”
“God, I wish. The landlord isn’t too bad with rent hikes, though, and I’ve always been able to sign two-year leases, so that means fewer raises, too. Why?” Arwen repeated.
“It’s just not in the best of neighborhoods, and I worry about you. Who else knows where you live? Your parents, I assume?”
Arwen stuffed the daffodil into the same vase with the rest of the flowers and said, “Yes, of course. Plus, Zara. My employer has my home address. Why are you asking weird questions?”
“You’re an attorney, and you go up against rich people with agendas. I know a lot of rich people with agendas, and they like to keep their agendas on schedule, if you know what I mean. I don’t want any of them stopping by. That’s all.”
“It’s never happened before. I’ll be fine.”
“How would you feel if I maybe paid someone to stop by and make it a little safer for you? An alarm system, door camera, that kind of thing.”
“On my apartment?”
“Yeah. It would make me feel better. There’s not even a lock on that door downstairs. I know having a buzzer system probably seems less secure because people can just buzz anyone up, but at least you wouldn’t have to go downstairs at night to let someone in.”
“I don’t have many late-night visitors, Iro.”
“Can I still possibly do a few things for you?” she insisted as she wrapped her arms around Arwen’s waist. “It may sound ridiculous, but I do worry about you, and since I don’t envision you just agreeing to move somewhere else or move in with me after a singular date, this is probably the best I can do. ”
“What is your obsession with my apartment?” Arwen asked through her laughter and pressed her face to Iro’s chest. “You smell good, by the way. What cologne are you wearing?”
“None.”
“None? God, this is just how good you smell?”
Iro held her close and looked around at the two windows she could see. They were old and standard. Yes, they had locks, but they were easy enough to get through, and if Cassia wanted to kill Arwen, she’d get in and do it.
“We should go. We have a reservation.”
“Can we be five minutes late? I haven’t seen you since lunch yesterday. I just want you to hold me for a while.”
“If we’re five minutes late, they’ll take off without us, I think.”
Arwen pulled back and looked up at her.
“What?”
“I asked you how you felt about heights… Ready?”
◆◆◆
Iro stared at Arwen, not caring about how the city looked from the helicopter she’d booked for them.
A private ride in the night sky, overlooking DC, was something she had been certain Arwen had never experienced, and as she watched Arwen’s surprised, shocked, and excited eyes take everything in, she knew for certain that she would never go back to Cassia.
Cassia hadn’t ever made her feel like this, like Iro was seeing the world through new eyes.
Cassia had been bored with everything, so she had refused to do anything.
She loved sex. She loved blood. She tolerated everything else.
Staring at Arwen, though, Iro understood that most of her life as a vampire had been a lie.
For centuries, she had thought that she was in love with a woman because that woman seemed to be in love with her, and, in the beginning, there had been nothing Cassia wouldn’t give her, including time apart with the promise of Iro’s return.
As their relationship had progressed throughout the decades, though, Iro would crave modernity and making her own way.
Cassia had still only craved sex and blood.
Iro hadn’t wanted to be a vampire, and she hardly remembered the night Cassia turned her, even right after it had happened.
All she had remembered back then was seeing the faces of Mary’s parents and finding out that she’d lost the only person she had ever loved.
Yes, she had enjoyed some of the advantages that came with immortal life, but there were drawbacks, too.
In fact, one of them was staring her in the face right now.
Well, Arwen was still staring out the side window, but Iro was still staring at her, and Arwen had no idea that Iro had been born at the end of 1666, that she had only lived thirty-one years, turning thirty-one a few weeks before Mary died, or that she had died as well.
She had been reborn, as Cassia called it, and she had spent a hundred years with Cassia, not caring about anyone they fed from.
People could have lived or died, and it hadn’t mattered to them.
They’d spent all that time moving around Europe, having sex, making love, and feeding and enjoying their time together, but Arwen knew none of that.
Arwen didn’t know about her second refrigerator filled with animal blood or the secret rooms in her new house.
She also didn’t know that Iro was exhausted from spending too much time in the sun recently and that even a night high in the sky, nearer to the Moon, wouldn’t be enough to sustain her.
She’d need time out of the light for at least the next full day to recover from this kind of exhaustion, but in this moment, staring at Arwen, she knew it was worth it.
“It’s amazing,” Arwen noted, and her words got to Iro muffled through a headset, of which Iro had on an identical one.
“Yes, it is,” she replied.
She then took Arwen’s hand in her own and brought it to her lips to kiss, needing to feel Arwen’s skin to believe it was even real to be this happy.
Three hundred plus years ago, she’d been happy with Mary, but only in the privacy of Mary’s home whenever they could get time alone.
She could never profess her love, show it in public, or enjoy any other aspect of being a woman in the sixteen-hundreds.
Today, she could kiss Arwen’s hand while the pilot looked on if she wanted to.
She could kiss her on the street outside of Arwen’s new favorite restaurant.
She could own a business, earn money, own property, and not have to allow any man to dictate the terms of her life.
“Are you okay?” Arwen asked.
Iro realized that she had zoned out a bit and said, “Yes. I’m perfect. Are you enjoying yourself?” she asked and leaned in to kiss her sweetly on the lips.