Chapter 14 Claustrophobia #2
But even as I say the words, I doubt them. It’s the middle of the night. The morning staff won’t be here for another few hours. The night staff will be finishing up, but security is thin and Tuesdays are our quietest time of the week. It could be a long time before anyone comes looking for us.
I can feel Lily shaking in my arms, and I curse myself again for not feeding recently. If I had more blood in my veins, I could easily open the doors to the elevators. But right now, I’m powerless.
At just the thought of blood, I feel my fangs elongate. I don’t have any more willpower to stop them from crossing over my bottom lips. I’m using all of it holding back the overwhelming urge that arises inside of me with Lily pressed up so closely, her scent filling the elevator car.
She sees my fangs and her eyes widen, her irises contracting. She’s so scared that she forgets to call me by my last name. “Re-Renata…”
“It’s ok,” I say to her, my voice thick. “I won’t hurt you. It’s just an instinct.”
“You…you said you weren’t strong enough to open the doors because you haven’t drank any blood lately…”
A heavy stab of guilt pierces my chest. “Yes.”
She looks up at me, her eyes shining eagerly. “You should drink from me,” she says breathlessly. Her cheeks are stained with tears. “It would make you strong…and…and I have O negative blood…”
My lip twitches at the thought. I can’t do such a thing. It would be completely unprofessional and inappropriate. “Absolutely not.”
But I can feel the red glow behind my eyes. Lily sees it, and she bites her lip. The gesture makes me ache in more than one place.
A protective feeling washes over me, like the one I experienced on the holding floor when I was sure she was going to die.
I didn’t hesitate before giving her my blood.
I’m responsible for Lily, for her safety.
If I could give her my own blood, is this so different?
I know I shouldn’t…but every frightened beat of her heart weakens my resolve.
“Please,” she whispers. She has such perfect lips. How did I not notice her perfect lips before? So pink, and so gracefully bowed. “Please, Renata, I have to get out of here.”
And with those words, all reason is gone. I let the crimson spill into my eyes, and the fangs creep lower down along my chin. I take down the wall that stops her scent from filling my nostrils, that holds back the tender song of her heart from drawing me closer.
I pull her by the waist, pressing her against me.
And I lock my eyes onto her’s. It’s a spell I’ve cast a hundred thousand times.
A glamour charm that will lull her into a pleasant state.
It will make the bite a transcendent experience for her.
Each vampire’s spell is different, and I’m particularly proud of mine.
It’s quick and seamless, with a tantalizing finish.
I feel her shiver pleasurably in my arms, and her eyes soften.
Her heartbeat pounds strongly, but there’s no scent of panic in the air. Only warm desire.
Because there is desire in her eyes, even if I didn’t let myself see it before. It’s much more difficult to charm someone who wasn’t already willing to be charmed.
Her desire sparks a matching one in me. Without hesitating, I pick her up in my arms and lay her down on the plush bench behind us. I carefully arrange her head on a pillow so she’ll be comfortable. I push the hair from her eyes.
I bend down over her, but she presses her palm into my chest.
“Wait,” she whispers. “Not my neck. Is there another place…”
Of course. She doesn’t want a mark to show. “Your wrist?” I suggest.
She shakes her head. “It’s the summer…I wear short sleeves…”
“Then…” My head spins at the very thought. “There is a spot…that’s more hidden…”
She nods eagerly. “Where?”
“Your thigh,” I tell her, showing her with my gaze what I’m implying.
“Oh…” she gasps. With my heightened senses, I can smell the hormones emanating from her pores like a floral perfume. “Yes…I mean, if you think that would be best…”
“Whatever you desire,” I say. I hadn’t meant to say ‘desire,’ and the word hangs heavily in the air between us. Her lips tremble.
“Yes, you can bite me there,” she breathes.
“If at any point you want me to stop…”
She peers up at me through heavy eyelids. “I trust you, Renata. I trust you completely.”
Her words cements the covenant between us. Without another thought, I gently pull up the silky fabric of her tight pencil skirt. My mouth finds the perfect spot on her upper inner thigh, and my fangs pierce her tender skin.
Her blood is thick, and flows vigorously. It’s the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted, more fragrant than the ripest fruit, and sweet. Sweeter than honey.
She moans, her pleasure like a symphony, resonating against the elevator’s walls. Unable to control myself, I drink deeply from her thigh, and she responds in kind, pressing it up against my mouth.
Her blood strengthens me and calms the restlessness in my core.
For the first time in many, many years, I feel grounded.
I don’t know why, but drinking from Lily just…
feels different. I realize suddenly that I’ve never drank blood from someone I know, someone I already have a relationship with.
I’m always able to distance myself from the living humans I feed on.
To think of it as a transaction. I fulfill my need to drink human blood, and they’re compensated with a pleasurable experience, or money. Usually both.
As her blood fills me and my vampiric bloodlust abates, reason returns. Despite the relationship between Lily and I, I have to consider this just another transaction. She allowed me to drink her blood so that I can rescue her from the elevator. It’s just like all of those times with the donors.
I have to think of it that way…
But it’s hard to deny the powerful swell of feeling in my heart, the strong urge to protect her. I need to get her out of here. It’s my responsibility…
As her boss, of course.
I pull my mouth from her thigh, licking the wound.
The magic in my spit not only heals the bite, but does so neatly to ensure there will be no scar (another signature of my abilities that I’m quite proud of).
I pull her skirt down carefully. She looks up at me with an expression of satisfaction and complete trust. As the glamour charm wears off, I can feel her panic begin again.
The elevator is still dark, and there’s no help in sight.
But inhuman strength and power now flow through my veins and harden my resolve.
“Wait here,” I tell her. Now I put my fingers between the elevator’s thick metal doors and find it easy to wedge them between the gaps. With one hand on each I force them open like two sliding screen doors.
The elevator shaft is dark, but there’s a safety light that’s enough for my vampiric night vision. I look up the shaft. We’re poised between two floors, and I can see the light from the floor above.
I look down. The sides of the shaft are too smooth to scale safely. If it was only me, I might try to go down. But with Lily, I won’t take the risk. I return to her side. She’s sitting up on the bench now. She swallows.
“Please don’t leave me,” she says, her voice small.
“I would never leave you,” I reply, bending down to meet her gaze. “But I’m going to ask you to be very brave, Lily. Do you need me to glamour you again?”
She shakes her head. “No. I’m scared, but…but I feel safe with you.”
“You know me in a professional capacity, Lily,” I say to her.
She knows of my vampiricism, of course, but she may not be fully aware of the extent of my abilities.
“And it might be easy to think that I’m just like any other CEO or businessperson.
But I need you to understand something. I’m over two hundred years old, Lily.
I don’t breathe, or have a heartbeat. There’s magic inside me that allows me to sustain myself with human blood, and it makes me extremely strong.
Stronger than any other person you’ve ever met, except perhaps Celine.
I can do things that living humans can’t do. ”
She nods.
“I’m going to do something right now that seems impossible. And I need you to put all of your faith in me, and know that I can get you to safety. All right?”
“Yes.” Her panic subsides slightly, although there’s a warm pink flush to her cheeks that wasn’t there before.
I reach down and take her in my arms. She’s so light, and her heart hums like a bird in her chest. She clutches onto me tightly, her arms around my neck and shoulders.
“You can hang on as tightly as you like,” I tell her. “If it makes you feel safer. But I need you to know that I won’t drop you. Do you know that?”
“Yes, I know that,” she says, breathlessly.
“Good.”
Holding Lily in one arm, I lean out of the elevator doors. Her pulse starts to pound, but she doesn’t make a sound. She presses her face into my chest.
“You’re doing well, Lily,” I tell her. “This will be scary, but it will soon be over. Could you count to ten for me?”
“Ok,” she whimpers. “One…two…”
With the arm that’s not holding her, I reach out over the elevator. There’s a bar there, for emergencies exactly like this. I grip it in one fist and swing us up, and over onto the top of the elevator car.
“Three!” she shrieks.
“Keep going,” I tell her.
“Four…” She trembles against me, but she’s got nothing to fear. There are several thick ropes and pulleys attached to the elevator car. They’re too rough for the delicate skin of a normal human, but I’ll have no trouble.
“Five…”
With my free arm, I take one of the cables and hoist us up. I get a nice grip on the cables with my legs for stability as I use the other arm to pull us farther up.
“Six…”
I could move faster, but I don’t want to spook Lily too much.
“Seven…”
There’s light shining down through the small crack between the elevator doors on the next floor.
“Eight…”
Using my legs to hold us to the cable, I reach out, and pry them open with one hand. It’s far, but I can just manage it with my body fully extended, Lily nestled in my lap as I reach back. Light from the hotel lobby streams through the gap in the doors.
“Nine…”
“This is the worst part,” I whisper to her. “But I’ve got you.”
She nods and buries her face into my hair.
Launching myself with the force of my powerful legs, I leap across the elevator shaft.
She screams, “Ten!”
And I land on the hotel lobby floor, with Lily in one arm.
The lone night concierge looks over at us, his mouth open in shock, a phone against his cheek. This late at night, he’s the only one in the lobby. “Um…I’m going to have to call you back…”
“Get this elevator serviced,” I tell him sharply. Then I adjust Lily in my arms, holding her torso and legs delicately. She takes a grateful inhale, the adrenaline evaporating from her skin as she realizes she’s safe.
But I’m not letting her go yet. I carry her briskly toward the emergency staircase beside the service elevator, using my foot to kick upon the door.
“Where are we…?”
“I’m taking you home,” I tell her. “You’re off the clock.”
I don’t look back down at her. I’m worried how I would feel if I do. I’m worried about how things may have changed between us.
But I don’t have to think about that yet. Right now, my single focus is making sure Lily is safely tucked away in bed.
I have a master key, so I can enter her suite. Luckily, vampires move quietly, but I don’t turn on any lights, so as not to wake her sleeping son. I take her up the stairs of the suite and into the primary bedroom, laying her gently down on the bed.
Then I can’t avoid meeting her gaze. Her glittering eyes look up at me with admiration and awe…
“You saved me,” she whispers. “How can I ever thank you…”
“You saved me first,” I remind her. I want to take the blankets from the bed and tuck them around her, but that seems too intimate. And I’m extremely aware of how unprofessional things have become between us. “Lily, I just want to say…”
But to my surprise, she brings a hand up to my shoulder, interrupting me. “I understand. And I don’t want you to say anything. But I understand. Nothing’s changed. I promise.”
I nod. And I look at her, as though it’s the first time I’ve ever seen her.
She does understand. She understands that what happened tonight, and what happened on the holding floor, can’t interfere with the professional relationship between us. She values our work together, and the strength of our working relationship. She values that as much as I do.
She’s the only one who values our work as much as I do.
How did I not see it before? How did I not see her before? Out of everyone, Lily is the one that I trust the most, the one that I know I can count on. I hadn’t realized it, but she’s the person I look forward to seeing when I rise from my coffin each night.
She means so much to me. It takes all of my willpower to leave her.
As I close her bedroom door behind me softly, I can still taste her blood on my lips.