Chapter 11
Dahlia
I’m uncomfortable. Not just because the carriage we take back to the palace is rickety as fuck as it rolls over the city cobbles, nor because Penelope is passed out in my arms and her knobbly elbow is digging into my rib.
But because there’s a shift between Penelope and me.
Subtle, slow but significant, nonetheless.
Octavia may have been winding me up, but she wasn’t too far off the mark.
The close proximity and being unable to leave her side are muddying my mind too.
Even though she was stood next to me when we discovered that body hanging from the club exit, my blood froze in my veins.
What’s thrown me is what went through my mind.
I should have been paranoid about failing as her bodyguard, worried about the political climate and the damage this might do to Octavia.
But the only thought in my mind was: thank fuck it wasn’t her.
I didn’t want it to be her. I keep having flashbacks of the woman hanging and the frisson of pins and needles that swept through my body.
I don’t want to think about what it means.
She’s still asleep when we arrive back at the palace, so I carry her in my arms all the way to her bedroom.
She burrows her head into my chest and makes these light snuffles that I desperately don’t want to think are adorable.
I like holding her like this, protecting her. Knowing that I’ve kept her safe.
But I’m also exhausted; a rare feeling for a vampire because we don’t often sleep. I slide her into bed, taking off her dress and stripping myself of my clothes. I’ll just have a sit down, maybe read while she sleeps.
Only once I’m in bed next to her, the pattern of her snores is so melodic, I find myself nodding off.
* * *
I wake with something curled against me. It’s soft and oddly warm. In fact, really warm. Why is it so hot? I peel my eyes open and hiss as a bolt of blistering pain rushes up my arm.
“Shit,” I shout as long beams of afternoon light make their way across the bed. “Shit!” I scurry into the corner of the four-poster bed, wrapping myself in layers of drape fabric.
“What? WHAT?” Penelope shrieks as she jerks upright, throwing yet more of the bed drapes open. I can tell because the curtain I’m curled in warms and my skin bristles against the heat.
“Window,” I shout.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Mother of Blood, Penelope. Did you forget I’m a vampire? Close the fucking curtains…”
“Ohhhh, fuck,” she says.
The bed shifts and I risk a peek through the tiniest sliver of fabric. She pads softly across the carpet to the window and closes the curtains. Finally, the warm drapes cool. I untangle myself from the safety of the thick fabric.
“We must have slept most of the day away,” I say. “But for future reference, unguarded light like that is enough to give me some blisters and a face lift. So, thanks.” I waft a hand in the direction of the now covered window.
Penelope stands there staring at me.
“What?” I ask.
She sucks in her bottom lip, and my nipples peak. I’m suddenly very aware that I’m completely naked, and she is dragging her eyes down my body like she’s licking up every last drop of pudding from the bowl.
“I just… I’m taking in the view, that’s all.”
“Well, it’s rude to stare. So why don’t you do something about it?”
She strides over to me and then stops suddenly.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Don’t worry. It’s nothing.”
She slopes off towards the bathroom, but I’m not having that. She was clearly about to say something.
I fling myself over the bed and enclose her in my arms, pressing my chest to her back.
“Tell me what is going through your head.” I’m not demanding or dictating, I genuinely want to know.
She wriggles out of my grip and faces me but can’t seem to actually look at me. I slide my fingers over her chin and pull up until she locks her gaze on mine.
“Penelope,” I breathe.
“I guess, I’ve had fun. That’s all. And we haven’t exactly talked about whatever the hell this is.”
She looks at me pointedly. I don’t answer because she’s right. Whatever this is has become the elephant in the room. It’s just… this situation. I’m protecting her while we’re here and… We’re… She’s right, I don’t know how to answer that either.
“What is… what do you…” I start, but my words fade because I don’t know how to finish the sentence.
“What are we?” she asks, her eyes all doey and cute, and I want to take the stake I fucked her with and shove it right into my chest. This is just a bodyguard assignment.
A favour for Octavia, nothing else. It was never going to be anything else.
It’s not like we could ever be anything more, we live in different cities.
We’re different species, for fuck’s sake.
She’s a royal magician princess and I’m some common vampire.
How could we ever be anything more than temporary?
A hard lump forms in my chest and throbs like I’m wounded and bleeding out. But it’s the truth, isn’t it? How would it work?
My eyes fall away from hers, my fingers loosening on her chin. I don’t have an answer for her.
“I thought as much,” she says, and steps out of my grip.
“Penelope, wait—” but she’s turned her back on me and stepped into the bathroom, closing the door.
Fuck.
* * *
When Penelope has finished adorning her face in several coats of makeup, she does this odd movement with her fingers and knuckles and her lips change colour. If we had time, I’d love to understand how their magic works. But I’ll have to learn it from a book. Maybe Gabriel can suggest something.
She glides out of the bathroom looking angelic and slips a black and two-toned blue coloured bridesmaid dress over her shoulders and turns her back to me.
She’s barely said more than three words since she left the shower.
She’s gotten dressed in sheer silence. I don’t think in all the days I’ve been here I’ve ever heard her this quiet for this long.
“We should talk,” I say.
“Can you zip me up, please,” she says and inches her backside towards me.
I chew the inside of my cheek and dutifully tug her zip into place. She turns to face me, and my mouth hangs open. Her dress is long, the fabric smooth and satin-like. The blue swirls almost pirouette over the slight curves of her body to look like ocean waves.
“Wow,” I say, the words just slipping out.
She huffs out a sad little laugh. “Thank you?”
“No, no, thank you for giving me such a glorious view… Listen,” I say suddenly serious. “Earlier…”
She turns away. “It’s fine.”
“No. Listen. Please.”
That little beat of submission gets her attention.
“Go on,” she says but still can’t quite bring herself to look at me.
“I would love this to be more… you are… damn, Penelope, you’re everything I’ve ever wanted…”
“Why does it feel like there’s a ‘but’ at the end of that sentence?” she says.
A loose lock of blonde hair falls from her up-do, so I slide it back into place, lean in and kiss her. Her lips are soft and warm. She tastes like mint and roses, her lip balm no doubt.
“Because there is a ‘but,’ and I think you know it as much as I do.”
She lets out a breath so heavy I feel it in my lungs.
“We live in different cities,” she says.
“We have different lives.” I answer.
“If I wasn’t a princess…”
“And if I wasn’t a general…”
Thoughts whirl through her expression as she bites her lip. “It’s just that this has been the best couple of days I’ve had in years. Even with everything that’s been going on.”
“Me too. I just don’t see a way it can work after this. Do you?”
She shakes her head, her eyes welling. “No.”
“Then let’s make the most of this while we can.”
What I don’t say, is that she is the kind of memory I will hold for as long as the moon shines and the night runs through my veins.
Because if I admit that, then this means something.
She means something. And if that’s true, then I don’t know how I’ll go back to Sangui City knowing the perfect woman exists, but she’s out of my reach.
Her eyes soften, her fingers brush against my jaw as if buried beneath my skin is the answer. But there isn’t one. We don’t get a happy ever after.
I lift her up by her thighs, marching her back and pinning her against the wall.
My lips find hers. But the way she kisses me is different. It’s not fuelled by lust and heat, it’s slow and longing. I kiss her back, realising that everything about this aches.
Hands and mouths caress each other. Tongues slide, unfurling an aching heat in our mouths. The longer we kiss, the more my stomach knots.
I yearn to take her with me to Sangui City. But this trip is about politics, so we always had an expiration date.
Her hands curl through my hair, insistent, needy. She tugs on my scalp, driving the embrace deeper, more urgent. She grows hot beneath my fingers. I place her on a table and slide the dress over her thighs, running a finger over her lace underwear.
Her mouth grazes my neck, her teeth nipping at the skin. I hiss and pull away as my fangs descend. She grins, the devil in her eyes and demons in her heart.
“Don’t play with fire, Penelope, that’s how you get burnt.”
“What does it feel like?”
“To drink? Or be drunk from?”
“Either? Both. I’m dying to know. When I was in the Whisper Club, I saw this woman and she…” Pink flecks her cheeks.
I pause, searching for the right words. “It feels like serenity and bliss, like molten lava and the glimmering of a thousand moons. It tastes like wildfire and winter air, like summer blooms and all the orgasms under the night sky.”
“Wow,” she breathes. “And for me?”
“It tastes like the biggest orgasm of your life.”
Her eyes bug out at this, and I chuckle to myself.
“Bite me,” she says.
But I shake my head. “Absolutely not.”
She pouts at me. It is, without exception, the brattiest expression I have ever seen.
“And why not? What’s wrong with my blood?” she whines