Chapter 10 - Rowan #2
“How was it?” I croaked, then cleared my throat and tried again. “How was it?” Better. Still a bit raspy, and I could hear my mouth trying to work around my fangs that were trying to grow, but much better.
“This is so good,” she said in that musical way of hers as she smiled brilliantly at me. “Do you want to try it?”
Suddenly, I couldn’t help but wonder if this was what it felt like to be under a vampire’s glamour, because I was temporarily stunned. Thankfully, I recovered quicker and didn’t sound like I was doing an impression of a frog.
“Yes, please!”
I had been expecting her to slide one of her plates toward me, but instead she speared some fresh fish on her fork and used her spoon to scoop rice and gravy onto the utensil. She held the fork out to me, giving me one of those dazzling smiles.
Fuck.
My fangs grew so fast I was shocked there wasn’t an audible pop. My mind was buzzing with so much. Desire. Lust. Surprise. But also, there was something so... Was it wholesome? Being offered not only food from Naomi’s plate, but her literal fork?
Was I already falling? Because when I looked into those eyes of hers, saw the fluttering of the pulse in her neck, and let my gaze drop to that same beautiful, genuine smile, I felt a lovely ache in my chest that I had only barely brushed against during my long life.
It was rare to encounter something I had so little experience with after more than a century of life, but that was how each new experience with Naomi was.
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Naomi said, mistaking my pause for hesitancy.
Well, we couldn’t have that, now could we?
I leaned forward, locked eyes with her once more, and opened my mouth to take what was on her offered fork. The tips of my fangs had to be visible, but I didn’t care. All that mattered was the simmering heat I was beginning to feel at my heart and rapidly spreading through my limbs.
Did I take satisfaction in the tiny hitch of Naomi’s breath as I straightened, chewing methodically? Of course. And god, the flavors that exploded over my tongue only enhanced the moment that much more. If it tasted that good to me, a vampire, it had to be downright heavenly to a human.
“W-what do you think?” Naomi sputtered slightly after swallowing.
Once more, I was distracted by the siren song that was the bobbing of her throat.
Shit, I couldn’t recall the last time I was so affected by a singular person.
She was better than a live band, more fun than puzzling out a new instrument. She was… she was…
Naomi, my mind supplied.
And yes, that was it. More than any of my vocabulary could describe, she was just wholly and wonderfully her.
“Scrumptious,” I murmured after taking my time chewing and swallowing. If I had my way, that moment would never end, and it would be the two of us locked into this lovely—and perhaps a tad odd—experience.
But now it was time for the tables to turn.
“Here, try mine.” And if my voice dropped a bit lower while saying that… Well, that was nobody’s business. Carefully, I constructed a fork with a little bit of every component of one of my dishes and extended it over the table.
Even with the lovely makeup Naomi was wearing, I could still see the flush that traveled down her face before becoming much more vibrant as it reached her neck and décolletage. Both parts of me—the civil and the feral—liked that very much.
And then her mouth opened, her tongue instinctively swiping over her bottom lip.
The demon within me wanted to leap over the table and bite into her.
Taste her. Consume her. As for every other part of me?
It understood that compulsion but argued that the absence of the vision in front of me would leave us lacking, no matter how satisfying the feed.
At that, the apex predator inside me settled, and my fangs slowly returned to normal. Even as I sat transfixed, watching Naomi swallow yet again, her eyes fluttering closed in ecstasy, I enjoyed it for the beauty of the moment rather than imagining how I could devour it.
However, that didn’t stop an image from flashing through my mind. Her in my lap, that beautifully muscled and tanned back of hers flexing as she bounced up and down, a look of pure bliss and indulgence across her resplendent features.
“Oh my god,” she moaned, as if she could see the fantasy rushing through my mind so quickly that I couldn’t stop it.
Not that I was sure I even wanted to stop it.
While I wasn’t celibate, I wasn’t exactly the hedonist that so many vamps my age and younger tended to be.
I needed connection, needed familiarity and companionship in order to feel solid in my lust. I always thought that it was another way I wasn’t quite really a vampire, but now, as I let myself drown in everything that Naomi made me feel, I couldn’t help but wonder if this was how it was supposed to be all along.
“That is so good!”
It was almost too much between us, like the gravity of our attraction would grow so strong it would crush us and the building. Especially once Naomi’s eyes fluttered, half-lidded and almost sleepy. Parts of me stirred that hadn’t in quite some time.
“I—”
“Well, isn’t this quite the spread?”
I nearly jolted. I’d been so laser focused on Naomi that I hadn’t realized three rather strapping but somewhat shorter men had approached us.
Naomi’s spine went ramrod straight. Whatever heat was between us dissipated immediately. For a split second, I was completely confused, but then I saw their faces when the men basically pinned her in by standing behind and to either side of her chair. The family resemblance was uncanny.
“What are you doing here?” she hissed, sounding somewhere between horrified and enraged.
“Aw, you know how it is. We just had to come check out our sis on her date. Make sure her beau’s being a right proper gentleman and not a chud.”
“After all, we’ve heard nothing about you,” the shorter one chimed in, smiling in a way that let me know he was definitely trying to neg me in some way.
I got the feeling that Naomi’s brothers may be idiots, and her reticence to talk about her family made a whole lot more sense now.
“Kinda weird place to come, don’t cha think?” the last one said, looking around uncomfortably. “Isn’t it a bit hum—uh, kitschy?”
Yes. Definitely idiots.
“Guys, you need to go, and you need to go now,” Naomi said, and there was this sort of… vibrating energy to her. She looked so upset when we’d just been having a good time that I wanted to do something, say anything, but I also didn’t want to overstep.
“D’aw, come on, Otto-Roboto, you can’t blame us for being concerned for the only one like you in the family! You’re precious.”
“Only one like me?” she repeated in such a low tone that I almost couldn’t hear her. It felt like poison was slowly dripping down my ear with each syllable.
“The only girl, of course! It’s up to the stronger to protect the weak. You know that! Don’t worry, we’re not here to demand you go home or make waves. Just wanted to check in, ya know? Can’t have our one and only Otto get—”
“I told you not to call me that!”
“God, calm down—”
That was quite enough.
Naomi was clearly upset and I wasn’t about to let her be harassed right in front of me without saying anything.
“It’s sweet to see siblings so involved in each other’s lives,” I said in what Ibrahim had once called my teacher tone.
While I never had an education in a formal classroom, I had always taken it as a compliment.
“But perhaps you would be less inclined to interrupt your sister’s dates if you had romantic evenings of your own to deal with. ”
It wasn’t a zinger. It wasn’t some sort of showstopping condemnation. But I hoped it was enough to shake them out of whatever made them think it was all right to embarrass Naomi like this. Hopefully, they would retreat and cause no more trouble.
Rarely did it ever work out like that, but hey, at least I always gave people the option to do the right thing.
“Oh, believe me, we have no shortage of chicks to spend our time with.”
I never liked stereotypes—I’d been hurt by them myself—but the three frog-shouldered men before me really did seem like the quintessential douchebag jocks, all posturing and macho and pulling some sort of power play on their sister.
Granted, I didn’t know the family situation, but as an outsider looking in, this seemed like a control issue of the highest order.
And it concerned me how Naomi was just staring at her plate, her fist balled so tightly that I was starting to smell the sharp, floral bouquet of her blood. While that was a scent I craved, that I sometimes dreamed about, this was not how I wanted to experience it.
“And yet you are here. With no ‘chick’ in sight.” This time, I put my fork down and stood.
While I wasn’t a hulking man and covered in muscles like Naomi’s brothers, I was quite a bit taller than them, which allowed me to look down at their rather annoying faces.
While Naomi’s features looked so lovely on her, feminine and artful, I found those same things foul on her brothers.
It was a corruption of her beauty, her strikingness pasted onto men who didn’t deserve her time, blood relation be damned.
“I highly encourage you all to go out and use this time to pursue positive romantic interests rather than living vicariously through Naomi.”
“Pffft!” one practically spat. Although I was no longer a particularly violent man, I really wanted to punch him. “Like I’m taking advice from some random guy! And what’s with the weird goth makeup?”
Makeup?
I only just figured out what he meant when the largest brother elbowed him and started laughing.
“That ain’t makeup! This guy’s a straight-up ghost!
God, Noms, you could have told us if you were slumming it this hard!
Come on, let’s go home and we’ll find you a nice mate from the pa—our neck of the woods. ”