Chapter 9
F or the umpteenth time that night, Amos let his gaze track over Tessa’s body. He felt like a creep, but Tessa had made it fairly clear that she enjoyed the admiration. She was the most perfectly formed woman he’d ever laid eyes on. Everything about her was lush and curving. She was a dramatic hourglass, with thick thighs, full hips, and breasts that could make a man weep. The desire to run his hands over every soft curve, to squeeze and stroke, to feel every inch of her, was nearly unbearable.
That he’d fed from her twice in one night—and after Tessa’s wicked little game of make-believe—was making the possessiveness stronger. He found himself imagining all the places on her body he’d like to feed from, the places where he might leave his claim mark. Somewhere intimate? Or somewhere visible? Both had their appeal.
Tessa glanced up and caught him staring at her again. He felt the flush in his cheeks, but couldn’t bring himself to feel too sorry when she gave him a feral little smile in return.
“What’s the occasion?” he asked, giving himself at least a modicum of justification for the intense scrutiny. He continued to watch intently as Tessa nibbled her way through the chocolate-covered cherries.
“Hm?”
He gestured at her outfit. “Why no scrubs?”
“Oh. There’s no occasion. These are just my regular clothes. I don’t have to work tonight.”
“No?” Excitement sparked in his chest. “Does that mean you’re free to stay?”
“Yes. If you’ll have me.”
Amos raked his hand through his hair, so pleased he could hardly reply, then suddenly overwhelmed. “I wish I’d known you could stay. I’d have planned something. I should take you out. Somewhere nice. A piano bar? Do you like champagne? If you give me a second to change, we can go—”
“Amos.” She stilled his anxious babbling with a hand on his chest. “You don’t have to take me anywhere.”
“I know I don’t have to, but I want to do right by you. I want to give you the things you deserve.” He raked his fingers through his hair again. He had to do this right. He knew he wasn’t the most exciting man, immortal or otherwise, but he would do whatever it took to make Tessa happy.
Tessa curled her fingers around his bicep, pulling his arm down before he tugged all his hair out. “I’m on my feet all day every day. A night in would be perfect.”
That made sense, and he wanted to believe her—largely because staying in suited his own introversion. But he was afraid she was just being polite. “Are you sure? I told you I was going to court you properly, and I meant it.”
“Honest. I don’t really want to be surrounded by people right now. I spend most my waking hours at work, surrounded by people, and even when I’m at home, I’m constantly surrounded by family.” She blew out a heavy breath. “I love them, but they’re…a lot.”
Amos couldn’t be glad that she was so stressed all the time, but he was grateful that he could be a quiet harbor for her. “Alright, if you’re sure.”
“I am.”
The tension eased from his shoulders. “How does a movie sound, then?”
“Perfect.”
He pulled out his phone, controlling his entertainment system from it. He brought up a streaming service and scrolled through titles, insisting Tessa pick.
She settled on a comedy Amos remembered hearing good things about, but had never actually seen. He got it started and set his phone aside. As soon as he had settled back against the couch cushions, Tessa scooted up next to him, curling against his side.
Amos went totally still, surprised by the easy intimacy. He looked down at her, arm held aloft like a seagull with a broken wing. Tessa glanced up, alerted by his stillness. Whatever she saw in his face must have reassured her. She relaxed against him, wrapping one arm around his midsection. Her free hand reached up to pull his hovering arm down around her shoulders.
He could feel her breasts pressed against his side, the warmth of her body seeping into his. It took a moment, but he finally managed to relax. Contentment rumbled in his chest with every breath. He tried to suppress it, but the purr wouldn’t be silenced. In any case, Tessa didn’t seem to mind. She laid her ear against his sternum, listening.
The movie ended up being fine. Not particularly memorable, but not unenjoyable. The real pleasure though, came from the easy, unhurried conversations they kept getting into, instead of paying attention to the TV.
“Have you ever courted anyone before?” Tessa asked during the opening credits.
Amos tensed. “Yes.”
“Do you not want to talk about it?” she asked gently.
He ought to. If he was going to court her, if he was going to ask her to accept a permanent bond with him, he needed to be honest with her. “There’s not much to tell. There was a woman I met in… 1952? Mary Catherine Donovan.”
Tessa snorted. “You have a thing for Catholics?”
Sudden alarm seized Amos’s heart. “Are you Catholic?” he asked, trying to sound casual.
She shot him a questioning glance. “I mean, I’m Italian and Mexican, so my family is all Catholic, and I was raised Catholic. Baptized, CCD, Confirmation, the whole thing. But I’m not really religious. The only time I go to Mass anymore is for weddings and funerals.”
“So you don’t have any, er, spiritual objections to…me?”
Her eyes went wide. “Oh, no, Amos. No.” The arm around his midsection squeezed tighter. “Let me guess—Mary had some objections?”
“Yes. But, you don’t need to feel too bad for me. I wasn’t irrevocably in love with her. She was just… she was kind. And we got along very well. And I thought there was a possibility there. But—” he shrugged “—there wasn’t.”
“I’m sorry.” She was quiet for a moment. “Was there ever anybody else?”
“There was one other person.”
Tessa waited.
“His name was Michael Delacroix.”
“Oh.” She paused, and in that pause, Amos became acutely conscious of the precariousness of his relationship with Tessa—the newness of it, all of the unknowns between them, the weight of its potential. “How did you meet him?” she asked, sounding merely curious—not disgusted, not angry, not confused.
He didn’t realize how tightly his jaw had clenched until then. He relaxed, letting the tension ebb away. “We met in 1965. He and I worked together—nights, of course—at an investment bank. A.G. Becker & Co. It doesn’t exist anymore. I was a computer programmer, he was the custodian.”
“Workplace romance,” Tessa mused, still draped against him. It felt incredibly strange to lay entangled with a woman and tell her about a past lover—and a man, at that. He’d told Etta all about it, of course, but Etta was different. She knew what it was like. Her sympathy was guaranteed.
“I suppose,” he said, a hint of bitterness inadvertently creeping into his tone.
“Not a romance?” Tessa asked, picking up on it.
“It was, for a while. But when I revealed to him that I was a vampire… things went badly. He was afraid. Many people—especially men—lash out when they’re afraid. He tried to kill me.”
Tessa gasped, her fingers fisting in the front of his shirt. “ What? ”
“I was never in danger from him. A stake through the heart won’t actually kill us.”
“He tried to stake you through the heart ?” Tessa asked, aghast.
Amos shrugged. Had Michael set fire to his home while Amos was in his daysleep, or even just dragged him out into the sun, he would’ve had a much better chance of ending him. A stake in the back was a mere annoyance. Nothing, really, compared to the emotional pain.
“I’m sorry, Amos. That’s terrible.” Tessa laid her head against his chest, stroking her hand over his heart in soothing circles. While the hurt of Michael’s violent rejection had long since passed, small scars remained in his psyche. The conviction that he would never find a willing bloodmate. The suspicion that who he was as a person—predictable, introverted, subdued—was not appealing enough to overcome the detractions of being with a vampire. The knowledge that his predatory inclinations would always horrify potential partners.
Well. Tessa had upended that last one. And he dared to let himself hope that she would prove the other two wrong as well.
“So… you like men?” Tessa ventured after a brief silence.
“Sometimes,” Amos answered easily, no longer afraid of her reaction. “More often women. But occasionally men, too.”
“I’ve only ever been with men,” Tessa said. “I’ve had crushes on women, but nothing ever came of any of them.”
The peaceful feeling of being understood, being accepted, had Amos nearly glowing with contentment. But a small worry suddenly crossed his mind, dimming the glow somewhat. “Is that something you would want to explore before… ah… before…”
“Before committing to you?”
He nodded.
She gave it a moment of thought. “No. Intimacy isn’t about gender. And I want intimacy. It’s not like there’ll be this un-fillable void in my soul if I never get to eat pussy.”
Amos nearly choked on his own tongue .
Tessa flashed him a devious look. “Sorry, I keep forgetting you’re, like, a hundred and fifty. How would a Victorian woman say it?” She fluttered one hand to her heart, drawing his eye back to her impressive cleavage again, and the other to her brow. “Oh! My dear sir,” she warbled in some kind of mangled transatlantic accent. “Prithee do not trouble thyself over my lascivious needs. I am but a simple woman who seeks only the genitals of her truest love.”
Once again, Amos nearly choked. Laughter like he hadn’t experienced in years burst out of him. He clutched his chest as he fought with it, trying to remember how to breathe. “We did not talk like that!” he managed to wheeze.
His laughter had set Tessa off. She cackled at his discomposure, giving him a playful poke in the ribs. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” he said firmly, struggling to get a hold of himself. “Very sure.”
“Hmmm. If you say so.”
She curled against his side again and as their breathing evened, they lapsed into a comfortable quiet, both vaguely watching the movie.
“Do you want to watch another?” Amos asked when the movie ended, wishing he had something more exciting to offer. It’d been eons since he’d hosted anyone other than Etta and Fran. He was out of practice at entertaining guests. He was even more out of practice at courting.
“Yeah,” Tessa said definitively, easing his uncertainty. “But this time you pick. Put on a movie you loved that was made before I was born.”
“How old are you again?”
“Thirty-three.”
He thought on it for a moment. Several films occurred to him right away, but he discarded each of them. He wanted something that would appeal to Tessa and as he remembered his favorite films over the years, especially the older ones, he doubted they’d appeal much to a woman of the twenty-first century.
“Er… have you seen Doctor Zhivago ?” he finally ventured.
“No, what’s it about?”
He explained the premise while he searched for it. When he found it and got it playing, he leaned back into the couch, and Tessa curled into him again. She reached across him briefly to pluck up another one of the snacks he’d brought in and it suddenly dawned on him that humans had to eat full meals on a regular basis. He checked the time on his phone—it was close to when Tessa usually took her lunch break at work.
“Are you hungry?”
“I’m fine. You’ve got all these snacks.”
“You need real food. What do you like? I’ll order takeout.”
“No, Amos, you don’t have to do that. Really, I’m fine.”
“Do you like pizza?” he prompted. Thanks to Fran, Amos had a list of restaurants that were open in the middle of the night. “Chinese? Greek? If you don’t tell me, I’ll just order something at random.”
He could see the internal debate written across her face. It was obvious Tessa wasn’t used to being taken care of. Chewing her lip, she met his gaze, and finally gave in. “Pizza sounds good, actually.”
Satisfied with the small victory, Amos picked up his phone. “What do you like on your pizza?”
“Jalape?o, pineapple, green olives, and ham.”
Amos must’ve made a face because Tessa laughed. “ What would you know, vampire? When’s the last time you tasted anything besides blood?”
Amos sighed heavily. “I do this against my better judgment.” He tapped at his screen, placing her order.
When he looked up from his phone, Tessa’s gaze was on him, but her focus had gone distant.
“Is everything alright?” Amos asked softly.
Tessa blinked, her focus returning to him. She smiled ruefully. “Everything’s great. I was just thinking, I could get used to this. Ordering pizza with my family is impossible. Nobody can compromise. This is kind of selfish, but it’s nice not having to compromise.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to assure her that she would never have to compromise or settle for less with him, before reality sank in. Being a vampire’s bloodmate was nothing but compromise. An eternity lived in darkness. An eternity in which she would watch her family age and die, even the children, without her. An eternity that would be contingent upon her relationship with him.
He swallowed the naive promise, the lie. “I can guarantee I will never fight you over pizza toppings,” he said instead.
They settled back into a comfortable cuddle and watched the movie. After a while, it was obvious that Amos had chosen well. Tessa was completely engrossed, occasionally murmuring questions about the plot, but quickly subsiding back into attentive silence. Her pizza arrived and Amos went to the door to get it. Tessa slid down to sit in front of the coffee table, eating with her eyes pinned on the TV screen. When she’d had her fill, she climbed back onto the couch and cuddled up against Amos again. He pulled her into his arms, barely paying any attention to the movie, almost entirely focused on the warm, soft weight of Tessa’s body pressed against his.
Feeling her like this was different from feeding. When he was drinking from her, the pleasure of her blood was enhanced by the closeness of her body, but the forefront of his awareness was occupied by the taste of her blood and the flow of vitality suffusing him. Now, there was just Tessa, just the lush feel of her and nothing else. Without consciously meaning to, one of his hands began to stroke slowly up and down the length of her spine.
Tessa murmured something inarticulate, shifting against him. Amos looked down at her, about to ask her to repeat herself, but the words never made it out of his mouth. Tessa tilted her head up, catching his lips with hers in a sweet, soft, long kiss. Amos groaned as he leaned into it, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her closer.
The kiss deepened, mouths open, tongues stroking together. The tip of Tessa’s tongue curled teasingly around one of his fangs, sending a jolt of hunger through him that tightened his gut and pulled a snarl from his throat. He jerked back, embarrassed at his loss of control, but Tessa only chuckled and came closer, slinging one leg over his lap so that she was straddling him. Her hands slid up the back of his neck, fingers furrowing through his hair, nails dragging against his scalp. He was hard again, alive with need. He brought his mouth down on Tessa’s, stealing her laughter away and turning it into a helpless moan.
He savored the way she clung to him, the way she yielded to the urgency of his kiss. He wanted more—he wanted everything. Her hands roamed over his shoulders, down his chest. They slipped beneath his shirt, pressing hot fingers against his bare skin, sending another almost-painful jolt of pleasure through him.
Before he knew it, he had Tessa on her back, pinning her with his weight while he devoured her. Hard, hungry kisses traveled from her sweet, hot mouth to the edge of her jaw, to the fluttering pulse at her throat. Slowly, he worked his way down, tasting the crook of her shoulder, her collarbone, until, at last, he was nuzzling the soft curve of one breast. He dragged his tongue over that velvety slope, rewarded with a gasp from Tessa, and the arch of her spine.
More. She wanted more. He needed more. His hands slid up her body, cupping the voluptuous swells of her breasts.
“ Amos, ” she panted, one hand closing over his, pressing him down harder, urging him to take more, more.
He did—squeezing, pressing, stroking—but it wasn’t enough. His fingers curled in the edge of her neckline, hooking the lace of her bra, and tugged one cup down. Her nipple was already a taut brown peak, and he shifted lower so that he could close his mouth over it, stroke his tongue over it, suck on it. Tessa’s hand slid to the back of his head, holding him there, soft cries rising from her throat as she writhed beneath him.
Half-wild with lust, only vaguely aware of what he was doing, Amos tugged her shirt and bra down to her waist, freeing her other breast for his mouth to feast upon. Her skin was fever hot, her pulse a drumbeat beneath it. Her plush thighs were spread beneath him, clinging to his flanks, hips rocking against him. His cock was hard as iron, desperate to be inside her. His fangs ached, tempting him to bite her, to suck sweet blood from the swell of her breast, sucking on her nipple at the same time, making her come while he did it .
But he resisted the urge. He’d already fed from her twice today. A third would be too much.
The hunger continued to build until it became nearly unbearable. Before he did something he’d regret, Amos drew back, holding himself up on arms that wanted nothing more than close around Tessa and crush her close while he fucked and fed from her.
“What’s wrong?” Tessa asked, breathless, flushed, eyes glassy. Her breasts rose and fell with each deep breath, her nipples still peaked and shiny from his mouth. Her bountiful hair spilled across the couch, tousled and free. Her bottom lip was swollen and red from her teeth sinking into it. She was too beautiful, too tempting.
With a groan, he levered himself off of her entirely. He sat on the edge of the seat, rubbing at his face as if he could scrub the sight of her—dazed, pliant, needy—out of his mind’s eye. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he rasped. “I’m getting carried away.”
Tessa puffed out a breath, running her hands restlessly up and down her body before she tugged her shirt back into place, tucking those glorious breasts out of sight. She sat up, leaning against the backrest as if she needed the support, and regarded Amos contemplatively.
“We can go at whatever pace you want,” she said gently. She swept her hair over one shoulder, finger combing it back into order.
“I don’t want to take too much, too soon,” Amos told her.
“You’re not taking anything from me. Believe me, I’m giving it, freely. But I think it’s sweet that you want to take things slow.” A devilish twinkle came into her eyes. “And kind of hot.”
Amos let out a disbelieving snort. “Hot? ”
“Yes. You’re so polite. So buttoned up. I like seeing you fight for self-control. I wonder what it’ll be like when you finally let yourself off the leash.”
Predatory hunger sharpened to a piercing ache in his fangs. “Ah, Tessa, you make it so hard to be a gentleman,” he growled.
Her gaze dipped briefly to his lap and the obvious bulge beneath his jeans, a dangerous smile curling one corner of her mouth. She looked back up, meeting his eyes again. “Good.”
He couldn’t believe his fortune. Tessa was too good to be true. The monstrous side of him wanted nothing more than to take her captive, make her his forever, make it so she could never escape him. But he wanted more than that. He didn’t want her an unwilling captive—at least, not in their everyday lives. He wanted her to want him back with the same intensity, to be a willing victim to his depravity and an equal partner in his heart. The rational part of his mind—growing weaker every day, it seemed—knew that to achieve his ends, he needed to be patient, gentle, careful.
“So…” Tessa pulled her knees to her chest, resting her chin on them as she continued to survey him. “You mentioned wanting to ‘hunt’ me.”
And just like that, the predator was back. He clenched his throbbing fangs together, swallowed the envenomated saliva pooling in his mouth. “Yes.”
“Could we do it soon?”
He had to grip the edges of the sofa cushion to keep himself from leaping on her. “We could.”
“I’m off tomorrow and Friday, too. We could do something either of those days. ”
That soon? A fine tremor ran through him. He clenched his teeth again, swallowed again. “Tomorrow?”
“Yeah. I mean, if that works for you.”
Amos stared at her. There was nothing in the world that could possibly prevent him from making it work. “Yes. Tomorrow works.”
“Okay.” She eased up next to him again, settling into the same casual cuddle, turning her attention back to the movie. “Could you rewind it? I don’t know what’s going on anymore.”
Amos tried to relax, tried to enjoy the simple pleasure of Tessa’s nearness and the movie. It took time. A long time. But eventually, he managed to unclench his jaw, lower his shoulders. He let his mind drift, only half paying attention to the movie, mostly focused on memorizing the feel of Tessa pressed against him.
When the movie ended, he was in a near-catatonic state, blissed out on the pleasure of the current moment and the promise of tomorrow. As the final credits rolled, he glanced down at Tessa, surprised to find her sound asleep against him.
She trusted him that much.
She enjoyed his aggression. She wanted to be hunted. And she felt safe falling asleep in his arms.
His heart thumped heavily. He drew in a shaky breath. He sat in the silence and the dark, gazing down at her, and for the first time in a long time, he truly felt hope .