Chapter 12
A fter breakfast with Ma, Tessa got up to go to bed.
“Just so you can’t say I didn’t give you any warning, Aunt Louisa needs your help this afternoon.”
Tessa paused at the bottom of the stairs. Dreading the answer, she asked, “What time?”
“She needs you at her house at two.”
“ Two? ” Tessa asked, rubbing wearily at her face.
“Yes,” Ma answered impatiently, brows drawing together in a scowl. “Two.”
“Ma, you know I sleep til five.”
Ma threw her hands out, eyes wide in an expression of total exasperation. “You’re always sleeping! And what does it matter, anyway? You don’t have to work tonight. You can catch up on sleep later.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Tessa muttered, pinching the bridge of her nose. To Ma, she said, “You’re going to have to tell Aunt Louisa you made a mistake. Tell her I can be there around six. What does she even need? ”
“She needs your help doing her medicare forms. She doesn’t understand them. And no , you have to go at two. She’s got dinner at the Casino with her friends tonight.”
Tessa didn’t bother explaining that just because she was a nurse didn’t mean she knew the ins and outs of medical billing and insurance plans. She’d tried explaining that at least a hundred times to various relatives, and friends of relatives, and neighbors of relatives, and none of them ever seemed capable of accepting that information.
Instead, she said, “I’m sorry, you’re telling me I have to break up my sleep schedule because Aunt Louisa needs to go lose fifty bucks on slot machines tonight?”
“She’s an old woman! She can’t have a few guilty pleasures? She can’t go out now and then with friends?”
“I never fucking said that!” Tessa snarled back.
Instantly ashamed of herself for losing her temper, she pressed her fingers against her temples, screwing her eyes shut. She drew in a deep breath. When she looked up, Ma was standing with her arms folded in front of her, one hand clutching her robe closed at the throat, her face the perfect picture of dignified affront.
“Look,” Tessa said tersely, but calmly, “I’m not saying Aunt Louisa can’t do whatever the hell she wants. But that doesn’t mean I have to rework my schedule around hers. If she needs help—”
“Fine,” Ma snapped, jaw setting stubbornly. “You have her number. Call her up and tell her you’re too busy to make sure she’s got medical coverage.”
Tessa pressed at her temples again. “You know I’m not going to do that.”
“Then why are we even having this conversation?”
Why was it suddenly so hard to breathe? The edges of Tessa’s vision grew dark, narrowing down to tunnels as her heart started to race. A detached part of her mind recognized that she was having a panic attack. That, or she was dying. It really felt like she was dying.
Shaking, she sank down to sit on the bottom step, leaning against the wall for balance, curling her sweaty hands into trembling fists.
“Tessie?” Ma asked, suddenly sounding uncertain. “Baby, are you alright?”
Tessa couldn’t remember the last time her mother had called her “baby.” It made the dying feeling worse. She slid off the step so that she could lay down on the floor. Her heart was going to pound out of her chest. All her senses seemed far away, muffled.
“Baby!” Ma cried, racing over to her. “Jesus, what— Tessie? What do I do? Do I call nine-one-one?”
“No,” Tessa managed to say between gasping breaths. “I’ll—I’ll be okay.” She’d only just managed to dig the family out from under the strain of Dad’s medical debts. There was no fucking way she was paying for the cost of an ambulance ride just because she was bad at managing stress.
“I have to,” Ma said frantically, wringing her hands. “I’m gonna call.”
“ No! ” Tessa managed to yell firmly enough to stop her mother. “Don’t call.” Though she would have rather remained on the floor, she pushed herself up to sit so that Ma would stop panicking. Leaning against the stairwell wall, she closed her eyes and focused on her breathing. She tried to think of something calming—soup from her favorite deli, the smell of lilacs, a sunny day at the beach, the financial relief of the paid-out HemoMatch contract…
And Amos. Sweet, thoughtful, steady Amos, who made her feel safe and treasured and taken care of.
Gradually, Tessa’s heartbeat slowed. The shakes eased from her body. Her vision and hearing normalized. Sticky with sweat, but otherwise fine, she lifted her head to meet her mother’s worried gaze.
“I’m fine,” she said calmly.
Ma straightened from where she’d been crouched beside Tessa. “I told you you’re working too much! You’re driving yourself into the ground. I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all. You need to stop with the overtime. You need to go back to the day shift. You need to—”
“Ma.”
“—get back on a normal schedule! You’re going to end up just like your father! God bless that man and God rest his soul, but he worked himself into an early grave, and if I told him once, I told him a million times—”
“Ma.”
“—that he needed to slow down and spend less time at work and more time with his family. And now you’re doing the same thing to me, and I can’t sit idly by and let you kill yourself like this! You need to—”
“Ma!” Tessa barked. In the second of shocked silence, she hurriedly said, “Don’t worry about it. I don’t need the overtime anymore. I went to the bank yesterday, and with the money I’ve been able to save—” She very deliberately did not explain that she had seventy-eight grand. That would require either an extremely creative lie, or the straight truth, and she wasn’t prepared for either option. “—I was able to get the mortgage out of arrears and a reasonable payment plan set up.”
Ma stared at her, blank-faced .
“The debt’s not totally squared, but it’s manageable now. You don’t have to worry about anything. And since that’s all taken care of, I’m going to get my own place.”
Ma took an unsteady step backwards, reaching for the table for support. “What?” she asked faintly.
“I said, everything’s taken care of. The house is still yours, the credit cards are paid off. Now that that’s settled, I’m going to be moving back out.”
“You’re leaving?” Ma asked in a small, hurt voice. She was suddenly the fragile husk again, the ghost who’d drifted aimlessly in the months after Dad’s death.
“Not right away,” Tessa said quickly. “But, you know, soon.”
Her mother seemed to shrink even more.
“Well, not soon -soon,” Tessa amended weakly. “But eventually. I’ll have to save up for the security deposit and a couple months’ rent to be safe.”
At that, her mother seemed to revive a little.
Simultaneously exhausted and relieved, Tessa said, “A few months, probably.”
“What, like six?”
“I don’t know,” Tessa hedged, well aware that she could not handle another six months of living with her mother. “But, I want you to be prepared for the fact that I’m moving out, okay?”
Her mother nodded, looking thoughtful. That look made Tessa nervous, but it was better than seeing her mother look totally crushed.
Tessa pulled herself up with the stair rail. “Alright, I’m going to shower and then I’m going to bed.”
Ma nodded distractedly. “Don’t forget you have to be at Aunt Louisa’s at two. ”
Tessa clenched her jaw and said nothing, climbing the stairs with more force than necessary.
Several long, exhausting hours later—a few inadequate hours of sleep, a couple frustrating hours trying to walk Aunt Louisa through signing up for Medicare, and then a few more stolen hours of sleep back at home—Tessa stepped outside to head to Amos’s. At the bottom of her steps, she nearly stumbled, a scream rising in her throat as a dark figure materialized out of the shadows beneath the maple tree in front of the house.
The scream died when she realized it was Amos. Still, her heart pounded against her sternum, a surge of unspent adrenaline making her want to flee.
“I can hear your heart racing,” Amos said, his voice lower and darker than usual. The sound of it sent heat pooling low in her core, intimate muscles tensing in anticipation. Amos let the shadows fall away from his form, streetlight shifting across his face like a well-placed theatre light. His expression was feral, hungry.
“What if I ran?” Tessa asked softly.
His smile was predatory. “You wouldn’t get very far.”
Well, that was encouragement if she ever heard it. She spun around, all of her earlier exhaustion forgotten, and sprinted for the narrow gap between Ma’s house and Marcus Weaver’s. She’d expected Amos would at least let her get to the alley behind the houses, where the garages and fences would provide all sorts of hidden nooks and crannies for him to feast on her.
But she was wrong. Halfway to the back of the house, big arms wrapped around her. A truly surprised scream tore out of her, but it didn’t matter, because one of Amos’s hands was pressed over her mouth. He held her pinned against his body, a purr thrumming in his chest. He was hard, and he let her feel the full length of him pressed against her ass.
“What have we here?” he murmured. His tongue swept out to trace the curve of Tessa’s ear. She whimpered, goose flesh racing over her neck and back. She was still high on adrenaline, and she knew Amos liked a struggle, so she gave him all she had. She twisted and bucked in his grasp, truly putting all her strength into escaping his hold.
She had no chance. Laughing at her efforts, he pushed her up against the house, his bulk pressed against her back. The bricks scraped her cheek as she hauled in desperate breaths through her nose, muffled cries sounding incoherently against Amos’s hand.
“Why are you struggling?” he asked tauntingly. “I’m too strong for you. Why not just enjoy what I’m going to do to you?”
Tessa renewed her efforts, hips pushing back against his, pressing the hot, hard brand of his erection against her ass again. He shoved his whole body against her, crushing her flat against the wall. His hips worked in subtle flexes, grinding his cock against her. He bent his head, tracing his nose up and down the side of her neck.
She made wordless objecting noises, even as she felt slick moisture pooling in her panties.
“You fight me now, but I’ll make you like it,” Amos promised darkly. He licked the tender skin over her pulse. Before she was ready, his fangs were in her throat. The sharp pain sent a spike of pleasure through her core that had nothing to do with his venom, and everything to do with the helpless pleasure of being Amos’s plaything .
He drank in deep, brutal pulls. His venom seeped into her blood, and by the third draught, blinding pleasure was singing through her veins, lighting her up from the inside. The unbearable ecstasy of it overwhelmed everything. She was no longer aware of the rough brick pressed against her face, or the sounds of the city, or the cold air, or any of it. There was only Amos’s mouth and the euphoria he wrought.
He finally finished drinking, but it took a minute for the venom to dissipate and the climax to ease. When she had a better grasp of the world around her, she became aware that Amos’s hand was still pressed over her mouth, his tongue lapping gently at the wound in her throat. She relaxed in his hold, sated and at ease.
He realized she was no longer in the grip of his venom and pressed a kiss to her cheek as he lowered his hand from her mouth.
“Okay?” Amos asked.
“Yes,” she said, voice a little raw from all the stifled screaming.
“Good. Let me take you home.” He lifted her into his arms, holding her against his chest. The speed at which he could move was dizzying. Deprived of her usual volume of blood, Tessa closed her eyes against the blur of their surroundings and simply held onto Amos, trusting him unerringly.
At his house, he kept her in his arms as he carried her to the kitchen. He set her gently at the table and went to fetch snacks. Tessa watched him, feeling dozy and warm. Now that the excitement had passed, she was feeling the toll of the day’s stress and lack of sleep. She yawned heavily, folding her arms and leaning on the table as Amos took the seat across from her, spreading the outrageously gourmet snacks in front of her.
She picked something without really thinking about it and ate it without really tasting it.
“Tessa, are you alright?” Amos’s brow was furrowed, his eyes soft with concern.
“I’m really tired,” she admitted, drinking whatever drink Amos had opened and passed to her. Some kind of fruit juice. “It’s been a really long day.”
In a blink, Amos was out of his chair and standing over Tessa, one hand feeling for her pulse, the other pressed to her forehead, assessing her temperature. “Did I take too much?”
She closed her eyes, savoring his gentle touch, his instinctive caretaking. “No. Please don’t feel bad about feeding from me. It was the best part of my day.”
Her eyes flew open on a gasp as Amos scooped her into his arms, moving at a speed she could barely comprehend. A second later, they were in the living room. He set her on the couch and pulled a multi-colored patchwork quilt from the trunk-style coffee table. He sank down next to her and pulled her sideways onto his lap, settling the quilt over her.
It was the comfort she’d been aching for all day. She swallowed hard past the sudden constriction in her throat, squeezed her eyes shut against the burn of impending tears.
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
It took Tessa a second to get a hold of herself. When she felt like she could talk without her voice breaking into a sob, she said, “There’s not much to tell. My family is exhausting and I resent them for it. And the resentment just keeps building, to the point where I can’t tell if I’m reacting reasonably when they piss me off, or if I’m freaking out over nothing.”
“I’m sorry,” Amos said, his chin resting atop her head.
Tessa rested against his chest, just breathing.
“What would you like to eat tonight?” Amos asked, shifting as he fished his phone from his pocket.
Tessa shrugged, eyes closed. “I don’t know. Don’t make me make a decision.”
Amos was quiet for a moment. “How do you feel about shawarma?”
“Oh my god, yes.”
He chuckled softly. The sound of his finger tapping against his phone screen went on for a minute until he finally tossed the phone aside and wrapped his arm back around her. “It’ll deliver in about an hour. Think you can stay awake that long?”
“Yes,” she lied, and then immediately got caught in a deep yawn.
She must have fallen asleep because she was suddenly awoken as Amos gently deposited her on the couch.
“Where are you going?” she asked blearily.
“Your dinner’s here. I’ll be right back.”
When he returned, Tessa sat cross-legged in front of the coffee table and ate contentedly while classical music played softly from an invisible sound system. She and Amos talked about nothing really—their work, their families, that one city alderman that everybody was always talking about, the new bypass being put in on the Red Line, climate change, Britney Spears, multi-level marketing scams, invasive mussels in Lake Michigan, astrology, dog breeds, and a million other things.
It was so comfortable and easy, she could have spent eternity in this room having the same small conversations with him. At some point, when she’d finished eating, she ended up back in his arms, cuddled against him while they murmured to each other in low voices.
It was perfect. He was perfect. Tessa realized in a slow, dawning kind of way, that whenever Amos figured his courtship had been completed, and he actually asked her to be his bloodmate, she would say yes. She wanted to tell him right then, but she hadn’t missed his insistence on courting her “properly.” If Amos wanted a proper courtship, then she would give him one.
Sometime later, Tessa knew she’d fallen asleep again, because she woke to Amos softly calling her name. She sat up, still in his arms, and blinked up at him.
“Oh no, Amos, I’m so sorry! I can’t believe I fell asleep again.”
He stared down at her, his expression both tender and grave. “I enjoyed every minute.” He kissed the top of her head. “But the sunrise is coming, so I need to see you safely home.”
What if I stayed? Tessa didn’t voice the thought, but the idea lingered wistfully.
A few minutes later, thanks to Amos’s supernatural speed and his ability to “slip into” shadows, Tessa was standing outside her mother’s house. In the pre-dawn darkness, the streets were quiet, the houses mostly dark, except for a few lit windows here and there.
Amos tipped Tessa’s chin up and pressed a chaste kiss to her lips. She wanted to lean into him and really kiss him, but the sun was close to rising, and she didn’t want him lingering when it was dangerous for him.
He broke the kiss, holding her gaze for a second. “You’re working tonight?” he asked.
She nodded, getting her bearings. Even a tame kiss from Amos turned her brain to mush. “Yeah. I’m back at work for the next four days.”
“Text me when you’re on your lunch break. I’ll take you to a noodle place that Fran loves.”
“It’s open in the middle of the night?”
Amos smiled at her skepticism. “It’s owned by a vampire’s bloodmate. They intentionally keep late hours.”
“A vampire noodle shop?” The mundanity of it was hard to wrap her head around. “The wonders never cease,” she said wryly.
“Yes, well, we can’t spend all our time skulking in shadows and preying upon virgins.” Amos’s tone was light, but Tessa tensed. He was a hundred and fifty years old. It was so easy to forget he wasn’t her contemporary. It was only every once in a while that she was reminded of their vast age gap. And this was the first time it had worried her.
“Amos…”
“Yes?”
“I’m not a virgin.”
He shrugged. “Neither am I.”
Tessa frowned, searching his unbothered expression. “So the virgin thing was a joke? Because you actually do skulk in shadows. So…”
Amos laughed. “I do not skulk in the shadows. I stride boldly through them.” He reached out to tuck a stray curl behind her ear. That small contact was unexpectedly reassuring. The tension eased from her shoulders. “I’m not looking for a virgin,” he said. “I just want you, Tessa.”
The sweetness of that declaration gave her no choice—she threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around the back of his neck, and kissing him desperately, deeply. He returned the kiss with equal intensity, holding her roughly against him. They were pressed so tightly together, she felt his purr reverberate in her own chest.
After a moment, Amos broke the kiss, setting her back with a firm grip on her arms. “Tessa,” he said, hair mussed, face flushed, eyes a little wild. “I have to go. The sun is rising.”
“I know,” she said breathlessly, pressing her fingers to her kiss-swollen lips. “Go.”