Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
FLORENCE
FLORENCE
Tap.
I’ve got Quinn’s number now, and I’ve been formally invited into his home, so there’s really no reason I can’t call him or knock on his door, but there’s something about this little routine that calls to me.
FLORENCE
Tap tap.
I’ve made my peace with today’s technology, but I have only known it for a very small proportion of my existence and there’s a part of me that yearns for the simplicity of the pre-digital age. That said, my aim isn’t the best, so digital pebbles it is.
Ok, I admit that it is kind of convenient.
QUINN
I’m coming down.
I smile at my phone, but there’s a part of me that wanted him to pop out of his window like usual, half-naked and bed-headed. I know I shouldn’t be thinking like that, not if I don’t want my heart to get obliterated again, but there’s nothing I’ve found that stops it.
Quinn would be a ten in any era.
He proves me exactly right when he appears at the door, barefoot and still buttoning his forest-green shirt. I catch a glimpse of the light dusting of hair spanning his chest and have to look away. Instead, my eyes find his face, and that’s also a mistake.
The glasses.
Good God, the glasses.
‘Come on,’ I say, feigning irritation so he won’t guess I’m having impure thoughts about him. He ups his pace, pulling on socks roughly and hopping into his shoes. He rolls up his sleeves as we start to walk, as if I needed another part of him to actively avoid looking at.
‘Where are we going?’ he asks, as we duck through the alley and emerge onto Flowergate, but I just smile. No need to worry him ahead of time.
I lead him over the bridge and through the narrow streets, smiling a small, secret smile to myself as he complains about the 199 steps again. We head along the road at the top of the cliff until we reach the lowest section of wall. I stop in front of it and he flashes me a grim expression.
‘Ok, cool,’ he quips. ‘You brought me back to the haunted abbey to scare the living shit out of me again.’
‘No,’ I say, looking up just as faint hues burst into a riot of colour above us, a trail of vibrant green swirling overhead as streaks of red and purple dance alongside it. ‘I brought you back to the haunted abbey to see this.’
He gasps audibly as he follows my gaze upwards. They really are magnificent, the Northern Lights. I must have seen them hundreds of times, but every time takes my breath away just as much as the first.
‘How are…?’ he trails off, mouth falling open as he follows the trail with his eyes. ‘Whoa.’
‘Good, no?’
He nods slowly. ‘I’ve seen them through my phone camera a couple of times, but never like this.’
‘Come on,’ I say, tugging at his sleeve. ‘I know a good place to watch.’
He accepts my leg-up this time without me even having to prompt, and I half drag him towards the abbey, finding a spot against the nave, facing north.
‘I don’t know exactly how much you can see,’ I say, as we sit, our backs against the scratch of the sandstone wall.
‘When you turn, your sight is heightened – we see parts of the spectrum the human eye can’t detect.
I think even humans would be able to see some of these colours tonight, but I’m willing to bet that yours is a little better than that. ’
He blows out a breath of a laugh. ‘It’s not done much for my short-sightedness.’
‘Not yet,’ I say, so that I don’t say that when it happens – if it happens – I will mourn those glasses. In reality, his shortsightedness probably won’t change all that much. Cam’s certainly hasn’t. ‘What colours can you see?’
He looks back to the sky. ‘That huge ribbon of green, obviously. And the purple.’
‘Can you see the pink?’ I ask, and he frowns a little.
‘No.’
‘Here.’ I shuffle closer to him, pointing to the streaks of colour in the sky.
‘There’s a whole section there that’s deep pink – huge arcs of colour that come down almost to meet the green.
’ Before I’ve thought it through, I lean across him to point out the place where the other section of pink is.
I don’t realise how close we are until I hear his breath catch in his throat.
‘There’s also a bit there,’ I mumble, trying to play it through, but not before I’ve caught a whole lungful of his scent. It throws me off completely.
You get used to the differing smells of humans.
It’s almost subliminal when you’re human too, just your immune systems signalling to each other that they might be a good match.
But when you’re undead, that manifests as a scent as unique as a fingerprint.
Then there’s a further layer of intentional scents – shampoo, soap, fragrances – and the background smells they’ve picked up through the day.
An odour of food, maybe, or grass, or smoke, or fresh paint.
But there’s something more, right at the core.
It’s almost like you can smell their emotions, and they each have a distinctive note.
Sadness smells almost metallic, euphoria as sweet as sugar, anger is thick and acrid.
And then there’s desire. That smells like nothing I’ve ever known, a heady, enticing fragrance that draws you in and steals your breath.
That’s what I smelled on Quinn just now. Buried beneath his own scent profile, the spearmint of his toothpaste, the warm, woodsiness of his aftershave, something he puts in his hair that smells like freshly washed babies, and underscoring it all, something completely, unequivocally him.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, jumping away from him like he’s burned me. ‘I didn’t mean to get into your personal space there.’
He smiles tightly, clears his throat and immediately changes the subject.
‘So…’ he starts, not looking at me. ‘Is this abbey really haunted?’
I want to laugh, but it feels like something is gripping my throat. ‘Probably not,’ I manage. I’m not sure it’s very ethical to give him a definitive no given that the last time we were here, Josiah was too.
He blows out a soft laugh and shakes his head. ‘You’re killing me.’
* * *
The aurora puts on one hell of a show. It’s almost an hour later and we’re lying on our backs in the grass, watching what looks like it might be the tail end of it.
The colours are changing, fading almost to nothing and with them the tension between us seems to have faded too, so much so that it lulls me into a false sense of security, and Quinn’s question catches me entirely off guard.
‘What?’ I ask, trying to buy myself some time.
‘Regrets,’ he repeats carefully. ‘I asked if you had any regrets from your human life. Because if this is happening, I want to make sure there isn’t anything I’m kicking myself over ten or twenty or three hundred years from now.
’ I hear him adjust his position next to me.
‘I asked you something like this before, but I feel like you were holding back on me.’
I probably shouldn’t say it. Because of course I was holding back. I was trying to protect myself. I should still be trying to protect myself now.
‘Maybe,’ I say to the sky. ‘There are things I never got to do that I fear I may spend eternity wondering about. Things I think might be different.’
I can almost hear his brow furrowing. ‘Like?’
Maybe it’s because it’s a perfect summer evening with the ghost of the Northern Lights still dancing in the sky or maybe because I’m breathing in every complex layer of the man lying beside me, but at that moment, the urge to protect myself feels a little less urgent.
So, I probably shouldn’t say it, but I do.
‘Like sex.’
Never in my life have I witnessed a person go from lying down to sitting quite so quickly. I’m a bit concerned he might have pulled something.
‘You’ve never had sex?’ he says, incredulous. ‘What are you, two hundred?’
I sit up too at that, crossing my arms over my chest and narrowing my eyes at him. ‘I’m 177, and yes of course I’ve had sex.’ I look away. ‘Just never as a human.’
The air between us thickens, time seeming to slow like it’s wading through a swamp. I can feel the burn of his eyes on me even though I’m not looking at him.
‘How about with a human?’ he asks carefully. I shake my head.
‘Also no.’
I hear him blow a breath out. ‘Well, if you need a volunteer…’
I want to laugh at that, but I turn to him in mock horror and slap him on the arm instead. It does nothing to temper the hum in my chest, or the swooping coils of heat that ebb and flow deep in my belly.
I chance a look back at him and am immediately rewarded with a soft smile, with the fading hues of green and pink reflected in his eyes.
‘I’m kidding,’ he says, shifting his position so he’s sitting opposite me. ‘Tell me what the difference is. What’s vampire sex like? Is there lots of biting?’
‘It’s fine.’ I roll my eyes at him, but I can’t help smiling a little too. ‘I don’t know, it’s good.’
His eyes widen. ‘Well,’ he says, stressing the first letter. ‘I’m sure everyone you’ve slept with would be thrilled by that description.’
Ok, I probably could have been more tactful, but it’s the truth. I’ve spent decades chasing the same feeling I had with Josiah, but nothing has ever come close.
‘I mean, maybe it was the people I did it with, or the connections we had, but it always seemed … kind of empty.’ I shrug. ‘Like there was pleasure there, but no connection. Nothing I couldn’t do by myself.’
His eyes jump to mine and I see his pulse quicken at his temples. I’m not entirely sure what to read into that, so I just keep rambling awkwardly while he stares at me.
‘I don’t know. I just always wondered what it would be like, you know? Humans are … well, they’re messy and they’re real and they’re raw and it always just makes me wonder’—I almost whisper the last bit—‘what it would be like to feel someone’s heart beating for you through their skin?’
Quinn doesn’t say anything and he doesn’t stop staring at me, either. I see a muscle ticking in his jaw, see his fists subtly clench, the muscles in his forearms flexing as they do. I pretend not to notice. That tension is back, stretching tightly between us.
He doesn’t look away. I don’t either. I’m not convinced either of us can.
Then slowly – so slowly – he begins to move.
Without breaking eye contact, his hands go to the buttons of his shirt and unfasten the top button, then the next, then another. One hand reaches for mine and begins to pull it towards him.
There’s a question in his eyes and I know he’s giving me a choice, a chance to take my hand back. But I don’t. Instead, I nod. It’s so slight, barely even a movement, but the way his hand momentarily tightens around mine, I know he’s seen it.
I watch as he places my hand on the bare skin of his chest, just over his heart, and holds it in place with his.
His heart is pounding. Racing.
A hundred beats per minute, maybe more.
I find his eyes again, pupils blown wide in the darkness, and though I’m vaguely aware there’s a line and we just crossed it, at this moment I can’t find it in me to care.
So, I don’t pull away. I don’t look away.
Instead, I revel in the feel of him, in the warmth of him, in the slightest drag in his breathing as his chest rises and falls under my touch.
I hear my name, but it doesn’t sound as if it comes from him. And then I’m moving too, leaning closer and closer to him until I can feel the heat of that same breath on my face.
I can’t say which one of us closes the gap first. I think perhaps it’s me.
All I know is that my lips are on his and my free hand is fisted in the soft cotton of his shirt and he’s kissing me back.
It’s gentle at first, slow, testing movements of our mouths until I sigh and he groans and then all of a sudden it isn’t slow or gentle at all.
It’s needy and frantic and just a little bit dirty.
I’m losing myself in the slip of our tongues and the tug of his fingers in my hair. He’s kissing me like it’s been a hundred years since he’s wanted anyone like this, and I’m meeting him with the same energy because for me, it has.
It’s as if time freezes, just for a few moments, and all the reasons and the fears fall away until all that’s left is the heat of his mouth on mine and the faintest taste of spearmint and sea salt on his lips.
And beneath it all, the wild thump of his heart underneath my palm.
It’s beating for me, just like I imagined.