Chapter 10 Diantha
Diantha
“Diantha.” The music of his voice pulls me from my dreamless sleep. “Dai, amore. It’s almost eleven.”
My eyes fly open and I attempt to jolt upright but Jesus, my neck. I’m still on the floor, my head on the pillow, but I’ve somehow curled myself around Orfeo’s thigh, like a cat. My head is almost resting in his lap. No wonder I’m stiff.
“Eleven?” I rub the heel of my hand into my eyes. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“You looked so peaceful. Like a little sleeping fox. And…” He holds a piece of paper in front of my face. “Writing in English can take me some time.”
I stretch and yawn and force myself to get to my feet, but after shaking all the blood back into my limbs, I sort of feel…amazing?
“Why do I feel like I just slept for fifteen hours?”
A haughtiness flashes over his features. “We have that effect on humans. We’re like the sun, and you are our dying little houseplants. We recharge your cells.”
I narrow my eyes at him while I pull on my cardigan. “Why? So we’re nice and ripe and juicy when you’re ready to finally dig in?”
He snorts, placing my pen and notebook back into my bag for me. “See, you know a lot about Mediterranean vampires.”
“How lovely.” I pull my hair up into a ponytail, finally warm enough to want my curls off my neck.
Orfeo watches me, the fire dancing in his eyes, lips twisted in a way that makes him look even more playful than usual. “So, you’re feeling better?”
I can see traces of his human self in that perfect, symmetrical face—little flaws like the scar through his eyebrow and the hump in his nose that probably once, when exaggerated, made him look like the safest place on Earth.
I nod. “Mhm. My heat stopped working early this morning. I woke at three, almost frozen. Then, I couldn’t get back to sleep.”
“What?” His eyebrows snap into a frown. “You must be joking—you can’t stay in a place with no heat. That’s inhumane.”
“Thanks.” I scoff, despite the ribbon of blush I feel curling up my neck. “Apparently my landlord doesn’t give a shit.”
“Well…” Orfeo drags his teeth over his bottom lip, suddenly drawing my attention to how unbelievably kissable his mouth is.
Genetically modified to make me want to crawl across this rug, push him back against the couch, throw my leg over his hips, and just—“I can drop off our essays, then I’ll take a look at your heater. ”
“Oh.” I furrow my brow, then shake my head. “Don’t you have to work?”
“Not until midnight.” He checks his watch. “I have an hour—more than enough time.” I watch his expression change like the sky at dawn; a smile lighting up his features the way a sunrise paints everything bright. “I’ll be fast. I’m good with my hands.”
“Oh, really?”
“Uh huh. Notably good.”
“Notably good,” I repeat dryly, fighting fiercely against the smile pulling at my lips. “Well, don’t let me get in the way of your reputation then.”
He gives me a quick once-over, a hot sweep of his eyes over my body. “Don’t worry, I haven’t left a customer unsatisfied in over fifty years.”
He sounds so damn proud of himself. I gawk, snagging the pillow up off the floor and tossing it at his head. “You pig!”
He catches it easily, lazily intercepting its path directly toward his face. “Come on, Diantha. Enough goofing off. We need to keep you warm.”
Our words melt into laughter. We pull on our coats, and I bundle myself against the cold. Even as the night air bites at my cheeks, there’s a warmth that stays lit inside my chest. When Orfeo holds the door open for me and slows his pace to stay by my side, it only intensifies.
Orfeo drops off our essays, evading locked doors through some sort of warp-speed vampiric power, and then we take the long way back to my apartment.
The streets of Echidna are eerily quiet, but as we pass behind Devil’s Row, I can make out the drunken shrieks and thudding music coming from all the bars and clubs.
We reach my place, and I lead Orfeo through the front door and up the three flights of steps to my studio, once the servants’ quarters of this two-hundred-year-old townhome.
My apartment is slightly less cold than it was this morning, but regardless, I keep my jacket on.
When I flick on the lights, I find Orfeo shockingly close with his arms crossed over his chest and his eyebrows pinched into a fearsome frown. “It’s freezing in here, Diantha. You could have died.” He points toward my bed. “And no more Hello Kitty?”
“Um, that was actually Kuromi before. She’s like Hello Kitty’s goth friend. Anyway.” I clear my throat. “Guilty on both counts.”
He tsks at me. “I miss the Kookoomi.”
Then he pulls off his jacket and his sweater and demands to see my toolbox—all while wearing the tightest undershirt I’ve ever seen in my life.
“I hate to disappoint you and whatever idea you might have about me being a strong, fiercely independent woman.” I hand him my “toolbox”—a double-knotted CVS bag from three rebrands ago. Inside, there’s a wrench, a screwdriver, a hammer, and a handful of nails. “This is all I have.”
He takes the bag from me, lips pulled to the side in a look of deep consternation. He unfurls the mess before extracting my Phillips screwdriver and holding it up between us. “This is one of your occult relics, no? An ancient object from Mesopotamia?”
“Ha ha.” I resist the urge to stick my tongue out at him and instead shrug off my jacket and toe off my boots. Undeniably, this damn vampire is warming up my apartment. “Can I get you anything? A glass of water? Coffee?”
Orfeo flashes me a sardonic smile before grabbing a chair and getting to work on the mini-split unit near my bed. “It has been a very long time since someone has offered me a coffee.”
“Sorry—is that stupid?” I feel my cheeks heat. “It just feels rude not to—”
“No, no. I like it.” He works the screwdriver at a dizzying pace. “Makes me feel human again.”
“Well…” I lean against the wall, crossing my arms over my chest. “What would happen if you drank coffee?”
He pushes out his bottom lip, shrugs. “Nothing. Maybe the flavor would be offensive…” He presses his tongue to the ridge of his top lip, curling his fingers around the heater’s front casing and popping it off with almost no effort.
The thick, corded muscles in his forearms don’t even tense. He’s strong. “Maybe I would enjoy it.”
I swallow against the sudden swell in my throat. “I can make a pretty mean cappuccino. Wanna try?”
He clicks his tongue at me, shaking his head. “Oh, Diantha. A cappuccino is not something you drink at night.”
“I forgot—Italians love food rules.”
He smirks, lips pulling sideways to reveal a dimple in his cheek, bone-white fangs extended slightly. “Those are the only rules we have. Let us enjoy them.”
“Fair enough.” I laugh, filling my Moka pot with water and coffee and setting it on the stove. As Orfeo works, I busy myself emptying the dishwasher and trying my best to not just stand there and watch him work.
When I turn back around, he’s extracted the air filter. He turns the material over in his hands. “Tell your asshat landlord this needs to be replaced, but I can clean it for now. That should do the trick.”
The pot begins to percolate and my tiny apartment fills with the aroma of fresh coffee. I pour us each a shot into the bottom of my oversized mugs. “After.” I nod toward the balcony. “How about a coffee and cigarette?”
Orfeo uses the back of his hand to swipe the hair off his forehead. “Haven’t done that in a very long time.” It’s like every shred of light that meets his skin remains trapped. He glows with the same warmth as the library’s hearth; his eyes are crystallized fire, his skin like liquid gold.
“Might be nice,” I say, putting all my focus on stirring sugar into my espresso.
“I agree,” he says, skirting behind me through my narrow kitchen to open the balcony doors. Frigid air bursts forward, ruffling his curls out of place.
I pull on my coat, gather up our coffee cups, and join him outside.
Orfeo presses a cigarette between his lips, and by the time he takes his coffee from me, smoke is already trickling from his nose.
The moon hangs over us, bright and close, almost full.
I sip from my mug, letting the coffee warm me from the inside.
An odd, contented little sigh spills out of me. Orfeo’s eyes catch mine, and he grins. Really grins, eyes crinkling at the corner.
I tuck my chin into my jacket and laugh. “Sorry, it’s just been a nice night.”
“Do you know what I like best about humans?” he asks, narrowing his eyes against the smoke from his smoldering cigarette. That smile dances in his eyes. “There is such an appreciation for little things. Moonlight. Warmth. A cigarette. A coffee.”
“Do vampires not…?”
He shakes his head. “No, we are pleasure-seekers. Hedonistic. Between moments of intense pleasure, it is easy to turn our minds off. To go numb to the world. Perhaps it is my age—I still remember the sun on my skin. The joy of a kiss with someone you find quite beautiful.”
A ripple of recognition travels up my spine, from my stomach to my heart. My mouth jumps into a little O shape, but thankfully I stop myself from making any noise.
“Very romantic of you,” I say instead. My nerves are concealed by the gentle chattering of my teeth as the wind picks up. Orfeo steps closer to me, his warmth snaking around my body, enveloping me.
“Better?” he asks, his voice low and deep. He’s still in only that undershirt. It strangles the width of his defined biceps, contouring his pecs and the gentle taper of his waist. It’s hard not to just reach out and drag my fingers down his chest.
But I’d never do that.
“Much.” I nod, letting my shoulders melt down and away from my ears. “Do you have a lot of human friends?”
He lets out a hard laugh. “I don’t have a lot of anything these days.” He rolls his eyes at himself. “That sounds quite dramatic, but it’s the truth.”
“You’re here under mysterious and problematic circumstances,” I say, almost mindlessly. A projection, if there ever was one.