Chapter 13 #2
The way she called my name was unlike anything else I’d ever heard, and then she was clamping down on me with what should have been a painful amount of force but instead sent undiluted pleasure all the way up my spine.
Somewhere between sticking a fork in an electrical socket and ascending to a higher plane of existence, I came so hard that I could only grit my teeth and hang on for dear life.
Ecstasy tore through me like it didn’t have a care in the world for what it left behind.
I was rent in twain, then stitched back together. Undone and reforged.
How had I never known it could be like this?
By the time it ended, I was run ragged and barely holding on, but the way Naomi’s pussy milked me caused little aftershocks to rock through me over and over again, echoes of revelation.
Somehow, I managed to last until Naomi rode out the rest of her climax. Once she was done, I collapsed to the side. We lay there, soaking in the quiet after the war against that very silence we’d just finished fighting.
“That was…” Naomi murmured breathlessly.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
With a little bit of shuffling, I got my arm under her and pulled her to my side. She rested her damp head on my chest. While I couldn’t sweat any longer, I appreciated the warmth and vitality of hers as we cuddled in the dark.
Naomi and I dozed on and off for a while. I wasn’t able to truly sleep, as I wasn’t in my coffin, but I drifted listlessly through the peaceful moments.
Never had I expected for our date to go how it had, but now that we were in the after part of things, I wouldn’t have changed any part of it.
It still boggled my mind to think that she was as much of a mythical creature as I, and that she also had been forced to be an outsider in her own community.
How could they not see the gorgeous, witty woman for the incredible being that she was?
I had no idea, but it made me feel a bit less worthless about my own alienation.
“Penny for your thoughts?”
I glanced down at my chest, loving the way Naomi’s sun-kissed skin looked juxtaposed to my complete lack of melanin, and saw that her lovely, green gaze was dreamily resting on me.
“Just reflecting on how we got here,” I answered, lifting my hand to stroke her hair.
During our date it had been far too impeccably styled to do that, but now that it had been thoroughly tousled, I seized the opportunity.
It was just as soft as I knew it would be, and I gently worked out what tangles there were from our… let’s say calisthenics.
“It’s kind of crazy, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “Mutual deception might not always be the best launching point for a relationship, but given the circumstances, I don’t think either of us blames the other.”
“Relationship?”
I froze mid-hair stroke. “Sorry, perhaps some old-fashioned verbiage there.”
“No, no, I didn’t mean that,” she said quickly before pushing herself up and looking down at me. “I was just checking if we were on the same page.”
“And which page is that?”
“Well, we’ve been seeing each other for over a month, and now that we’ve broken the seal, so to speak, and found out that we’re very compatible, I don’t see why we wouldn’t put a label on it.”
I was pretty up to date with most current slang, but I wasn’t completely sure what she meant. “Are you asking for us to go from courting to a partnership?”
“Yes. I want you to be my boyfriend. And I want to be your girlfriend.”
A sappy smile spread across my lips, and I gently cupped the back of her neck so I could pull her down into a slow, sweet kiss.
“I’d like that very much,” I said once we parted.
“Good. Very much on the same page then.”
“Absolutely.”
She settled down next to me, sitting up against my headboard and I moved to join her, draping my arm around her so she could rest her head on my shoulder.
“You wanna ask questions back and forth until we pass out or get hungry?” I asked, feeling oh so content in the moment.
“Yeah, that sounds nice.”
“Do you want to go first?”
“Nah, you lead the way.”
I chuckled. Had I ever been so happy? So satiated? It was a nice feeling, and I wouldn’t mind getting used to it.
“Okay, I’ll start. What’s your middle name?”
She gave me a slightly puzzled look. God, I loved how I could read so much on that beautiful face of hers. She never tried to hide with me, tried to pretend to be unaffected and nonchalant about everything.
“What?”
“Nothing. I kinda thought you would ask me about the whole no-wolf thing.”
“Oh, do you want me to?”
She paused, and I’d come to know that particular arrangement of her features as her pondering face. “No. I mean, I don’t mind. I don’t know why I expected that.”
“Is it because you’re used to being reduced down to that? That others see that as the most important part of your identity?”
I understood the heavy sigh she let out far too well. “Yeah… and it’s Naimh. Spelled the traditional way. My family has a lot of Gaelic in our lineage.”
“Neeve,” I repeated, not quite sure what the traditional spelling was. “That’s beautiful.”
“Thank you. What’s yours?”
“I, uh—” I caught myself. What I had been about to say wouldn’t have been accurate.
Naomi noticed my hesitancy right away and began to tease me about it. As much as I loved her fuck drunk and blissed out, I adored talking with her and seeing how that mind of hers worked that much more. “That one wasn’t supposed to stump you.”
“I know. I was going to tell you I didn’t have a middle name, but I suppose technically I do.”
“Technically?”
“See, my name when I was a human was Suleman Vikentios. But when I immigrated here with my maker, Ibrahim, I really wanted to adapt to American culture, even if I was a vampire and would only experience certain parts of it. I put down my American name as Rowan, after my adopted mother’s favorite tree, then changed the rest to Solomon Vincent.
So I suppose Solomon is my middle name.”
“That’s really lovely.” She leaned over and kissed my cheek. “Thank you for sharing that with me.”
“Any time.”
We chatted a bit more, flirting here and there, being open and vulnerable.
Eventually, the conversation did drift a little more toward our experiences with our own kind.
I really did feel as if I had a kindred spirit next to me, and I wasn’t looking forward to leaving her and crawling into my coffin.
“Another penny for your thoughts?” she said after a bit, when I’d withdrawn into my own head about it for a moment.
“Just wondering how the whole nocturnal, diurnal thing will work out.”
“I figure it’s the same as it is now, maybe with a little extra adjustment.
I have my free time during the day where I work and do my own thing, we have a large overlap where we’re both up, and then you have the deepest parts of the night to do your work.
You don’t want me hovering over your shoulder while you’re trying to fine tune a harpsichord or something. ”
Huh, it really could be that simple, couldn’t it?
“I dunno, I’m beginning to think I’d like you close to me no matter what I’m doing.”
“Really?”
“Really,” I affirmed.
I loved how her blush spread up her face to her hairline and then down to her breasts. A troubled expression disrupted her blissful expression.
“Penny returned for your thoughts?”
“Huh? Oh. Just a silly question. It’s not actually important.”
“What is it?” I murmured, curious and a little worried.
“It’s just… uh, you know when you wore all that makeup and wig?”
“Yeah?”
“This is kinda personal, but I couldn’t help but wonder…” Her hemming and hawing made me nervous. I thought we were past that, but suddenly I wasn’t so sure. “Why did you paint yourself white?”
…what?
“Um, I am white.”
“No, I don’t mean literally,” she said with a chuckle. “I’m talking about Caucasian.”
I frowned. “Naomi, I am Caucasian.”
Now she fully turned to face me, and her expression was just so serious that I couldn’t help but be as amused as I was bewildered. “Rowan, you mentioned growing up in a desert, you just told me your original name was Suleman, and you don’t look white!”
I laughed. I had to. “Surely you’ve heard about judging a book by its cover.”
“I’m being serious.”
“I know you are. My parents were from Greece. My father was a merchant who used to trade all across the Black Sea. But my mother fled back to her family a while after I was born, saying I was a curse and proof that God didn’t approve of their marriage.”
I couldn’t recall a single person in my coven who had asked about my history. And even though Naomi hadn’t technically asked, the rapt attention on her face spurred me onward.
“My father’s caravan was attacked, and we wound up stranded in the desert with nothing. I can’t say why the raiders chose not to kill us, but my father did his best to protect me and get to civilization.
“We were out there for days, hiding during the day and traveling only at night”—huh, there were some interesting parallels to my current life there—“catching scorpions and other insects, using what little vegetation there was to hydrate me.
It was brutal, from what I was told, and eventually he collapsed.
But that allowed us to be found right before death by a rural farm couple returning from a festival with their far cousins. Suleman and Palwasha Rajput.
“They took us in, got us both to proper health, and gave us a home while my father sent word to his associates. We became family. And once my father was reconnected to his wealth, he essentially sponsored them for whatever they needed. Their barely functional farm became enough to support them, and then me too, because I ended up staying with them, being raised by them, while my father went along his trade routes.”
I smiled, remembering those simple times.
“It was an unusual arrangement then—two fathers and a mother—but it was perfect for me. I still miss them.”
What I didn’t tell her was that my biological father had died with his sinking ship when I was eleven, or how Suleman and Palwasha had never moved closer to any town or village, as I was always greeted by far too much trouble in those places.
“Wow. That’s… that’s incredible. The kindness they showed you and your father. I’m so glad you had these little havens.” She shook her head. “The internet has been a great way for me to find acceptance and escape, but you didn’t exactly have access to that in, uh…”
“Nineteen-thirteen.”
“Right, nineteen-thirteen, you old geezer.”
That did startle a bark of laughter out of me, and I pulled her closer so I could kiss her forehead. I breathed in as I did, inhaling all her lovely scents. “Downright decrepit.”
We shared a chuckle at that before Naomi let out a truly egregious yawn.
“I’ll have to leave the bed just before dawn, but if you’d like, you’re more than welcome to crash here and see yourself out in the morning. Just make sure to lock the door behind you.”
“You know what?” Naomi murmured, snuggling right back into my side like she was made to fit there. “That sounds like a great idea.”
And that was how we stayed, curled together and enjoying the solace we found in each other’s presence. We were on the precipice of something that would truly change our lives, and I was more than ready to take that leap of faith.
Together, of course.