Chapter 26 The Trimming the Tree Trope #2
“You can’t be vulnerable around people.” With an intense look, he said, “I will not let anyone hurt you. You bear my mark.”
My hand brushed the mark on my neck that Vlad had left so many years ago. Did it make me his? Did I want that?
“I’m a vampire,” I pointed out. “I can take care of myself.”
“But are you?” He gave me a look that made me squirm. “You have never embraced the power. Look at this.” He gestured to our surroundings. “You are living in the cast-off life of a failed woman. You won’t even drink blood. Tiffenie, you might have fangs, but you aren’t a vampire.”
I hissed at him and bared my fangs. “Just because I don’t do things the same way as you doesn’t mean I’m not a vampire.” But his words caught me off guard. Was he right?
Vlad didn’t respond. His conviction that he was right was infuriating.
“And what are you doing? How can you fall in love if you don’t trust someone?” I said, just to throw something back at him. “How could I ever trust you?”
“I’m just saying, leave Santa Claus alone. That’s too much.”
Just to piss him off I made direct eye contact and said, “I like Santa. I think he’s got something special in his sack for me.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and narrowed his eyes.
“You’re jealous,” I said. “Remember Y2K?” I remembered flirting with a guy named Steve all night, deliberately toying with Vlad, and then Vlad ripping my pale pink gown off like I was his only sustenance, like he was starving for me.
He leaned forward menacingly. “I don’t get jealous.”
“Okay, well, then you won’t mind me dating Tyrone.”
At that he made some kind of clearing-his-throat noise.
“You’re jealous,” I taunted. “I’m going to ask my therapist if you’re jealous. I’m pretty sure you are.”
“I don’t think that’s what therapy’s for,” he said.
“Have you ever been?”
“A woman tried to make me go to couples therapy once. I told her vampires don’t need therapy.”
When I laughed, he retorted, “We don’t. Maybe humans can have their feelings hurt, but vampires are too strong for that.”
“Do you have feelings Vlad?”
“I’m not sure what I’d call them. I have responses to situations. I don’t have…feelings.”
I leaned back in my chair and did my best impression of Dr. Rosetti. “Okay then. If it’s not a feeling, describe your response to Tyrone.”
Cat jumped onto my lap and I stroked her fur.
“It’s a twofold response. Step one is analysis. I objectively viewed this situation and came to the conclusion that you are putting yourself in harm’s way. You’re making yourself vulnerable, and you wouldn’t defend yourself despite your powers.”
I pulled on Cat’s belly whisker, just because I couldn’t stop myself, and she rolled up in a ball and attacked my hand, kicking with her hind legs and biting.
“Cat, stop it,” I said casually, while she continued her assault on my hand. “Go on. Tell me step two of your response to my date.” “Jingle Bells” played in the background, at odds with the mood of the room. We both ignored it.
He cleared his throat. “Step two is a tactical response.”
“Tactical—that sounds a little military for the situation.”
“It means carefully planned to gain a specific response, which in this case would be your safety.”
“So you’re telling me you might drain him?”
“I would like to.”
With a laugh I confirmed my diagnosis: jealous.
“I need to get some sleep. I have to get up right after sunset for therapy.”
“Ugh, Tiffenie. What am I going to do with you?”
“I don’t know, you’ve had a few good ideas in the past.”
He moved closer. “You are still mine, Tiffenie. Do you remember?” “I am nobody’s, Vlad.
” His possessiveness was a wet blanket on the nostalgia.
I had been living in the cracks, not a vampire or a human, belonging nowhere.
For all his help, Vlad was in charge of all the rules that kept me in hiding.
This was not a Taylor Swift, “I’m the problem, it’s me” situation.
He was the problem. I snarled in his general direction.
“I think I’m done with you and your interference. It’s time for you to go back to Provo.”
Cat mewled and jumped off my lap as Vlad closed the distance between us. Inches away from me, he said, “Make me.”
The desire inside me boiled over, angry, hot, and desperate. With him so close, my senses spun out of control, a weathervane in the face of an approaching tornado. My anger and my passion intermingled, leaving me with nothing but a raging sense of need.
A minute ago, I wanted to yell at him to get out of the house for…why was that, again? Now I just wanted Vlad.
What was the matter with me?
Lust, plain and simple, my long-dead ovaries doing the talking for me.
“I thought you’d never ask.”
He pulled me into his lap with a low, throaty “Mmmm.”
I heard footsteps on the stairs and Heaven’s voice: “Damn. I’ll just, ugh…damn you two.” Her footsteps retreated upstairs.
He growled into my neck, nuzzling it suggestively, and then trailed his teeth slowly across my jugular. He sucked in air slowly like he wanted to sink his teeth in, to taste me. I arched my back and he ripped my sweater in two. “I’ll get you a new one,” he whispered into my neck.
He sucked in hard and palmed my breasts through the lacy fabric of my bra, sending tingles everywhere.
“Bite me,” I said, desperate for his tongue, his teeth.
“Are you sure?”
“Please.”
I leaned back, completely at his mercy. After years of struggling with daily life, the surrender was even more delicious.
He sunk his fangs into my neck, and for the moment I became his completely, all of my worries gone.
I was on another plane, floating away from Vermont, where I didn’t really belong and never did anything quite right.
Take me away, Vlad. My blood trickled from the wound, arcing over the curve of my breast and plunging between the mounds.
Vlad dipped his finger in the blood and drew the shape of a heart on the pale skin above my heart that would never beat again.
“Have you gone soft?” I asked, spread out before him in front of a fire while he drew blood hearts on my skin.
“I love you, Tiffenie.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I will say what I want,” he said.
My swollen flesh cried out for his touch, and my undead heart sputtered to life like a car in the depths of winter.
He turned his attention to my tender peaks and sucked, drawing blood from a breast that would never again give milk. He followed the trail of red to my core and tasted all of me with his tongue like he had been starving for nothing else.
“I’m still kicking you out,” I said, in between spasms of pleasure.
“Let’s make the most of this, then.”
“Let me see that perfect cock.” I licked my lips. “It’s been a while.”
I unzipped his pants to find my favorite toy. “I’ve missed you,” I whispered. “So hard already. You are such a good boy.”
To clarify, I looked up at Vlad. “Not you. Don’t get things mixed up.”
“Stop monologuing and put it in your mouth. Please.” His cock throbbed in my hands. I licked him gently because I wasn’t as bloodthirsty as him, and he moaned softly. “Tiffenie.” He said my name in the way it was meant to be said.
Vlad slid into me, filling me, making me feel whole in a way that I craved and that sort of pissed me off.
I didn’t want to feel like this, to be empty without him, but I couldn’t deny it.
We were like two parts of a puzzle meant to be together, created for each other.
It isn’t very feminist, and I would never tell him that because it would go to his head.
The music changed to “Angels We Have Heard on High” in Italian, the language of love.
We both burned as Andrea Bocelli exalted the angels.
He belted out “Gloria in excelsis Deo,” drawing out each syllable, which in turn drew out a long slow sizzle.
Pain from God smiting us for taking pleasure, for existing.
Something about the pain, the pleasure, reveling in it boldly in front of the Christmas tree, intensified the sensations.
“Do you want me to change the music?” I asked.
“No, I like the way it hurts,” he said, through the fog of pain and pleasure. “I like…no, I love the way you hurt.”
Pulling out and pushing in, a pantomime of our relationship. Yes, no, yes, no. Never a guarantee.
“Gloria in excelsis Deo!” We burned.
Andrea took a breath and the pleasure surged.
“Gloria in excelsis Deo!” We burned longer and harder as the song moved toward the climax.
The magic of always wanting more, the anticipation never over. As always, Vlad let me come first, an explosion of sensation that I had been starving for. To feel anything was good, but to feel this was transcendent. I closed my eyes. Maybe it was just a physical reaction. Maybe it was more.
Vlad came with a groan that made me feel more like a woman than if I was wearing the most beautiful dress in the world. I made him cry out and exalted in the thrill of my own power.
“Oh, shit! Vlad, the rug!” Beneath us, the rug was smoldering. The flames were starting to lick at the edge of the nearby couch.
Vlad hopped up. “Do you have a fire extinguisher?” he asked.
I didn’t (don’t tell Mr. Jarvis), but I did have several buckets of lemon water. Heaven had filled buckets with water, lemon, white vinegar, and salt to ward off negative spirits and placed them by the doors.
I grabbed the three buckets of lemon-scented spirit water, or whatever they were, and doused the couch.
Vlad and I stood naked in the destroyed living room, with a sopping-wet couch reminding us of how things always turned out when we were together. This had been a bad idea. Vlad and I were a bad idea. What had I been doing?
I wanted a happily ever after in Vermont. That meant: no blood, no biting, no promiscuity. No Vlad.
If the last three hundred years had taught me anything, it was that a vampire couldn’t have a happily ever after. Staying up all night, thirsty for blood and sex—that was everything a woman shouldn’t be.
“You said I’m not much of a vampire earlier, Vlad. That’s the way I want to keep it.” It was fine for him to be a vampire, but not me.
We sat on the partially burned rug, the smell of burnt fabric in the air, Christmas music still playing, not saying anything for a moment. I could tell he understood what I’d just said. If I didn’t want to be a vampire, I couldn’t be with him.