Chapter 33
Tiffany! Tiffany, can you hear me?” Someone was frantically calling my name.
I blinked myself awake and Tyrone’s face came into focus. “Thank God.” He took a breath and asked, “Can you walk?”
“Umm.” I was lying on the snowy trail, the dead coyote a few feet away.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I didn’t know you’d be so freaked out at the sight of a dead animal.” He exhaled a frozen cloud of frustrated breath. “I’m dead inside. I don’t even know how a normal person is supposed to feel anymore.”
I stifled a laugh. “Who’s dead inside, you?”
World-weary, he hung his head and sat in the snow between me and the coyote so that I wouldn’t have to see it.
I propped myself up on my elbows. “It’s fine. Really, I’m sorry for…” I smiled weakly at him. What had happened? Had I passed out?
His face lined with concern, he said, “No, don’t be sorry. I was being too single-minded about protecting you, about the damn coyote.” He shook his head and carefully placed the gun behind him, as if I might become overwrought at the sight of it.
“I’m trying to make up for…” Tyrone’s voice trailed off like he couldn’t bring himself to say something.
“What?”
“Jeff.” Tyrone looked tortured.
“What about him?” I asked.
He didn’t answer.
“Stop beating yourself up, Ty.” I rested my hand on his.
“I’m okay. You shouldn’t be worried about me.
” He brushed the hair away from my forehead and looked at me with a softness I hadn’t yet seen in him.
“You’re the one who fainted. I didn’t realize how delicate you are.
And you must be freezing. You don’t even have a jacket on.
” He pulled the flaps of my cape around me like he was wrapping me in a blanket.
“I’m tougher than I look,” I said. “You remember how we met.”
“Can you walk?” he asked. “I want to get you inside where it’s warm.”
Before I could protest, he lifted me up like a baby.
This was a problem for a couple of reasons.
Number one: My face was too close to his neck and his heart was pumping so fast and strong.
I was too thirsty for that. Number two: No girl wants a man to awkwardly carry her for a mile through the snow.
He took a few steps, rearranging my weight like I was a couch he was trying to get down a flight of stairs, before his Apple Watch beeped and alerted him to his elevated heart rate. I already knew.
“Tyrone, I can walk. Please, set me down.”
With a laugh he said, “Don’t want me stumbling around with you in the woods, huh?”
“Actually, yes. My legs are just fine.” I could carry him better than he could me, not that I was going to tell him that.
“I’m going to bring this coyote back, okay?” He searched my face, clearly worried that the animal would upset me.
“Of course,” I said. “It can’t have died for nothing.” I grew up in a time when we hunted for food. I had killed and plucked chickens for dinner without a second thought. But this coyote had died to protect my lie and it sickened me.
“Tiffany, this was the right thing to do. This is the coyote that bit Wayne. It’s been scaring the horses since the night we took the sleigh ride.
And you heard it growl, right? Never in my life has a wild animal approached me and growled.
They just don’t do that. They avoid humans unless there’s something wrong. ”
He lifted the creature from the snow and slung it over his shoulder, where it flopped lifelessly, its tongue lolling out of its mouth, its eyes glassing over with death.
Calmly, he said, “It’s gotta have rabies. There’s no other explanation. The city can test, everything will be cleared up, and you can go back to doing your thing.”
The poor coyote had just been walking through the woods minding its own business. Now it was taking the fall for Heaven’s violence. And, if you took it back a step, for mine. If I hadn’t fallen asleep dreaming of Vermont with Heaven’s neck in my mouth, this never would have happened.
“I really didn’t know you loved animals so much,” he said, misreading the anguish in my face.
A few moments later, we emerged in the clearing outside his house. He dropped the coyote to the ground before turning back to me. “I’m taking you to the hospital.”
“The hospital?” What was he even talking about? The only one who had been hurt was the coyote.
“You passed out.”
I shook my head emphatically and held up my hand. “No, I’m fine. I was probably just hungry.”
“Nope. I’m taking you in.” He looked me over with real concern. “Before you dropped, you were sort of drooling.”
I bet I was.
“And I don’t know, was I imagining it, or did you lick me?” He laughed. “At any rate, you need to get checked out.”
“Tyrone, I don’t have insurance. I can’t go to the hospital.”
“Are you serious, Tiffany?” He screwed up his face in thought, then said, “I’ll pay for it.”
“Absolutely not.”
“I’ve got it,” he said like he’d just figured it all out. “Jessica’s working. I bet she’ll check you out off the books.”
It was obvious that he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. Men could be so frustrating. All I had to do was fake it through one quick check with Jessica. I relented.
“Fine, let’s go.”
On the car ride over, my thirst did nothing but grow.
I hadn’t had anything to drink but No Fear Bloodshot since swearing off coconut water and taking a sip from Vlad under the tree.
Honestly, I’d been all over the map emotionally—hopeful, excited, overwhelmed, panicked.
It wasn’t just dating. I was on a calorie-deprived emotional roller coaster.
I was at the ragged edge of my limits.
When Jessica padded over in her pink scrubs, I looked up from under my hood and apologized. “I’m sorry. Tyrone made me come in. I’m fine.”
If she checked my heart, it’d be a dead giveaway. No pun intended.
“No worries. Looks like you had some fun after those cinnamon rolls,” she said wryly.
“Thanks again for the ingredients.” I reluctantly dragged myself out of the chair and followed Jessica. “I really don’t need any tests. I’m fine.”
“Tiffany, it’s no big. You’re a friend.” She ushered us into an empty exam room. “I’ll check on you in thirty after I do my rounds.” Before she left, she looked at my eyes. “Have you taken something, Tiff?”
“No, why?”
“Your eyes.”
Tyrone confirmed. “Yeah, your pupils are blown.”
It was bloodlust.
When she clicked the door shut behind her, Tyrone settled himself in a chair.
“Tyrone,” I said, “I need to get out of here.” I wasn’t at the ragged edge of my limits; I was past it. The vampire inside me was clawing her way out.
“What’s the matter?” he asked with concern.
“I don’t know what’s the matter, but I feel like I’m coming out of my own skin with…pent-up desires.”
A small smile quirked his lips. “You mean to tell me you’re falling apart because you need a little D?”
“Yes.” Men were such idiots, thinking the whole world revolved around their dicks. But at the moment he wasn’t totally wrong.
He pressed his full lips to mine and cut off my explanation. “We can go back to my place after you talk to Jessica.”
I couldn’t wait that long. I was ready to bite anyone.
“We have thirty minutes and there’s a bed right here.”
He narrowed his eyes at the exam table with the paper sheet. “It’s that serious? What do you have, like, medical-grade horniness?”
“Yes.” That was an accurate description of bloodlust. I traced his jugular with the tip of my tongue. As I did, his blood pumped faster, calling to me.
“Let’s get you undressed, then,” he said with ragged breath. He began undoing buttons, whispering kisses down my throat as he did. The scent of iron tinged the air as his heartbeats pounded out a primal rhythm.
“Hurry, Tyrone,” I said.
“Not sure if I can still work a bra. Santa hasn’t gotten laid in a while.”
With a quiet laugh, I said, “All giving, no receiving. That’s not fair.” Tyrone might be a saint.
Like a pro, he unhooked my bra without looking.
“You still got it, Santa.”
“Mmhmm.” He fondled my breasts, cupping their heaviness reverently and tracing a peak with his finger and then his tongue as I arched my back.
I wanted to be the girl on Maple Lane dating the boy across the way, looking forward to the SugarBoo Ball and trivia night. I pulled Tyrone harder to my chest, as if I was trying to clutch the dream in my arms. With my eyes shut, his skin was so warm and alive. I started to drool with thirst.
Lips, tongue, sucking, licking—I’d never been filled with so much need. I needed him inside me. I needed his neck in my mouth.
And he needed me. I could feel his hardness, smell his pumping blood. The two of us were a desperate, hot mess of pent-up desire. If my heart could race, it would.
If I gave him everything, maybe he would do the same. This was more than sex, this was me, just a girl in front of a boy asking him to give her a Hallmark life and a regular blood supply.
Under the fluorescent overhead light of the exam room, I stood before him and shimmied out of my skirt and tights as sexily as I could.
“How bad do you want me?” I asked in a throaty purr. I needed to know he wanted me as much as I wanted him.
“Hurry,” he said, “we only have a minute.”
“Can I see my present, Santa?” I said, with mischief in my voice.
I undid his pants, released the D, and dipped my head to his lap.
For other women, a blow job might be a chore, but for a vampire, it’s something else entirely.
Lined with veins, throbbing with blood. This was nothing but a little something to whet my appetite.
He swallowed a laugh and gently tried to pull me up. “No, let me,” I said, running my tongue up the veins. “Please.”
The skin was so thin and the blood so close to the surface. Before I’d finished tasting, Tyrone pulled me up. “We gotta be quick, baby.”
Aye aye, captain.
He made a move to stand, probably to bend me over the table, which would have been the most hygienic position, but I’d have nothing to sink my fangs into.
“Let me climb on Santa’s lap.” How many women had used that line on him before?