DAE #2
"Stop." She flinched at the sharpness in my voice, and I instantly hated myself for it, but I couldn't stand there and listen to her talk herself into disappearing. "I'm not scared of you, Alice. I could never be scared of you."
"Then why did you pull away?" she challenged.
I couldn't tell her. Couldn't watch the way she looked at me change into fear and disgust. But I couldn't walk away either. That was the thing she didn't understand. That walking away from her was the one thing I'd never be able to do, no matter how many times I tell myself I should.
As we stared each other down, the tension between us began to morph into something else.
I could feel it slithering against my skin, looking for an opening.
This thing that had been building between us for years, unnamed and unacknowledged, now screaming so loud it drowned out the crickets and the distant music and even the pounding of Alice's heartbeat.
It pulled me toward her with such force my muscles shook with the effort it took to keep my feet where they were.
But it wasn't just me. Alice felt it too.
I saw it in the way her breath hitched, the way her pupils dilated, the way she swayed toward me before catching herself.
Her fingers curled and uncurled at her sides, and I knew — I knew with every cell in my undead body — that if I reached for her right now, she wouldn't stop me.
And gods help us both, I wasn't strong enough to not reach.
Closing the distance I'd created between us in one step, my hands found her waist and pulled her against me and her body hit mine and the contact — ah, gods…
the full, devastating, soft curves against hard muscle contact — sent a shockwave through my system so intense my vision went white for a full three seconds.
She made a sound when it happened. Small and breathless and needy. A sound that I decided right then and there was my favorite sound in the entire world. Her hands came up and fisted in the open halves of my shirt, dragging me down, and then her mouth was on mine.
The kiss wasn't gentle.
It was hungry and raw, but her lips were soft and warm and she kissed me like she was starving for it, starving for me, and every nerve in my body lit up at once.
My hand slid up her back, fingers spreading wide against the thin cotton of her shirt, and her spine arched, her hips rolling against mine, and the friction sent a bolt of heat straight through me that had nothing to do with feeding and everything to do with wanting.
And gods. l wanted.
Her fingers tightened in my shirt, pulling me harder against her, and I groaned aloud as I walked her backward until her back hit the porch railing.
My hands dropped to her hips, then the backs of her thighs, and I lifted her onto the railing without breaking the kiss.
She wrapped her legs around my waist and pulled me between her soft thighs and —
??. ??. ??. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Her heat bled through the thin layers between us and my nostrils flared as the sweet, musky scent of her desire mixed with the heady scent of her blood.
My hips pressed into her on instinct, running my hard length against her, and she gasped and broke the kiss just long enough to drag in a ragged breath before pulling me back into her.
Her hands slid inside my open shirt, palms flat against my stomach, fingers tracing the ridges of muscle, trailing fire across my skin.
When she raked her nails lightly down my abs, my fangs shot down hard, fully extended, and there was nothing I could've done to stop them even if my life depended on it.
I tore my mouth from hers before I accidentally drew blood and pressed my face into the side of her throat, breathing her in, my lips pressed against the wild flutter of her pulse as I fought for control.
She smelled like blood and warmth and magic and want, and every instinct I had was screaming at me to bite. To taste. To claim.
But I couldn't. Gods, I wanted to. But I just couldn't. Because I already knew what she was to me. The pull between us was too fierce, too absolute, to be anything else. But knowing this and deserving her were two entirely different things.
I pressed my lips to her throat instead, open-mouthed, then dragged the tips of my fangs slowly up to the hinge of her jaw.
She shivered in my arms, and the sound she made was so undone that my fingers tightened on her hips hard enough to bruise.
There. That right there. That was the sound.
I was going to dream about that fucking sound for the rest of my days.
"We should stop," she whispered, but her legs tightened around me and her fingers curled into the waistband of my jeans and her body was saying something entirely different than her mouth.
"I know." She was right. This was going too far. And she deserved more than being felt up on the front porch where anyone could see us.
Yet neither of us moved away this time.
Her chest rose and fell against mine, and I could feel her heartbeat everywhere. Against my ribs. Under my lips. It pulsed through me like it was my own, the sound of her blood rushing in my ears until it was all I heard.
"I'm serious." Her voice was shaky. "If we don't stop, I'm going to drag you into Aunt Judy's azalea bushes and she'll definitely stake you."
A startled laugh broke out of me. "That would be a hell of a way to go, though."
"Dae." She pressed her forehead against mine, and her fingers loosened from my waistband but didn't fully let go. Her breath was ragged and warm against my lips. "I can't... I can't do this to you."
That was supposed to be my line. Not hers. I pulled back to look at her. "Do what to me?"
"This. Whatever this is." She gestured between us the way I had a minute ago, and the mirror of it made something twist behind my ribs.
"You saw what happened to me. You saw what came out of me.
And I know…I know Marcus is gone now, I know it's over…
I think. But there are things about me, about my blood, about what I might be...
" Her voice cracked. "You even said it. My aura is different.
Because I'm different. And I…I can't drag you deeper into this when I don't even know what that means. "
I stared at her. "You think you're protecting me from…you?"
"I don't see anyone else doing it."
"Alice." I cupped her face between my palms. Her skin was warm despite the chill of the air, flushed from the kiss, and her pulse hammered against my thumbs when I rubbed her temples. "You are not something I need to be protected from."
"You don't know that."
Walk away. She's trying to push you away. LET HER. It's what's safest for her, for you, for the secret rotting behind that sealed door inside you.
But even as the thought formed, my hands wouldn't move from her face, my body wouldn't step back, because my instincts were telling me what my mind refused to register.
Alice was MINE.
The vampire in me knew it the way it knew sunrise from dusk, knew it down to the marrow, and it would sooner risk her hating me than let her slip away.
"I'm not going anywhere, yeobo."
Her eyes glistened, and she was quiet for a long time. Then she finally whispered, "That's exactly what I'm afraid of."
The fear in her tone cracked something wide open inside me. Because I understood…understood in a way I wished I didn't…what it meant to believe your love was a death sentence. To look at the person you wanted most in the world and see a risk instead of a future.