DAE #2
But I shook my head slightly. I'd never be able to get this out if she interrupted me now.
"I was good at it, Alice. I was very good at it.
And I was proud, at the start. Only nineteen years old, and for the first time in my life, people were looking at me with respect.
" My throat worked. "I don't know how many were sent to their deaths because of me.
But I know it wasn't small, and I know they weren't all guilty, because after a while it stopped mattering to them what I said.
They just wanted somebody to be able to point their finger at. "
She'd gone very quiet.
"They marked those of us who belonged to them," I said. "On the back. So everyone would know who we belonged to and the hell that would come your way if you dared to harm us."
Her eyes went to my open shirt, to my shoulder, and I watched understanding dawn across her pretty face.
"The tattoo," she said.
"Yes," I admitted. "Just the skull. Not the rest of it. The rest of it is mine."
"To make it into something different?" she asked.
I turned my face away. I couldn't look at her. "That girl I cared about...I'd known her since we were children. Her family and mine were close. She was—" I stopped, because there were really no words to describe her in any of the languages I knew. "She knew what I did for those men."
"What was her name?" she asked when I went quiet.
"We don't say it." I shook my head. "I'm sorry. It's…we don't speak the names of our dead."
She looked like I'd scolded her. "I'm sorry. I didn't know."
"No, no," I reassured her. "It's okay. Really."
Her eyes traveled over my face, like she was trying to reassure herself that I meant it.
"I added the red flowers for her," I told her.
"Why red?"
"Because red keeps things out." I brushed a strand of hair from her face that had fallen into her eyes.
"It's an old belief now, but red drives off spirits, sickness, whatever's circling you.
My mother tied red thread on my wrist when I was small.
You put it on a bride, on a baby, over a door. Nothing gets past it."
I had to stop for a second, overwhelmed with memories I tried very hard to keep in the past.
"I used to bring her armfuls of them," I said. "And she'd tell me the flowers were stronger than the skull. That it didn't matter when it came to us."
"What happened to her?"
"One night they brought a man in for me to read and I knew him.
He was a good man, and I could tell by the way they were acting that they were trying to frame him for something he couldn't possibly have done.
So I told them no." My hands had gone still.
"I thought I was being brave, standing up to them like that, but it ended up being the stupidest thing I'd ever done. "
I heard her heart speed up as she watched me, entranced by my story.
"They were angry with me. But they didn't touch me, though," I told her quietly. "They went and got her instead." Memories of the horrific things they'd done to her flashed through my mind. Things I would never say out loud.
Alice didn't say anything, but I could feel her eyes on my face.
"There's a story about those flowers," I said. "About a girl who waited for a man who was supposed to come back for her, only he never came back, and she died waiting. And the next summer the balsam came up red all over her grave."
"Oh, Dae…"
"I couldn't bring her flowers anymore. I had to run. So I put them on my back, where I could tend her grave the only way that was left to me."
The fog moved through the vaults like ghosts of my past.
"So that's the answer," I said. "That's what kind of male I am." I stopped talking. My hands were shaking, and I gripped my knees. "That's all of it. That's what I owed you."
For a long moment she didn't move.
Then she got up off that step and came and moved to stand in front of me, and I braced myself for whatever she was going to do.
To my surprise, she put her cold hand flat against my cheek. "You were nineteen," she said.
My throat locked up, and all I do was press my face into her palm.
"You were nineteen years old and you were owned by men you had no chance against. There was nothing you could've done to stop what they did."
"She died because I—"
"She died because they murdered her." Her other hand joined the first to cup my face. "Because they were the evil ones. Not you. Those people would've died with or without you. And did you ever think it's possible you actually saved some lives?"
I couldn't look at her. If I looked up now, if I saw whatever expression was on her face—pity, horror, disgust—it would end me.
So instead I dropped my forehead to her stomach, pressing my face against the soft cotton of her dress, against the flowers that weren't red but blue. Blue and innocent, just like my Alice.
Her fingers threaded through my hair, tentative at first, then more certain.
The touch was gentle, so gentle it hurt worse than any blade.
She didn't pull away. She didn't flinch.
She just held me there against her while the fog drifted through the cemetery.
Slowly, giving her time to pull away, I wrapped my arms around her legs.
Eventually—I don't know how long—I felt something in my chest unlock.
That rigid thing that had been holding me upright since I started talking finally gave way, and I could breathe again.
The air was cold and damp and tasted like rain, and underneath it all was her, that something that was indefinably Alice that made every nerve in my body wake up and pay attention.
I inhaled slowly through my nose, drawing her scent deep into my lungs like I could memorize it at a molecular level. I wanted to drown in her. Wanted to wrap her around me and never leave the warmth of her heart and her body.
"Gods, I want you," I whispered against the fabric of her dress, the words torn out of me before I could stop them. My voice cracked on the confession. "If you'll have me."
If you'll have the male with a skull on his back and blood on his hands. If you'll have the weapon who pointed fingers and got people killed. If you'll have me now that you know what I am.
"Then take me," she said.
Her hands remained tangled in my hair as I stood, moving down a step so I was below her, and then my mouth crashed against hers with a desperation that shattered every careful restraint I'd built these past weeks. The dam broke, and I was drowning in her.
"Tell me to stop," I gasped against her lips, my voice raw with need as I gave her one last chance to escape this fate.
"Never." The word was a vow, trembling between us.
"Alice—"
"No," she insisted, fingers fumbling with my buttons, tearing my shirt from my shoulders with a hunger that matched my own.
At vamp speed, I rushed her to the side of the stairs and pressed her back against the tomb's rough brick.
My eyes roved over her perfect face in disbelief, and then I kissed her again, shielding her head with my palm as her coat fell forgotten to the stairs.
Her hands—so cold, so desperate—branded my skin as they roamed my chest, my ribs, my shoulders, clutching at me as if I might vanish any moment.
But even with the wall at her back and me at her front, she trembled violently against me. "Here," I growled, lifting her effortlessly, her thighs wrapping around me as I pinned her between my body and the wall. And when she melted against me with a broken moan, I nearly lost my mind.
"Oh," she gasped. "Oh, gods—"
"Alice..." My voice was rough with barely controlled restraint.
I pushed her dress up her thighs, my hand working its way between us and my fingers sliding through the heat of her, finding her already wet for me.
I moaned as the last shred of my control shattered at the way her breath hitched when my thumb circled that perfect spot.
She buried her face against my shoulder, biting down hard to stifle her cries as I worked her slowly, torturously.
Her arms wrapped so tight around my neck, the sounds breaking from her throat, I'd carry both into every dawn for the rest of my nights.
I stopped abruptly just before she could crest that wave and brought my fingers to my mouth to lick off the sweet taste of her.
"Oh, my gods," she gasped, watching me with eyes dark with frustration and desire.
I grinned, unrepentant, drinking in the sight of her—flushed and furious and utterly perfect. The scent of her arousal mixed with the damp earth was as intoxicating as any spell she could cast.
"Say it," I ordered.
She dragged her eyes from my mouth.
"Please, yeobo, I need to hear you say it."
Her eyes burned me from the inside out as she told me what I wanted to hear. "I want you inside me, Dae."
Balancing her against the wall with one hand, I freed myself with the other and thrust into her in one long stroke against that crumbling tomb, and the sound I made when I was finally inside of her was feral, inhuman.
She was tight and wet and perfect, her arms locking around my neck as I had to stop, forehead pressed to hers, just to keep from finishing right then and there.
"Move," she begged. "Please."
I moved.
It was rough, desperate, and she met every thrust, her heels digging into my back, her open mouth hot against my jaw as I threw my head back, my fangs bared and aching, my throat burning with thirst. The fog curled around us as I cradled her head, protecting her from the brick, and when she came, it was intense and devastating—her body clamping around me until I had to bite my cheek bloody to hold on.
"Dae." Her voice broke on my name.
Then her lips, warm and reverent, pressed against my shoulder.