Chapter 25 The Nun & the Vampire
Millie — Present Day
By now, tears have claimed the last of my make up and left my face stained with streaks. I lost it when Bane pulled the knife on Francesca, and instead of me comforting Gray, it was the other way around.
“That’s awful, Gray.” His arm is firmly under my head, which is likely soaked from tears now, too. He doesn’t move or try to push me away, though. We just lay there, staring at one another, unsure of what to say next.
“It was.”
“I can’t believe he did that,” I choke on another sob, and he flashes a cool hand forward to catch more stray tears. “They left you there to rot after, too, like, how traumatic? I mean, it’s fucked up enough that he tortured you, but fuck, I mean… how can you just kill someone like that?”
“I know what you mean.” He closes his eyes for a few moments, as if remembering it all one horrible moment after another. “It still haunts me.”
“How did you get through it?” Pain slashes across his features, and I immediately regret asking.
“Starving was a fine distraction. As the years went on, it was easier to let go. In all that time I slept, I was trapped with those feelings stuck inside my head. Guilt, shame, grief. The nightmares were neverending, but I didn’t have the strength to pull myself out of the darkness,” Gray says, his voice tight with emotion.
“It wasn’t until you stumbled into me that I was able to wake up. ”
“Able to?” I ask, sniffling.
“Your fall startled me,” he says, opening his eyes again. “After that, you had my full attention. The smell of your blood was like a siren call.”
A blush sneaks up on me as I recall the gash on my leg from falling. “Was it really?”
“Millie, yours was the first blood I had smelled since Francesca’s.” I can tell he’s deadly serious, but it doesn’t stop me from wanting to shy away. “It was so strong that it overpowered the memory I had of hers.”
“You’re only saying that because you were hungry.”
Gray snakes his free arm around my hip and leans in close to my face. “I thought that at first, but it hasn’t faded. Your blood is like…”
“Peaches?”
He smirks and purrs lowly. “No, darling, that’s your cunt.”
“Oh.” My thighs press tighter together.
“No, your blood is like… the chorus of a song written just for me. When you’re around, I can’t hear or feel anything but the notes and their vibrations.
” Gray’s fingers trail a soft line down my back and along the curve of my rear.
My body jolts and shivers in reply. “When I touch you, I hear new notes, new lines that form a different melody. When I taste you, the song is whole, full and flowing. I can’t get it out of my head—I can’t get you out of my head. ”
“Songs get old after a while,” I say sheepishly, though I am completely floored by his profession.
“Not yours,” he says seriously, all while rubbing hypnotic little circles against my hip. “There’s always something new… something different I discover. It’s in your voice, your taste, or your scent.”
I make the mistake of making eye contact as he speaks.
Something about his expression makes my chest ache, kicking up feelings like fallen leaves.
I know the universe is mysterious and all good things happen in due time, but it’s working overtime on me.
My head and my heart are falling faster every minute I spend with him.
He’s so close I could kiss him, and I desperately want to.
He opened up to me; he let down his walls just a little for me to see some of the pieces that make him, him.
Unfortunately, I know myself too well. A kiss would end this conversation, and I don’t want that. Not yet. Not until he’s said everything he needed to say.
With that, I give myself a mental shake and refocus.
“I’m sorry you lost her. Francesca, I mean.” I can’t imagine what it was like for him to watch Father Bane kill her the way he did. It was brutal. “She was clearly important to you.”
Gray’s hand stops moving on my hip. A shuddering breath overtakes his body and he closes his eyes.
I see the anguish in his expression, and even if I can’t hear his thoughts, I kind of understand what’s passing through his mind.
I lean forward and push him onto his back, draping half of myself on top of him.
“Gray?” Red eyes blink open, and in them I see so much emptiness. It pulls at my heart. I know that look more intimately than I know my own smile. For so long after Ronnie, my worth was eclipsed by the self-loathing that filled the empty hole she left behind in me.
“Father Bane had me for so long that I thought he had broken me down to nothing, and when she came, I was just a shell of what I was before. I thought I could hate her, but all of my anger and grief were reserved for Bane. I think, in a way, she healed parts of me I didn’t realize were broken.
When we talked, I felt a part of me was unburied by the monotony. I felt… human again.
“I learned that as vampires grow older in age, our emotions, if unchecked, fall away from us. Mine went untouched, so for years it was my instincts and hunger that kept me going. I had Tannis, of course, but I always thought they were foolish. They kept themselves close to mortals, whereas I only hunted them. With Francesca, I didn’t feel that way.
I felt as I did in those early days of turning when my emotions were heightened and everything felt new. ”
“Sounds like you found religion.” I smile, pressing a pointed finger against his chest. With his inhuman speed, he grabs it before I can pull away.
“There is no higher power that I believe in that trumps all of my life experience.” He brings my hand from his chest to his lips and holds it steady.
“So what did you find?”
“Humanity,” he says without skipping a beat. “Love.”
Guiding my pointed finger to his lips, he softly kisses the pad of it. My stomach flutters to life and I feel myself blush.
“My only regret,” he starts with heavily, “is that I couldn’t bring myself to hate Francesca. Maybe if I had, she wouldn’t have died.”
“That’s a lot to carry,” I say. In the end, it seemed like he did carry her loss from there on out.
The pieces of the puzzle finally fall into place as I realize what that means.
He didn’t just save my life on a whim, he did it because he could.
The chains were useless over time, so they couldn’t hold him back from doing what he couldn’t do for Francesca all those years ago.
“It is.” He nods.
“But you know”—I break my hand away from his mouth and slide it along his cheek, drawing his eyes back to mine—“for all that talk about mortals, you’re doing a terrible job at untangling yourself from me.”
“You make it difficult.” He wraps an arm around my waist again, slipping his hands along the curve of my ass. “There’s a lot of you that I want to touch.”
“Then touch me,” I whisper, but it comes out like a whine.
“Dante…” He hesitates.
“Dante is already hot on my heels,” I say with a little more force than I intended. “I’m damned either way, right? And your hot cousin is going to teach me Taekwondo, so it’s all good. I’ll karate chop his jugular and set a matchstick on his silky hair.”
“Hot cousin?” Gray’s hands go to my hips and grip them, hard. In one swift motion, he has me on my back, pinned to the bed. “Tannis is off-limits.”
“Oh yeah? Why’s that?” I hope it sounds like I’m challenging him, but I’m a little out of breath.
“I said it once already, Millie.” Gray rises to his knees and leans back on his heels.
With his shirt hanging off his shoulders, hair scattered across his forehead, and crimson eyes glittering like jewels; he looks every bit the vampire that he is, right down to the hungry way he licks his fangs. “You’re mine.”
I suck in a sharp breath and let it out slowly. “Not yet.”
“Not yet.” He weighs those words carefully, each one tipped with a promise as they’re spoken.
It’s two simple words, but it feels like he’s saying so much more than that.
There’s no time to dissect his meaning, either.
Gray sinks over my body, one hand braced beside me while the other trails along my left leg.
“If it wasn’t for our earlier interruption,” he says, voice deepening, like the far off rumble of a coming storm, “I would have made you a shaking mess.”
“Sounds like a threat.” I like it.
“It’s a promise.” He smirks, fitting himself between my legs. A perfect fit. “I want to feel you. All of you.”
Reaching for his face, I hold his attention and spread my legs wider. “Then do it, because I can’t go another day like this.”
“Like what, Millie?” He tests the pressure between us by rocking his hips into me. The bulge of his erection is pressing against his pants so tightly that I can feel the tip of him through two layers of fabric.
“Aching for you.” I pull him down by the collar of his shirt and rut against him. Payback.
Gray groans and meets my mouth with fervent need.
I wrap my arms around his neck as he sits up, pulling me into his lap.
Somewhere in between the kissing, he manages to free his hard cock and shoves my panties aside.
He slips the soft tip of himself along my sex, and then pushes in, hands gripping the underside of my ass.
I moan into his mouth, tingling with the sensation of his girth stretching me to fit.
“Oh… oh my god, you feel… you feel incredible.” I break away from his lips and roll my lower half against him. He’s fully seated inside of me, wrapped up in my heat and tightening walls. His fingers dig into the supple skin of my cheeks in reply.
I cling to him, finding his lips again to stifle my cries. He accepts every rush of breath, kissing me back with equal passion. The tension between us feels like it finally snapped, as if everything leading up to this moment has been a constant cycle of foreplay.
“I want to feel you come on me,” he hisses, and I shift, switching my rhythm.
He’s pressed against the tender bud of my clit, and the tip of his cock is stroking my insides at the perfect angle.
My hips and thighs burn, but the sensation is worth it.
I feel the buildup in my lower stomach as it tightens with my movement.
“That’s it, darling. Fuck me,” he says, and I kiss him, holding myself there to keep my mind focused. He meets me with equal passion, chasing my lips every time I break away, and coaxes my tongue to tangle with his.
Focus, he seems to say. Focus on me.
“I’m so close,” I whimper, and he grips me, keeping the same pace with his own hands and hips.
The ringing in my ears is growing louder and I’m so wet, so goddamned wet, I can’t think about anything else but the way my pussy throbs around his cock.
We’re pressed against each other, chest to chest, and yet, it doesn’t feel like enough.
I want more; I need more. That’s the feeling I chase until I’m ready to fall over the edge.
“Bite me,” I pant. “Fuck! Bite me!”
Gray’s teeth sink into my neck just below my ear, and the moment I feel them puncture, I let myself topple over the edge into pure orgasmic bliss.