by L.H. Cosway
I found a park bench and sat down, letting the rain pour down on me. I was too forlorn to care. I wasn’t sure how long I spent sitting on the bench when I reached inside my jeans pocket to pull out Edwards’s coin. After all these days, it felt less and less likely that he was ever going to show up.
Thinking this, a sob escaped me, my tears mixing with the rain that was still pounding down on me. I cried for my dad and for Rita’s mum. I cried for the people living in this godforsaken city. And finally, I cried for myself and the loss of my innocence now that I’d killed another living being.
Somewhere amid the crying, someone sat down next to me on the bench. Strong arms lifted me, and I caught Ethan’s familiar scent. Seconds later, I was out of the rain and inside a warm, dry car. A blanket covered me, and hot air blasted from the heater.
“How did you find me?” I asked quietly.
“The blood connection between us is still strong. It helped me locate you,” he answered.
I finally lifted my gaze to look at him. His blond hair hung over his face. It was longer than usual. He didn’t start the engine. Instead, we sat in silence, peering out the window at the falling rain.
“It’s truly amazing what your blood can do to heal humans,” I said, thinking of the times he’d let me drink it and how quickly I’d recovered from my injuries.
“It is amazing,” he agreed. “But it also comes with a moral dilemma.”
I glanced at him, snuggling deeper into the blanket. “Oh?”
“I can heal the sick and dying, if I choose to. I spent a number of years working as a night shift orderly in various hospitals. When patients came in fatally ill or injured, I’d sneak them some of my blood to heal them. I could only do it for so long before other staff grew suspicious and then I’d have to move on to a new hospital. I can’t heal everyone, though. When I give blood, I need time to recuperate the same as a human does.”
“That’s a very kind thing to do. I don’t know many people who would be so selfless,” I said. Honestly, I was surprised by his confession. I’d always seen Ethan as this wealthy, charming night club owner, when in reality he’d probably had a whole range of different professions over the course of his long life.
“You sound surprised,” he said, a smile tugging on the edge of his lips.
“I just can’t picture you as a hospital orderly,” I replied.
“I can glamour myself to go unnoticed. It’s not too difficult.”
“When I first met you, I couldn’t imagine why you wanted to befriend me. I thought we were so different. Little did I know you had experience working a gruelling night shift, too. If I had of known, maybe I wouldn’t have been so hesitant to let you in.”
“It’s good to be suspicious,” Ethan said. “Often people have ulterior motives.”
A quiet fell as we stared out the car window. Across the street, several men were getting into an argument outside a pub. I couldn’t tell if it was the mist or if they were simply being drunk and rowdy.
“This city is coming to a boiling point,” Ethan said as he watched them. “Sometimes it feels like one day it will simply tear itself apart, no longer able to contain all the animosity.”
“If that’s how you feel, then why do you stay here? You could go anywhere in the world.”
His expression clouded. “Sometimes you become tied to a place, with too many factors preventing you from leaving.”
“What factors are preventing you from leaving Tribane?” I asked, and his gaze met mine, a thousand sorrows in their golden depths. In that one look, I saw just how much he’d been suffering lately. I reached out and took his hand in mine. “It’s okay, you don’t have to answer.”
A little while later, Ethan started the car, and we drove away from the park. Even though I was wrapped in a blanket and the warm air was on full blast, I couldn’t seem to get any heat into my bones. I must’ve stayed out in the rain for too long.
Ethan pulled up to his house and climbed out of the car. When he came around to my side, he lifted me into his arms and carried me out.
“Why are you being kind to me?” I whispered. “Don’t you hate me still?”
“I never hated you, lumina mea, and you know it.”
For a moment, my heart stopped beating. He hadn’t spoken to me with such affection in what felt like a lifetime. He carried me inside his sparsely furnished house and upstairs to a bedroom, containing only a simple wardrobe and a bed with soft cotton sheets. He held me to him as he pulled back the covers, before laying me down. I expected him to try and climb in beside me, but he didn’t.
“There’s a bathroom through that door and clean clothes in the wardrobe,” he said instead.
“Why didn’t you just bring me to Finn’s?” I asked, confused.
“I don’t like you sleeping there.” He paused and ran a hand through his too-long hair, looking conflicted. “Please, just stay here for one night?”
I let my head fall back into the perfectly soft pillow. “Okay then,” I whispered, confused by his unexpected kindness. Just as he turned to leave, I said his name, “Ethan.”
He looked back, a wistful expression on his face.
“If there’s no hope for us as lovers, can we at least try to be friends?”
He sighed. “That probably won’t work.”
“How do you know if you don’t try?”
He stood still, regarding me intensely for a few quiet moments. “Very well then, we shall try.”
“Thank you,” I replied, and he left the room.
Exhaustion plunged me into a deep sleep, but I woke up in the middle of the night shivering. Stupidly, I hadn’t changed out of my rain-soaked clothes. I quickly got up and peeled everything off, before stepping into the bathroom and turning on the shower. The hot water seeped into my bones, warming me up. I couldn’t tell whether this was the guest room or if it belonged to Ethan. It had no distinguishing features, no belongings except for a couple of shirts hanging in the wardrobe.
I wrapped up in a towel and lay my clothes out on the radiator to dry. I put one of the shirts on, and judging by how it almost reached my knees, I’d say it definitely belonged to Ethan. Crawling back into bed, I switched off the lamp and closed my eyes. A moment later, the bedroom door opened, allowing a sliver of light to stream through.
I peeked my head over the blanket and found Ethan standing there.
“I could hear you moving around,” he said, eyes running over me.
“I fell asleep in my wet clothes, so I took them off and had a shower. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all.” A pause. “Well, goodnight then.”
He was about to close the door when I spoke. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“I thought I’d feel guilty after killing Eliza, but I don’t feel anything. When I think about her, I just feel nothing—empty. Does that make me a bad person?”
“Everybody reacts differently to their first kill. It all depends on the individual. Perhaps you feel nothing because you’re blocking the emotion. You’re still grieving for Rita’s mother. There’s no room for guilt, not yet.”
“So, the fact that I feel nothing is a survival instinct?”
“It’s definitely possible.”
“Oh, well, thanks. That makes me feel a little better.”
Ethan gave a soft smile. “Is there anything else you’d like to talk about?”
“Yeah,” I replied. “You need a haircut.”
Grinning, he tilted his head and ran his hand through his locks. “Are you criticising my appearance, girl who never wears anything but scruffy jeans and T-shirts with anti-vampire sentiment?”
I laughed. “Piss off. Sometimes I dress up. And I only have one anti-vampire T-shirt.”
He stopped smiling and instead gave me a smouldering look. “You don’t need to dress up. Your scent alone is enough adornment.”
“Well, you are the target audience for that,” I shot back.
; “True,” he exhaled heavily as he ran a hand through his locks again. “Unfortunately, there’s nothing that can be done about my hair. Human barbers don’t open at night and there are no vampires on this side of the city to do it for me.”
“There are vampire barbers? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“We all have our professions,” he answered with a shrug.
“I can cut your hair for you, if you’d like,” I offered impulsively.
“You cut hair?”
“I worked as a trainee hairdresser for a bit after I left school. I mostly only shampooed and swept the floors, but I can manage a basic cut.”
“I don’t possess any scissors,” Ethan said.
“I’m sure Delilah has some,” I replied, finding it adorable how hesitant he was being. “There’s no need to look so wary. I promise I won’t give you a hack job. After all, it would ruin our newfound friendship.”
“Okay then,” he replied, with just a sliver of apprehension.
I hopped out of bed, still in his shirt, but since it was so big on me, I didn’t feel self-conscious. Several minutes later, with some scissors borrowed from Delilah’s room, I stood over Ethan as he sat on a chair pushed up to the sink in the main bathroom so I could wash his hair before I cut it.
I put my fingers under the running water to make sure it was warm enough.
“You only need to give me a trim.”
“God, you are such a Vain Wayne, aren’t you?” I teased. “If I was your age, I wouldn’t give a crap what my hair looked like anymore.”
“Ah, but you don’t have my hair,” he retorted with a playful grin. “And you don’t need to be my age, you clearly already don’t give a shit.” He made a show of eyeing the bird’s nest atop my head that I hadn’t bothered to comb out after my shower.
I slapped his shoulder. “The cheek! I’ll have you know that the not-giving-a-shit look is very in right now.”
“Well, you do seem to pull it off,” he acceded, placing his hand affectionately on my hip for a moment.
I glanced down, and he moved it away. Friendship was definitely going to be a difficult task for us. I told him to lean his head back into the sink, as I filled a jug with warm water. I poured it over his hair and glanced down to see him watching me. His hair felt like the purest silk beneath my fingers.
“Do you do that when you visit the barber?” I questioned.
“Do what?”
I shot him a meaningful look. “Stare.”
“No,” he replied. “But I’ve never had a barber quite like you.”
“I am very talented,” I agreed with a smirk.
“And pretty.”
A grin tugged at my lips. “Why thanks.”
I proceeded to shampoo and condition his hair. The conditioner might’ve been overkill, but a part of me wanted to prolong the experience. I liked doing this for him, caring for him. It was rare that I managed to get so close to Ethan. I poured water over his head to rinse out the last of the conditioner. Then I grabbed a clean towel off the rack and used it to dry his hair a little. He was smiling at me.
“What are you smiling about?”
“You’ve got a caring side. Who would have thought it?”
“I’m not the cold-hearted bitch you’ve come to believe I am. I can be very caring when I want to be,” I said defensively.
I removed the towel and grabbed a comb, brushing out the tangles in his golden locks.
“You’ll make a fine mother someday,” he went on, and I froze. It was the last thing I expected him to say. It took me off guard. It wasn’t so much the statement, but the way he said it. The way he looked at me like he was imagining me pregnant or something.
“Not sure I can see myself ever having kids,” I replied, letting his long fringe drift through my fingers.
“Wait a few years, and you might change your mind.”
At this, a sudden burst of curiosity hit me. “Have you ever had kids?”
His eyes moved across mine as he nodded. “Four.”
Say what?! I stared at him in shock. Ethan was old, but I just never pictured him with children. “Where are they now?”
“Three were dhampirs. They all died as infants. The other was a vampire, but he was killed by slayers before he reached his fiftieth birthday.”
“And the mothers?” I asked.
“Long gone. This all happened in my first hundred years. After that, though I longed for a family of my own, I grew weary of trying to create offspring. The heartbreak of losing them was too much, and it hardened me. I refused to open my heart, to allow myself to be that vulnerable again.”
His words made me sad. To lose one child was devastating, but four? I couldn’t imagine how difficult that must’ve been. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, standing in front of him, my hands still sifting through his hair. I remembered him telling me about the time when a witch trapped him in a mangrove and Whitfield saved his life. He said he’d been grieving at the time, and that’s why he’d wandered the forest alone. Had he been grieving for one of his children? The thought made my heart ache for him.
“This might sound silly, but during the months you were gone I often wondered if we could create a dhampir that would survive. Since you are power-blooded and half-witch, your genes would be far stronger than most human females.”
“You’ve thought about having a child with me?” I asked, shocked. I swear my eyebrows jumped all the way up into my forehead. At the same time, something warm filled my chest. I found I didn’t hate the idea of him thinking about us having kids together.
I wasn’t sure why he’d decided to open up to me, but I wished he’d stop. It made me want to curl myself around him and kiss away the painful memories.
“I’ve thought about a lot of things pertaining to you, Tegan.” His hands moved up over my hips, pulling me closer to him. “I think you’d look beautiful, swollen with my child inside of you.”
I stopped fingering his hair because this was way too much. I couldn’t handle how candid he was being. “You’re not allowed to say things like that to me,” I said softly.
“Why not? It’s the truth.” He leaned in to whisper in my ear. “I still think about that night we spent together, how I regret not sinking inside of you while I had you in my bed. Do you know how difficult it was not to drag you over here when you had that lust potion in you? I spent the night imagining all the ways I wanted to violate you, but also hating the fact that I had to keep you at a distance.”
Goose-pimples broke out all over my skin.
“You didn’t have to keep me at a distance. You could have just forgiven me.”
“I wasn’t ready to do that.”
“Are you ready now?”
He didn’t answer, but I suddenly realised there was barely an inch between our mouths and we were on the verge of doing something very, very stupid. I pulled away, putting some space between us. Taking a deep breath, I picked up the scissors and quietly began trimming the ends of his hair.
Ethan typically went for that long on top, short at the sides sort of style. I tried my best to recreate the look, but I couldn’t get it close enough on the sides without an electric shaver.
I got so lost in the cutting that it took me a minute to feel something tugging at my shirt. When I looked down, Ethan had pulled one of the buttons open to expose the upper part of my breast. He dragged his knuckles across my skin, and my breathing quickened.
“Stop that. I’m trying to concentrate.”
“You’re good with hair,” he said, dropping his hand but leaving the shirt button open.
“I told you I was.”
“I bet you’d be good at being under me, too.”
My hand started to shake so I put the scissors down. I was more or less finished anyway. Picking up the towel, I used it to dust the stray clippings off the back of his neck and around his ears.
“All done,” I said.
“Thank fuck,” he muttered, and before I knew what was happening, h
e’d pulled me onto his lap. I was suddenly aware that I had no underwear on beneath the shirt. Ethan dropped his face to my neck and licked me right over the spot where Eliza bit me. The wound had healed over, but it was still sensitive.
“We can’t do this,” I protested, gasping when his hand slipped inside the shirt and cupped my breast.
“Yes, we can,” he argued, pushing my thighs farther apart. He was so calm and collected, and I was a heaving, breathless mess.
He claimed my mouth with his tongue, his hand travelling up to hold my neck. His thumb brushed back and forth over the bite marks, and I felt it deep down in my core. His other hand slipped under the hem of the shirt, and he groaned when he touched me. I was so wet it was embarrassing. He slipped his fingers inside of me, and I trembled against him.
“I take it you’re pleased with your haircut,” I muttered, as his fingers moved in and out.
“More than you can imagine,” he answered, thrusting so deep this time that I moaned.
I fumbled with the waist of his jeans, trying to get them off him. In the back of my mind, I knew what we were doing was wrong, but I just couldn’t stop. I needed to lose myself in him, forget about all the bad things that were happening.
A few minutes of hungry kissing and groping later, he picked me up and carried me into his room. It wasn’t the one I’d just been sleeping in, but a larger one at the end of the hall. He put me down on the bed and climbed over me, a look of pure, undiluted lust shining in his gold eyes.
“I’m going to make you forget about every other man in the world,” he promised.
I swallowed thickly, every pore in my body primed and ready for whatever was to come next.
14.
Ethan pushed the shirt off my shoulders, baring my nakedness. His eyes soaked me in, and I suppressed a tremble at how his golden irises practically glowed in the dark room. They reminded me that he wasn’t quite human, and the edge of danger made me catch my breath. His fingers traced my healing bite marks again, and I shuddered. It was odd, but they’d become something of an erogenous zone. His hand travelled down over my collarbone, then lower to cup my breast. His other hand went to my stomach before drifting between my legs.