Dreams for the Dead
Page 24
She lifted one of his hands and flattened it on her chest. “Do you remember when you said your heart beats for me?”
“Yes.”
“My heart beats for you, too. I’ll always forgive you.”
His other arm crooked around her neck and he leaned down for a kiss. The night folded around them. On his lips and tongue she tasted her own yearning and desire. Ripples of pleasure shot through her body like low currents of electricity. It was probably absurd to feel such profound relief at being with him after so long, yet there was no way she’d ever make him leave her again. She wouldn’t leave him, either. This was the moment she’d spent six months pining for, even the times she’d convinced herself she was better off alone.
The kiss ended slowly, their lips just breaths apart. A breeze picked up strands of his hair and made them dance around her face. Tristan’s full, fanged smile was artless and heartbreaking. She returned it, delirious and happy.
“What,” he asked, “have you been doing with yourself for the last six months?”
“Missing you. Every single day, even when I didn’t think I was. What about you?”
“The same.”
“What are we going to do now?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he replied. “Everything. Just be with each other. We have forever.”
“Forever,” she said, testing the word aloud. It was just a word. She had no true concept of it. Somehow, though, it wasn’t hard to imagine always being twenty-three. Maybe that was the way of everyone young, cursed to think it would always be so.
“I don’t know what forever’s like,” she told him.
“Neither do I. Not yet.”
“So we’ll find out together?”
“Yes.”
Arm in arm, the vampires disappeared into the night.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Heather lives in Las Vegas, NV with her family. She is the author of A Dark-Adapted Eye and the young adult novel Unchanged.