by Lexi C. Foss
I had been lost for months, but now, here with him in whatever alcohol-induced world I’d created, I was found.
He had an iron grip on my body, and he shuddered as our bodies quieted their frantic movements.
But I was confused. Because he was still here. His skin…his cold skin, was still here under my fingertips. His eyes were still staring up at me.
“I don’t understand,” I whispered, my body started to descend into a dreamland that only an orgasm and alcohol could probably bring. He pulled out of me and began to pull on his clothes, and I immediately felt empty inside, like he’d taken one of my vital organs with him.
He began to pull on my clothes, lovingly stroking my skin as he did so. I’d never known putting on clothes could be so pleasurable. After we were both dressed, an activity that I did not participate in because one did not dress themselves in dreams, my drunk self rationalized, he scooped me up in his arms.
His cool skin felt like a balm against my flushed skin as I pressed my face against him. “Why is your skin so cold, honey?” I whispered lazily, rubbing my face against his shirt, because I was positive it was the softest thing I’d ever felt.
He chuckled, and I lived in the sound of it. I’d almost forgotten what it sounded like. How sad was that? And when I woke up, I’d probably have forgotten again.
Tears started streaming down my face. “Please don’t leave me,” I whispered as he began to walk towards the door, stepping over Jason’s body to get there.
Jason’s throat had been ripped open, and his eyes were staring unseeing up at the ceiling.
I should have felt something at seeing him. I had kissed the guy after all.
Wait, did Jason do something freaky while we were making out? Did he choke me? Did I die? Was this some kind of strange aftermath?
Because I would honestly take it.
“We’ll explain everything, baby. And we’ll never be apart again, I promise,” he swore to me softly. We walked across the entryway into another room where there was an open window.
“Sleep,” he whispered to me, brushing his ice-cold lips across my forehead.
“Don’t make me wake up,” I answered, before his words dragged me into a dreamland.
My last thought was to wonder how fucked up my dreams had become that I was falling asleep in them now.
9
I shifted on a bed that felt like a cloud, wondering where I’d fallen asleep, because my bed at the sorority house had not felt this comfortable the last few nights.
Was this Jason’s bed? At that thought, an arm tugged on my stomach, pulling me closer against a firm chest, and I became aware that my head felt like I’d been smacked by a cinder block.
I was never going to drink again. I groaned, and the arm pulled me even closer. It was so cold. I needed a freaking blanket. Why was Jason so cold?
Jason. Blood. Cold. Wyatt.
I tried to sit up, struggling against the arm hooked around me. I finally just flipped around and let out a loud shriek when I saw Noah lying there, grinning at me with that stupidly gorgeous left dimple blinking at me.
Sobs erupted out of me as I felt his face, tracing every line. I wasn’t sleeping. This still could be the afterlife theory, but I didn’t think so.
How were they here?
“You died,” I sobbed, grabbing desperately at him. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to slap him or hold him, but my need to be close to him had me pressing myself against him in a mimicry of my actions last night with Wyatt.
There was a small part of me that remembered last night, remembered Jason’s lifeless eyes staring up at the ceiling, the blood all over the room…the taste of blood in Wyatt’s kiss.
I couldn’t find it in myself to care, not when his skin was beneath my fingertips and his lips were on my skin.
“What happened to you? Where have you been? Why haven’t you contacted me?” The tears continued, and then I just broke. I began to beat on his chest, trying to get the ache out of my own chest. I had been alone for months, broken beyond repair, convinced I’d never be happy again.
And they’d been alive all this time.
Noah’s face was tortured, like my tears were physically hurting him, and I hoped they were. I couldn’t think of one good reason why they’d allowed me to suffer for so long. I couldn’t think of where they would have gone that they wouldn’t have taken me too.
Had all our years together been a lie?
“Livvy, sweetheart. We can explain,” he murmured as he smoothed my hair and just took the hits. It was a testament to my E.V.I.E. training when he grimaced with one particularly solid hit.
“How can you explain leaving me? I hate you. I hate you,” I yelled at him. I was out of control, completely irrational, but I’d broken up, all the pent-up sorrow and rage that I’d been tightly controlling streaming out of me now.
“This hasn’t been a walk in the park for any of us,” Noah finally snarled, his voice rising as I taunted his anger into appearing. “You think it’s been fun having to stalk my girlfriend all over the country, to find out you almost had sex with some random guy you met that night?”
“I thought you were dead,” I spat out, wiping the tears angrily off my face. “And how do I know that you haven’t been with a girl since you’ve been gone doing whatever you’ve been doing? It’s been six fucking months.”
Noah’s face went blank, a faint glimmer in his eyes that looked suspiciously like guilt.
My stomach soured.
“This looks like it’s going well,” a voice purred from the doorway just then.
I hiccupped out another sob and saw Ryan leaning, shirtless, against the door, staring at me intensely. I jumped up from the bed.
“Ry,” I gasped, my hand rubbing my chest, because it kind of felt like I was having a heart attack. If that’s what it felt like for your heart to clench in your chest and feel like it was in danger of stopping.
“Hi, pretty girl,” he said, stalking towards me in that smooth way of his.
He was a few feet away from me…and then I blinked, and he was in front of me, his hand around my neck as he backed me against a wall.
“What’s this I hear about another man touching what’s ours?” he demanded, his beautiful lips curled up in a sneer. “Did he touch your pretty pussy? Did he make you go off like a firework? Does he know how good you taste?”
My cheeks were fifty shades of red at his dirty talk. Who were these boys? They were in the same gorgeous bodies of my loves, but there was a feral, dirty edge to them that had never been there before.
Was it bad to admit that I liked it, that I liked seeing their tight control slip away?
He tipped my head up, and I watched, admittedly turned on, as his eyes darkened and his pupils extended…
Just like a vampire’s.
“She smells so good,” he groaned, looking at Noah like he was asking permission for something. “Better than anything I’ve ever encountered. It’s like heaven.”
“Take a deep breath, center yourself,” cautioned Noah as he eyed Ryan warily.
Ryan groaned, a desperate, erotic sound that had my nipples tightening and my core clenching, despite my rage and sorrow. He sunk into me indecently, the line of his body molding closer to mine. He nipped at my lip, lost to the lust flowing between us.
My eyes rolled when his hands suddenly strayed under my shirt, along my spine and to the sides of my breasts. Suddenly, they were aching and heavy, and my breath fractured when his mouth slid into place with a kiss so intense, I felt it in my chest. I was ruined by the powerful thrust of his tongue and his complete abandon.
“Careful, Ryan,” Noah cautioned.
Ryan ripped himself away from me.
I continued to watch, fascinated, as his incisor teeth lengthened and sharpened into two long points. Fangs actually. That’s what they were.
Ryan was a… They all were…vampires?
“Vampire,” I whispered, horrified, as my mouth drew open in disbelief.
Ryan let me go just then, disgust written all over his face. “Finally figured it out, pretty girl?” he sneered.
I was shaking, all my E.V.I.E. training running through my head like a wildfire.
My soulmates were vampires, the very creatures I’d made an oath to destroy. I’d spent months being indoctrinated with how evil vampires were, how they were destroying the world, how they preyed on the innocent. And here in front of me were the three men who I loved more than anything…now vampires.
I fell against the wall, my brain struggling to comprehend the truth, even as it stared me right in the face.
Wyatt came in just then, his eyes heated as he looked at me, I’m sure remembering what happened the night before…and then he realized the situation he’d walked into. Fear replaced the lust.
I felt like I was hyperventilating as my mind tried to put together all the pieces. Tears flooded my gaze as I looked at each of their faces.
“Pretty girl, just relax,” said Ryan softly, approaching me with both hands up, like I was the feral vampire about to strike and not him.
My brain was having a hard time breaking from the months of training I’d just gone through, where the vampires had been ingrained in my head as ultimate purveyors of evil on earth.
Not to mention, I’d spent the entire year thinking that vampires had killed my loves and hating them with every ounce of my soul every day.
So to say that I was having trouble would be an understatement.
I snapped.
“Don’t you dare tell me to relax,” I hissed, and I found myself in hysterics, punching him in the chest as hard as I could. He flew backwards, a look of shock written across his face.
I felt an enormous sense of satisfaction as realization hit them all at once that I wasn’t the same girl they’d left behind. I’d been irrevocably changed by my grief.
I loved them, that hadn’t changed. But did they love me still? And if they did love me, was it with the kind of love that would only last with the memory of who I used to be?
I was afraid to know the answer.
“Fuck,” Ryan snarled, rubbing his cheek where I’d hit him. I’d rarely seen him exhibit any type of anger in the past from my artist. Evidently, I wasn’t the only one that had changed. He stalked out of the room without a look back, taking a piece of me with him.
The three of us remaining just stared at each other. Wyatt sighed and brushed his hair out of his face. “I’ll go talk to him, and then we’ll explain as much as we can.”
I didn’t say anything, and he just sighed again before walking towards the door. He hovered at the doorway for a moment before looking at me. He put his fingers to his lips, giving me our secret sign, and I almost crumpled to the ground. He gave me a soft, sad smile, and then left the room.
And then it was just Noah and I left.
“Sweetheart,” he whispered, and the word lived in my soul.
I turned away from him, and my eyes squeezed shut, the hot tears leaking through. There was no point in pretending this was okay. It was not going to be okay. My life wasn’t a fairy tale, I’d forgotten that fact before they’d disappeared. But now I was well aware that there was no happily ever after.
And then Noah’s mouth captured mine. Our mouths crushed together, betraying the urgency coursing through each of us. There was so much that needed to be said, but I opened my mouth to his, allowing his tongue to take mine, allowing him to dominate me. His kiss burned through my blood until I was on fire. Passion mixed with fear, and even as I clung to him, the flames of desire slowly engulfed me as though I’d found myself ignited on a pyre. Gasping against him, I clutched his shoulders, my fingernails digging into his hard flesh, terrified to let go. Terrified of what waited for me on the other side of that kiss. But he didn’t release me, even as our lips broke free, and we struggled for air. We both were afraid of what would happen if we let go.
“I’d never experienced joy until the first time I kissed you,” he murmured against my skin.
“Then kiss me again,” I breathed.
Noah wedged himself between my legs, which wrapped possessively around him. He tipped my chin up and kissed me deeply. His hand settled on the back of my neck, cradling my head tenderly. His movements were slow with adoration.
He kissed me slow, and he kissed me hard, until I was senseless with desire.
Noah finally pulled away and laid his forehead against mine, his breath labored as we both struggled not to give in to the pull we were both feeling.
I needed answers first.
Wyatt poked his head in just then, rolling his eyes when he saw the position Noah and I were in.
“Noah, we need to talk.”
A wave of unease hit me, but it was more than unease, it was despair that I was feeling. There was a time that it was the four of us against the world. In the year that had passed, it was evident the three of them had become a team, just like before I’d come into their lives, and now I was firmly on the outside.
Noah’s hands gripped my sides like it was killing him to let me go. He gave me one last squeeze before he nodded at Wyatt and stepped away.
“Be right back,” he told me, his voice still ragged and out of control from what we’d just done.
I nodded distrustfully, and his face fell.
He left the room, and I slid down to the ground, my face in my hands.
My whole world had imploded, shifting and changing again into something I didn’t recognize.
Vampires.
10
A buzz filled the air, and I looked around, frowning, until I saw my phone plugged in on a table against the wall. My eyes widened when I saw a bag of my stuff beside it. Evidently, the boys had been busy while I’d been asleep.
I got up off the floor and trudged over, hesitating before picking up the phone, since it was my handler at E.V.I.E., Janie.
I took a deep breath and then answered, trying to keep the exhaustion and stress out of my voice.
I may not have known what was going to happen between the guys and I, but one thing was for sure…E.V.I.E. was never going to get its hands on them.
“Hello.”
“What happened last night? Rumor is there was a murder at the party you were at,” Janie jumped in, not one for niceties, I’d learned right away.
Right…Wyatt had murdered that guy last night. I hadn’t even begun to address that fact in my head yet.
“Olivia?!” Janie snapped.
“Yes, I heard about that. I haven’t gotten any of the details yet. No one had any clue what happened.”
“I’ve seen the photos. The poor guy was torn to pieces. This should be a good lead on the vamp you’re hunting.”
A horrible thought hit me. What if Wyatt was the vampire I’d been hunting? The thought that he could be the one killing the sorority girls filled me with an odd mix of horror…and jealousy.
Supposedly dead or not, if I found out that he was the vampire I was after, a vampire who’d made his way across campus fucking, feeding, and then killing those girls…I didn’t think I could come back from that.
I wasn’t sure what that said about me that the “fucking” part was the item on the list that was the non-starter for me.
Suddenly, I was itching to get off the phone, desperate to confront Wyatt and find out the truth.
I would figure out what I was going to do after that.
“I’ve got it handled, Janie,” I told her firmly, trying to sound confident. I didn’t have it handled. Not at all.
But she didn’t need to know that.
Janie grunted in displeasure and then let out a frustrated sigh. “Don’t get frustrated. People are counting on you. There are lives at stake.”
Like I needed the reminder.
“I’ll call you tomorrow. I’m sure there will be more parties this weekend for me to get leads at.”
“Tomorrow,” she said curtly before hanging up the phone.
I sighed and pressed on the side of m
y head, bemoaning the migraine I had, a product of too much alcohol and stress.
Digging through my bag, that was of course packed with all the right items, confirming that the guys still at least knew me well enough to know my fashion sense, I decided to get dressed and hunt them down. They’d had enough time to themselves.
It was time for answers.
Feeling like a new woman after a quick shower in the luxurious bathroom attached to the bedroom I’d woken up in, I got dressed in a pair of black joggers and a graphic tee with the phrase “Bite Me” on it.
Very amusing, guys.
I stepped into the hallway, rubbing my arms as a chill descended over me. Examining everything closer as I walked, this place was nice. Fucking nice. Since I doubted that the Masterson’s had been sending money to their dead sons, I was definitely questioning what they’d been doing to have enough money to stay in a place like this.
The floor was a shiny white marble, the walls were a dove grey color, and there were fancy glass light fixtures that lined the hallway. The place looked like it had come straight from the cover of a celebrity home magazine…and this was just the hallway.
Turning a corner, I walked into an enormous living room with twenty-foot ceilings and floor to ceiling windows lining the far wall that looked out to what appeared to be an enormous pool. The carpet in here was a dark grey color, and there were tasteful white couches laid out in front of an enormous flat screen television. And just beyond the living room, gathered in what looked like some kind of fancy study…were the guys.
I took a moment to examine them as they talked to each other, urgent and worried looks written across their faces.
They were still them…but they were also more. Their cheekbones were sharper, their eyes more vibrant colors than they’d been before. Their skin and hair were shinier, and I could tell even though they were dressed, in what I could tell were very expensive clothes I might add, their bodies had packed on more muscle. Three perfect specimens sat at that table, faces that would make women and men alike go crazy.