Hunger Embraced (The Hunger Series)

by Jennifer James

  What did I care what he thought? He probably didn’t think about me farther than the fact we kept running into each other and sex stuff kept happening. Although he’d admitted he’d been following me at lunchtime. Why? And he’d accused me of having “conquests” the other day. I sure as hell didn’t think of it that way. A conquest implied I desired them, sought them out. Hell to the no.

  Not only did I not have conquests, there was no way I was going to accept some guy who called himself my king. As if. Maybe Mr. Darkly Handsome Spanky Pants could be scared off with T.T.B. intervention. After all, Daniel had not been happy to see him there.

  “Yes…Daniel…”

  The impression of a sharp-toothed smile in the dark flitted through my head. I shivered, wondering if I was finally going nuts.

  Questions swirled through my head. I bet Daniel had answers. I returned to the bed and tossed the comforter back all the way to the bottom of the mattress, intent on making a toga out of the top sheet. I had it half pulled out when I noticed the small pile of clothing on the corner of the bed.

  Oh, look at that. Daniel had left me a present of a pair of sweats and a huge T-shirt.

  I tightened the drawstring sweat pants around my waist and glanced down at the shorn leggings. I traced the snipped fabric with my finger.

  He had shortened them for me.

  No, no, no. Do not start giving him brownie points. He was the enemy! He withheld information and couldn’t be trusted. So what if he knew how to use scissors.

  The shirt was a different story. The lower hem hung down almost to my knees. I looked like a child playing dress up, but it smelled wonderful. His detergent tried to erase his scent with the fresh clean bite of citrus, but ocean spray and a crisp breeze after a storm clung to the fabric.

  I refused to think about why I liked the shirt so much or the memories his aroma aroused. From now on, he was T.T.B. and nothing else. It didn’t matter if he’d tried to co-opt the name. I was taking it back and using it the way it was meant to be used—as a distancing device. He was just another vamp looking for food at the Miranda drive-thru.

  I jerked the door open too hard and glanced up and down the hall. I could leave now, call him later, and grill him over the phone. I didn’t have to look at his gorgeous body and knowing eyes to get answers.

  Soft strains of classical music spilled down the hall, the strings accompanied by pounding bass rhythms and a Middle Eastern vocalist, all blended together into a marvelous wall of sound. The floor vibrated and every step enclosed me deeper in the spell being cast by the soaring notes of a violin and a woman’s undulating voice. I was encapsulated, and some of the tightness in my chest lightened. If I listened long enough, I’d be able to fly far above the earth.

  I opened the door directly across the hall, hoping for a bathroom. It turned out to be a linen closet with sheets, towels, and extra blankets folded in precise piles. My towels never looked like this; maybe he moonlighted at a Bed, Bath, and Beyond. I snickered, tugged a towel from the middle, unfolded it, and shoved it back in a nasty ball right on top.

  I turned to the left, moving deeper into the music. The next door I tried was a bathroom done in shades of brown, tan, and green. Score! I really had to pee.

  I played with the no-touch faucet and soap dispenser for a minute before washing up and then used one of his monogrammed towels to dry my face and hands. Every fine line and wrinkle had disappeared. My hair, although sleep rumpled, shone with red highlights, and my normally hazel eyes had lightened to a color closer to green than brown.

  I finger combed my hair, messed up his neat arrangement of bath products in the glass block shower stall, and sniggered. All this neatness was really getting to me. The thought of Daniel going around straightening everything gave me a silly grin.

  I found Daniel sitting cross-legged in the middle of the living room floor with his hands resting palm up on his knees. If he breathed, I couldn’t tell. There were candles lit throughout the room, illuminating his beautiful skin and hair.

  Tendrils of the slight glow—Daniel’s light—waved around his body. All the muscles in his face and neck relaxed, and it made him appear so much younger.

  I wanted to run my fingers through the hair that fell across his forehead when he leaned forward and inhaled. The tattoo on his chest pulsated slightly in the soft light, and I wondered again what it meant. The simple, clean lines of a sword, hilt up, with an infinity symbol of some kind threaded around it in shades of black, gray, and white seemed so familiar to me, as though I had seen it somewhere before and should know what it meant.

  He didn’t seem too inclined to move anytime soon, so I wandered into the kitchen to find something to eat. The microwave displayed 12:45. Wow, talk about a power nap.

  The cabinets didn’t have any food or tea, but I did find a leftover pizza in the fridge and a half-empty bag of dark chocolate, peanut M&M’s buried in the cabinet above the stove behind some Tupperware.

  Someone cleared their throat behind me. I spun, bacon in one hand and a frying pan in the other. Daniel stood in the doorway looking around like he’d never seen his own kitchen before. So some of the doors were open, and maybe there were a few dishes on the counters. But it wasn’t that bad.

  “Can I help you find something?” The question sounded more like “Let me clean up the mess you’re making before I lose my mind.”

  “Don’t you have any tea?”

  He crossed to a tall, skinny cabinet to the right of the fridge and retrieved a metal tin and set it on the counter, then filled a teapot and set it on the stove to boil. A delicious aroma wafted from the tea leaves.

  “What were you planning to do with the bacon and pizza?” He moved through the room putting things away with practiced efficiency. I could tell he wanted to take over bacon-cooking duty, so I purposefully moved to block his view.

  “Make it better. Pizza is supposed to have meat on it. It’s not a giant, cooked salad.”

  The crinkle of plastic sounded. I turned around and glared. Scarfing the candy again and unrepentant while I had to stand around, deprived! He smiled, turning up his infuriatingly charming, surfer-boy grin.

  “It’s my candy this time.” He returned to the pantry and reached into the back of one of the shelves and produced a bag. It dangled from his long fingers—temptation in reach. Jelly beans. Good jelly beans. “Let me cook and you can have this.”

  I lurched for the bag, but he held it back out of my reach. The spatula was extended halfway before I thought too hard about it. I retreated to the small dinette table against the wall and settled in to watch him clean up my mess and take over cooking.

  “I didn’t think vampires ate food.” I picked up the requisite colors to make a root beer float and munched happily.

  “Of course we do. We’re alive, so we eat. You eat.” He didn’t look in my direction as he replied, instead focusing on the bacon.

  “I’m not a vampire. I’m vampire food. My dad was a vamp, true, but my mom was just a human groupie with a hard-on for fangs. When did you buy these?” I waved the bag of jelly beans around for emphasis.

  “The other morning. After I left your place.”

  “Ah, so you were going to bribe me with candy the next time you saw me?”

  He grinned, and I smiled back.

  “I thought the idea had merit.”

  “Mmmm.” I popped a few fruity bites of heaven in my mouth and chewed.

  He delivered a mug of tea, a tiny porcelain pitcher of milk, and a matching sugar bowl to the table, setting each down with precise movements. Life was good.

  I watched while he drained and chopped the bacon, sprinkled it on the pizza, and slid it into the oven. Damn, he was fine. His ass filled out the back of his shorts, and I resisted the urge to run across the room and bite it.

  “What did your father tell you about vampires?” He crossed his arms and leaned against the counter, and I had to look down at my bag of jelly beans so I wouldn’t stare. He made it awfully hard
to concentrate.

  “What does your tattoo mean?” The tea was as delicious as the aroma advertised, and I finished half the mug before I looked up to see him eyeballing me. Warmth spread through my muscles and I sighed, shifting around in the chair. “What is in this tea anyway? It tastes awfully familiar.”

  “It’s the same you have at your home. I left it for you the other morning. It has a few…special ingredients. Gives a pick-me-up. Answer my question, and I’ll answer yours.”

  “Truthfully and fully?” I had the feeling he’d answer my questions, but only so far as it suited him.

  “The truth as fully as I can.” He crossed his feet at the ankles.

  Huh, well it didn’t mean complete disclosure, but at least he wouldn’t hold back things unless forced to by some outside influence. Interesting. The plot thickened.

  “My father told me very little about vampires. I usually only saw him on my birthday when he would have me to his house for brunch. He never ate in front of me, and neither did any of his people. Solid food was not something we ever discussed.”

  “And…”

  “He told me most of the human myths are just that, myths. He told me I was a Chosen Childe, whatever that means, and I am meant to feed hungry vamps sexually and otherwise.” I picked out four or five fruity jelly beans and chewed them one at a time. “Uh, he told me there are several courts throughout the world, and most vamps live secretly among humans. There is more than one type of vamp, and usually they like to live with like vamps.”

  Daniel studied the floor until I shifted in my chair, tucking my heels up off the tile and wishing for socks. Whether from Daniel’s frigid air conditioning—which was weird for fall—or my nerves, I didn’t know, but my toes were seriously cold.

  Daniel cleared his throat. “That’s all he told you?” A quizzical frown creased his unlined forehead as I popped more sugary goodness into my mouth.

  “Pretty much. Unless you want to get into the fight we had on my birthday, and I don’t. I figured everything else out by exclusion. ‘Quid Pro Quo, Dr. Lecter.’”

  He looked confused by the expression and crossed his arms over his chest. The tattoo rippled nicely.

  “Don’t you ever get a stomachache from eating those?”

  “Ah-ah-ah! You answer my question first. Then I’ll answer yours.” The delicious smell of pizza wafted from the oven.

  “It is a symbol of the coven I serve. You have a similar marking.”

  He’d lost his mind. I didn’t do ink. “No, I don’t.”

  “Yes, you do. On your back.” He lowered his head, and his chin almost touched his chest.

  “If there was a big black tattoo on it, I’d know.”

  “It is on the small of your back. Just above your—”

  “Wait—do you mean my strawberry birthmark? It’s just a blob.” I had to stop him before he said butt or gluteus maximus or bottom or something equally ridiculous and embarrassing. “I don’t have a tramp stamp, thanks.”

  He shook his head slowly. “When is the last time you saw it?”

  Mmmkay, Captain Stubborn. T.T.B., the world’s first vampire/pit bull hybrid live and shirtless. “No, I never get a stomachache.” I popped a piña colada jelly bean in my mouth and wished it were the real thing. “Or cavities.”

  Daniel rolled his eyes and turned to the oven door, yanking it open to peer inside. He closed it again and looked at the clock on the back of the stove. “Five minutes or so should do it. And it’s not a blob. It’s a cup. A chalice if you want to get technical.”

  A bunch of questions burbled in my mind, but I couldn’t decide on what to ask. I had to make it count, had to make it something that would cover plenty of ground. I wondered if he’d enjoyed looking at my birthmark and my ass. I hoped he had. “A cup huh? How boring.”

  “Not boring. Important. Powerful.” He cocked an eyebrow at me, daring me to argue.

  I decided to change the subject. “Which myths are fake? About vampires, I mean.” I clarified just in case he thought I referred to unicorns or gnomes and tried to weasel out of the question. He would stick to the spirit of the question truthfully, I knew, but I didn’t trust him not to hedge. Hell, I did it, why wouldn’t he?

  “Most of us are unaffected by sunlight. We cannot be killed by typical wooden stakes, we are not dead, garlic is delicious, and blood is not the only way we gain sustenance.” He opened a drawer and retrieved a pot holder, took two plates down from the cupboard, then rooted in the fridge and produced bottled water. I would have killed for a Coke, but at least there was bacon.

  I accepted the water he offered me and twisted the top off. “Those aren’t the only myths. Religious objects, being invited in, transforming into mist or wolves, bats, changing humans by draining their blood, and obviously coffins are out.”

  T.T.B. rolled his eyes. “How many different types of people are there in the world? Many, right? Many times many, all affected by genetics, the region of the world they are from, nutrition…each pocket of humanity could almost be called a subspecies of ‘human,’ correct? Well, what makes you think vampires are any different? Just as you would be wise to take precautionary measures before venturing overseas to ensure you were not infected by a parasite the native population has grown immune to, vampires from different regions are immune to or affected by different things.”

  I covered my face with the T-shirt and groaned in frustration. “Well, OK, but any way you slice it, a human hit by a bus be it in Mexico or Pakistan is still a dead human.” When I dropped the cotton back down I froze. The nimbus of light I’d been seeing around him flared in white-blue whips and arcs. The twin points of his fangs depressed his lower lip. I swigged the water and wiped a stray drop off my lower lip with the back of my hand, keeping my attention on the floor a few feet in front of him.

  The rumble of a low growl rose, and I froze until it cut off. This was not the time to get all groiny. I ignored the urge to whip my borrowed clothes off and climb him like a deranged, sex-starved, spider monkey.

  He cleared his throat. “Yes, vampires are tougher to dispose of.”

  When I was brave enough to chance a peek at him, he was using a rotary cutter on our meal.

  He set a plate of pizza in front of me, and I took a big bite, burning the roof of my mouth. I savored it anyway. Whatever spices he had added along with the bacon transformed leftover delivery pizza into one of the most delicious things I had ever tasted.

  He sat opposite of me and began cutting his pizza into pieces and eating them with impeccable manners. It was funny and cute to watch. Here we were: him in gym shorts, and me in my massive oversize T-shirt and sweats, and he ate pizza like we were in an uber-fancy restaurant with a snooty waiter and five-hundred-dollar wine.

  Damn, he looked too relaxed and yet hoity-toity all at the same time. My freezing feet stretched toward the proximity of his knees under the table, searching for the warmth radiating from his body. I bet he’d jump pretty high if I stuck my poor Popsicle of a foot on him. “You didn’t answer me about the biting. Or the transforming.” I stuck my foot out cautiously and watched to see if he realized I had shifted in my seat. Nope. Quick as a rattler my foot connected with his bare knee, and he jerked in the chair and yipped.

  “Holy shi—why didn’t you tell me your feet were cold?” He stood up from the table and left the room at a jog.

  I laughed. “Don’t worry about it, T.T.B. Seeing you jump out of your chair like that was worth the cold toes.” I took another bite of pizza and tapped my foot on the floor. It had been a long time since I had shared a meal with anyone but Anna. It was kind of nice, even if I suspected he was buttering me up for something.

  He reappeared holding a pair of massive wooly socks and descended to one knee in front of me, chafing my right foot with his palms. I giggled and squirmed trying to get away; it tickled like crazy.

  “I think you’ve earned some tickle torture for freezing me, but I’m going to save it for later.” Daniel put a sock o
n my foot and looked at me from under his eyelashes until I brought my other leg around to the front of the chair. He scratched the sole of my foot once, just enough to make me jerk and sniggered before putting the other sock on. I wiggled my toes, grateful for the socks, even if they were so large the heel was halfway up the back of my ankle. It was an improvement over naked feet.

  We stared at each other until he cleared his throat and sat back down on his side of the table. I leaned in. “Thanks for the socks.”

  “You’re welcome.” He picked his utensils up. “Transforming. Most humans die if we try to change them into vampires. It’s a DNA thing. The answer to the transformation into an animal question is as I said before. Variations among a population.” He chewed a bite of pizza and looked at me from under the sweep of hair that kept falling into his eyes. “Are you going to answer my last question?”

  I cleared my nose with a hard exhale and picked up the bottle of water. I took another bite of pizza, chewed slowly, and closed my eyes when I swallowed. The leftover crust was suddenly fascinating.

  The urge to move somewhere—anywhere—overtook me. I made a beeline for the stove. “Want another piece?” The triangle of dough and toppings sagged from my fingertips.

  He took the offered slice and looked at me pointedly with one arched, blond brow. “Your mark. The chalice. When did you see it last?”

  “The night I lost my virginity. I make it a point not to look at it actually. I have enough reminders of my weirdness.” I practically shoved the pizza in my mouth and chewed like it was the most important thing I had ever done. Shame colored my cheeks and tears burned my eyes. Tommy’s face flashed across my mind, smiling and handsome in the hallway at school.

  “Who—”

  “Nope.” My voice barely even cracked. Point to me. “My turn. You said vampires are hard to kill, but you didn’t say impossible. How does one kill a down and dirty nosferatu?”

  “There is only one sure method. The body and head must be separated, destroyed completely to ash, and mixed with salt. Adding in iron is even better. Dumping it all into moving water is a good measure if you can manage it.”