“Anna, please.” He groaned and his eyes darkened with desire.
“What?” I looked at him, my voice husky. He pulled me up with another gentle tug on my hair, but instead of leaning up to kiss him, I removed my pajamas and straddled him again. I leaned forward and kissed him deeply, his hand holding me in place at the back of my head. I could tell he wanted to be the aggressor, and while that was the way I liked it just fine, he didn’t have the strength or the maneuverability that I had. My hand was barely paining me, and the pain from my stomach was just a memory.
I pulled away and positioned myself over him, lowering myself until he was sheathed deep inside me. I gasped at the pleasure, at the fullness of him inside me, where he belonged, and I began to move, slowly at first, teasingly.
He raised his hand, anchoring it in my hair and pulled backward with a gentle tug so that I leaned back, bracing my arms on the bed on either side of his legs. He raised his hips and went deeper than I thought possible and I moaned again, in pleasure, in ecstasy, my head falling back. My hips rocked, my passion getting away from me.
I love you. His voice was gentle in my thoughts, at odds with our now frenzied movements.
I love you, too. I answered him with a cry as my release shuddered through me. I collapsed on top of him, even with a mind dulled with pleasure managing to avoid his injured shoulder. We lay like that, shuddering and quivering against one another, my body on fire, his good arm thrown across my back, pressing me to him tightly.
“Thank you.” He murmured in my ear, and I smiled against his neck.
I sat up to look at him, still straddling him. “What are you thanking me for?” I place my hands on his chest below the bandage and rested there, feeling him still inside me.
“I’ve been wanting to do that since you came crashing in here yesterday.”
“Oh, it’s entirely my pleasure.” I purred, leaning forward again to kiss him.
“Not entirely.” He smiled against my lips, and I nipped at him. He rolled with me, and I protested. “Gareth, your shoulder…”
“I don’t care.” He growled as he lowered his head to my breast, and with a gasp of pleasure so intense I lost myself in him.
We came downstairs an hour later to find everyone gathered in the great room, Harley and Teagan cooking in the kitchen, Noah and Damien sitting in the club chairs by a cheery fire.
The two men stood when we walked in and came towards us, Noah pounding Gareth on the back, carefully avoiding his right shoulder.
“Glad you’re up and out, man. I was beginning to wonder if you had gone weak on me.” Noah smiled, the relief in his eyes at odds with the teasing tone of his voice.
“I had to recover so that I could make sure you and Teagan don’t kill one another. I don’t think Harley or Anna could contain you two for long.” He clapped a hand to Noah’s arm.
Noah cast a long glance at Teagan, who was studiously avoiding the conversation. Good for her.
Now came the hard part. Damien limped forward, and Gareth stared at him. I was worried he would toss Damien out on his injured leg, but Gareth had to feel some kind of gratefulness to him, didn’t he?
“Vampire.” Damien stuck his hand out, and it hovered, waiting for Gareth to take it or spurn it. Gareth stared at it for a moment, and I almost nudged him, but this was his fight to resolve, not mine. As far as I was concerned, Damien had my ever-lasting gratitude.
“Werewolf.” Gareth reached out a shook the offered hand, and I let go of a breath I didn’t know I was holding.
“I am forever indebted to you. I can’t thank you enough.” He said, his voice gruff, with a nod in my direction.
Damien gave a slight smile and released Gareth’s hand. “I had no choice. Despite my affliction, I’m really not that bad of a guy. Oh, and my name is Damien Stavros, not Werewolf.”
“You were working with Padraigan to find us, though.” Harley commentated from the kitchen. Her voice was cold, her back to us. Damien glanced at her, his eyes lingering. Hmm, that was interesting.
“I didn’t think I had a choice, until someone convinced me otherwise.” He replied with a glance back in my direction.
“So it’s that easy to turn coat?” Gareth asked as he moved into the living room and sat down, pulling me along with him. I gave him a glance full of sympathy. I knew Gareth wouldn’t let it go that easily.
Damien sighed and looked at the ceiling. I could tell he was struggling to not get angry, and I was slightly annoyed with Gareth and Harley. Why interrogate the poor man now, when he was still recuperating and had obviously helped us for no other reason than to help.
Because he might be still working for Padraigan and is infiltrating us.
Gareth was in my mind, reading my thoughts. He gave a good argument, but I countered, not looking at him.
He’s always known where the house was, Gareth. He could have turned us over to Padraigan last week if he truly wanted to.
Gareth pondered this as Damien made his slow way back to the chairs next to the fire. With a deep sigh he sat down, stretching his wounded leg out in front of him.
“You can believe what you want, Gareth, but as far as I’m concerned, this feud between us is over. It was ridiculous anyway, started for a stupid reason and continued over wounded pride. I just want to go back to what I was doing before I was pulled into this feud you have with Padraigan.” He placed a hand over his eyes, closing them as though he was too tired to keep talking.
“No one pulled you into anything.” Harley’s voice had warmed only slightly.
“Bullshit! Padraigan pulled me into it, knowing that I was waiting for my chance to destroy you myself.” His tone was a growl, low and ominous, and I wondered what kind of control he had over the other side of himself.
“Easy there, Furry Face.” Noah stood from where he had sat at the island, his stance defensive, and Damien growled at him.
“Can we please refrain from derogatory nicknames?” My voice was a pleading cry. “No more, please. I have had enough of anger and plotting and feuds to last me a lifetime.” I was tired of it all. I just wanted to lick our wounds and try to return to some semblance on normal.
“Anna is right. We still have the problem of Padraigan to deal with.” Gareth put his good arm around my shoulders and pulled me to his side. It calmed me immediately.
“No, you have the problem of Padraigan. I’m done with it. I have my own problems to deal with.” Damien replied, his voice returning to normal.
“Wrong. You think he’s just going to let you go after you betrayed him? He’ll be after you, too.” Noah pointed out, sitting back down and digging into the pancakes that Harley set down in front of him.
“I know that, but I’ll fight my own battles.”
“Broody loner, is that it?” Harley observed, barely looking at him as she addressed him.
“No…well a little. It’s my fight, not yours.” He gave her a slight smile, and considering her reaction to him so far, I was surprised to see her give it back to him.
“Does anyone know where he is?” I asked the room in general, but neither I nor Gareth had been in any shape to look for him, and I didn’t know how long Damien had been shut up in a room recuperating.
“He’s gone to ground, probably to heal and regroup.” Noah said around a mouth full of pancake. Teagan reached over and slapped him on the back of head, which earned her a glare. “Don’t talk with your mouth full. You ride me on my lack of manners?” She scoffed at him.
“Children please.” Harley yanked Teagan away from Noah and pulled her into the living room, where she flopped on the couch next to me while Harley folded gracefully to the floor, tucking her legs under her and spreading her peasant skirt around her so that no trace of leg showed.
“I think that we should all stick together. There is strength in numbers, and we’ve proven that we can all work together, despite our differences and feelings toward one another.” She continued, giving Gareth, Damien, Teagan, and Noah pointed gla
nces. I noticed her eyes didn’t stay on Damien very long, but he only had eyes for her. Nightingale syndrome? I knew that she had been his nurse while he was recuperating, and then I thought about how he had watched us the night of Imbolc. Had he liked what he had seen in Harley?
Gareth was saying something, so I brought my thoughts back into focus.
“Granted, we did work well together, and without previous planning. I think she’s right, Damien. We’ll benefit from sticking together.”
“I’ll think about it.” It was all we could hope for at the moment, and I wondered at his reticence. Why wouldn’t he want to work together to bring down a common foe?
“What is it you were doing before?” Harley asked, finally looking at him straight on. He gave her a puzzled glance.
“You said you just wanted to go back to what you were doing before.” She prompted with a nod.
“I… just want to go on living my life, that’s all.” He replied with a glance at me.
We all caught the hesitation in his voice, and knew he wasn’t being completely truthful. Only I knew what he was talking about, having been in the clearing that night with him and Padraigan. He was so much like Gareth in that respect, trying to find something to turn him back into a human.
You know something, don’t you?
I shook my head at him.
It’s for him to conceal or reveal, not me, Gareth.
I could see him nod, and it made me love him even more, if that were even possible. He never questioned me, never demanded to know what I was thinking, never pushed his way into my head other than to communicate.
“I think we all want to go on living our lives. Not one person here wants him hovering over us like a malignant cloud.” Harley said gently, turning away from him.
“Think about it, is all that I ask.” Gareth said to him and Damien nodded, casting his gaze to the outside, where the sun was shining and all thoughts of darkness could be banished in the bright light of day.
Epilogue
“Are you sure this is what you want?” Gareth looked at me, worry and fear in his eyes. I nodded. I was sure, but that didn’t mean that I wasn’t quivering in fear. My heart was racing, my adrenaline was up, my body shaking as though I was standing out in the cold winter woods with no jacket on, even though we were in the warm cocoon of our bedroom.
It had been two weeks since Padraigan disappeared, and he hadn’t shown his face once. Gareth had healed completely, and my brace came off just this morning. We had headed back to work, cautiously at first, but had gotten into a good groove in the past couple of days. Now that was going to change again.
The vampire that had guarded me at the warehouse had looked familiar to me for a reason. It had been Richard Clark, the head of my old division. He had blended in so easily at the lab, none of us even suspecting him, not even Gareth, but Richard had made himself scarce when Gareth had been around, so that Gareth couldn’t detect him, and he had taken a supply of the experimental sunscreen out of the lab to help him get to work every day. He wasn’t a vampire when he had come to work for Gareth, but Padraigan had recruited him with enticements and visions of eternal life and riches.
The stupid fool had kept a log of sorts, chronicling all this. Gareth had found it in his desk when he didn’t show up to work for a week after the warehouse incident, and he was reported missing by his mother. Needless to say, that was evidence the cops didn’t find.
Gareth was talking, and it brought me back to our present discussion.
“Anna, it’s not reversible, and it’s painful. I won’t leave your side, not for a minute, but the transition…it’s indescribable. I’m not sure I can do this.” He turned away, but I grabbed his arm and made him turn back to me.
“Gareth, I don’t know about you, but it’s still vividly fresh in my mind how I felt when I thought you were gone, and I don’t want to feel that way again. I don’t want to go through life with the thought always at the back of my mind that I will leave you one day against my will. The older I get, the harder this is going to be and I can’t take that. Please.” I begged, all my pride laid aside.
“But we’re still working on a cure…” He stopped talking as I shook my head.
“Even if we’re close, which we’re not, it could be years before it would be viable, and I won’t risk your life to test it. Then, if it worked the way we think it could, you’d be thirty-three and I could be over fifty, or even older. No way.”
“You’d be a well loved and envied fifty years old, though.”
He was trying to make jokes?
“Gareth, this is what I want.” I tried another tack. “Don’t you want to be with me?” I wheedled.
He saw through that strategy immediately and gave me a dry look.
“You know very well how I feel about that. My life is nothing without you, which-” he held up a hand to stop my retort, “I know seems contradictory, but I would never wish this life on anyone.”
“You’re not wishing it on me, I’m asking for it.” I walked over and laid a hand on his cheek, and he brought a hand up to cover mine. “I would walk through the fires of hell for you, Gareth.” I said softly.
“It will feel like it, anyway.”
“Then I’ll recover. It’s what I want.”
“I can’t explain it to you how it is to be a slave to the thirst, to only being able to move freely at night, to know you can’t have children.”
“I can argue with you that if you wanted children, then its best that we change me now, because if we wait for a cure and I’m fifty when that happens, you’re not getting children. But, if I’m changed now, and we find a cure thirty years from now, poof, change me back and I am at prime child bearing age.”
“You’re going to have an argument for every reason I give you, aren’t you?”
I gave him a smile through chattering teeth.
“Anna, I don’t know that I can bear to see you go through it.” He turned away from me again, but this time I let him go. I knew it was hard on him, and it hurt me to think that I was causing him to do something he would never have done to another person, let alone me. I would have the same issues if the tables were turned.
“Will I be different? Will I turn into a rabid animal?”
He thought about it for a moment, and it amazed me that I had not thought about it sooner. It still wasn’t enough to change my mind.
“No, you won’t be different. I wasn’t any different, personality wise, but the thirst…it’s very overwhelming, and if you’re not guided correctly, it would be easy to lose control.”
“But I will be guided, by the best teacher I could ask for. And have you ever seen me when I need chocolate? I destroy whole houses trying to find just a small piece of Godiva, so if I’m a slave to the thirst, it won’t be much different than being a slave to chocolate.”
Now I was trying to make jokes.
“It’s not the same.”
“How do you know? You’ve never craved Godiva chocolate before.”
The flippant remarks were working; I was calming down. So was he. He was able to smile at my remark. I moved to him and wrapped my arms around him from behind, pressing my cheek to his back. He grasped my arms and pulled me in front of him, enfolding me in his arms and pressing my head to his chest.
“Let me just hold you for awhile. If I’m going to rob you of your soft curves and warm skin, at least let me enjoy it for a while longer.”
“Have at it.”
We stood that way for what seemed like ages, Gareth running his hands all over me, arousing me to a fever pitch.
When neither one of us could take it anymore, he picked me up and carried me to the bed and spent the next few hours making slow, sweet love to me. He worshipped me, murmuring endearments in English and Gaelic, his cool breath raising goose bumps that his mouth quickly banished.
At one point I realized this would be the last time that I would touch him as a living, breathing human and instead of it frightening me witles
s, I felt myself letting go, like I was saying goodbye to what I was and welcoming what I would become.
After one last trip to heaven, he laid full length on top of me, his head buried in the crook of my neck. Idly I dragged my nails gently across his back, running them tenderly on the last remaining scar on his shoulder, which would be completely gone in a few days.
“Are you going to miss my warm skin that much?”
He raised his head and looked at me, reaching up to brush hair off my forehead. He searched my eyes for the longest time, and although I could look into his mind to see what he was thinking, I didn’t want to intrude. I could only be content to imagine what he was thinking. I met his gaze levelly, and he shook his head.
“No, it’s not your skin that I love. It’s what’s inside you that I love and nothing could change that. And I guess in the end, I’m man enough to admit that I can’t let you go. I need to be with you, next to you for as long as we’re meant to be on this earth. I could only hope it’s an eternity.”
“An eternity then.” I whispered.
Nodding, he bent his head again to the crook of my neck, and I shut my eyes and held on.
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