The trust was magic—almost euphoric—as if I could fall asleep and leave my body open to anything he might want from it. The world around me faded to a soft echo, like being lost in the perfectly tuned note of a song I’d never heard. I could float away, were it not for David grounding me, keeping me here.
It sickened me to think it, but I was excited to finally know what it felt like to be his victim: a human that could nourish him, but loved enough to be left alive. I could feel the lick of death, feel the peace others must do when they finally give over to it—how nothing in the world really mattered anymore. In a funny way, it all just seemed kind of silly to worry about the things we did.
Slowly, David drew away, leaving a cool moist patch on my wrist, and smiled down at me. A stain of crimson bled from his lips in rivulets, seeping out over his perfect smile. “Are you okay, my love?”
My chest and shoulders lifted with deep breaths, guiding my soul back to the present. “I might actually have found Heaven on Earth.”
David studied my face for a second then cupped the back of my head and rolled me up, slipping in behind me, his arms looping my shoulders like the wings of a swan. “I think you’re delusional.”
I giggled quietly, resting my feet beside his, our knees bent, committing the feel of his bare chest on my slippery, rain-soaked spine to memory. If I ignored the breeze making my wet bra cold, I could actually pretend we really were naked together. “Thank you, David.”
“For what?”
For letting me have my own way; for wanting it and not denying that he did; for being more than just an ordinary boy—for… “For being real.” I tucked my brow against his ear and slowly tickled the back of his wrist, imagining his blood in my mouth.
“You don’t have to imagine it, Ara,” he said, kissing just above my eye. “If you want it, you can have it.”
“Really?” I turned slightly to look back at him.
He lifted his wrist and shut his eyes tight as he bit into the skin, turning me straight in his arms again as he brought his bloody wrist around to my mouth, balancing the liquid there carefully.
Without hesitation, I scooped up the runaway drops with my tongue, wrapping my lips around the warmth of sweet orange-chocolate.
“Describe it to me,” he whispered into my hair. “In your thoughts.”
I swirled it around on my tongue and let it slide down my throat and into my stomach, like the first hot cocoa of winter: smooth and rich, warm. Like liquid made of satin ribbons. You taste like… like…
“Okay.” He slid his index finger into my mouth, gently forcing it away from his wrist. “That’s enough, my love. I’m not sure what it’ll do to you.”
Through the whir of the world spinning around me, I turned my head and looked up into David’s eyes, filling with that amazing, almost transparent shade of green. But it was brighter than ever before, like Dorothy’s Emerald City exploding in the gaze of a vampire.
“David, I think I can see your soul.”
He closed his eyes around a smile, laughing softly to himself. “I’d say you’ve lost your mind, but that was just so damn sweet I have to let myself believe it.”
I licked my teeth, tasting his blood again. “Mm. No, you’re the only thing that’s sweet around here.”
“I am, huh?” He looked at my lips, moving slowly onto his knees in front of me. “Let me taste it.”
I opened my mouth for David’s tongue, holding my breath as it skimmed across mine to push it away from the sharp edges of his fangs. Warm sweet butter and salty copper mixed in our kiss, and it almost felt like David and I were thinking the same thing. Thinking how amazing it was to taste the essence of him and me, of everything that made us exist, broken down to two flavors between our lips; tangible, real.
My body sung with ideas and desires that had been too long refused.
“I know,” David whispered into my mouth.
“Know what?” I angled my face to the sky, lying back on my elbows as his soft kisses travelled down my neck, over each and every one of the tiny scars there.
“I know how you feel.”
I moaned, the sound ending in a half gasp as his lips circled my navel. “Mm. I don’t think you do.”
He laughed, my wet skin making the path of his breath obvious. I parted my knees and let him kiss my inner thigh, feeling his face brush against my undies.
“What are you doing down there, David?”
“I want to know every inch of your body by only the memory of my lips.”
My eyes flung open as he kissed fabric, folding it down over my hipbone a little.
“Don’t worry. I won’t go there—today,” David said, bringing my ankle over his hip as he slid up my body and drank the rain from the curve of my waist to my neck.
I buried my fingers in his wet hair. “David?”
“Yes, my love?”
“I want to feel you pressed against me.”
“I know you do,” he said, and when I hooked my fingers just under his elbows and tugged him upward, feeling his bare chest and the weight of him on top of my body for the first time, it was like a hunger finally fed; a wave finally meeting a rock, dissolving into spray. For everything else in the world that hurt, in this moment I finally found the reason why we live. I wanted to tear away the wet remains of fabric between us and feel him inside of me.
He laughed breathily into the flesh just below my ear. “Ara, I can’t think straight when you think that way.”
“Don’t then. When you think straight, you deny me what I want.”
He stopped and pushed up slowly, lifting his chest away from mine.
I stared him down, beads of water blinding me, the rain pouring into our quiet little world as if it had no care for the fact that our forever was limited.
“I know what you’re doing,” I said. “I know you’re about to tell me we have to stop.”
“I have good reason for that.” He rose onto his knees, keeping his hands beside my shoulders, his body forming a shelter over mine.
“What reason?”
David nodded to the now dark sky. “That rain’s gonna get heavier any minute.”
“No. This sucks! You never give me my own way.”
“That, my love, is because your own way involves me taking something from you I’m not willing to take.”
“My virginity?”
A cheeky grin spread across his face, golden under the gray sky. “Yes.”
“Oh, my holy freakin’ God. You have got to be kidding me!”
“Sorry. I’m not.”
With the cold conclusiveness of reason, the small split in my wrist started stinging. “Why? Is my virginity like kryptonite or something?”
“No. Even better.” He dropped a quick kiss on my mouth. “It’s sacred.”
“Sacred?” My arched brow thickened the sarcasm.
He closed his lips into a thin smile. “Yes, my love. You will always remember your first. If you choose not to come with me, one day you will belong to someone else, and you’ll want to be pure—untainted—for him. If I take you now, you can never go back. I would hate for you to regret any of our interactions one day.”
“David. This is the new world. It doesn’t work like that now.”
“That may be so, but it still works that way for me.” His wide, sincere eyes looked right into mine, his voice intense with conviction. “In my society, virginity is a virtue to be praised and cherished, not something girls give away without reflection or care.”
“But—”
“Ara, please? It’s what I want for you.” His sudden harsh tone forced me into silence. “Sometimes you can think too much with your heart and not enough with your head. I have to be the adult here. I have to protect you from yourself; from your human nature.”
“I can take care of—”
“It’s my job to protect you,” he scolded, softening when I reacted. “Even if it means I’m falling apart.”
“Fine.”
“I�
�m sorry, Ara.”
“I said it’s fine.” I looked at the trees so he wouldn’t see the tears of rejection coating my eyes.
“Come on then.” He jumped back and helped me to my feet, making the world spin with the speed he lifted me. “You okay?”
I nodded.
“Then let’s get you home before you catch a cold.”
“No.” I threw my arms around his ribs and cupped my wrist, forming a chain of unyielding force. “We’re staying a little longer today.”
“Is that so? And…”—he tried to lift my chin; I held fast, refusing to even look at him—“what, exactly, are you going to do if I decide to force you?”
“You won’t.”
“Hm, you’re so sure of yourself,” he said, but I heard the smile in his tone, and the fact that he did nothing else except for tangle his fingertips in my hair proved I was right.
My bones turned to rubber inside my flesh then, and though the summer rain continued, I felt only warmth. His blood had awakened me like a powerful drug, and mine had filled his veins, giving him life, fuelling his movements. There was no fear, no weight to the truth right now.
One day, he’d be gone, and my arms would fall empty to my sides; the need for his embrace just a gaping hole, his smile just a memory fading, and his lips never more a kiss that belonged to me. But I could exist eternally right now, living forever in this one moment with my everlasting knight because, for today, there was no tomorrow.
23
“Ara-Rose?” Vicki called from downstairs.
“Yeah?” I answered quickly so she wouldn’t come up and spot my vampire pillow.
“Emily’s on the phone,” she said.
“Ergh! Why’d she call the home line?” I said to myself. “I have a mobile.”
“She was probably hoping your dad would answer,” David said, his voice a gentle hum against my ear through his bare chest.
“If that’s the case, she needs therapy.”
“Good, then you could go together.”
I slapped his arm; he pretended to be hurt.
“Ara-Rose! Now!”
“Coming,” I called.
David grabbed my hand as I fell away from his arms, making me want to lie against his skin again. “Be quick. It’s cold here without you.”
“I will,” I said, closing my door. Since David shut my curtains when he came through my window earlier, I didn’t notice the gray day until I stepped into the cool air of the hallway. As usual, the windows all around the house were open and the soft lemon scent of Vicki’s bathroom cleaner mixed with the moist weight of freshly cut grass, drying the back of my throat as I drew a deep breath. I tucked my hands under my arms, wishing I’d put on a sweater to come down.
“Morning, Dad.”
He smiled over his newspaper. “Morning, honey.”
“Any good news?” I hurried past him to the phone on the wall.
“No news is good news,” he moaned, lowering his nose into the paper again.
I took the phone from Vicki, shaking my head affectionately at Dad. “Hey, Em.”
“Hey, Ara. What are you two doing today?”
By ‘you two’ I assumed she was adding David to me. “Lazing around. Why?”
“Everyone’s going bowling tonight. You guys wanna come?”
“Um—” Bowling versus bed with David. I leaned against the wall. “Maybe. What time?”
“About six.”
“Oh okay, well, yeah. I’d say we will, but I’ll have to check with David.”
“When will you see him?”
“When I hang up the phone.” I grinned, watching Vicki. She had no clue what I was talking about, thank God.
“Oh my gosh, Ara. You rebel. Did he stay last night?”
“No, no. Nothing like that. Just… early,” I hinted, hoping she’d catch my drift.
“Oh. Okay. So, like, sneak-through-the-window sort of thing?”
“You got it.” I grinned. Vicki looked at me with a raised brow. “So, six then?”
“Yep.”
“Okay, see you then.”
“See ya.”
The phone clinked, and suddenly I was back in the kitchen with my parents.
“What did Emily want?” Vicki asked.
“They’re going bowling tonight.”
“Are you and David going?”
“Yeah, probably. I’ll have to check if he wants to, but I’d say he will.” I shrugged.
“What time is David coming over today?”
“Don’t know. But I’m going to get some more sleep before he does.”
“Sleep? It’s nine in the morning, Ara,” Vicki stated.
“I’m a teenager,” I offered. “Aren’t we supposed to hibernate on weekends?”
She issued a smile that said she was pleased with herself. I guess she wanted this for so long now that she’d let me do anything, as long as it was deemed ‘normal’ by the greater population. Sleeping beside a vampire might sit outside that realm, though.
As I headed back up to my room, the soft strumming of a guitar filled the air, but when I pushed my door open, expecting to see the outline of a vampire, my smile dropped within the bright yellow light of morning shining through my open curtains onto my empty bed. My eyes darted quickly to the iPod in its dock with a song playing at a volume my dad would approve of, and as I watched the rain spatter on the glass of my window, blurring the outside world, I listened to the words, gathering that my vampire meant them as a musical sticky-note saying, My love, I shall return soon.
Not that that’s what the words were, but that’s how David would say it.
With the absence of an all-hearing vampire in my room, I took a moment to be human, then jumped into the enveloping heat of the shower and washed my hair quickly, wrapping the towel around my chest as I hopped out. But when I stepped back into my room, a sudden breeze swept through my window and knocked all the papers off my desk.
“Damn it, David,” I said to myself, squatting down to pick them up. I was sure that window was closed a second ago.
“It was. I opened it.”
“Agh! David!” My heart jumped to its feet and punched my chest. I looked up from my precarious squat on the ground to the vampire perched on the windowsill, like a pterodactyl. “You scared the living bejeezus out of me.”
“Sorry.”
“What are you doing just sitting there with the window open?” I stood up, tapping the pages to force them into a neat stack. “You ruined my homework pile. Now I have to reorder these before I hand them in to Dad tomorrow.”
“I’ll do it for you.” He shrugged, obviously in no hurry to remove himself from the path of the whipping breeze.
I looked at him suspiciously. “Are you hiding something?”
He shook his head, one eye narrowing slightly as he looked over my wet, towel-covered body. “I’m just admiring the view.”
“You better mean the stunning panoramic view of the hills and my backyard, David Knight.” I dumped my disordered papers on my desk and took a step back.
“Nope. I meant my beautiful, almost-naked girlfriend.” He jumped down from the ledge, slowly pushing the window closed behind him. “So, bowling?”
“That’s the plan,” I said, inhaling the fresh cologne wafting off this suave guy as he stepped in front of me, hair all wet and brushed back, for once, showing his forehead. He looked more like a man today in that black hoodie and gray V-neck shirt than he ever had before. It almost made me sad that he’d never grow older than nineteen.
“Do you actually want to go bowling?” I added.
“As long as I’m with you, I will do anything.” He smiled down at me, his eyes shrinking with warmth. “But you shouldn’t stand in front of me like this, my love. You make me think inappropriate things.”
“Oh. Sorry. So”—I took a wide step back—“are you any good at bowling?”
“You forget”—he used a louder voice to call out as I disappeared into my wardrobe—“I lived t
hrough the fifties. Bowling was huge then.”
“Doesn’t mean you’re any good at it,” I stated, slipping my emerald-green sweater over my head.
“True. It’s more like I have to try to be bad. I’m a little too precise. I’ve also been known to break a pin or two.”
I turned around, buttoning my jeans, and met cheek-to-chest with the rain-dotted fabric of David’s hoodie. “Hey! How did you even know I was finished getting dressed in here? I could’ve been naked.”
He tapped his temple, grinning.
Hmpf! “Is there any point in me even dressing in a different room, with you and your mind-reading invading my privacy?”
“Etiquette?” He shrugged. Then, as his eyes traced over the rounded neckline of my sweater, his finger copied. “I like this.”
I closed my eyes. “I like you touching me like that.”
“So.” His touch came away, his somewhat urgent tone forcing my eyes open. “Are you up for a little outing today?”
“I can’t. I have a few notes and references to finish on my paper.”
“Which paper?” He followed me out of the wardrobe.
“The mythology one—on vampires,” I teased.
“The subject I told you not to do?”
“Yup.”
David smiled, nodding toward my now neatly reordered pile of papers. “Or do you mean the report I just finished for you? The one on angels.”
“Angels?” I ran over to my desk and flicked through the pages. “No! I spent hours working on that, David!”
“I know. And it was a great report. But I told you not to do vampires.” He shrugged. “You didn’t listen.”
“But, why?” I spun around and leaned on the desk. “What does it matter?”
“Because you know things you shouldn’t, and if you happen to publish any minor detail or fact, and my Set were to somehow find out, I could be punished, and you…” His words trailed off.
“I what?”
“You could be killed. It’s not worth the risk.”
“Killed?”
“Shh.” He rested a finger to his lip. “Your dad doesn’t know I’m here, remember? Look, I didn’t want to tell you that because I didn’t want you to worry. I just hoped you’d listen to me—for once.”
Dark Secrets Box Set Page 43