Well, when he puts it like that, I can’t dispute it. Dammit. “It stopped working on me. Is it because someone more suitable to your taste was in the room? Kind of like natural selection?”
How is this a conversation? In what world are people jilted because a vampire doesn’t want to suck their blood?
I think I need therapy.
“There is not a single living being on the planet who I want more than you. In all ways. The minute you touched the water in the lake, you awoke to your destiny and me. At that moment, you were resistant to my charms. Deciding to be with me must be purely your choice, unswayed by my compulsion.”
Chapter Ten
I’m as confused as a person who looks up Watermelon Sugar in the Urban Dictionary. The pros and cons in my head weeble wobble like a teeter-totter.
Instant love.
The sheer notion sets my teeth on edge. Hell, I don’t even want to read a romance novel where the couple jumps ass over elbows upon meeting. Yet, here I am living it in Technicolor.
What eighteen-year-old woman doesn’t want a sin-personified vampire to go all swoony? I mean Vampire Diaries, Twilight, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, True Blood, Lucifer. I think we all can agree we’d offer vampy Ian Somerhalder our necks on any day ending in Y. Elon Ford makes Ian look like a poop emoji. A cute smiling pile of shit.
It’s a simple kiss. One meshing of lips, maybe a bit of tongue, and BAM his intensity vanishes, allowing us to unlock the mystery of what happened at the lake without my friends wanting to hump his leg. I can ignore how it hitches my wagon to an undead masterpiece worthy of display in the Louvre.
“So we kiss. They,” I point to the door, “stop trying to get biblical with you. We go back out there and you explain what the hell happened in the forest. Then what? Am I your concubine or feed bag with benefits? I mean, I’m young, but I want a life someday. And I don’t see fat grandbabies in the offering with you. You’re a carnivorous cannibal whose heart doesn’t beat. Is it possible for you to love?” My words send him recoiling from the invisible sucker punch.
I swear Cupid shoots an arrow in my brain with a microchip of data on its barbed tip, downloading the 411 on all things Elon Ford. And makes me eat my words.
Elon is more than the monster. He is very much capable of love and the second my head ponders walking away from him, pain slices through my heart. I can’t breathe. My hand rubs at my chest, but the oxygen stealing agony won’t subside.
He recovers from my verbal assault, resuming his spot between my thighs. “Kiss or not, I’m yours. You will never be my concubine or feed bag. I’m at your mercy. Mates, fate, redemption—and yes, even love—were all myths I figured our kind spread to make living an eternity soulless easier. Until you she-handled me when you leapt out of that lake and proved me wrong.”
His hands settle on where my hips bend. “I’ve worked tirelessly for over a century to be more than the monster who ate my soul. A cannibal eats their own kind. I stopped being human the day my heart stopped beating. If you think this is too fast, I’ll wait. We’ll wait, but now I’ve found you, I refuse to let go.”
“Sooooo, you’ll love me until the end of my life, even if I decide to…” My throat burns, the probable denial chokes me.
His finger presses on my lips. Those ice blue eyes hold mine. “Nicole, I won’t merely love you until the end of your life. I’ll love you until the end of mine. Whether you’ll have me or not, I’m yours.”
Ah fuck. He had to go there.
My hands cup his face. I revel in the abrasion of his stubble under my sweeping thumbs. Without a care for what it means, I touch my lips to his. A jolt of static zings along my bottom lip, but not in a painful way. It’s a warm tingle running down my chin, creating a Tesla coil around my heart with thick bolts of electricity.
His body hardens to a statue. Eyes open wide, he hovers. A deep inhale expands his chest and a smile tilts his full lips. With a flash of speed, he grabs the nape of my neck, slamming his lips to mine. I gasp over the rising hotness of his flesh and trade my hold on his face for a grip on his wrists. He uses my intake of air to sweep his tongue inside as he nestles himself between my legs.
His pulse pounds under the grip of my fingers. His warmth and rapid breaths against my chest pebble my nipples. Thumbs tracing my cheekbones, he feasts on my mouth. I can’t get close enough. Needing more I hang my calves on his hips, locking my feet behind his back. Our cores align and I moan as every long inch of him feeds my craving. My heart beats so hard I swear it’ll explode. The swirling in my belly rockets lower, sparking between my legs. His body is solid and all around me. A nip of fang on my tongue knocks me off my wanton cloud.
I fall back. His eyes open and red swallows the icy blue. A hard ridge thickens where his brows were and bumps split his eyes along his nose. Severe edges protrude along his cheekbones. White sharp fangs gleam in the overhead light with his rough breaths.
This is the monster.
Hand shaking, I reach for his face. He turns, angling from my touch. “No, please,” I beg. His shoulders slump. With my thumb and index finger I turn him toward me, finding his eyes squeezed shut. With trembling fingers, I study the morphed lines of his beast.
My light touch traces the wide brim overhanging where his brows were, the gory crumpled skin along the narrow column of his nose, and the cutting high cheekbones. The line knifes through the pad of my thumb with the precision of a paper cut. I hiss from the burn, pulling back to inspect the damage. A thin line of blood beads on my flesh. I move to lick it off, but quicker than my eyes process my hand is in his. His red eyes darken as a growl rumbles his chest.
The hair on my arms rises and my heart speeds. Akin to staring into the eyes of a hungry lion my flight instinct screams, “Run!” warring with my heart ordering me to stay. Slowly he brings it to his mouth. His tongue on my skin stills my breath. Eyes rolled back, my head lolls to the side.
A tiny kiss to the now healed cut, he holds my palm to his chest. Euphoria drunk, I force open my heavy lids. “I haven’t drunk human blood since the day I turned. Our kiss sparked life in my dead body. Warmth I’d forgotten felt so good. It’s the first step toward being fully mated. The second step is tasting your blood. More than a simple drop. The last is something we’re not going to do in this bathroom with a room full of people outside the door. I won’t feed from you. The letting will be solely for pleasure. Your blood mingles with mine, basically tattooing your name on my forehead. Any other supernaturals I encounter will know I’m taken, especially vampires. It will also halt my effect on other people. Unless I will it, my compulsion won’t work. Our coupling will officially restart my heart, but drinking from you works like a defibrillator jolting it to half-beating.”
“Hmm,” I hum. “Coupling? Is that what all the cool vampires are calling sex?”
His low chuckle thrums through me. “Yes, but not until you’re ready.”
“Will it change me? ‘Cause after the supercharge at the lake—which I don’t understand, by the way—I’m thinking I don’t want any further body modifications right now.”
“No. Certain conditions must be in place to turn you. Drinking from my fated silences the beast inside me. It erases the bloodlust and unless I will it, my face will never change again. My humanity lives in my heart. You set it free, overriding the will of the beast.”
“So you get to keep all the monstery goodness without all the nasty side effects?”
He chuckles, low and husky. The sound wriggles from my sternum to my core. “Yes,” he nods, “I become the loyal Viking warrior. I’ll explain it all, but right now your friends are minutes from breaking down the door because you lessened my ability with the touch of your soft lips. Discovering what you mean to me veered me from why I was waiting for you in the woods. I feel your mind whirling. The next step can wait. We hindered my ability enough to contain the people in the other room.”
From the moment our lips met, a hot itching fire flared to life inside me. Like ant
s crawling under my skin. A jittery kid the night before a trip to Disney, energy staggering my breaths and pounding my chest. I want his teeth. In my mind’s eye I can already feel them puncturing the thin skin of my neck, like taking the first bite of a ripe, delicious peach.
Caleb twisted my emotions, kept me locked in a charm where my world revolved around a rosy shade of him. This is not the same. My mind is intent with knowing clarity. A wisdom far beyond my eighteen years. Everything about him heightens my awareness. Where Caleb’s influence felt like a shackle on my ankle, this man’s ardor and need lights up my insides like a sunbeam through a stormy sky.
Christ on a scooter, he’s turned me into a waxing poetic sot of super-amped hormones. Might as well write naïve virgin prone to bouts of sickening swoonage on a sandwich board and strap it to my chest.
I’m not a sexual savant but I’m not an ignorant noob either. While I haven’t ventured into the land of the full horizontal dance, I recognize want. Not the manufactured lust Caleb pushed on me. The ‘ooh he’s yummy and I want to ride him off into the sunset’ core rush where rubbing one out is the only path to easement.
This symbiotic vibrancy between us is lunacy. Like a straitjacket, alternate universe, I’m actually locked in an insane asylum and this is my wicked illusion crazy. If I’m stuck in a make-believe world, might as well enjoy the delusion, right?
I grab his belt loops, leveraging him forward. Without the influence of his lures, the scent of him wafts over me. Spicy with a hint of campfire smoke. This is him and it’s better than the fresh cut grass or out of the oven cookies. My need for him steadies my hands. Fingers splayed, I inch up his body. His stretched tight tee is soft under my palms. Slowly, my thumbs notch over all six of his abs. Bent and crawling, my fingers walk over his hard pecs, tapping along the slight rise of his trapeziums into the short strands at the back of his neck.
“Kiss me,” I demand, dragging him to my lips.
My ever-questioning brain chalked up our first kiss to kismet. Processed it as one of many wonders of the world and filed it away. Nothing is ever as spectacular as that first meeting of mouths. The toe-curling, tummy-flipping, firework-inducing kiss erasing any other. We’re talking inhibition lowering, cling to him like a spider monkey, and live in the feel of his lips sweeping over yours. Romance novels, movies, fairy tales all spell it out for you, but the second meeting of lips never holds a candle to the first spark.
Bah! Bullshit! I’m calling it in right now. I will never get enough of this man’s mouth exploring mine. The succulent taste of mint on his tongue as he sweeps it inside. His soft pliable lips moving in perfect sync. He takes a deep taste, draws back, flicking slowly along my bottom lip before succumbing to the hunger once again. Lightning sparks down my spine, rushes between my legs, bounces off my toes, and ricochets to set up camp in my core. Like him, it’s otherworldly.
My hands fist in his hair, dragging him away from my mouth. All my newly formed muscles tense against the urge to dive back in. Nostrils wide with heaved restrained breaths, I direct him to my neck. “Never thought I’d say this without venom but bite me, Elon.”
A nervous giggle escapes, but he’s not laughing at my failed attempt at humor. Instead the flat of his tongue traces my vein. I swear the fucker pops up and does a full-on dance routine for him to the beat of my racing heart.
My jugular vein is a prancing whore. Like she’s all mind your own, pick me, lick me, bite me, suck me dry. Yeah, I’m kind of right there with her. Don’t judge me or my body parts.
A low animalistic groaning growl vibrates my flesh. The pure neediness of it raises every baby hair I possess. We’re talking hair growing on recently shaved legs full-on twitch. I hold him tighter. His fingers dig into the meat of my thighs where hip becomes ass. The licking stops, I feel a tiny pinch and then ecstasy’s fire, hotter than the burning Vegas sun on the bleached-out desert sand, incinerates my panties. The orgasm hits me faster than a virgin boy getting laid on prom night. Instantaneous. My lower stomach flinches a microsecond before I detonate.
It’s embarrassing, but oh my goddess, who the hell cares ‘cause DAAAAMMMNNN! Minutes, hours, days, eons could’ve passed, but far too soon he withdraws his fangs and returns to licking. Suggesting we test his flat tongue approach a tad lower parades through my gray matter in full marching band on meth fashion. My vagina throws out equations, which is ironic in its duality.
One, we all know body parts don’t converse and two, math is hard. Yet my womanly epicenter is putting the formula together better than my mash potato brain right now. If him snacking on my neck sends me bippity-boppity, holy shitting over the Niagara Falls of wetness, and we incorporate the thick erection I felt against my leg, while factoring in those woman dumbing kisses and the whole of Elon Ford, it sums to a satiated climax-induced coma. I’m totally on board with exploring the possibility. Alas, my sister banging down the door yanks me out of my orgasmic postulations.
“Go calm her down while I clean up.” Sultry and seductive, his low vibrato ghosts the shell of my ear.
“Clean up?” I ask, hearing the metal of his zipper. Of course, I look, duh. His black jeans camouflage it well, but under the harsh bathroom light I can see the large wet spot darkening the fabric.
Tanned skin, manscaped hair. Flesh, flesh, flesh. His fly hangs open. I’m seconds from an eyeful of the goods. The pinch of my teeth gnawing on the corner of my bottom lips grows painful.
BANG, BANG, BANG.
“Nicole Freya Nodens, if you aren’t out of there in two seconds, Parker will breakdown the door,” Ranissa warns.
“Yeah, yeah. Calm your tits,” I huff.
Elon turns, taking away the peep show, so I might as well get out now before I do something stupid like offer to lick him clean. Heaving a sigh, I yank open the door and face the litany of stares ranging from sisterly worry to grab the pitchforks.
Chapter Eleven
Thirty minutes later, I’m in the hot-seated witness chair in the center of the room. I asked Elon to hang in the bathroom until the temperature of the group dropped from DEFCON 1. My diffusion of anger began with the simplest of tonight’s events. The frat party with Zeek the Meek. Ranissa is all ears, offering bad date support with a steaming cup of marshmallow-heavy hot chocolate.
Our dad is a card-carrying member of the chocolate cures life’s woes camp. As a single dad, he used television shows to navigate the murky waters of raising two girls on his own. We grew up understanding Dad couldn’t handle any issue lasting longer than thirty minutes. If Danny Tanner can Full House it in a half an hour so could Dad.
Lex studies me. Head tilting and brow furrowing, as though he’s analyzing an odd piece of art he isn’t sure he likes. The sporadic nose crinkles when he breathes is throwing me. Ignoring the way his observation offends, he leans toward Geri. “Does she smell?”
“Hey!” I shout, secretly sniffing myself, wondering if the lake slicked me with Ode de Pond Scum.
Geri shakes her head. “He’s not saying you’re stanky. When we met your earthy aroma was faint, but now it’s rolling and strong.”
“Great, so I reek of dirt or funky weed?” I scoff.
“More like the air before a storm.” She taps her chin, thinking about what she wants to say. “You know when a thunderstorm closes in you smell the electricity and danger? The sky rolls black, zipping with hair-raising warning. The hint of smoke you pick up before a fire blazes to life. It was all there before, but not enough to worry about. Now,” she holds up her arm showing me the tiny hairs standing on end, “You’re gonna get your ass kicked is pumping out of your pores.”
“Oh,” I say, diverting my eyes because what the hell do you say to that?
“No, I didn’t mean the emergence of her true essence,” Lex snaps. “She stinks of bloodsucker.” His voice deepens, matching the snarl on his face. The lights overhead flicker as purple arcs snap in bolts around his naturally yellow aura. Geri lays a hand on his thigh and the vibrant color fades. I’m e
ntranced, eyeing the changing rainbow around him while his words weave into my brain.
“As she should, sorcerer. I’d expect nothing less of my mate.” Elon’s plummy voice precedes his presence.
Guess he tired of waiting for my okay signal. Wait, did he call Lex a sorcerer? And what does he know about my true essence? Plaguing questions build on my lips until Elon’s warm hands rest on my shoulders. Kneading fingers work my stressed muscles until they’re too gooey to hold up my head. I drop it down as a breathy moan escapes my lips.
“Someone better start explaining,” Ranissa warns.
I cock my head, side-eyeing her on my left. A red flush climbs up her neck, stretching to her hairline. She glares at Elon’s familiar touch before bouncing her irate narrow lids between our friends. I weave my fingers with his hand, seeking solace in his grip. He wheels my chair toward the foot of the bed where he lowers, situating us side by side.
“So there is a lake in the middle of the forest we cut through for class.” I continue with the rest of the night’s events. My retelling works from the outer ring to the heart. After explaining how Elon lurked against a tree, I hit the first eye-bulging freaky point. The surge of magic when I landed in the water. A tear slips from Ranissa’s overfilled eyes when I tell her of the spirit. “I’m certain it’s Mom in the water, or at least some form of her.”
Through our connection, her hurt and shock is unbearable. A repeat of the loss I felt when Mom’s love cloaked over me. I move, needing to comfort her. Pain and eighteen years of wishing eclipses her eyes. On my knees in front of her slumped body, I pull her to the floor with me. My hand smooths up and down her back until her soft sobs fade. She’s always been the more emotional of the two of us, wearing her heart on her sleeve.
A Cursed All Hallows' Eve Page 84