by Opal Carew
She moaned. Her hands found my hair, stroking, pulling, fisting. Had my eyes been open they would have rolled back into my head. Hot feelings of ecstasy roared out of her and into me, and I groaned as I struggled to keep my fangs from stretching out. I pursued her touch, her kiss, again and again. She returned what I gave her with equal fervor.
Minutes passed before she finally pulled away. I released her reluctantly and smiled when she bit her lower lip and grinned up at me. I tasted her happiness and her exhilaration, but some of what I was feeling was my own. And that was a miracle.
She leaned in to kiss me again, this time just on the corner of my mouth. But having had a taste, I needed another—I turned my head to capture her lips again. She moaned into my mouth and pulled my hair, causing a groan to rumble low in my throat. A smile played on her lips.
I pulled back to look into her eyes. “What?”
She shook her head and laughed softly. “I don’t want to,” she murmured in a seductive voice as she stroked her fingers through my hair, “but I should probably head home. I might be able to catch Ollie to say good night.”
“Okay.” I impressed myself with the fake nonchalance in my tone; I was nearly out of my mind with delight and lust.
She took a step back, and I slid off the table and stood in front of her. I towered over her, forcing her to tilt her head back to maintain eye contact. I couldn’t resist. I cradled her face in my hands and greedily lowered my lips to hers one last time.
Her feminine curves melted against me as we kissed, then she finally stepped back and turned around. Our arms brushed as we walked back to the car. She intertwined her fingers with mine and smiled up at me.
Too fast, we were back to her house. As I walked Samantha to the door, I truly regretted the end of our evening.
She reached up on tiptoes to kiss me again and stepped away far before I was ready to release her. We said good night, and she slipped inside. Dio, I wasn’t ready to part from her.
The positive energy coursing through my body freed me from my usual melancholy. I felt better—content, whole, happy—at that moment than probably at any time since I’d been changed. So I went around the back of the townhouse and jumped up onto the tree branch where I had on previous occasions pondered Samantha as she slept.
A little over an hour later, she came into her room. I looked away as she changed her clothes, protectiveness now flooding me where Samantha was concerned. She crawled onto her bed and pulled open the drawer to her nightstand, then yanked out a book and a pen and flipped the book open in one fluid motion.
She wrote furiously. I occasionally caught a smile or thoughtful look, but most interesting were the feelings radiating from her. Happiness was the baseline emotion, but added to that were feelings of nearly uncontainable excitement and desire. I wished I could see the words flowing from her pen.
Finally, Samantha closed the book and hugged it to her chest. She shut her eyes and rested her chin on the book’s edge. Then she stretched to the side and slid the book and the pen back into the nightstand drawer and switched off her lamp.
She lay still for a moment. Then she caught me completely off guard: just as I sensed an intensified wave of excitement, she started kicking her feet and smacking her hands against her bed, her face alight with a brilliant smile. Her absolute delight was contagious.
Without thinking, I laughed out loud.
She bolted upright, her gaze directed at her window. Uh oh.
I flew from the tree and across the grassy field to the front corner of my house in a flash. As I peeked around the corner, she pulled her curtains apart and surveyed the area outside her window. She disappeared after a moment, her curtains closing behind her.
I chided myself for my stupidity with a smile still plastered on my face. If it hadn’t been so dangerous, it would have been funny.
Back in my own house, this newfound happiness demanded expression. The violin case was still on the kitchen table where I’d left it after Ollie’s morning visit. I undid the clasps and pulled out the instrument, then settled myself in the same chair I’d used earlier. I set the bow on the strings, closed my eyes, and allowed my mood to dictate the song.
The upbeat sound of Brahms’s Violin Concerto in D Major filled the house. As the closing chords of that concerto rang out over twenty minutes later, I moved right into Stravinsky’s Concerto in D Major. I allowed the instrument to take me from one high-spirited piece to another and reveled in the feeling and sound of the music.
Looking up, I was surprised by the LED display on the oven: 1:32 a.m. I could not recall the last time I’d played so long, so intently, or with so much joy. I placed the violin back in its case and stood for a long time at the table with my hands flat on its surface.
Then I paced, walking the length of the first floor several times. Finally I stopped in front of a side window in the living room. I ran my hands through my hair and interlaced them on top of my head.
My eyes focused; I was standing in front of the only first-floor window that allowed a view—partial though it was—of Samantha’s house.
Samantha.
God dammit, I want her. Now. I want them. Could I be falling…? My brow furrowed. I shook off the errant thought. I’m not that reckless or delusional. Am I?
No. That is simply the influence of her emotions talking. I nodded in agreement, then flopped down onto the couch and clicked on the TV. The black-and-white images of the old movie did little to pull my mind away from the momentous events of the day.
***
At three o’clock the next afternoon, there was a soft but insistent knock on my front door. Alarming emotions vibrated from the other side.
When I opened the door, a tear-streaked Ollie flew into my arms. My protective instinct engaged immediately. I stifled a growl, surveying the streetscape for potential threats.
I crouched down to her level. “What’s wrong?” My voice was raw. She sobbed against me and curled her little hands around my neck. I picked her up and kicked the door shut, then carried her into the living room and sat us down on the couch. “It’s okay, Ollie, just tell me what’s wrong.”
Her fear filled my nose. I vowed in my mother tongue to avenge her if she’d been harmed. Finally she responded. “Mommy’s gonna…be…be…maaad at me.” She cried harder.
“Why do you think that? What happened?” I sat her up and brushed her tears off with my thumbs. A fleeting image of Isa sitting crying at the bottom of a set of stairs with a skinned knee ran through my mind. I breathed deeply and willed the comparison away before I gently moved Ollie from my lap and sat her on the couch. “Here. Take a minute to stop crying. I’ll get some tissues and a glass of water.”
She nodded and her breath hitched as she tried to breathe deeply.
In the kitchen, I grabbed an empty cup from a new set I’d purchased and one of the two flasks I’d had filled. I poured some of the clear liquid into Ollie’s glass, then filled it with tap water. Drink in hand, I ripped a paper towel off the roll and returned to the couch. “Here, Ollie.”
She took the glass and a long drink, swallowing around the hiccups she’d given herself. She looked at the paper towel, then shrugged and wiped her nose.
“Okay, now, what happened?”
She placed the empty glass on the table and fiddled with the paper in her hands. “I was playing dress-up in Mommy’s bathroom. And I…I…”
“It’s okay. I promise.”
“I was trying on her jewelry. And I dropped a ring my daddy gave her in the sink. And…and…it…” The tears started again. “It went down and now it’s gone.” She looked pitifully up at me, her breath still hitching.
I closed my eyes and heaved a deep breath. She hadn’t been hurt. “Okay. It’s okay. I bet we can still get it, Ollie. I have tools that can help me take the pipe apart. We can look for it, okay?”
“Really?” The relief poured out of her and compounded my own.
“Yes. Really. Okay? But you have to try to
stop crying.”
“Okay.”
I patted her knee, then moved to the utility closet in the back hall and grabbed several tools. On my way past the kitchen, I noticed the time: 3:35 p.m.
“Does your mom know where you are?” Samantha was usually home from work by now. I shouldn’t have known that, but I did.
Ollie shook her head.
“Come on, then. We don’t want her to worry.”
I walked Ollie across the grassy field, her little hand gripped tightly around mine once again. Sure enough, Samantha flew out the front door just as we rounded the corner of the townhouse. She was still in her scrubs.
“Olivia Sutton! Where have you been? Grampa didn’t know where you were. You just left the house without saying anything! Again! How many times have we talked about this?”
Just then Samantha saw the tools in my hand and cocked an eyebrow.
“It seems we had an accident, Sam.” I glanced down meaningfully at the back of Ollie’s head. “But I think I can fix it.”
“Uh, okay. What happened, Ollie?” She knelt down in front of her daughter. “Come on and tell me. It’ll make you feel better.”
The words rushed out of her. “I was playing dress-up with your jewelry and dropped Daddy’s ring down the sink.” She looked up at her mother’s eyes from under wet eyelashes.
“You know I don’t mind you looking at my things. But only when I’m here, and only when you’ve asked permission. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Mommy.”
“Okay. Go on in, then.” Samantha smiled at me. “You really don’t have to do this, Lucien.”
“I don’t mind, unless you’d rather I not.” I sounded nonchalant but really wanted to take care of this for them.
“No, no, of course. Come on.”
We paused in the living room while Samantha recounted the story to Joe, who stifled a smile while looking sternly at Ollie. I asked her to grab a bowl before she showed me upstairs.
As we approached her bedroom door, she turned to me. “Um, sorry. Would you mind waiting a minute?” Embarrassment radiated off her.
“Sure. No problem.” Samantha scurried into her room. I heard her throwing clothing and pushing drawers shut and smiled to myself.
I wandered down the hall and stopped in front of what was clearly Ollie’s room. A princess border ran around the purple walls of the small room along with dozens of princess wall stickers. Baskets of stuffed animals and shelves of books crowded the space. It was perfectly charming. But what most caught my attention were the dozen or so pictures taped to the wall above her bed—some hand drawn, some cut from books or magazines. Angels.
Samantha’s hand rattled the doorknob. I flew back to the side of her door.
“Sorry. Okay. It’s safe now.” She grimaced at me, still embarrassed. “Bathroom’s over here.”
It was odd being in this room and looking out the window at the tree, but I pushed that thought away and followed Samantha into the bathroom. I knelt down and opened the vanity cabinet, then placed the tools and the bowl on the floor next to me. “Do you have a towel I can use?”
She turned and pulled an old brown towel out of the narrow closet in the corner. “Here you go.”
I moved a couple of bottles of various toiletries out of the way to make room for the bowl. Within minutes, I fished the diamond ring out of the pipe’s contents that had spilled down into it. I handed it to Samantha, whose embarrassment I tasted again. I reassembled everything, then dumped the wet contents into the sink and watched as I did so to see if any water would drip from the pipes below. When everything remained dry, I closed the vanity and stood up, then collected my tools and placed them on the countertop. I washed my hands and dried them on the still-clean towel.
“Thank you, Lucien.”
“No problem.”
We stood awkwardly for a moment. She was between me and the door to the bathroom. She realized this and rushed backward to move and in the process tripped over a scatter rug not fully flat on the linoleum.
I reached out and caught her, and she threw her arms around my neck to keep from falling. When I righted her, she didn’t drop her arms.
Hunger lit her eyes at the same time her lust blazed through me. She wanted me. It was all the invitation I needed.
I pushed her back against the bathroom wall and lowered my mouth to hers. I cupped her face in my hands. She threaded her fingers into my hair, grasping at long thick locks of it as she attempted to pull me closer. She opened to me, a small moan escaping her throat as our tongues touched. I explored the warmth of her mouth, tasting her sweetness, always her sweetness.
The kiss became urgent and needful, full of stroking tongues and sucking lips and hungry moans. The most intense feeling of possessiveness gripped me. I wanted to claim her, mark her, have her.
She ran her hands over my chest, forcing a hiss from me as she unknowingly brushed over a sensitive patch of skin. My insides went molten, making it nearly impossible to pull away. But this was neither the time nor the place. I slowed our kisses, pressing a final one to her forehead before leaning back.
Breathing hard, we smiled at each other. Then our eyes descended to the ring she held in her fingers between us.
“Oh.” The embarrassment again. “Since you had to fish this out of the muck, you deserve to know what it is.” She held the engagement ring up for me to see more clearly.
“I don’t deserve anything, Sam. You don’t have to tell me.” I took a small step back.
She frowned. “Well, I want to.” She looked up at me and I nodded.
“Olivia’s father, Jensen, was my college boyfriend. I thought he was great. He gave me this and called it a promise ring. I expected we would get engaged when we both graduated. But then at the beginning of my junior year, I got pregnant. And Jensen couldn’t deal with it. He wanted me to have an abortion, but I didn’t want to. Olivia was born the week before he graduated. He was headed off to law school in the fall, and he broke up with me. I dropped out of school to raise Olivia, which is why I’m just now finishing up.” She glanced at me through her lashes, judging my reaction to her story. “Ollie knows her father gave me this ring and absolutely adores it. When she’s older, I’ll give it to her.”
An unreasonable fury at this man I didn’t know who hadn’t been in Samantha’s life for years, apparently, seized me, but I moderated my tone. “I’m sorry he treated you that way.”
Her eyes flashed to mine. “Yeah. But I’m not sorry I kept Ollie. As hard as it’s been sometimes, she was entirely worth it.”
I smiled. “I have no doubt about that.”
“So, are you completely freaked out yet?” She held her smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes.
I frowned. “By what?”
“We’ve known each other for, like, three weeks, and I’m revealing all my deep, dark secrets.” She made a joke of it, but her feelings told me she was serious.
I shook my head and laughed out loud. She smiled uncertainly. “Samantha, your secrets are neither deep nor dark. Trust me. So, no, I’m not freaked out.”
She grinned self-consciously. “Really? Um, okay. Good.” She looked down for a moment and fiddled with the ring before shoving it in the pocket of her scrubs. “Lucien, can I tell you something else?”
“Of course.” Her feelings gave away the direction this conversation was about to take.
“Okay, so, I didn’t exactly picture this conversation happening in my bathroom, but, um, I just wanted to say I really like you.” She leaned back against the wall and looked up at me appraisingly.
I cautiously opened a part of myself I had long kept buried and took a deep breath and a leap of faith. “I like you, too, Samantha.” She smiled hopefully. So did I.
We’d barely voiced our declarations before Ollie pushed through the door behind us. I stepped back several paces before she got fully in the room.
“Crisis averted,” Samantha said as she pulled the ring out for Ollie to see.
“Yay!” She looked at me. “Thank you, Lucien! You’re the best!”
“You’re welcome, Ollie. Any time.” I squeezed her shoulder.
“Now remember”—Samantha recaptured Ollie’s attention—”you need to ask first.”
“Okay. I will.”
“And no more running out of the house without permission. I’m getting tired of having that conversation, Olivia.”
“Okay, Mommy.” We all stepped out of the bathroom and headed downstairs together.
“Well, I should be going.”
“Do you want to stay for dinner? Just spaghetti. Nothing fancy. But you’re more than welcome.” Samantha’s desire radiated. “It’s the least I could do to repay you for your plumbing expertise.”
I smiled and hated the thought of disappointing her. “Thank you. But I have some errands I need to run yet this afternoon.”
Her smiled faltered. “Oh, okay.”
“I’m free later though,” I said, pleased to see her grin return.
“Sure.”
I stepped toward the door and called back, “Bye, Ollie.”
“Bye,” she replied distractedly as she twirled in circles next to her mother, all traces of her former fear gone and replaced with a playful happiness.
Samantha stepped out on the front porch with me. Peeking back over her shoulder to check Ollie hadn’t followed us, she reached up quickly and kissed me on the mouth.
I smiled at her. “See you later,” I said as I resisted pulling her into my arms.
She nodded, then went back inside.
I could still taste her on my lips.
Chapter Seven
I loved the smell of the girls on me, but it was so distracting I could barely think, so I showered and changed. But then I was without something to do again. Somehow I’d gone from an eternity of keeping myself company to going stir-crazy after just an hour of being apart from them.
Still warm inside from their affection, I ducked out and bought some groceries, just in case. Then, because my violin had always served as my most effective form of distraction, I ran through the same repertoire of songs as the night before.