Her body was so cold, even beneath the fabric of her shirt, and I could feel my heart pounding through me as my fingers caressed her breast as she cupped my hands in her own, holding them to her chest. She leaned down then, brushing her cold mouth over the backs of my knuckles before she released my hands.
The dress had fallen to the floor between us, and I crouched down with unseeing eyes, scooping it back up. I pulled it on over my head, over her tank top, and it fell around me, the edge of the tank top just visible at the neckline of the dress.
“Beautiful,” she whispered, stepping forward and brushing her cold lips against my cheek before she walked away, sliding her arms into a suit jacket.
I glanced down at the fabric of the dress’s skirt, touching that fabric with suddenly cold fingers.
The blue of the dress was the exact same blue as Kane’s eyes.
“Thank you,” I whispered to Tommie, tucking a strand of my hair behind my ear as I moved into her bathroom. I shut the door behind me, gripping the edge of the ornate sink and staring at myself in the mirror.
My reflection stared back at me with wide eyes. I looked confused.
Because I was.
---
That night, after a very long, boring time behind the front desk (most of the vampires who were attending the Conference had already checked in, so I was basically manning the desk in case anyone came down to ask a question or needed something. And it’s not like vampires need extra washcloths and toothbrushes for their room. At least, none came down and needed these essentials on my watch), I slipped out of the Sullivan Hotel and into the descending dark of twilight.
And there on the porch, her cigarette glowing at the end as she took a deep inhale, was Tommie.
“Right on time,” she said, flicking the ash off the end of the cigarette as she straightened and smiled at me. Her long, lanky body was wearing the hell out of a pinstripe suit jacket and wide-legged, tailored pants, a plain black tie loose at her neck. Her gaze was intense as she held mine, but her smile was utterly genuine. She was happy to see me.
I still hadn’t worked up the courage to take a break and find Kane that day. I needed to talk to her about getting the lock changed back on my room, but I just couldn’t bear the thought of facing her. Not now. Not yet. I’d talked with Gwen, and I was going to camp out on her couch in her room that night, give me a little more time to come to terms with all this.
Cowardly, I know. But I just felt that if I saw Kane right now, when it was still all so new, it’d be more harmful than helpful.
I was still raw inside from the previous night. I didn’t need to pour salt in that wound quite yet.
Again, thoughts of Kane swirled in my head as I returned Tommie’s smile. I tried, valiantly, to push Kane out of my head. I repeated what I’d told myself all day: Kane had Melody, Kane did not want me. But it’s not as if I could just flip a switch.
And now, what I was feeling for Tommie was so tangled up in what I’d felt for Kane. In what I still felt for her.
I sighed out into the dark, my breath forming a mist ahead of me in the cold twilight. Tommie stepped forward, her brow furrowed as she cupped her fingers around my elbow, squeezing gently.
“Are you all right?” she asked me, her voice a low growl.
Not really, I thought. But I lied and told her: “yes.”
Together, we walked away from the Sullivan Hotel, and toward her Mustang, parked at the far right edge of the almost-full gravel parking lot that sprawled in front of the hotel.
I glanced back over my shoulder at the massive red building. The Sullivan Hotel brooded on the edge of that cliff face, overlooking the sea. It was so hauntingly beautiful with its columns and stories and bright red stones, and I should have known from the moment that I arrived that this building would spell trouble for me.
But it was turning into a nice sort of trouble at least, I thought, as Tommie made an elegant little bow and pulled the car door open for me.
I folded into the passenger seat, and in an instant, Tommie was seated behind the wheel, flexing her shoulders and wrapping her fingers around the wheel.
“I park the boat at the harbor in town,” she told me, turning the key in the ignition. The engine revved to life.
We slid out onto the road, the gravel spinning away from the back wheels as the car moved quickly through the encroaching darkness, down to Eternal Cove.
The old trees along the main street of Eternal Cove were all decked out in orange lights for Halloween, all of the shops full of window displays featuring witches and werewolves and cauldrons and pumpkins. Surprisingly, though every other character or emblem of Halloween was on display in the shop windows…I didn’t see a single vampire.
“Down this way,” said Tommie, parking the Mustang in an empty spot in front of the liquor store. The store, “Eternal Cove Spirits,” was brightly lit and still open—the only shop on the entire main street that was. I stepped up and out of the Mustang and took Tommie’s arm when she proffered it to me, because—of course—she was almost instantly around the other side of the car. It was such a smooth motion, how she offered me her arm, how I didn’t even hesitate or think about it. Mine had slid into hers like we’d done this before.
We walked down to the harbor. Even from the dock, you could hear the eerie (and yet, oddly beautiful) cadence of the ship’s pulleys hitting their masts. It was beautiful, haunting music that seemed to merge with the water lapping against the pillars of the deck.
Tommie hopped down to one of the small rowboats tied to the dock, offering her hand up to me. She helped me down without a word, her hands lingering at my waist, helping me settle onto one of the seats in the rowboat. She untied the mooring line and pushed off from the dock with her foot, and then we were quietly pulling through the water as she rowed us with smooth, even strokes toward the sailboats.
There was a rope ladder that hung down from the side of one of the nearest sailboats, and this was the one that Tommie was aiming for. It was mostly white, as were all of the sailboats, but there was a thin line of red that was painted around the edge of the boat, and there on the back end of the boat, were two looping, cursive words.
“The Song?” I asked, glancing at Tommie. “Is that your boat?”
“Yes,” she said, her jaw working as she pulled the oars again. She didn’t elaborate on the name.
When we arrived at the boat, Tommie threaded the mooring line through the floating anchor, pulling the little rowboat up alongside The Song. She tugged on the rope ladder, drawing the rowboat even closer, and then she inclined her head toward the ladder.
“Ladies first,” she said with a wolfish grin, and I returned the smile, standing uncertainly in the rocking rowboat. I put out my hand, steadying myself with the rope ladder, and then I put my foot in the first rung.
Climbing up a rope ladder sounds a lot easier than it actually is, especially in a dress, but I managed to get myself up and into the boat without making too much of a fool out of myself. Tommie scaled the rope ladder like she’d been doing it her entire life, and was right behind me and in the boat before I could even blink.
“All right,” she said, walking forward to the ship’s wheel, and patting the controls that included, I realized, an engine. “We’ll use this to get out,” she said, jerking her thumb toward the open water beyond the harbor. “And then it’s wind all the way,” she said, staring up at the small mast.
She sounded breathless, and more than a little affectionate, as she gazed up at the mast of the boat. She loved this boat, I realized, as Tommie started the motor and held onto the wheel, which wasn’t really a wheel…it reminded me of the controls in an airplane. But as she pushed a lever forward and the ship sprang slowly to life, her fingers moved over the controls and gripped the wheel as gently as you’d grip a lover.
“I’ve had this boat for about half a century,” said Tommie then, yelling a little to be heard over the engine. “It’s meant the world to me,” she said, worrying at th
e edge of her lip, and completely confirming what I’d thought. “For a time,” she said, then, casting me a sideways glance, “I even slept on here rather than at the hotel.”
“Why?” I asked in surprise.
Tommie grimaced again, her jaw working. “Kane and I…” she said then, wincing as she said the name. “We’ve not always seen eye to eye,” she finished gravely.
“Do you care to elaborate?” I asked, leaning against the boat’s railing. She cast me a wry smile and shook her head.
“Not really,” she said, turning the boat a little so that it maneuvered between two other ships.
And then we were out into the almost still waters of the open ocean, the sunset behind us, over the land, painting the sky in purples, oranges, golds…it was breathtaking. But that still didn’t distract from the fact that Tommie was being purposefully evasive.
“I fell in love with someone once,” said Tommie, then. She was so quiet that I almost couldn’t hear her over the roar of the engine, but I inched forward, mesmerized, and stood right next to her. She had a faraway look in her eye as she gazed out to sea, but then she shook her head, glanced at me. “I loved her utterly,” she said with a sad smile and shrug, “but Kane loved her, too, and I never had a chance. I tried, believe me. We both did. But she wanted Kane.”
The wind that roared past us, brought on by the swiftness of the boat, tossed her words away from me as I wrapped my arms around myself again and leaned against her.
“I’m sorry,” I told her. “That’s hard. There’s no winning in that.”
She glanced down at me again, her features softening as she wrapped an arm around my waist, pulling me closer.
“It doesn’t matter anymore. I’ve spent so much of my life trying to forget her, and it was so much harder to do that than I thought it should be. But I’ve forgotten her now. Because I’m getting a chance with you.”
I gazed up at her with wide eyes, tasting the salt of the ocean, and—in that moment—tasting Tommie as she leaned down and gently brushed her lips over mine.
The sailboat turned, and we began to make our way up the coast. With Tommie’s strong arm around my waist (and my arm wrapping around hers, too), I didn’t notice the cold of the air so much. Not that Tommie was warm (she was practically freezing to the touch), but there was something about having her hold me so tightly. I felt warm, even though I wasn’t.
Ahead, through the darkness, rose the Sullivan Hotel.
The moon was edging out from behind clouds overhead—a gibbous moon that hung, almost full, in the cloudbank. It shed enough light to perfectly see the hotel by…from the ocean, it was such an impressive structure. It sprawled up on the cliff face like something out of a horror novel, with its red stone walls that, in the moonlight, looked almost bloody.
“Home sweet home,” Tommie remarked with a wry chuckle. She groaned, then. “I can’t wait for this Conference to be over. I’m used to being mostly by myself, having more independence…I have to be nailed down to all of these terrible meetings about things I just don’t care about.” She sighed out for a long moment and then began to brake the boat slowly. She turned off the ignition once the boat stood still. “I’ve never cared about most of the things that Kane cares about,” said Tommie then, a snarl almost in her voice. I glanced at her in surprise.
“She wants this whole nicey-nice vampire culture,” said Tommie then, taking off her suit jacket and laying it over the captain’s chair situated behind the wheel. “She’s trying to gather together all of the vampires who care about humans. But there aren’t honestly that many of them. No offense,” she told me with a grimace as gooseflesh began to appear on my arms. It was so strange to hear her talk about humans like that…like she wasn’t one. Which…she probably wasn’t anymore, since was a vampire. It was still the oddest thing.
“So…vampires mostly don’t like humans?” I asked, feeling discomfort move through me. Tommie glanced sharply my way.
“Well. That’s a nice way of putting it, I suppose,” she said and sighed, gesturing overhead. “But let’s not talk about stuff like this.”
“It’s kind of important that I know, really, considering where I’m working right now,” I pointed out stubbornly.
Tommie folded her arms in front of her, her mouth going into a thin, stubborn light, just visible by the faint remnants of light along the horizon. “Bluntly put, most vampires wish that humans were enslaved into nice, easy blood bank type facilities.”
I stared at her.
Tommie shrugged. “There aren’t that many vampires out there. But there are fringe groups that are actually vying for that future. The Sullivans represent the polar opposite. Every one of the Sullivans believes that human beings, what we evolved from, deserve to live out their lives and be protected. It is not a popular opinion among our kind. That’s what banded us together…after the love of women,” she said, her lips tugging up at the edges.
“So…wow,” I said, and then my legs buckled under me, and I sat down in the captain’s chair, stunned. I blinked up at her. “Wow,” I repeated, suddenly at a loss for words.
Tommie shrugged again. “Honestly, it’s nothing to worry about. The factions of vampires who want to subjugate humans are fringe groups. Just like the KKK…it’s not a lot of people who think that way, just some, thankfully. It’s the same with vampires.”
“That’s still kind of terrifying,” I muttered, rubbing at my arms and shivering.
Tommie knelt down in front of me smoothly, searching my eyes as she cupped my hands with gentle fingers. “Are you all right?” she asked.
“Not really,” I told her truthfully, searching her gaze. “Tell me the truth: are there vampires from that fringe group at the Conference? At the Sullivan Hotel right now?”
“Yes,” said Tommie instantly, her jaw working. “But there are treaties in effect that they cannot break, and none would be stupid enough to do so. If the treaties put in place during the Conference are broken, the vampire or vampires who break them are put to death. There is no trial, no excuse. There would never be any violence committed by vampires during the Conference—the punishment is too immovable and swift.”
“Well that makes me feel a little better,” I muttered, rubbing absent-mindedly at my neck and the healing wounds there as I took a deep breath.
“Come,” said Tommie then with a small smile, standing and holding tightly to my hands as she pulled me up. “Come look at the stars.”
There’s so much light pollution on land, that—even if you’re camping at one of the most remote places—there’s a lot of starlight that’s lost to the light of men. But out here, on the ocean, even though we weren’t that far out from shore, the cascade of stars overhead immediately took my breath away. The long, bright line of the milky way practically pulsed with starlight, and as I stared overhead (my mouth open because I was in awe), Tommie wrapped her arm tightly around my waist, and I felt my body drawn to hers, leaning back against her.
“Tommie, it’s beautiful,” I managed to whisper to her. I felt her chest rumble in a chuckle behind me, and then Tommie brushed her cold mouth to the top of my head.
“Not nearly as beautiful as you,” she quipped then. I felt the blush rising in me, and then I was turning of my own accord toward her, pressing myself against her, wrapping my arms around her waist.
Behind Tommie was the Sullivan Hotel, rising above us on the cliff face, and the long stretch of beach beneath the hotel glimmered in the moonlight. It was almost as bright outside as daytime because of the starlight and moonlight, and every little thing was visible.
As I reached up to kiss Tommie, as I felt drawn and pulled to her, my eyes flitted to the beach, only for a heartbeat.
And my heart skipped a beat at that moment. Because there was a figure on the beach. Someone was walking in the moonlight.
There were hundreds of people checked into the Sullivan Hotel right now, and the figure on the beach could have been any one of them. But I knew it wasn’t.
I knew it was Kane. She was alone, walking the beach like she always did, lost deep in thought.
At that moment, as if she felt my eyes on her, the figure on the beach paused and stopped at the edge of the water. She turned toward us.
And I knew that Kane saw us, saw Tommie and me out on the water together, in each other’s arms.
I shouldn’t have cared. But, in that moment, I did. I felt my heart split into two pieces. I didn’t know what to do, but I felt my body react, and I just let it.
I stepped away from Tommie.
She glanced at me in surprise, still holding onto my hands. Her head went to the side quizzically, and then she glanced over her shoulder, at the spot that I was staring at on the shore.
At Kane.
“Rose,” she said then heavily, turning back to me with a quick shake of her head. “What—”
“It’s nothing,” I told her, biting my lip, my words tense and sharp. I stepped closer to her again, and—almost aggressively—I wrapped my arms around her waist.
I reached up, wrapped my fingers around the back of her neck, and I drew her down to me for a kiss.
She tasted of cigarette smoke and coffee, her lips soft and cool to the touch, her kiss utterly sensual and irresistible. She drank of me deeply, and my body responded as I carefully shut down my thoughts.
All I wanted to do was feel. And for a long moment, that strategy worked. I didn’t think about Kane at all as I kissed Tommie, and I didn’t dare look over Tommie’s shoulder again, to see what the woman on the shore was doing. I focused wholly and utterly on Tommie, and I kissed her deeply.
But when we broke apart, when Tommie searched my gaze questioningly, I couldn’t clamp down on the thoughts anymore, and one lone one found its way into my heart:
Kane. The pain in Kane’s face as she turned away from us, only last night.
What was I doing? I felt so much for Kane, and I was trying so hard with Tommie.
Was I utterly doomed to be unhappy forever? Why couldn’t I just stay in the moment, concentrate utterly on Tommie? Why did Kane keep coming up when I knew that I could never have her, that we could never be together? I was torturing myself, and I was becoming very quickly frustrated with myself.
Trusting Eternity (The Sullivan Vampires, Volume 2 Page 8