Crave

  The question was like a smack to the back of her head. “Uh, yeah, sometimes, I guess,” Shay replied. She was always mentally accusing Olivia and everybody else in her life of seeing her only as the Sick Girl. She’d never realized that she did it to herself just as much.

  “Well, take it from me, there’s more to you than sickness. You’re one-of-a-kind,” Gabriel said. “For starters, you’re sitting in a motel with a vampire and you’re acting like it’s no biggie.”

  Shay snorted. “You said biggie.”

  “Don’t harsh my buzz,” Gabriel shot back. “Seriously, you’re not just ‘the Sick Girl.’ You’re Shay. You’re unique.”

  “Special,” Shay mumbled, embarrassed by the way he was looking at her. “That’s the code word for ‘sick,’ or ‘damaged,’ or ‘weird.’”

  “It also means ‘important.’ ‘Uncommon,’” Gabriel leaned closer to her. “‘Rare.’”

  If he kept looking at her the way he was—like she was special, not special—she didn’t think she could take it. She reached over and picked up a package of cotton candy off the bed. “Do you eat? I mean, can you? Or is it all blood all the time?”

  “Blood is all I can digest now,” Gabriel replied.

  Shay ripped open the bag of cotton candy and put one of the fluffy pink pieces on her tongue. It instantly dissolved. “You could eat this, I bet. There’s really no digesting involved. It just kind of evaporates into sweetness.”

  “I’ll pass,” Gabriel said.

  “Why? Where’s my life-embracing Gabriel?” Had she actually just called him her Gabriel?

  “You realize you’ve known me at a lot of different ages. I’ve changed over time. The me you’re thinking of, that’s an old version,” Gabriel answered.

  “So now you’re the guy in the cave. With all those amazing senses you have on mute. Is that it?” Shay demanded.

  “After you’re alive for hundreds of years, you tell me if you still take the time to appreciate every minute experience,” Gabriel snapped.

  “I feel like—I don’t even know how to describe it.” Shay slid her fingers into her hair, at a loss.

  “Why does it matter to you?” Gabriel asked.

  “Because you changed my life, okay?” Shay burst out. “Your blood gave me strength and health, but you, the way you lived, it inspired me. I wanted to be like you. I wanted to feel everything, do everything the way you did. Back when you were young,” she added, disgust roughening her voice. “The transfusions changed me in this profound way. Physically, they made me feel normal. Which to a sick girl—I mean, to me—was the same as feeling superhuman. And seeing your life made me think about the world and my own life in a different way.”

  Shay reached out and touched his arm lightly. “Now I know that there was a cost for those transfusions. I wouldn’t have taken them if I’d known you were real and what you were suffering. But I still want to say thank you. Is that wrong? To thank you for something that it almost destroyed you to give?”

  Gabriel didn’t answer the question. Instead he asked one of his own. “What did you do after the first one?”

  “The first transfusion?” Shay smiled at the memory. “I drank a beer.”

  They looked at each other for a long moment, and then Shay burst out laughing. It didn’t sound so profound and life-changing when she described that part of it.

  Gabriel snorted. “Excellent,” he teased. “What else did you use my blood for?”

  “Running. I went to P.E. and I ran. And dancing. And swimming. And I made out with my best friend’s boyfriend,” she confessed. “Want to play cards?”

  “Back it up. You made out with your best friend’s boyfriend?”

  “Complete scum move, right?” Shay asked. Gabriel didn’t say anything, just waited for her to go on. “I’d never kissed anyone, besides, you know, my mom. Didn’t have any grandparents or—” She shook her head. “I’m off-tracking. I’d never kissed a guy. And I didn’t think I ever would. I didn’t think I’d have … time. But then after a transfusion I went to a party, and Kaz—that’s my friend’s boyfriend—and I were dancing. And I wanted to know, I really wanted to know how it would feel. I didn’t think about Olivia. I didn’t think about anything. I wanted to feel, and I let myself. Maybe I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t been drinking, but I just let myself.”

  Gabriel still didn’t say anything.

  “The transfusion before the party, it showed me a vision of you on your last day with the sun,” Shay explained. “What Sam said to you—it really struck me. Do you remember? He told you you’d always felt things deeply, that you wanted to experience everything about your humanity before becoming a vampire. I wanted to be like you, that human guy who wanted to take in everything the world had to offer.”

  “It was a long time ago. I was nineteen,” Gabriel said.

  “Don’t you miss it? Don’t you want it back?” Shay asked. “Now that I’ve had the chance to be out in the world and try to suck the marrow out of life—I can’t remember who said that—”

  “Thoreau,” Gabriel said softly.

  “Right. Now that I’ve had that, I don’t want to give it up. Even if I lived a thousand years, I wouldn’t. That’s what I’ve realized. Before I was just surviving, being careful so my body would keep going for one more day. But being truly alive … that’s different. It’s the whole point of everything. Without that feeling, why even bother living?”

  “I don’t know,” Gabriel said. He wasn’t answering her, he was talking about himself. Shay didn’t know what had happened to steal his joy in life, but she wanted to help him find it again. The way he’d helped her.

  “Open your mouth,” she told him. To her surprise, Gabriel did. Shay popped a piece of cotton candy inside. “Now savor!” she ordered.

  Gabriel closed his eyes and his brow furrowed.

  “Don’t try quite so hard,” Shay coached him. “Tell me what you taste and smell and everything.”

  “It has an amazing surface area. So many contact points with all those strands. It goes from fluffy to sticky to small bits that are almost crunchy. There’s a bitter mineral taste, not at all strong, maybe from the food coloring. Mostly just sweetness, overwhelming sweetness. Not a lot of ingredients.”

  Gabriel opened his eyes. “It’s gone.”

  “So did you enjoy that?” Shay asked.

  “Uh … I don’t want to disappoint you. I appreciate the effort.”

  “No, you don’t. You were annoyed by the effort,” Shay said.

  Gabriel laughed. “Well, being ordered to have a pleasurable experience is not exactly—”

  Shay was already so close to him. All she had to do was lean a little more. So she did, interrupting him with a kiss, light and fast. So light and fast, Shay couldn’t believe that her body responded as strongly as it did. She felt as if an arrow of heat had shot straight down her spine. That didn’t happen with Chris Briglia. Or with Kaz.

  She quickly pulled back.

  “What was that?” Gabriel sounded gobsmacked. Shay had picked up that word from a British blood specialist she’d seen once—and it fit Gabriel’s reaction perfectly.

  “A kiss,” Shay said, going for casual, even though her heart was pounding. “Something maybe I wouldn’t have to order you to find pleasurable.”

  Gabriel shook his head, running one finger over his lips. “You really are one of a kind.”

  “Was it pleasurable?” Shay asked.

  “I’m not sure I felt anything but surprise,” Gabriel admitted.

  “Does that mean we should try again?” Shay asked. This time she went for a teasing tone, but she was absolutely serious. She wanted this. She really wanted this. She hadn’t realized how much until that quick, impulsive kiss. She wanted a real one now—long, and slow, and hot.

  “I don’t think that’s a—”

  Shay didn’t let him finish. She caught his mouth with hers again and twisted her hands into his curly hair. She wasn’t an expert in kissing. She
’d had two—count ’em, two—kisses in her life. But kissing Gabriel felt so natural. Her tongue found his and slid across it. He put his hands on her waist and pulled her closer. Warm, soft, a brush of slick, hard teeth. Shay gave up trying to categorize the sensations and just turned herself and her body over to the hot rush.

  Gabriel gave a groan low in his throat, then jerked away. He stared at her, his beautiful brown eyes wide. “That wasn’t— We shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Why not?”

  Gabriel moved to the other side of the bed, putting distance between them. He didn’t answer.

  “Okay, but you were savoring the moment, right?” Shay pressed. “You felt that.”

  “On all cylinders,” he said. But his tone was clipped, hard to read. “Let’s play cards.” He grabbed the deck and pulled off the plastic wrapping.

  Shay watched him, a little stunned. How could he be talking about cards after that kiss? Hadn’t he felt it too? There was no way that rush of feeling was one-sided. Shay’s breath was still coming fast, her heart still slamming against her ribs. She didn’t want to play some stupid game. She wanted to keep kissing him, wanted his arms around her, wanted more.

  More Gabriel. There would never be enough.

  Oh crap. I’m falling for him, Shay thought. When did that happen?

  “Two-handed poker?” Gabriel asked.

  “What?” Shay’s mind was reeling. How could this be? It wasn’t the kiss. The kiss wouldn’t have been The Kiss if she hadn’t already been into him. Was she crazy? She’d known that she had feelings for him, back when he was only a dream. But that was different. Falling for a fantasy guy was fine; it didn’t mean anything. But Gabriel wasn’t a dream anymore. He was a real live extremely complicated vampire. Falling for that was not fine.

  “Do you know how to play?” Gabriel asked, his tone annoyed.

  “Yeah. Sick Girls know all the card games,” Shay answered, distracted. Which part of being … what? In love? In like? … with Gabriel was worse—the fact that she was dying or the fact that he was a vampire?

  “Would you stop saying that?” Gabriel snapped. “I don’t want to hear the words Sick Girl out of you again.”

  “Okay,” she whispered. Because she wasn’t just a Sick Girl. She was rare. Gabriel had said so. Did that mean he felt the same way she did? He certainly wasn’t acting like it.

  Gabriel began to deal. His fingers were long and strong. Elegant and competent. Shay wished she didn’t notice every detail about him.

  “What should we play for?” she asked, trying to get this night back to normal.

  “Your stepfather took my wallet,” Gabriel said.

  “I have an idea.” Shay stood up and headed into the bathroom. She was glad to have an excuse to get away from him for a minute. With trembling hands, she got herself a drink of water, willing her mind to stop all the drama. She’d wanted to immerse herself in an experience, and she’d wanted to get Gabriel to do the same.

  And they had. End of story.

  She grabbed the spare roll of toilet paper, then returned and sat back down on the bed across from him.

  “We can use this for chips.” Shay tore a long, long section of toilet paper off the roll, then tore off a second section of equal length. She handed one to Gabriel and kept one for herself, tearing it into individual squares.

  She put a square in the middle and waited for him to tear up his own paper.

  “Humans must seem like babies to you. All of us,” she said. There was no way he would ever want to be with someone like her. He’d been all over the world, seen so much, lived so long. She probably seemed barely formed to him.

  “Why do you say that?” Gabriel asked, adding a TP square of his own to the pot.

  “Because you know everything. You’ve been alive longer than this country has even existed. It must be infuriating to watch all us humans acting so stupid, over and over. How can we not seem like infants?” Shay picked up her hand and studied it. Lousy. But she tossed a second TP square onto the pile. He didn’t know her tells.

  Gabriel studied his hand, threw down two TP squares. “I see your one, and raise you one,” he said. “Age doesn’t matter as much as you think. I’m old, but I haven’t gotten wiser every year. There are saturation points, I guess you could call them. And some things, no matter how many times you experience them, are as powerful, as overwhelming, as the first time.”

  Shay raised a square. “Like what?”

  “Like grief.” Gabriel stared at his cards, but Shay didn’t think he was really seeing them. “No matter how many times you’ve felt it, it’s still like a punch to the stomach. That immediate. That hard to deal with, even though you’ve had to deal with it before. Many times before.” He again raised her two. “Maybe love is like that too.”

  “Don’t you know?” Shay asked. It wasn’t exactly comfortable talking with him about love. But she wanted to know. She matched him, then raised a square. She’d already used more than half of her bankroll.

  “I love my family. I can’t imagine anything ever changing that. I think if I fell in love, it would be as powerful as grief, at least I hope so,” Gabriel said. He raised. Shay had the feeling neither of them was paying any attention to the game.

  “I could really feel how much you love Ernst and Sam and all your family when I was with you,” Shay told him. That was a kind of love she could actually talk to him about. “Can I ask you another question?”

  “Can I stop you?”

  “What happened with you and Sam? Is he okay? Did something happen to him? I got a sad feeling, when you thought about him. You were in the cave with the bats, and Sam didn’t seem to be around. Like you’d lost him somehow.”

  Gabriel tossed his cards down on the bed between them. “You should get some sleep. You were awake all day, shopping and whatever else you did. Do you need food? Have you eaten anything except candy?” He got off the bed and slumped down in the chair in front of the wobbly desk.

  Shay pulled the candy ring off her finger. It didn’t seem that fun anymore. “I’m good,” she said. Actually, she could use a hamburger. But she wasn’t going to tell him that. He obviously wanted her to go to sleep and leave him alone. “We didn’t even finish the hand.”

  “You win.” He didn’t even glance at the cards strewn all over the bed.

  Shay swept them into a pile, silently. Then she crawled under the covers and turned on her side, her back to Gabriel. She didn’t want him to see her hurt. “Good night, I guess,” she told him.

  His only reply was flipping off the light.

  When Shay woke up, it was after nine. Gabriel must’ve moved from the chair to the floor sometime while she slept. He lay on the ugly carpet, far from the window, in his daytime sleep. The death sleep, he called it.

  Shay gathered the sheets around her and sat up in bed, staring down at him. It was either him or that bad painting of the wildflowers. I’d want to look at Gabriel even if I were in the Louvre, she admitted to herself.

  As she gazed at him, she did a self-test, but not the usual kind. She focused on her feelings instead of her body, then let out a sigh. She was still attracted to him. Still wanted him. It hadn’t all been a hormone storm last night.

  “I’m kind of crazy about you,” she said to his sleeping form, just to try out the words. “And that sucks, by the way.”

  It was no Romeo and Juliet situation. For starters, he obviously didn’t feel the same—the way he’d turned off after their kiss proved that. And besides, the Capulets hadn’t taken Romeo prisoner and drained him of blood. I wanted to experience everything, Shay thought ruefully. If this broke her heart a little, well, maybe that was something every girl felt at some point.

  Did he know how she felt? Maybe that was why he’d suddenly gotten annoyed last night—so much so that he couldn’t even finish one stupid game of poker. What happened? Did I bring up something really bad when I asked about Sam? Is that what set him off? she wondered for about the two hundred and
fiftieth time. She’d wondered that as she had tried to fall asleep last night. It had taken forever. She ’dbeen so hyper-aware of Gabriel being in the room with her. …

  Maybe she’d never know the answer. No more transfusions, no more drinking from Gabriel—so no more visions of his life. Soon he’d be back to his own life and she’d be on her own.

  Get over it, Shay told herself. She checked her watch. Second period would be over soon. She should be able to catch Olivia in between classes. Shay grabbed the car keys. The cell needed charging if she was going to keep calling Olivia every day. And that was a must do. If she didn’t keep Olivia calm, she—and Gabriel—were going to have more problems than a little pissiness.

  Just as the sun set that night, Gabriel awoke. He knew instantly he was being watched. He was on his feet before he realized it was Shay. Why did he have to sleep so deeply? He hated being vulnerable in front of a human. If he’d been at full strength, perhaps he would have been able to force himself to stay awake; but weak as he was, he hadn’t a chance of stopping the death sleep from overtaking him.

  “Nightmare?” Shay asked.

  Gabriel raked his fingers through his hair. “No,” he said. He wasn’t ready to talk to her. Last night had been … unsettling. With that kiss. Kisses, actually, except he hadn’t exactly participated in the first one. The second one, though … What had he been thinking?

  He knew the answer. He hadn’t been thinking anything. He’d just gone with the sensations, the way he used to before he learned to keep them in check. Before he learned the consequences of following your heart.

  Shay had broken a big hole in the wall he’d built up so carefully. With that damn cotton candy and those damn kisses. And then she had to start asking about Sam. When his guard was down. The guilt and self-loathing had smashed into him full force.

  Put her back in her proper place, he told himself. Get back to when she was nothing more than the human girl. She’s just a part of my plan. Once I’m done with her, I’ll let her go, and it’ll be like I never met her.