by Light
“Christian,” she breathed, “stop.”
“Relax,” he whispered, reaching up to caress her face again as he pressed himself between her legs. He rolled his hips into her subtly, letting her feel his excitement. She whimpered softly, and he felt a throbbing pulse straining beneath his jeans. What was subtle turned heated as his hand smoothed up the fabric of her blouse, exposing her skin.
“You can touch me, if you want,” he said.
“No… I don’t want to do this.”
Aria slid his hands away, trying to pull her shirt back down. He snatched her wrists, pinning them above her head. Christian was kissing her so hard she couldn’t think. She was dizzy and lightheaded, and the touch of his hands as they roamed down her arms felt so deliciously right. He was pressing hot kisses over her neck as his fingers fumbled with the button of her jeans. It took her back to that moment. To hands ripping at her clothes and holding her down. To the panic building in her chest, that harsh sound of laughter and jeers, and the slow, creeping pool of blood.
“Stop it!” she yelled. “Get off of me!”
Aria shoved him hard, sending him tumbling out of the chair. Christian landed on the ground, ripping his jeans on the rough cement.
“What the hell?” he breathed, catching the fierce look in her eyes. Something inside of him liked that look – some darker part he wasn’t willing to acknowledge. Her body language said that she could tell, and she wasn’t happy about it. Aria rose from the chair, eyes flashing gold as she advanced on him menacingly. “Whoa,” Christian exclaimed.
She watched him scramble back a few feet as fear and hunger swirled around in his eyes. “Leave,” she said in a low voice. “Now.”
Christian couldn’t move.
“I’m sorry, okay?” he said unevenly. He watched her irises bleed back to their lovely green, standing slowly and keeping his back against one of the machines. Aria wrapped her arms around herself, circling back over to the chair in silence. “…What are you?” he whispered.
“A fool,” she replied.
“You’re not a fool. I didn’t mean to take it that far.”
“You always meant to take it that far. Dallas was right about you.”
“Dallas doesn’t know the first thing about me,” he said. “He doesn’t know that I’ve kind of let you in, that I’ve taken you places I’ve never taken anyone. And no one seems to realize that I’ve been trying to protect you from that psycho. I don’t know what more you want from me.”
Aria kept her back to Christian as she wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. She sat down slowly, staring out at the night sky.
“I want the same thing I’ve always wanted,” she said distantly.
“And what’s that?”
“…Something real.”
Chapter 16
Life tends to hand us more questions than answers. It throws us curve balls, steers us in the wrong direction, and sometimes it even falls out from beneath our feet completely. It doesn’t give us time to adjust, and it certainly doesn’t care what we think we can handle. Christian felt like he was drowning in questions – questions that burned brighter than all the stars in last night’s sky. He was thinking about going to find Aria when a plate of waffles slapped down onto the table in front of him, blueberries rolling wildly off into his lap. It was the last thing he needed after a sleepless night.
“What the hell is this?” he complained, looking up at his friend.
“I snagged you a plate of awesome,” Adam said, setting his own towering pile of waffles down with a loud clank. Christian’s stack paled in comparison to his own, and he planned on going back for seconds.
“I’ve told you before; I don’t eat junk like this.”
“What? This isn’t junk. Look, fruit,” Adam said, holding up a sliced banana and waving it carelessly towards him. It flew out of his fingers and landed on Christian’s arm. Adam could see his face twitching.
He looked calm as he peeled the sticky, syrup-covered slice of fruit off of his skin and smashed it into Adam’s cheek.
“Dude, you made me delectable,” he laughed. A group of girls walked by and he held his arms out wide, calling out to them. “Any of you girls want a taste? I’m officially delicious!”
Christian was not in the mood for Adam and his energy. He’d left Ariahna alone on the roof in the middle of the night, and had spent the rest of his own evening staring at the ceiling of his dorm room. It didn’t help that bits and pieces of his memory were coming back to him, either.
“So did you pound that shit, or what?” Adam asked.
“Do you always have to be so crude?”
“Uh, duh,” he replied. “She left you with a stiff one, didn’t she?”
“Adam, just… shut up.”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he laughed, taking a ginormous bite of his breakfast and smiling as he chewed his food like a cow.
“I can’t believe women actually sleep with you,” Christian said, draping an arm over the back of his chair. “I mean, seriously, does it always have to be about sex?”
Adam turned a paranoid look to Christian, chewing a little slower. “What’s up with you?” he asked. “You’re yammering on like some sentimental girl. The answer is yes. It’s always about sex, always. The fact that you even have to ask me that is cause for concern.”
Christian sighed. “I don’t know why I hang out with you sometimes.”
“Pull the tampon out of your twat and grow a pair,” Adam advised.
“You first.” He watched what Adam called ‘eating’ in barely concealed disgust. The mess in his mouth looked more like a massacre than anything edible. “I need to give her something real,” he mumbled.
“What?” Adam said around a mouthful of waffles. Half-chewed food tumbled out of his mouth and onto the syrupy disaster on his plate. He swallowed the rest of it hastily. “Man, I don’t know what this girl has done to you, but you are entering the danger zone. Abort mission, now.”
“I’m not aborting anything. This girl is going to be the sweetest little fuck I’ve ever had,” he said. “I just have to re-strategize.”
“And he’s back,” Adam grinned.
Christian glared at him in annoyance. “I never left. I’m just perplexed trying to figure her out. I’m not going to win her the usual way.”
Adam frowned, mouthing the words, ‘The usual way’.
“What other way is there?”
“If I knew the answer to that question I wouldn’t be sitting here with you and your god-awful mountain of sugar,” Christian muttered, leaning forward on his elbows. He stared over the tops of his laced fingers, trying to solve the problem he’d created.
“How do I give her something real, without…?”
“Give her a good time. That’s as real as it gets,” Adam laughed.
“Why hadn’t I thought of that?” he said, slapping him upside the head. “If the next thing out of your mouth is not something helpful, you’ll be leaving here wearing your breakfast.”
Adam promptly shut his mouth.
“Give her what she values most,” he said after a quiet moment.
A solution was forming in Christian’s mind and he slapped a palm against the table as it came to him. “That’s it. If I want this one, I’m going to have to venture into uncharted territory. Adam,” he said, looking at his friend dead on, “I’m going on a real date.”
***
Gentle fingers combed through Rome’s hair, rousing him from his sleep. He opened one bleary eye at a time, blinking through the heavy weight of his eyelids and the bright overhead lights.
“…Eliza? What are you doing here?”
“Hello blue eyes,” she said. “How are you feeling?”
Like I have to pee, he thought. Rome moved to sit up and heard the clanking of dishes in his lap. Eliza had brought him breakfast. Two perfectly cooked eggs sat sunny-side up on his plate, adorned with several strips of bacon and links of sausage. A short stack of buttery pancakes drew his attention away fr
om the orange juice and towering bowl of fruit. But what really made him uncomfortable was the red rose sitting elegantly in a glass of water. “Are you sure you meant to bring this to me?” he laughed.
“No, I meant to bring it to the other boy who’s dying in a hospital bed,” she said, sitting down on the mattress beside him.
“I’m not dying,” Rome grinned.
“Really? Because I heard you got struck by lightning.”
“If that’s the case, I must be more confused than I thought.”
“You should eat up,” she said, “so you can get your strength back. The sooner you get better the sooner I can sweep you off your feet.”
Rome wasn’t sure how to accept something like this, especially from someone he barely knew. “I’m not really hungry,” he lied. His stomach growled as if on cue and his lips curled up in a guilty smile.
“Don’t worry, it’s not poisoned,” she joked.
Rome picked the fork up, hesitantly cutting off a bite of pancake. It had just passed his lips when Eliza smiled.
“I should just start laughing now to mess with you,” she said.
Rome nearly choked.
“Now I have to make you take a bite, just to make sure.”
Eliza looked down at the syrupy pancake dangling from the end of the fork. Rome was holding it out for her to take, and she smirked at him before slowly wrapping her lips around the metal and sliding it onto her tongue. “Mm,” she moaned, chewing delicately. “Tastes pretty good for poison.”
He cleared his throat, looking down at the plate. He hadn’t intended for her to do that. “Well, um… thanks,” he said.
“Sure.”
An odd kind of silence blanketed the room. It was the kind Eliza only experienced when she was around Rome. It was actually somewhat peaceful, she realized. “…You might be the quietest date I’ve ever had.”
“What?” Rome said, gulping down his half-chewed food.
“I said you’re not very talkative,” Eliza smiled.
“You know that’s not what I meant,” he said sheepishly.
“What, you mean when I called you my date?” she asked. “Let’s look at this objectively. You’re here, I’m here, there’s food and conversation. Isn’t that pretty much what a date boils down to? So it’s in an unconventional setting. But hey, you can’t always schedule your near-death experiences around your social life. I told you I was going to take you out. This is just more like a home visit,” she shrugged.
Rome stared back at Eliza, the girl who was probably the object of every guy’s affection at Vardel. She’d brought him breakfast in bed, shamelessly flattered him, and all but declared her interest in having him on her arm. And yet all he could think about was a girl who wanted nothing to do with him. He exhaled, loudly. “Eliza, I have to be honest with you. There’s someone I like, and it’s—it’s not you.” Her face fell so fast he literally felt pain at the dejected expression. “Okay, that came out wrong.”
“No, it’s alright,” she said, smiling down at his eggs. “I think it came out right.” Eliza was torn. She was supposed to be keeping Rome distracted for Christian, but from the moment she’d met him it had become a purely selfish mission. She genuinely liked him; and not because he was flashy, or cocky, or rich. He wasn’t drooling all over her and falling at her feet. And there was something appealing in that – sexy, even.
“So you don’t like me at all?” she asked. “Not even a little bit?”
“I’m not saying I don’t like you. You seem like a great person. I just don’t think it’s fair to let you do things like bring me breakfast when I’m hung up on somebody else.”
“Oh, well if that’s all you’re worried about, I’ll just eat it,” she said, laughing lightly. Eliza could tell she was only making a bad situation worse. And the last thing she wanted to do was come off as desperate. “Hey, it’s no big deal. Thanks for letting me know so I didn’t waste all my good lines on you,” she said. She stood, backing towards the door. “I suppose I’ll see you around. You know, class and stuff.” She was stalling, and he probably knew it. “Okay. Um, I hope you enjoy the eggs.”
Rome watched her leave and then tossed his head back against the pillow, expelling all the air from his lungs. He knew he had to be a complete idiot, turning down a girl like Eliza. With the way things had been going, he was probably going to get hit by a car or blown up before he could even talk to Aria.
It felt like days had passed before the clock on the wall finally struck twelve. Rome was staring down at a cup of jello. His lunch certainly paled in comparison to the breakfast Eliza had brought him. Beyond listening in on the stagnant conversations going on in the teachers’ lounge, he was bored out of his mind. He’d tried to tell Ruth that he was fine. The burns were completely healed and the bruises on his abdomen didn’t hurt that bad. He’d all but told her he’d had worse. It wasn’t just a state of mental numbness driving him to leave, either. The longer he stayed in these hospital clothes, with the nurse checking on him every few hours, the more likely she was to see the scars all over his back. If she hadn’t seen them already.
His stomach twisted, and his eyes snapped up to the door. Rome was starting to salivate. He was being overtaken by a sickening hunger. That hunger could only mean one thing. “Kaleb?” he called. “I know you’re out there.” Shit, he heard him mumble from the hall. The door creaked open a moment later and Kaleb slipped inside. “What are you doing here? Come to finish the job?” he joked.
“No. I just wanted to make sure you didn’t die before I could collect on that favor.”
Rome hummed thoughtfully, sitting up and swinging his feet over the side of the bed. “Does that mean you came to collect?”
Kaleb stepped between Rome’s legs, fingers curling around his waist as he tugged him towards his hips. “I haven’t fully decided what I want yet.”
Rome glared at him. “You know I’m not gay, right? So whatever you’re thinking, you can forget it and back the fuck up.”
“Neither am I,” Kaleb said. “…Maybe I shouldn’t have taken you for a man of your word, though.”
“What the heck is that supposed to mean?”
Kaleb’s hands smoothed over the tops of Rome’s thighs, bunching up the thin fabric of his hospital pants. “You know what it means.”
“When I said anything, I meant anything but this,” he corrected, trying to shove him away. He didn’t have the strength.
“Are you always so aggressive?”
Rome didn’t answer.
“I just want to talk,” Kaleb said quietly.
“That’s what counselors are for. I think the guy’s even your type.”
Kaleb’s fingers bit into his skin, fangs snapping down from the roof of his mouth unintentionally. “I could simply take what I want.”
Rome reflected the dark look in Kaleb’s eyes. They were always so hit and miss, he thought. “What do you even want from me?”
“There are only two things I need, and since you’re foolishly taking sex off of the menu, that leaves…”
“Blood,” Rome said.
Kaleb’s smile widened.
“Fine, just hurry up and get it over with.”
“Were you even listening to what I said the other night?” Kaleb asked angrily. “What you asked me to do, that doesn’t come cheap. I’m not going to feed on you once and call it even, you stupid mongrel.”
Rome growled, feeling the sound reverberate in his chest.
“Didn’t anyone ever teach you how to ask for things nicely, or does the son of a king just get whatever the fuck he wants?”
Kaleb ripped him off the bed, slamming Rome roughly into the wall. He took pleasure in the grimace on his face and the light trembling of his body. “Sorry, did I hurt you?” he breathed. His face was tight with anger, jaw clenched and eyes narrowed. He pressed his knuckles into Rome’s chest, crushing him against the plaster. This was one of the things he hated most about Rome. He had a talent for taking away his control
, for getting under his skin in a way no one else could. It was like he knew just the right words to say to make him snap. He was almost starting to think he delighted in it.
“Do I need to call the nurse?” Rome warned.
“Call the bitch, if you think she can stop me.”
Rome chuckled under his breath.
That sound was grating on Kaleb. He could kill him right now if he wanted to, and Rome was laughing. He thought he was a damn joke, just like everyone else. Kaleb closed his eyes, trying to push back the boiling rage that laughter was provoking. “I’m so tired,” he muttered. “I’m so tired of everyone treating me like shit!” Magic crackled dangerously through the air, surging around them wildly and raising the hair on Kaleb’s arms. A crack started at the bottom of the door, running up the solid piece of wood until it splintered loudly in half. Bits of plaster sprinkled down from above as the ceiling began to cave under the weight of his fury.
“Holy shit,” Rome whispered, staring upwards. His eyes flicked back to Kaleb, touching his wrists cautiously. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. But right now, you need to get ahold of yourself. Before you bring the roof down on our heads.”
Kaleb wasn’t listening to Rome. He wasn’t looking at him. If he did, he thought he might rip his throat out.
“You can feed on me, okay? It’s the least I can do to pay you back for what you did. I know I owe you… for more than just saving those guys. I know that I owe you my life.”
“You know what?” Kaleb whispered, opening his eyes. “I don’t even want your blood. You’re filthy, and vile, and I hate you. You’re worthless, and ugly, and no one in their right mind would want you,” he hissed. He hovered over Rome’s mouth, staring at his lips – wanting to kiss him and claw into his face at the same time. He brushed cool lips over Rome’s burning hot ones, reveling in how sick it made him feel. “I can’t wait for the day when one of us kills the other.”
Rome was stunned.
“…Don’t talk to me again,” Kaleb said, turning and storming out of the room. He slammed the door behind him, glancing back as half of it broke off and crashed down onto the floor.