Sometimes, I didn't see him for a few nights at a time. He always came back, though. His skin might be just a degree or two warmer, a tad less chalky. His eyes twinkled more than usual. I didn't ask why. I didn't want to know, but as the saying goes, sometimes you know before you know.
Evidence was there; it was just left up to me to decide to face up to it.
"Miss me?" he'd tease as soon as we made it upstairs, laughing still at Mrs. Hudson's offer of a cup of tea. He'd always politely say, "No, thank you; I've already eaten," or "I've just had something to drink," like everyone's favourite son or brother or friend, and I'd try not to think about what he truly meant.
"Not really," I would say. "I've been busy at work all day."
Adam got into the habit of pushing me down onto the sofa, but it was too small for us both to sprawl comfortably, so it would be a few kisses, maybe undoing a few buttons, then on to the bedroom. Each day---or rather, each night---we spent time together, we'd go a little further. Shirt buttons, then belts.
The first time I saw Adam with his shirt off, I was too awestruck to feel guilty. Something in the back of my mind said don't get caught, but that was it. By then, I wanted to carry on touching him and didn't feel guilt or shame. Not with the way he looked at me, like I was his favourite toy.
"Do you have any idea how long I've waited to meet someone like you?" Adam murmured against my neck, and I stiffened. Not in a good way. "Sorry." He pulled away. "I keep forgetting people who know what I am get nervous when I do that. I just want to bite you all over."
My eyes must have widened in shock because he laughed, though not cruelly, I believed.
"Not like that. Well, maybe. I just mean because you're so delicious. Good enough to eat in that sense. Honestly. I don't want to hurt you."
Oh, but you're going to, I almost said out loud. Instead, I just pulled him down toward me again, breath catching in my throat when I realised his arm was between us, his hand working at my belt. Somehow, it had become almost undone, and Adam's unnatural dexterity making quick work of the buckle.
"Oh." Christ. At last. I felt like I'd been waiting for that forever, his bare hand on my erection. I gulped. "Fuck. What...?"
"What am I doing? What you want me to."
Adam smiled against my mouth, half-laughing, half-kissing. He pressed his lips to mine, and I struggled just a little. "What is it? Am I hurting you?"
"Can't breathe," I managed to say and laughed too.
Everything was done quietly. Whispers, gasps, winks, silent communication through brief looks, the expressions on each other's faces. It made it all somehow dirtier, but I knew beyond all uncertainty that this was right. I pushed against him from the hips, but with his weight on top of me and the fact I was weakened by lust, there wasn't much give there. I had to wait for Adam to roll over to one side so we were facing each other. Soon, we fell into a rhythm of me pushing myself through the tight grip of his hand, and Adam whispering at me.
No sweet nothings; it wasn't that romantic. I could never remember his exact wording; the way his hand felt on my prick distracted me.
Adam's grip tightened, and I had to bite my lip to avoid crying out. "Shit, Adam," I whispered.
"You'll make me...I can't..." Breathless, I couldn't continue. I couldn't even ask or tell him to kiss me, and he didn't, merely touching his cool forehead to my perspiration-soaked one and smiling when I came all over his hand and forearm, twisting and fighting to bury my head in the curve of his neck, or a pillow, anything to muffle the sound.
I gulped back as much air as I could when I felt able to breathe again; Adam's hand was still on me, as if he didn't just not mind the sticky mess I'd made, but actually liked it. "God." I screwed my eyes shut for a few seconds in an extended blink. "What the hell have I just done?"
"Nothing wrong. Absolutely nothing wrong at all."
"I need to get cleaned up." I kept a water basin and jug in the room; the water would be cold by now, but it was better than nothing. With my return to normality, whatever that was these days, came the lurking dread and the more active, heart-pounding panic. How to explain any suspect stains away when laundry time came around again? I could sponge my trousers down, but my shirt? The top bedcover? "I should have been completely naked, then I wouldn't have...my clothes..."
"I won't argue with that."
Adam was still smirking when I pulled away from him. My legs shook, and it was just as well I was still lying down.
"God, what a mess."
"You can wash yourself. Wipe yourself down with a washcloth."
"No, not that. I mean, yes that, but this. Us." I wasn't sure quite what "us" meant, if this would carry on, or if it even should. I wanted this, at least before I'd come, before the guilt washed over me, but was wanting enough? With the war and my work and Adam's mad insistence on certain things being true, things that were impossible.
"I need to go soon."
"Yes." I didn't look around at him while I cleaned myself up. The washcloth took care of the worst of it; it wasn't that bad after all. I tried to tell myself I worried over nothing.
"It won't be daylight for a few hours yet, but I wouldn't want to draw suspicion on you with your landlady. Got a spare washcloth?" Adam looked me up and down while I corrected my clothing, trying to adopt a respectable appearance once again.
"Yes, here." I handed him one and went back over to the bed, inspecting it for evidence of what had happened minutes before. I straightened the sheets and pillows while Adam cleaned himself up. "I'm sorry the water's not hot, but..."
"Doesn't matter to me." He shrugged.
"Temperature doesn't affect me, remember?" He'd said several times that he didn't feel the cold.
"Just the heat?" I threw at him, meaning sunlight or fire. I'd finished straightening the sheets and flicked away imaginary dust motes from my shirt, smoothing down my trousers.
"You're catching on." Adam stood with his hands on his hips, facing me, looking as if he meant business. "Listen, I---"
But I never found out what it was he was going to say. That was when the siren went off.
The all clear came, and Adam was one of the first out of the bomb shelter. I felt like I'd been holding my breath all that time. My landlady in the same damned bunker as the man who'd masturbated me to a messy climax a short time before, and I felt like fire ants were crawling all over me.
He could charm the birds out of the trees, though. "It's almost a relief to be down here," he said with a smile. "We could have brought all the paperwork we were going through with us, but we just didn't think, and let's be honest, this is as good an excuse as any to stop working, isn't it?"
Mrs. Hudson smiled, completely taken in, and almost giggled like a schoolgirl. "The MOD works you too hard," she said with sympathy, clearly assuming that Adam worked in the same, or a similar, department to me. I said nothing, making myself complicit in such deceit. "I understand that what you do is essential, but this war..." She rolled her eyes and looked skyward, through the roofing of the shelter, the earth above it, likely praying for deliverance. Or wondering if soon, she would be joining her husband, wherever he was now.
Time passed, and the all-clear sounded.
"Must get back to work; you understand, Mrs. Hudson? Sergeant Stephenson, I'll be in touch as soon as I can."
"Nice man," Mrs. Hudson commented as he fled. "Charming."
"Hmm," I murmured in tacit agreement, thinking, dangerously so.
The bombing panicked Adam in more ways than one. He didn't like being trapped in shelters with "Ordinaries," as he called us. "What happens if I get the bloodlust in me and end up killing you all in a frenzy?"
"Stop joking about it, Adam," I said.
"Who's joking? Nathan, you have no idea what it's like for me. Not only am I praying a bomb doesn't come along and blow you to bits---"
"What about you?"
"Never mind me. I'm worried about you coming to grief; I'm a bit more resilient than you. You've already se
en evidence of that. But even if you're fine and dandy, how long will that continue for? How long can you get away with it? Plus, what if the all-clear doesn't come until daylight?
Have you thought about how awkward things would be then? I say awkward; I mean bloody agonising for me, and any witnesses to it? They'd be driven mad by the sight. We need to do something about this."
"Such as? Assassinate Hitler? Bring the war to an end overnight? I shouldn't be surprised if there were people attempting that very thing as we speak."
"No, you idiot. I mean this as in us. We have to do something to make sure we're safe."
"Such as?"
"You. I think you should join me."
"Pardon me?" I thought I knew what he was getting at, but I needed him to clarify.
"I want you to join us. I want you to become like me. Change. So we can be together properly. Forever."
I said no, vehemently. My refusal involved many words of four letters.
Adam was never good at taking no for an answer. I tried to shut him out, carry on with my work, but just as had been the case at the start of our relationship, he was always there. Not in a creepy way, or so I thought, but just waiting. I'd leave work, shake hands with a colleague to say goodbye, be on my way.
And there he would be. Stepping out of a doorway, throwing off the darkest of shadows so I could see him again---but only just, given the blackout. Sometimes with a demand to know who I'd been speaking to, as if I could throw him off that easily and move on to someone else.
Sometimes with accusations and always with a ready apology for smothering me, but hot on the heels of such apologies always came the pressing, the pushing, the demands. "You can't do this to me," "I need you," and the desperate-sounding "What will I do without you?"
I felt the weight of his expectation bearing down on me until it crushed my soul. What if he wasn't asking me to do this so that I could be happy? What if he was pushing me into this because he was running away from his own loneliness? I didn't know if I could be the one to put him back together again. Not that he was broken. He was just...demanding. Demanding that I love him.
On more than one occasion, I caught him looking at me. We'd be in the same room, candlelight flickering over us, and I'd look up from a book, some papers, and he'd be...looking. Just looking. As if he was scared one day I wouldn't be there anymore.
Given that we were slap bang in the middle of the Second World War that was a very real possibility---and strangely, it seemed to bother Adam more than it did me---I wanted to do the right thing, morally. He just wanted to possess me.
It was a scary thing, the force of his desire to own me. To inspire such desperation in a lover, male or female, was disconcerting. I wondered often if he'd prefer me to die in the war than actively choose to walk away from him. He could stand being disappointed, not being left.
But I couldn't let him go either; my addiction to what we were doing was just as strong, though of a different sort. I was curious about whether I could ever love and be loved by another man, and Adam? Adam was a steamroller in a man's body.
He worked on me. A full-on charm offensive. Not that I was charmed by his ability to cut himself and heal almost immediately. Or the fact he didn't breathe.
I will admit, though, that I was amused by his ability to stick his head in my washbowl and not come up for air for ten minutes.
"I could have done it for longer," he said at the time, "but it gets boring."
The first time he did it, I pulled him away, told him not to be so stupid, but he insisted it wasn't stupidity; it was him trying to show me what he was capable of. What I could be capable of too, if only I'd agree.
I said yes, I said no, I said yes again. I loved the thought of being with him and not giving a damn what society thought, but there were those who'd kill me for daring to be with another man.
"Imagine the freedom of being impossible to kill," Adam pointed out. "Or as near to impossible as you can imagine. Sunlight? Bad news. The older we get, the more we can endure, but blades, bullets, cars, other weapons? We can stand against anything. And I want to give you that! You can't say no, Nathan. You just can't."
He introduced me to his friend William--- sorry, Will---Bosworth. I liked him straight off. He was a straight down the middle, honest sort; I could tell. I also got the impression he was one of the few, rare people Adam Locke would listen to.
He had a commanding presence, and I asked him once if he was older than Adam.
"Yes, by around five decades," he'd said.
I knew it; I could tell. Not world-weary, but long-lived nevertheless. I just felt I'd get a better hearing from him. Adam was all fired up on lust and enthusiasm. Will was more down to earth than that. I pointed out the negatives, and Adam brushed them off; Will considered them. "This isn't something you take on lightly, Adam," he'd warned. Several times.
I said yes, then no, and finally yes again.
Why? Because...oh, I don't know. Yes, he bulldozed me into it, but ultimately, no one had ever made me feel the way Adam did. He'd awakened something in me I'd previously thought was wrong and evil and immoral. And even if it had been? Adam made me not care. At that time, he was the only one I could imagine ever doing that. There were good times, too; it would be foolish of me to deny that fact. When I was inside him and trying not to cry because it felt so good?
Those times were good enough to make me agree to the craziest things.
And thinking I could be with him forever and ever, Amen, was a pretty crazy thing.
I didn't have much to give up. A job. A couple of rooms in Mrs. Hudson's converted house. That, placed against Adam? A feeling of coming home, of finally discovering what I was, moved me to agree. Reluctantly so. He was my first male lover, and part of me wondered if I was moving too fast, allowing myself to be swept along by events. But then, as so many people parroted, "There's a war on, you know!" The bottom line was, anyone (except Adam and Will) could be killed at any moment, and this was the only thing to give me a cast-iron guarantee that I could carry on living and enjoy what I'd discovered about myself.
But still, those little whispers of doubt played at me. Right up until the last minute when I stood in a room with Adam and Will, in a building they occasionally hid out in. Abandoned, half bombed- out, but with a few rooms still standing and a basement dry and dark enough for a vampire to spend daylight hours in if he were caught short.
"I can't do this." I gulped back fear, wondering if I were more scared of changing, or of disappointing Adam.
"You're just nervous; that's only natural,"
Adam said, dismissive of my concerns as ever.
"Natural? Natural? You think anything about this process is natural? Adam, after what we've done, after...you can't..."
Will laid his hand on my shoulder, immediately calming me. "Adam, give him some breathing space. You have to understand---"
"He's had plenty of fucking breathing space! He's the only one in this room who can breathe. There's a bloody war on out there." Adam swept his hand in the direction of where the windows used to be. Now they were boarded up to hide their shattered state. "People are dying all the time. We can't just delay and delay and delay while Nathan makes up his mind and changes it again. Ordinarily, yes, we'd wait, but..." He looked directly at me at that point. "War speeds things up. It's not normal or natural, but we're not normal or natural. Everyday rules don't apply here."
"Adam, I just need time to think about this."
"There isn't time. You've already had some to think, and we're quickly running out. You'll grow old. Or be killed. Then what?"
"That's what everyone has to deal with these days, Adam. I'm nothing special."
"Yes, you are; you're one of the few who has a chance to do something about it."
Adam asked Will to leave the room after that.
To give the two of us some privacy to discuss things. I thought he was going to try to persuade me with words.
So did Will, probably.
<
br /> Chapter 8
"I HONESTLY DID," WILL SAYS.
"I swear, I thought he was just going to speak to you. Not...not..."
I've given them both a rundown of my history, most of which Will already knows, but he listened along respectfully for Kieran's benefit. I left out the details of the bedroom hand job and any other sexual intimacies. It's obvious Adam and I were lovers--- they are lovers too, but some things don't need to be discussed in detail. I, on the other hand, have no choice. I remember all too well. Those images aren't going anywhere.
"So what happened?" Kieran asks. I catch his eye, and he bites his lip. "Sorry. I don't mean to intrude, but I admit; I'm curious." He shifts around on the settee, having made himself clearly uncomfortable. We moved through to the living room some time ago while I was in the middle of sharing my story, ostensibly so we could all sit back and relax while I filled Kieran in on my past, but it looks as if none of us have managed to do so.
"I don't remember much of it. I'm not avoiding the question, I promise you. I literally can't remember. Adam banging on and on about how I had to change, I couldn't let him down, and I thought he was moving in to kiss me, but..." I shudder, touching a hand to the side of my neck.
The scar has long since faded, and I'm thankful I don't remember much of the actual deed itself, but a certain jumpiness remains.
"I interrupted," Will puts in. "Much as I'm doing now, but Nathan tells me that was when he began to lose consciousness."
"Please, carry on," I say, glad that I have someone to help me out. It's not pleasant to think about and even more unpleasant to relate to someone new.
"I'd been outside for a bit," Will continues, "just taking in the sights and sounds of a blacked- out city. When I returned, I heard someone cry out and a piece of furniture get disturbed. I knocked on the door, no answer, so I re-entered the room anyway. Nathan was struggling, so I hauled Adam off. Basically had to punch him off of Nathan, who was, by that time, out of it."
"In so doing, Adam tore my skin. His fangs were deep inside me, and Will pulling him off me tore the skin and flesh, and..." I shrug in a "sorry, you did ask" way and make an attempt to smile at Kieran, who's probably wondering, will this happen to me, too?
Bring Me to Life Page 8