When the others began leaving, Rue started to pull her outer layer of clothes back on.
“Not so fast,” Sean said. “We have practice tonight.”
“I’m mad at you,” she said.
“Turn out the lights behind you, whichever one of you wins,” Sylvia called.
Sean went out into the hall and locked the front door, or at least that was the direction his footfalls took. She heard him come back, heard him over at the big CD player in the corner, by the table of white towels Sylvia kept there for sweaty dancers.
Rue began to warm up, but she still wasn’t about to look at Sean. She was aware he began stretching, too, on the other side of the room.
After fifteen minutes or so, she stood, to signal she was ready to practice. But she kept her eyes forward. Rue wasn’t sure if she was being childish, or if she was just trying to avoid attacking Sean. He started the CD player, and Rue was startled to recognize Tina Turner’s sultry voice. “Proud Mary” was not a thinking song, though, but a dancing song, and when Sean’s hands reached out for hers, she had no idea what he was going to do. The next twenty minutes were a challenge that left her no time for brooding. Avril Lavigne, the Dixie Chicks, Macy Gray and the Supremes kept her busy.
And she never once looked up at him.
The next song was her favorite. It was a warhorse, and the secret reason she’d decided to become a dancer, she’d told him in a moment of confidence: the Righteous Brothers’ “Time of My Life.” She’d worn out a tape of the movie
Dirty Dancing
, and that song had been the climax of the movie. The heroine had finally gained enough confidence in herself and trust in her partner to attempt a leap, at the apex of which he caught her and lifted her above his head as if she were flying.
“Shame on you,” she said in a shaky voice.
“We’re going to do this,” he said.
“How could you take over my life like this?”
“I’m yours,” he said.
It was so simple, so direct. She met his eyes. He nodded, once. His declaration hit her like a fist to the heart. She was so stunned by his statement that she complied when he put his hand on her back, when he took her left hand and pressed it to his silent heart.
Her right hand was spread on his back, as his was on hers. Their hips began to move. The syncopation broke apart in a minute as he began to sweep her along with him, and they danced. Nothing mattered to Rue but matching her steps to her partner’s. She wanted to dance with him forever. At every turn of her body, every movement of her head, she saw something new in his pale face—a glint of blue eye, the arch of his brow, the haughty line of his nose, which contrasted so startlingly with the grace of his body. When the song began to reach its climax, Sean raced to one end of the long room and held out his hands to her. Rue took a deep breath and began to run toward him, thinking all the way, and when she was just the right distance from Sean, she launched herself. She felt his hands on her hipbones, and then she was high in the air above his head, her arms outstretched, her legs extended in a beautiful line, flying.
As Sean let her down the line of his body very slowly, Rue couldn’t stop smiling. Then the music stopped, but Sean didn’t let her feet touch the floor. She was looking right into his eyes, and the smile faded from her face.
His arms were around her, and his mouth was right by hers. Then it was on hers, and once again he asked admission.
Rue whispered, “We shouldn’t. You’re going to get hurt. He’ll find me. He’ll try to kill me again. You’ll try to stop him, and you’ll get hurt. You know that.”
“I know this,” Sean said, and he kissed her again, with more force. She parted her lips for him, and he was in her mouth, his arms surrounding her, and she was altogether overwhelmed. It appeared that she was his, as much as he was hers.
For the second time in her life, Rue gave herself up to someone else.
“This is different,” she whispered. “This is different.”
“It ought to be.” Sean said. “It will be.” He picked her up in one smooth move. Their eyes were locked.
“Why are you getting into my life?” She shook her head, dazed. “There’s so much bad in it.”
“You fought back,” he said. “You made a new life, on your own.”
“Not much of one.”
“A life with courage and purpose. Now, let me love you this way.” His body moved against hers.
“I’m not scared.” She was.
“I know it.” He smiled at her, and her heart wrenched in her chest.
“You won’t hurt me,” she said with absolute faith.
“I would rather die.” He was so serious.
“You know I can’t have children,” she said. She meant only to let him know he didn’t need to use birth control.
“I can’t, either,” he murmured. “We can’t reproduce.”
If she’d ever known that, she’d forgotten it. She felt oddly jolted. She’d always supposed that her barrenness would be a terrible obstacle to forming another relationship, but instead it was a non-issue.
His tongue flicked in her ear. “Tell me what you like,” he suggested, his breath tickling her cheek. He walked over to the pile of exercise mats, carrying her as if her weight was nothing.
“I don’t know,” she said, partly embarrassed at her own ignorance, partly excited because she was sure he would find out what she liked.
“Light out, light on?”
“Out, please.”
In the space of a second, he was back beside her. He had a few towels with him. He spread them on the mats, and she was glad, because the vinyl surface was unpleasant to the touch.
“My clothes?” he asked. He waited for her answer.
“Oh…off.” Ambient light came through the frosted glass in the door of the studio, and she could see the gleam of his skin in the darkness. He was built smooth and sleek, as dancers usually are, and he was purely white except for the trail of red hair starting below his navel and going down. She followed that trail with her eyes and found herself gasping.
“Oh…oh. Wow.”
“I want you very much.”
“Yeah, I get that.” Her voice was tiny.
“Can I see you?” For the first time, his voice was tentative.
She sat up on the pile of mats and rose to her knees. She pulled off her white T-shirt very slowly, and her bra was gone in an instant.
“Oh,” he said. He reached out to touch her, hesitated.
“Yes,” Rue said.
His white hands with their long fingers cupped her breasts with infinite gentleness. Then his mouth followed.
She gasped, and it was an urgent sound. His hands began tugging her shorts, gathering up her panties with them, and she lay down so he could coax them over her feet. He stayed down there for a minute or two, sucking her toes, which made her shiver all over, and then he began working his way up her legs.
She was afraid her courage would run out. She wanted him so badly she shook all over, but her only
previous experience with sex had been short and brutal, its consequences painful and disastrous.
Sean seemed to understand her misgivings, and he eased his body up her length until his arms wrapped around her and his mouth found hers again.
“I can stop now,” he told her. “After this, I’m not sure. I don’t want to hurt you or frighten you.”
Rue said, “Now or never.”
He gave a choked laugh.
“That didn’t sound very romantic,” she apologized. His hips flexed involuntarily, pressing his hard length against her stomach, and he began to lick her neck.
“Oh,” she said, reaching down to touch him. “Oh, please.” His fingers touched her intimately, making sure she was ready. The delicate movement of his fingers made Rue shudder.
Then he was at her entrance, the blunt head pushing, and then he was inside her. “Layla,” he said raggedly.
“It’s good,” she said anxiously. After a few seconds, she said again, in an entirely different tone, “It’s so good.”
“I want it to be better than good.” His hips began to move.
Then she couldn’t speak.
S
HE HAD NEVER IMAGINED
she could be so relaxed, so content.
His hair had come loose from its ribbon and trailed across her breasts as he lay on his stomach looking down at her. He had never seen anything so beautiful as her face in the faint glow of the city night that lit the room through the frosted glass.
She wondered how he could have become so important to her in such a short time. She loved every line of his face, the power of his sleek white body, the passion of his lovemaking; but most of all she loved the fact that he was on her side. It had been years since anyone had been on her side, unconditionally, unilaterally. She thought,
I should still be angry that he went to Pineville.
But she searched for the anger she’d initially felt and found it was gone.
“I’m a wimp,” she concluded, out loud.
“I know what that means,” Sean said, his voice dreamy. “Why do you say that?”
“I’m glad you found out. I’m glad I don’t have to tell you all about it. I’m glad you care enough to want to find…Carver.”
The hesitation before she was able to say his name told Sean a lot.
“What did your parents do?” he asked. He hadn’t had time to ask Will Kryder all the questions that had occurred to him.
“They didn’t believe me,” she murmured. “Oh, my brother Les stood by me. He saved me that night. But he’s not a strong-willed, forceful kind of guy. See, my dad works for Carver’s dad, and my dad probably couldn’t get hired anywhere else now. He drinks a lot. I’m not sure he’d still have the job he’s got if he wasn’t my father. Dad knows Hutton’s got to keep him on, or else he might talk. My mother…well, she decided to think it was a clever ploy on my part to get Carver to marry me. When she found out otherwise, she was…livid.”
“She wanted you to marry him.”
“Yes, she actually believed that I’d want to be tied to the man who raped me.”
“In my time, we would have made him wed you,” Sean said.
“Really?”
“If you were my sister, I would have made sure of it.”
“Because no one else would have married me otherwise, right? Damaged goods.”
Sean perceived he had made a massive error.
“And for the rest of my life I would have had to put up with Carver’s little ways, like beating on me, because he’d raped me,” Rue said coldly.
“All right, in my time, we would have been wrong,” he conceded. “But we would have been on your side.”
“I have you on my side,” she said. “I have you on my side
now.
If this has meant anything to you.”
“I don’t get this close to anyone unless it means something to me.”
“That come from being an aristocrat? In your time, were you like Carver?” There was an edge to her voice that hadn’t been there before.
“The night we first make love, you can compare me to the man who raped you?”
She hadn’t thought before she spoke. “After years of weighing every word I said to another person, all of a sudden I’ve gotten to be the worst—I’m so sorry, Sean. Please forgive me for the offense.”
There was a long silence in the dark room. He didn’t speak. Her heart sank. She’d ruined it. Her bitterness and mistrust had twisted her more than she knew. But she’d come by it naturally, and she didn’t see how she could have existed otherwise.
After another unnerving two minutes of silence, Rue began to fumble around for her clothes. She was determined not to cry.
“Where are you going?” Sean asked.
“I’m going home. I’ve screwed up everything. You won’t talk to me, and I’m going home.”
“You offended me,” he said, and his voice wasn’t level or calm at all. He was saying,
You hurt me
. But Rue wasn’t absorbing that. Before Sean could scramble into his own clothes, she was gone, wearing her flannel shirt tossed over her dance outfit. She’d thrust her feet into her boots without lacing them. She was out the door of the studio, then out the door to the building, before Sean could catch her. He cursed out loud. He had to check the studio and lock everything up; that was the duty of the last person out, and it was something he couldn’t shirk. He could always catch up with Rue, he was sure; after all, he was a vampire, and she was human.
C
ARVER WAS WAITING FOR HER
in the third alley to the north.
Rue was walking very swiftly. She was trying not to cry; and not having much luck. She wanted to reach the next corner in time for the bus, which would be the last one running on a Sunday night. As she passed the alley entrance, Carver burst out with such astonishing suddenness that he was holding her arm before she could react.
“Hello, Layla,” he said, smiling.
The nightmares she’d had for four years had come to life.
Carver had always been handsome, but his present look was far from his preppy norm. He’d spiked his dark hair and he was wearing ragged jeans and a leather jacket. He’d disguised himself.
“I have a score to settle with you,” he said, still smiling.
Rue hadn’t been able to make a sound when he’d grabbed her arm, but now she began to scream.
“Shut up!” he yelled, and backhanded her across the mouth.
But Rue had no intention of shutting up. “Help!” she screamed. “Help!” She groped in her bag for her pepper spray with her free left hand, but this one night she hadn’t been prepared, mentally or physically, and she couldn’t find the cylinder she usually carried ready to use.
Pinning her with his grip on her right arm, Carver began pummeling Rue with his fist to make her shut up. She tried to dodge the blows, tried to find the spray, tried to pray that help would come. Where was the pepper spray? Abandoning her futile one-handed rummaging through her big bag, Rue yanked it off her shoulder, since it was only an impediment. Then she fought back. She wasn’t nearly as big as Carver, so she went for his
genitals. She wanted to grip and squeeze the whole package, but he pulled back. All she managed was a vicious pinch, but that was enough to double him over. When he heard a woman shouting from across the street, he staggered away from Rue.
“Leave that girl alone!” a female voice yelled. “I’m calling the police!”
Rue sank to her knees, too battered to stand any longer, but she stayed facing him, her hands ready to defend herself. She would not give up what she’d worked so hard to maintain. Carver began to hurry down the alley as swiftly as his injury would permit—she was proud to see he was walking funny—and though Rue remained upright, but still on her knees, he vanished from her sight as he passed out of the alley and onto the next street.
“I won’t fall,” she said.
“Are you okay?”
Rue wouldn’t even take her eyes from the alley entrance to examine the woman beside her. This woman had saved her life, but Rue wasn’t going to be taken by surprise again, if Carver decided to return.
“Rue! Rue!” To her immense relief, she heard Sean’s voice. Now Carver couldn’t hurt her anymore; no matter how angry Sean was at her, he wouldn’t let Carver strike her. She knew that. With profound relief, she understood she didn’t need to stay vigilant any longer, and she sat back on the pavement. Then she was lying on the sidewalk. And then she didn’t know anything else.
W
HEN SHE BEGAN TO RELATE
to her surroundings again, Rue knew she was in a strange place. Hospital? Nope, didn’t smell like a hospital, a smell with which she was all too familiar. It was a quiet place, a comfortable place.
She was lying on clean white sheets, and there was someone next to her. She tried to move, to sit up, and she found out she was sore in several places. Before she could gain control of herself, she groaned.
“You okay? You need a drink of water?” The voice was familiar and came from a few feet away. Rue pried her swollen eyes open. She could see—a little. “Is that Megan?” she asked, her voice a dry thread.
“Yep, it’s me. Julie and I been taking turns.”
“Who else is here? Where
is
here?”
“Oh, we’re at Sean’s place, in his safe room. That’s him in the bed with you, babe. It’s daytime, so he had to sack out. He wasn’t going to leave you without someone to help you, though. He made us swear on a stack of Bibles that we wouldn’t leave. So you won’t think we’re these wonderful people, I gotta tell you that he promised to help us out with the money we’re getting docked for missing work. I mean, I want to help you, and I would’ve come, anyway. But I just couldn’t, ah, skip telling you. Okay?”
Rue nodded. It was an effort, but somehow Megan caught the motion. “Water would be good,” Rue managed to say.
In just a moment, Megan was sliding her arm under Rue’s back and helping her sit up a little. There was a glass of cool water at her lips, and Rue sipped gratefully.
“You need to get up and go to the bathroom?”
“Yes, please.”
Megan helped Rue rise. To her relief, Rue discovered she was in the T-shirt and shorts she’d worn the night before. She shuffled to the bathroom. When she was through, she washed her face in the sink and brushed her teeth with a toothbrush she found still encased in a cellophane wrapper. That made her feel a great deal
better, and she made her way back to the bed with a little more confidence.
“Megan, I’ll be okay now, if you need to get to work.”
“You sure, girlfriend? I can stay. I don’t want Sean to be mad at me.”
“I’m good. Really.”
“Okay then. It’s four o’clock. Sean ought to be up in about two hours. Maybe you can get some more sleep.”
“I’ll try. Thank you so much.”
“Don’t mention it. See you later.”
Rue had left the light in the bathroom on, and when Megan had gone through the heavy curtain at one end of the room, Rue turned to her silent companion. Sean lay on his back with his hair spread out on the pillow. His lips were slightly parted, his eyes closed, his chest still. The absence of that rising and falling, the tiny motion of life, was very unnerving. Did he know she was there? Did he dream? Was he truly asleep, or was he just held motionless, like a paralysis victim? She’d almost forgotten what they’d fought about. She stroked his hair, kissed his cool lips. She remembered what they’d done together, and a flush suffused her face.
What Carver had done to her, when he’d attacked her years before, didn’t qualify as sex. It had been an assault, using his sex organ as the weapon. What she’d done with Sean had been real sex, making-love sex. It had been intimate and primal and wonderful. Carver had made her into a shell of a human being overnight. Over the course of a few weeks, Sean had helped her become a full person once more.
She wasn’t going to chicken out just because he was dead part of the time.
So, when darkness fell, Rue made sure her arm was
across his chest, her leg lying over his. Suddenly she knew he was awake. The next second, his body reacted.
“Good evening to you, too,” she said, startled and intrigued by his instant readiness.
“Where is Megan?” he asked, his voice still a little fuzzy from sleep.
“I told her to go. I’m better.”
His eyes widened as he remembered. “Show me,” he demanded.
“You seem to be ready for anything,” she said, greatly daring, her hand wandering down his abdomen in a tentative way.
“I have to see your injuries first,” he said. “I shouldn’t even be…it’s your smell.”
“Oh?” she tried to sound insulted, failed.
“Just the smell of
you
. Your skin, your hair. You make me hard.”
Not a compliment she’d ever gotten before, but she could see the evidence of the sincerity of it.
“Okay, check me out,” she said mildly, and lay down. Sean raised himself on one elbow, and his left hand began to turn her face this way and that.
“It’s my fault,” he said, his voice steady but not exactly calm. “I shouldn’t have stopped to lock up the studio.”
“The only fault is Carver’s,” she said. “I’ve played that blame game too many years. We don’t need to start it all over again. For the first year after he attacked me, I thought, ‘What if I hadn’t worn that green dress? What if I hadn’t let him hold my hand? Kiss me? Slow dance with me? Was it my fault for looking pretty? Was it my fault for treating him as I would any date I liked? No. It was his fault, for taking a typical teenage evening and turning it into the date from hell.”
Sean’s fingers gripped her chin gently and turned her face to the other side so he could examine her bruises. He kissed the one on her cheek, and then he pulled the cover down to look over her body. She had to stop herself from pulling it right back up. This level of intimacy was great and very exciting, but she sure wasn’t used to it.
“This is the closest anyone’s been to me in years,” she said. “I haven’t even seen a doctor who looked at this much of me.” Then she told herself to shut up. She was babbling.
“No one should ever see this much of you,” he said absently. “No one but me.” His fingers, whiter even than her own magnolia skin, brushed a dark bruise on her ribs. “How much are you hurting?”
“I’m pretty stiff and sore,” she admitted. “I guess my muscles were all tensed up, and then, when I got knocked around…”