Both of us froze for a moment as he realised he was touching me and slowly drew his hand away.
“There’s something else I wanted to talk to you about,” he added.
I focused on his black woolly sock and the length of his toes under it as he lowered his heel to the ground, laying the book beside his thigh before sitting slightly on the edge of the sofa again.
“Judging from your tone, I’m guessing I’ve done something wrong,” I said.
“No.” He glanced once at his bed across the room and then his gaze fell onto the floor between his feet. “I did.”
“What? When?”
“The night you came here—” He nodded to the bed. “Saw what you saw.”
I closed my eyes around the very vivid memory.
“I … I know it, perhaps, shouldn’t matter to you, Ara, being that we’re no longer together, but it would matter to me to know, and I…” His hand edged toward mine, reversing with better thought. “I just wanted you to know that I didn’t go through with it.”
“With what?” I looked right at him, waiting, but he wouldn't look at me.
“I didn’t sleep with those girls—didn’t even kill them.”
“You didn’t?” I asked, playing dumb.
He shook his head softly.
“Why?”
“Well—” He laughed, his straight white teeth and the sharp point of his fangs showing under those perfect dark pink lips. “Firstly, you kinda ruined the mojo.”
I laughed, too.
“And, second…” he added timidly.
“Second?” I prompted.
“I was worried—about something I said to you.”
“Which bit?”
“I told you I’d been doing that when I fed, and you took it to mean I’d had naked girls and tied them up and done all sorts of sick things to them—”
“No, I—”
“Ara, I can read your mind, remember?”
I closed my mouth.
“But that wasn’t what I meant—when I told you that,” he said. “And I shouldn't have let you think that for so long. I felt … terrible about it.”
My stomach shrunk and moved up into my chest, making it all tight.
“What I meant was … the way I kill—the way I always killed before I even met you, is to…” he stuttered, fighting to get the words past his lips.
“David?” I grabbed his hand, this time not so afraid he’d pull away. And he didn’t. He just looked quickly at our joined flesh and moved that stunned gaze to my eyes. “Don’t be afraid to open up to me. I am the one person in this entire world that will never judge you.”
“You used to,” he snapped defensively, bringing the past up like an insult. “You used to hate hearing anything about the kill. You never wanted anything to do with my vampire side and—”
“Things have changed.” I squeezed his hand a bit, trying not to draw too much attention to our touch. But it was too late. He realised how twisted it was that we were sitting that way, and drew his hand from mine. “I was young then, David,” I continued. “And I might have told you I loved you for who you were, vampire and all, but I never really understood totally what that meant.”
“And you do now?” His cold tone suggested outward disbelief.
I nodded. “I’m sorry for making you feel like a monster. But you need to know that…” As I hesitated, searching my feet for the right words, he looked up from his own, curiously waiting, his dark lashes thinning his green eyes into slits. “I’m okay with the kill. Of course I’d prefer you stick to the Pledge, but I guess, when it comes to people I lo…” I tripped over the noun and replaced it with, “care about, I don’t really see humans as humans anymore.”
He laughed.
“I know that sounds awful,” I added, for some reason feeling the need to defend that atrocious belief to a vampire—one I knew he shared wholeheartedly. “But … in a lot of ways, I see them as collateral damage because, if you didn’t drink their blood, you’d wither away—suffer.” I looked right into his eyes then, my own all glassy with a few tears. “And that would be worse.”
“Would it then?” He smiled the words out, an edge of sarcasm lighting up his face.
“For what it’s worth, yes. I don't enjoy the idea of you suffering, you know. Even if I’d like to inflict pain on you myself sometimes.”
His eyes flicked to the bed again, then the box at the end of it, where I knew he kept his tools of sexual torture. He knew I didn't mean I’d like to inflict
that
kind of pain on him, but his mind went there, quickly coming back as he cleared his throat to dispel the dirty thought.
“So—” I cleared my own throat. “Please talk to me about the kill. Don’t feel like you have to hide your true self from me, David. Jason certainly doesn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve seen him kill.”
“He took you to a kill?” He almost leapt out of his seat.
“No. I … I leave my body sometimes and—”
“Oh.” He nodded and sat back, scratching just beside his eye as if it were actually itchy. “That spirit walking thing you do.”
“Yeah,” I said nervously. “I ended up in the kill suites one day.”
“And you saw him?”
“Yeah.” I bobbed my head a few too many times, reliving the moment in my thoughts for David to see. “And he just attacks. Scares them—”
“Really?”
“Yeah. He’s really quite brutal.” I smiled at his frown. “Shocking, huh?”
“Not even
I
do that.”
“I know.” I reached across and cupped the back of his hand, giving a gentle squeeze that he, surprisingly, didn't draw away from this time. “So please talk to me, David. I mean, you’re quite okay with me hating you now anyway, so why keep up pretences—acting like some moralistic human-lover?”
He laughed. “Even if I do talk to you about this, my aim is not to make you hate me, Ara. Not right now anyway. And not when it comes to … my preferences.”
“Then, please help me understand—about both the kill and the … sex?” I asked delicately. “Because, I know we’re through and all, but I’d like to understand.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. I didn't really know why. Maybe because I still loved him, and maybe because it still mattered to me how he thought I saw him. And also… “Let’s just say that curiosity plays a really big part.”
He laughed, easing into ‘lovely’ David again. “Well, the truth is … I do tie my victims up—in the way you saw that night.” He rubbed his eyelid furiously, exhaling. “Sometimes partially naked, sometimes not—”
“Against their will?”
“Not usually.”
“Not usually?” I asked with a light laugh. “But
sometimes
you tie them up screaming?”
“Sometimes. If they annoy me enough.”
My brows went up. “Remind me not to annoy you.”
His eyes and lips sharpened on the edges in such a way that his whole face seemed to drop about ten years.
“Do you…” I thought again before continuing, not sure I wanted the answer. “Do you get naked with them when you kill them?”
“I used to—before you.”
“But not while we were together?”
“No.”
I almost cried with relief, choosing a mature and composed demeanour instead. “Did you have sex with them—before me.”
“If that’s … If I was ‘picking up’, yes. But … the kill was never about sex.”
“What was it about?” I asked instead of dredging up the discussion about him and Emily, dragging with it all the hurt for the fact that he told me I was the
first
human he’d had sex with.
“Closeness,” he said with a shy half smile and a one-shouldered shrug. “The excitement of the skin, the pulse, of their desire as they’d beg me to touch them.”
I could accept that easily enough, remembering one of the first things he ever told me: that vampires like human skin.
“It’s almost the same as fear,” he added.
“What is?”
“That pulse of desire.” He held my gaze intently as he spoke, not breaking away—like our souls were meeting for some kind of lustful dance in the description of his desires. “It makes the blood warmer, richer, but without the tangy taste fear gives it.”
“So, if you don’t like the fear taste, why do you tie them up?”
“That’s … not to scare them,” he said, eyes breaking from mine to travel across the room with a hint of mischief.
“What does it do?”
“Excites
me
.”
I nodded slowly. “The submissive thing?”
“Yes,” he said sweetly. “But what you saw that night when you walked in—it was the first time I even attempted sex with anyone since we … since…”
“Since we broke up.”
He wouldn't look at me then. “I know that … that when I walked into the lab, I know you were crying because of that—because of what you saw.”
I bit my lip, holding my breath so I wouldn't sob.
“I’m sorry.” His long, delicate fingers made gentle impressions against my hand, a touch so firm and yet so gentle he needn’t have used words as an apology at all. “I’m still angry at you …
and
hurt, Ara.” His voice trembled on the last word. “And I still find myself trying to hurt you back. But that’s not … I don’t
want
to—I … for what it’s worth, it kills me to see you cry.”
“Really?” As I looked up, a plump tear snuck past my lashes and slipped down my cheek.
David caught it against a curled finger. “I married you. I loved you once. And as much as I hate it, Ara, I still feel for you when I see your tears. I still…” He dried the tear on his jeans, his shoulders tensing until a long breath sunk them into a relaxed position again. “Anyway. I’m sorry I made you cry.”
“Because you still care about me?” I said suggestively, trying not to grin.
His eyes darted quickly up to mine, then he closed them, wiping his thumb down the bridge of his nose. “You remember last night.”
I tapped my temple. “You’ll have to try a bit harder if you want to make me forget.”
“It didn’t mean anything,” he said quickly. “Don’t read into it, Ara—”
“I won’t.” I drew my hand from his and sobered myself quickly, just a breath away from completely falling into his loving arms. “I get it. You just slipped into old habits, right?”
“No.”
A few seconds ticked by, the sun warming the cold room with a gorgeous golden ray of sunlight, while I held my eyes to where his would be if he dared to look up. But he didn’t. “What do you mean?” I probed, knowing I shouldn't.
“I mean…” His emerald gaze landed on mine, soft and kind, but guarded. “I’m angry at you. And the pain of what you did will—
can
never go away, Ara. I won’t let it. But, for God knows what reason, I still care.”
“Care about what?”
“Don’t. Okay?” He grabbed his book again, crossing his ankle atop his knee. “I can’t talk like this with you.”
“You mean you can’t be open with me.”
As his spine straightened, I noticed his fist balling slowly, turning white around the creases, his eyes closed and scrunched in a head that was angled awkwardly away.
“Would you like me to change the subject?” I offered, littering the gloom with my brightest smile.
“Please,” he said, his voice strained.
“Arthur did an ultrasound.”
The tight eyes opened and the heat smothering his aura faded from volcanic to watery-cool. “I thought those machines wouldn't work on you. How did he—”
“He did it intra-vaginally.”
“He did
what
?” He lurched forward in his seat, the book hitting the floor with a thud.
“A probe, you know—”
“I know what it is.” His lip lifted in clear disgust. “I just don’t like the idea of my uncle with his hands, or
anything
, on your … were you covered?”
I snorted out a rather embarrassing laugh, rolling my eyes as though none of it was that big of a deal. “I wanted to show you something.”
He noticed my hands come from behind my back then and cross tightly to my chest with a small square of silky paper folded between them. “Did he … it worked. He saw the baby?”
I nodded and gently passed the picture across the half meter of space between us.
David drew a breath and covered his mouth, his thumb pressing a little too firmly into the page, bending it slightly. “This is…”
“Our baby,” I said factually.
He nodded once and stood up, walking quickly over to the window—taking my picture with him. “She has toes?”
“Yeah.” I laughed. “And it almost looks like she’s waving, too.”
He ran his fingertips down the image, moving his hand up to his own mouth after.
“Pretty amazing, huh?” I skipped over and stood beside him. But when my smiling eyes went from the picture to take in his face, I stepped back a bit, giving him space, seeing the tears sparkling at the brim of his lashes. “Um,” I said, continuing backward. “I gotta run. You keep that, okay. I have another.”