Silence: Part Two of Echoes & Silence (26 page)

“But in the last two hours, I’ve noticed a point-two percent fat reduction under your skin. You’re quite literally fading fast.”

“Seriously?”

He nodded.

“How can you notice something like that?” I pinched my skinny wrist. “That’s insane.”

“I’m a vampire.” He pulled me a little closer, but it was a more awkward move than a romantic one, because my round little belly wouldn’t let me wistfully fall into his arms like a movie star. I had to get up first and shuffle over on my knees, then fall into him lovingly—my little bump sticking out between us. “And being a vampire,” he continued, “I not only notice more than the naked human eye, I also get very annoyed when I repeatedly ask my wife to undress and she distracts me with conversation.”

“Stop it.” I pouted playfully, slapping his chest. “Sometimes I’m not sure if you’re kidding.”

His arm wrapped me just a little bit tighter, his chin pressing in to my head as he kissed my hair. “I’m kidding, Ara. But I do want you naked while we share blood.”

“Are you sure the belly won’t put you off?”

“Put me off?”

“Gross you out, you know—make you avoid touching me in future.”

“Is that why you’ve been avoiding blood-sharing all night?”

“I haven’t been avoiding it. I’ve been tired.”

“No.” He smiled, but with my head against his chest, I could only tell because of the way his voice changed. “You’ve been avoiding it.”

“Okay, maybe a little.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m worried you’ll be turned off by my body, for one—”

“Ara,” he sighed my name out, sitting up more so he could look down into my face. “My love, you are beautiful, and I’ve missed you and I’ve missed that cute little bump so much I wouldn’t care if you’d put on so much weight you could no longer see your own toes.”

I raised a brow at him. Something in our past just made me unable to believe that anymore.

“It’s just going to take time before you trust me completely again.” He squeezed both my arms firmly. “But look into my eyes and tell me that I’m lying.”

So I looked, and all I saw was truth—saw that he truly believed his own words. Which was great. Until he no longer did.

“Give me the benefit of the doubt, Ara. Please.” His eyes rounded, making his whole face softer.

I let my silence be the answer.

“Now,” he added in a businesslike tone. “Your self-consciousness was reason number one; what was reason number two?”

Reason number two: my last feed was a hunt. It was new and exciting and exotic and I wasn’t sure a lay-in-bed-romantic-feed would really do it for me now. I wanted the taste of uncertainty and fear. And I realised, with that thought, that this new darkness inside hadn’t risen from the way his journals tainted me, but perhaps from the way that hunt changed me—awakened me.

“What are you grinning at?” he asked.

“I went hunting, you know—at the castle.”

He cupped my shoulders and moved me back from him a little. “What?”

I nodded, grinning. “I ate some poor, unsuspecting vampire living on the first floor.”

“Ara, are you serious?” An alarmed gaze darted across my face. “Why would you do that? You could have been arrested, and—”

“The rules have changed there, David. Drake just laughed—thought it was funny.”

His tense touch softened and the horrified look withered, leaving him in a distant stare. “That doesn’t sound like him.”

“He’s changed—a lot. I think maybe a part of him has stopped caring much about anything.”

“Because Morgana is dead?” he asked, but it sounded more like a statement. “Did you find it odd that he never mentioned it—when we spoke to him in the drawing room? Because I was waiting for him to pull me up on it, but he just… didn’t.”

“Could you read his mind?”

“No. But I can read his eyes as well as I can read another’s mind—it’s something I had to master quite early in my vampire years. And he didn’t even spare a thought for her. His concern was mostly for you.”

“What about me? As in he didn’t want you to take me?”

“More like he was relieved that I was.” He laughed. “You must have been a real pain in the ass.”

“Ha-ha.” I shoved him. “I was not. He liked having me there.”

“And you liked being there,” he stated.

“It was easy,” I offered. “I didn’t have to
be
anyone there. I could just sit back and… relax.”

“Which is why you finally put some weight on,” he said—a bit too quiet for it to add to the conversation.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“You lose weight when you’re stressed.” His eyes turned down with sadness. “I made you stressed—effectively caused physical harm to you with my behaviour, and—”

“My weight loss wasn’t just because of you,” I assured him. “Running an entire kingdom can be stressful, too.”

“So can spending a few weeks at a castle you were tortured at, with a man that killed your children,” he said flatly, making a point that, despite it all, I still managed to gain weight
there
. “How did you handle it?” he added. “Seeing him after what he did?”

My throat filled up with saliva. I swallowed it down. “I had no choice but to handle it—play it cool. But… Drake wanted me to understand something about their deaths: he said there were reasons they died. He wouldn’t tell me what, and asked me not to enquire any further after that.”

I expected David to scoff and call bullshit, but he just looked down to one side in consideration. “So you believe him?”

“I do. And that’s why I don’t think we should kill him.”

David’s attention moved to Bump then. “But he’ll take your soul when he finds out the baby is not Anandene.”

“In all honesty…” I waited a moment until David’s curiosity built up. “I don’t think he will.”

“Why?”

“We talked—Drake and I. He even showed me how to use my Cerulean Light, and I think maybe we… bonded. I know,” I added when David cringed. “But you just needed to be there to understand.”

“No I didn’t.” He reached down and scooped up my hand. “I trust you, and I trust your judgement. If you say Drake’s on our side—that he means no harm—I’m happy to hold off on killing him until we have answers.”

“Just hold off, huh?” I winked at him. “But you
will
kill him?”

“He had you arrested and tortured,” he said simply. “I played nice at the castle, but it took everything in me not to execute my plot for his death—and the things I’ll do to him before I take his life.”

I rolled my eyes, but secretly thought that was pretty sweet.

“So… how was it?” he asked.

“What?”

“Your first hunt.”

“Oh.” I readjusted my position, settling myself in for a long chat. “It was amazing. I felt so powerful—like
I
was the strong one, for once, and the vampire was toast!”

David’s fangs showed as he tipped his head back in amusement. “Tell me everything—from the first moment you decided to hunt.”

“Well, it was right after I set Trey free—and then realised I hadn’t eaten…” I continued the story, watching David’s face change with fascination and awe, then told him all about the castle tour and the show, and how Drake led me through the tunnels after, explaining then how I came to be wearing the amethyst bracelet. David nodded, like he understood, but was adamant still that we’d get a new one in the morning.

“I’m proud of you.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I just never… I thought the hunt wasn’t in you—that you would just never connect with that part of yourself.”

“Because Lilithians apparently don’t hunt?”

“Perhaps.” He laid back on the pillows, opening his arm for me to lay on his chest. “Or it may be because you’re so sweet and kind. I never imagined you’d get kicks out of terrifying a living creature.”

I laughed, laying my head on his bony ribcage. “I’m not as sweet as you think I am.”

“I’m just starting to figure that out.” He kissed my head, leaving his lips there against my hair after. “I guess I never really got to know you. If you think about it, we were kids in the pretending phase when we first met; we didn’t know who we were, let alone each other—and most of it was the pre-marriage good behaviour leading the show. Then we got married, went through Hell and came out the other side damaged and unstable. After that you were at the manor, I was doing my own thing, and then we finally got to be together again only to be broken apart. We haven’t had a moment to get to know the real versions of ourselves let alone each other.”

“Yes, but, after all that chaos,” I said, snuggling in to him a little more, “I still know that I love you.”

“And I you.” His soft fingertips crept in under the hem of my shirt, tracing a circle on my hip. “But I’ve asked you too many times now to take your clothes off—”

I squealed excitedly when he flipped me onto my back and yanked my jeans down my legs, landing between them after, his hair falling over the sharp eyes of the vampire.

“—and now,” he said in a deep, whispery voice, “I am no longer asking.”

The hands I’d come to know so well moved delicately around my waist, one slipping between the bedding and the curve of my back, drawing my spine into an arch so my head tipped back and exposed my throat. I could feel the strength in his hands, in his arms, his resolve. I could feel how much he wanted this in every breath and in every bead of sweat that slowly prickled his flesh. It was common knowledge that vampires did not sweat—unless under extreme emotional pressure—and the idea that his desire for my body, to be inside of me, did that to him, made the air in my lungs expand.

I rolled my head reflexively as he laid a line of firm kisses from my jaw to my shoulder, his lips staying a while on each one to really taste the salt of my flesh. My legs flexed outward with the weight of his human-like body, leaving me pleasantly hyperaware of his presence between them—of the solid form of a powerful vampire—his jeans brushing the soft, warm flesh beside my undies; his own consciousness making him careful of the little bump between us. I wanted him to fall down on me completely and press his chest, his stomach, his lips, flat to mine until we blended with the earth five feet below us. I wanted to strip away my undies and move the hard line of his desire inside of me. But more than any of that, I wanted my teeth in his skin, my tongue dipped in the rushing blood from a broken artery.

Flesh would not be enough today. An open vein would not suffice. Tonight, my inner vampire would go full carotid, and with him weakening under me as I drained him, I knew sex may no longer be an option. But as he tore my cotton top away from my shoulder and freed my breast from the tight confines of my bra, the monster inside me awakened and a new kind of heat rushed through me. I thought back to our last night making love at the manor—the way he bound my hands and bit me in places no one ever had before. It hurt. A lot. But I knew even back then that I liked it in ways I hadn’t yet explored. I knew even back then that the monster in him would one day meet the Huntress in me, but I never imagined it would be so soon.

I closed my eyes and pictured everything through another’s eyes—disconnecting myself from the moment so I could focus. He swore to me once that he’d never used the spell of lust on me, but I could feel it in the air—challenging my Huntress, suppressing her like one of his victims. I could let go and become his. I could let go and open myself to him, give him my body and my blood. Or I could take control, because his power was no match for mine. Not if I
wanted
to fight him.

He flipped me onto my hands and knees, drawing my hips backward as he pulled my undies down my thighs, leaving them stuck there half way between torn away and innocent concealment. And I knew it was time.

I looked down at my fingertips against the blankets, hooking them slightly to get a good grip. As much as I wanted him to slam himself inside of me and end the craving, the two weeks’ worth of desire, the part of me that tore that vampire’s throat out back at the castle wanted something else.

His mouth cupped my hip and the hot breath made the flesh wet, but before his teeth came out to play, I angled my body sideways, pushing past the self-consciousness, the uncertainty, and the moment of his surprise, and pressed my palm into his chest, swinging my legs over him as he fell to the floor.

Nothing in my body or my mind altered in any way—I didn’t try; I didn’t focus—but the vampire lay subdued as if by magic, staring up at me with jet black eyes and a look of curiosity, narrowing them as he tried to enter my mind. But this thing inside me held a power greater than his, and she blocked his entry, leaving him in a state of confusion.

He wasn’t afraid, though.

But he needed to be. I needed the fear to change his blood—give it that warm, magical tingle—the only thing that would satisfy this growing demon inside me.

I sat back on his hipbones, seductively sweeping my hands up my body, taking my torn cotton shirt and the remains of my bra with them. And half naked, my breasts full with the beauty of pregnancy, I let him look at me. I let him imagine all the things his vampire would do to me.