Sunder (14 page)

Liv

I paced the room, weirded out by the fact he had an apartment in a town where he also had a house, though it seemed like he lived at neither. I paced, holding myself, remembering the feeling of his arms around me when I fell asleep the night before or his thumb dragging across my lips in the bushes. Shit, even the image of him staring at me from across the ballroom made my insides twitch.

I heard the door click but didn't look at it. I stayed close to the wall across the room, frozen in excitement.

The alarms going off inside of my head were screaming that I was making the wrong choice, but I didn't leave. I waited for him to close the door before I turned to face him.

Was it possible he looked better than he had twenty minutes ago?

He looked nervous. It made a blush cross his face but he didn't move. He leaned his back against the closed door, as if trapping me there but taking a moment to study me.

It made me nervous. I opened my mouth to speak but nothing came out. I didn't want small talk. I didn't know exactly what I wanted, well, besides the obvious, but I wasn’t sure he could do that.

He looked at me from under his lashes. It changed his face. The blush on his cheeks and the dark stare intensified things for me.

My hands started to fidget. Would we stare at each other the entire night?

He watched me for a moment longer. Outside, the sun was setting completely, making the wooden floor between us light up, like it was a barrier between us.

He crossed it after a moment, grabbing both my arms and pinning me to the wall behind me. He looked down on me, becoming the only thing I could see. His hands pinched a little, like he was angry, but I could see that wasn't it.

He was holding himself back and when he spoke, I learned why. “I have a feeling that once this line is crossed between us, there can be no going back.”

I nodded. He always said the thing I was thinking but didn't know it at the time.

His grip lightened as his lips twitched ever so slightly. He ran his hands up my arms, sending chills everywhere. My breath left my parted lips in tiny nervous bursts.

He lowered his face. I leaned towards his lips but he brushed past them gently and placed a soft kiss at the corner of my mouth. He was torturing me. He lifted his face, brushing across my lips but not kissing, not giving me the thing I wanted so badly. He placed a second small kiss on the other corner of my mouth.

He pulled back again, pressing his forehead against mine, looking down on me.

I didn't move
,
I wasn't certain I should. I didn't know when his red eyes would come back and his fangs would pop out. Some desperate part of me wondered if that was part of the attraction with him. Was being slightly scared of him what was making me so intrigued?

But he didn't look like a monster. No. He looked like perfection. His dark-blue eyes bore down on me, his lips quivered like he might speak or kiss or scream, and his hands pressed me into the wall.

His crazy dark hair was a mess, like he had run his hands through it in some attempt to sort things out by tugging on it.

He lowered his face closer but so slowly I couldn’t take it. I tried to reach my hands up; I desperately wanted to grab him but he lowered my hands.

He moved closer yet again, and I could feel his breath on my lower lip. His hand slipped up my arm, across my shoulder, and settled on the side of my throat. He ran his fingers up into my hair slightly as he lowered his lips on mine.

When he finally kissed me, the tension had built so
high,
it felt like we were flying. My breath got lost, but I didn't need air. I didn't need anything.

I had him to keep me alive.

The kiss started so delicately, as did his grip on me. As the movement of our mouths against one another increased, so did his grip. My hands slid between us, not to push him away, but to pull him closer. He wrapped himself around me, but I did the same. My hands ran up into his hair, gripping to him, terrified it would end.

He lifted me up into him, carrying me to the large bed with the strange old curtains around it. He laid me down, without breaking our kiss off.
His hands roaming my thighs and back.
It made me smile, regardless of the fact I was still lost in the kiss.

“I’m not a virgin,” I whispered.

He growled into my neck, sucking at my skin slightly. “Why did you feel the need to share that with me?”

I started to laugh. “You seem to be keeping this pretty PG, and I kind of want to take your clothes off.”

He pulled back. His face was flushed, and I had messed his hair up even more than it normally was. His jaw was clenched but he spoke through it, “I never want to have this conversation again, unless of course you want the young man to suffer through a violent animal attack.”

I rolled my eyes and sat up. “Fine, I’ll take my own shirt off.”

He grabbed my hands. “Stop rushing me, Liv. I am not an eighteen-year-old boy in every way. Unlike your previous friend, I am actually quite good at this.”

He scooped me into his arms, again kissing my neck. I closed my eyes and let him have it his way. It was better than telling him I had actually had two ‘friends’ in my past.

He laid me back down, lifting my shirt but kissing along my stomach. There was nothing in the world but the two of us. The room was sort of creepy in that it was outdated and dusty, but I didn't notice it anymore. The sun had set but we didn't need the light.

We searched each other’s bodies for places of pleasure to pay homage. When I kissed his stomach, dragging my fingernails along his chest, he moaned and squirmed. When he pressed me into the bed, finally giving me the one thing I wanted, I wrapped myself around him.

I lost the time, the world, my mind, and let him claim stake on my heart at the same time as my body. I would have walked across a desert to drink this nectar. I would have done or said whatever it took to make him mine for the remainder of my life, however long it would be.

Our bodies moved along the walls, like dancers in a play, only seen through shadows made by lights coming in the windows from the street lamps. I felt his teeth graze my skin several times—sharp teeth. I tried not to think about how close he was to biting me. It was easy. He made me feel sensations I didn’t know I could.

Things happened that had never before. Words left my mouth I had never uttered.
Words that came across as demands from a person who knew their way around the bed.

But he proved I did not. He showed me exactly what excitement from another person’s body could be.

He showed me what it meant to have someone make love to you. When he was finished, and we lay in a heap of sweat and smiles, I felt like he loved me, like he needed me.

He kissed my shoulder, pausing and pressing his lips in. “I don't think a week is long enough.”

I shook my head. “No. I don't want to leave this room—ever.”

He laughed into my skin. “When you change into a wolf, we will both want you to leave this room.”

The reality of it hit me like a ton of bricks. I closed my eyes and nestled into him. “Then we had better enjoy this week, Briton.” I was instantly scared of what I had done. I had bitten off more than I could chew, as my mother always said.

He crawled up the bed to
lay
alongside me and leaned in, laying a soft kiss on my lips. He hovered there, whispering, “Never was there a kiss destined to such an end.”

He was always saying the thing I was thinking, before I even realized I had thought it.

Briton

He beheld her for one more moment before leaving through the balcony doors and jumping down onto the grass.

He was across the grass when he noticed a silhouette across the road. He narrowed his gaze, startled by who it was. “Out for a stroll?” he asked.

Miles chuckled from under the bush. “I was hoping to catch you before you headed for the grove. I assumed your father had caught our conversation.” Briton stalked over to the old man and offered him his arm. Miles took it and glanced back at the house. “My dear boy, you are barking up the wrong skirt, literally barking.”

Briton looked back at the mansion and smiled. “I know it. But I have decided to let us have the week before she changes. I need her. I love her, and if I can’t have her forever, then I shall have to squeeze a lifetime into the time we have.”

“You will not be able to break it off.”

Briton ached inside. “The fortunate part of that is that she will become my natural enemy. We will despise one another and have no choice but to break it off.”

“Then why are you torturing yourself with this?”

“Because, dear Miles, I could spend my life watching her and wondering. Or I could let myself have this week with her and convince myself it is enough. Either way, I will spend the rest of my days thinking of her. At least this way I have something to fill my thoughts.” His words were broken and pained, like his unbeating heart.

Miles wrapped an arm around him. “I am sorry, son. It is a tragedy that the girl you finally fell for is something you can’t ever have.”

Briton shook his head, taking in a deep breath of the cool night air. “No. Tragedy would be always wondering. This way I know. I love her, Miles. As unlikely as that is, it is the truth. She is what the people of our village would call a ‘shadow love.’ She is the other half of me—one of us is the good and one is the bad. Like twins, we are the same. We will always find each
other,
no matter the length of time we spend apart. I have ruined the shadow love for us though by never dying and being reborn.”

Miles snorted. “That is a load of horseshit, if I ever heard one.”

They both laughed, though Briton didn’t feel like laughing. He was stuck in the feel of her silky skin against his, the taste of her neck on his lips, and the smell of her hair as she draped it over him. He was stuck in the way that when he closed his eyes and held tightly to her, they were one.

He had seen shadow love his entire life. His father and mother had it. It was dangerous. It was love you died for, but you killed for it too. Briton already could feel the stain of it tainting his love for his family. They were an obstacle in his way to her.

“So one week?”

“Roughly one week.” The words tasted badly, like a dirty lie.

Miles didn’t look convinced. “Where will you go?”

Briton shook his head. “I don’t know. Go find my brothers. I won’t be able to stay here.”

“You won’t mind if I stay though?”

He wrapped his arm around the old man. “No. You need this place. I hear Dr. Daniels is far too qualified to have the job he does. You’re in good hands.”

Miles gave him a look, blurting out the oddest sentence, “Your brother Gunnar murdered a whole family, not just those girls that had gone missing. That’s why the witches called the hunters. They knew their magic couldn’t kill one of you born vampires. So they called the hunters and laid the traps.”

Briton stopped, mid-thought and step. He grimaced. “Are you certain?”

Miles nodded. “I am. There were children involved and things too horrific to speak of. He snapped, and there was no going back for him. Your father defended him to the death, for your mother.”

“My father let him live? But the hunters came because of Gunnar’s actions. My father knew this? How many of the other vampires and wolves died at the hands of the hunters, fighting to protect my brother? How many deaths lay at my father’s feet?”

Miles grimaced. “Over one hundred. The bitten died first, dragged from their houses into the sunlight when the hunters arrived, but you know that part. The few born who had been here were those that died from the poisons the hunters carry, along with whatever wolves hadn’t been saved. The witches lowered the guards, warning the wolves of it. Some agreed with killing off the vampires, others did not. The ones who believed the vampires were being treated unfairly—we never warned them because we were scared they would tell your parents. I didn’t know the witches intended for your parents to hear of it. The plan was to trap your family. I didn’t know that plan existed. I assumed they would die in the fight, and I would save you.”

Briton didn’t have a response to it. He felt sick, and yet, he couldn’t believe his father would defend Gunnar’s actions. He shook his head. “He will want revenge against the witches. You have to get them out of here.”

“Where will they go? He can find them anywhere. No, it is he that must leave.”

“But he won’t, Miles. He won’t go anywhere until he feels like he is vindicated. I have watched him for two thousand years, and he hasn’t evolved in that way. He is still the barbaric Norseman he always was. Yes, he controls the blood lust but his temper is what it has always been.” Briton sighed. He didn’t want these troubles. He wanted to enjoy his week with the girl he loved.

“Then he must go back inside of the box. It is the only way.”

The thought of it was worse than any other. He couldn’t imagine stuffing his parents back into the coffins. When could they ever come out again? They would always want revenge. They would always be savages. His brothers would free them. They would never understand. If they had defended Gunnar, no one was safe from their insanity. How had he been such a fool?

They walked to Betsy’s small house, just a few blocks over from Briton’s. The old man crossed the road. “Think on what I said, dear boy.”

Briton waved and walked to his house.

He tried to force his brain to bounce back to Liv, but it was stuck on replay, rehashing his family’s problems.

When he got inside of the house, his mother smiled at him from her chair. He walked to her, feeling the heavy weight of the baggage of his family overwhelming him.

“What is that look on your face?”

He relaxed into the chair, closing his eyes. “I am in love, Mother.” It was the easier thing to confess.

She hugged him tightly, whispering into his ear, “Tell no one. Your father is planning something. He believes you are against us.”

Briton turned sharply to look into her dark eyes. She nodded very subtly.

“I would never.”

Her face softened. “I know that. But he is paranoid. Someone betrayed him.”

“Perhaps because he let Gunnar savagely murder that entire family.”

Her eyes darkened. “How do you know about that?”

“A lot of time has passed, old stories have a way of coming back to haunt you.”

“I know. He wasn’t right in the head. Something was wrong. He was a sweet boy. Your father believed the witches had done something to him, to make him that way.” Her voice was nearly inaudible.

“Really? The witches would do that?” he asked, confused on what to believe.

She nodded.

He got up from the couch. “Goodnight, Mother. Sleep well.” He said it knowing she wouldn’t. She never did.

“Goodnight, my love.”

He turned and walked from the room. His brain was working double overtime to rationalize the accusations that had all come about. It didn’t matter who was right or who was wrong; what mattered was who was going to start the next war.

He had a horrid feeling he was a pawn in it all, but he didn’t know who was moving the pieces on the board, or why.