“Wow, Ms. Discovery Channel, you sure know how to talk sexy.” He sways his hips against mine, studying my face to find just the right spot that will send me over the edge.
“Shh. Hold very still.” I lean close and kiss the left fang, then the right.
He pulls in a long, slow breath, then lets it out, never breaking our gaze. “Now what?”
I know suddenly what I need to feel safe. “Shane, I don’t want you to bite me. Ever.”
“I know that.”
“But, if you can, if it’s not too much—I want you to pretend.”
“Pretend to bite you?” His pupils dilate so quickly they wipe out most of the blue. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
His muscles coil, and he flips me onto my back so fast it knocks my breath out. He seizes my wrists, pinning them above my head, and drives himself deep inside me. His eyes are pure animal now, dark and fierce.
Instinct makes my body buck, frantic to fight him off, but he takes my desperate rhythm and makes it his own. Holding both wrists in one hand, he reaches back and seizes my leg behind the knee, then pulls it forward into the crook of his elbow.
Shane has complete control. He could break my bones, bleed me dry, like Gideon almost did. I slam my mind shut on the memory, close my eyes against the image of Shane’s savage face.
His head pushes mine aside to burrow into my neck. His mouth brushes my throat. Instead of growing cold with fear, my skin heats so fast it feels like I could singe him. I hear myself hiss the word, “Yes.”
He pulls away suddenly, and I wonder if I’ve taken the game too far, if he has to flee to keep from biting me. But his eyes hold no fear.
Shane flips me onto my stomach, lifts my hips, and enters me with one long thrust.
I scream.
I didn’t mean to scream.
He plunges deeper, and I scream again. I squirm and writhe beneath him, exactly like prey, but I can’t help it. Every sound and motion releases the waves of energy slamming through my body. To be still and quiet would rip me in two.
When Shane’s teeth touch the back of my neck, I know he wants to sink them through my flesh. But he won’t, and this feeling of safety turns me on more than any danger ever could. I move with him, surrendering to the terrifying trust.
The music ends. No sounds now but our ragged moans and the shifting of skin against skin.
Shane’s hands find mine, clutching the edge of the mattress. He slides his palms over them, interweaving our fingers. “I’ll never hurt you. Ciara . . .”
Before I can return the promise—which I can’t—he quickens his rhythm, carrying me with him up and over the last, highest peak. His groan lengthens into a feral howl, and my final scream is a vague approximation of his name.
He collapses on the bed beside me. I turn my head to see him gasping for breath, face damp with sweat. His eyes squeeze shut, and his body, like mine, shudders with the aftershocks. When he opens his eyes to look at me, I realize where I’ve seen that expression of happy gratitude: after he drank Deirdre.
No, that’s not fair. There’s something deeper in his gaze now, more than a hunger satisfied. I wouldn’t dare call it love, but maybe he would.
Lacking the breath to speak, we say nothing, just stare
at each other from our respective pillows. Finally Shane reaches out and tucks a lock of hair behind my ear, then lets his hand drop onto my shoulder. “Was that what you had in mind?”
“Pretty much exactly.” I roll from my stomach onto my side. The motion makes his hand slip off me. I put mine over it so it doesn’t seem like I’m pulling away. “Was it hard not to bite?”
His other hand wipes the damp hair off his cheek. “I had other things to think about besides blood.”
“But isn’t there some vampire equivalent to blue balls?”
He laughs. “It’s called thirst. But I told you, I drank before I came here.”
“Your fangs still came out.”
“Sometimes they have a mind of their own.” He runs his tongue over his now human teeth. “But it’s no harder for a vampire not to bite someone than it is for a man not to force himself on a woman. It’s not something a decent vampire would even consider.”
“And you’re a decent vampire.”
“No. I’m a damn fucking good vampire.” He reaches over and drags me into his arms. I let him, even though it’s too hot. His eyes turn serious. “David told me you almost died.”
“If it weren’t for that flack Ned Amberson I’d be dead or undead right now. I don’t understand what he meant by the big picture and what it has to do with me. Gideon said I didn’t want to know.”
His arms tighten around me. “I’ll kill him if I ever get the chance.”
“Have you ever seen a vampire die?”
“No.”
“You don’t want to. I wish I could forget I ever saw it.” My gaze hops over his shoulder to the far nightstand. “Hey, that might help.”
Shane rolls on his back and grabs the bottle of red wine. “I brought it because I thought you might need to relax.”
I let out a long sigh. “My limbs are pretty much jelly now, thanks to you, but the wine’ll finish me off nice.”
He kisses me and heads for the kitchen with the bottle. It turns out, the sight of him walking away is just as nice without jeans.
I get up to put in a new CD, deciding to expand Shane’s horizons with a little Fiona Apple. As I place the Leonard Cohen disc back in its case, a wicked curiosity creeps through me. I insert the disc in the wrong place on the shelf, after Counting Crows, then slip off to the bathroom.
When I come back, Shane is lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling, with his hands behind his head and the sheet pulled up to his waist. The lamp is off, and candles on either side of the bed are lit (sandalwood, not sausage pizza). As I return to bed, I glance at the CD shelf.
Leonard Cohen’s back where he belongs, between Chumbawamba and Coldplay. The shame and sorrow make me stumble. I slip under the sheets, wanting to pull them over my head.
“Did you do that on purpose?” Shane says without looking at me.
“I’m sorry.”
“Why?”
“Why am I sorry?”
He pauses. “Okay, we’ll start with that and work our way back to the other ‘why.’“
“I shouldn’t test you. You’re not a lab rat.”
“Then why did you do it?”
“To see if you had changed. You learn new things, and you have hope for the future.”
“Because of you.” Now he looks at me. “But you can’t cure everything overnight. Some things you may never cure. It doesn’t work that way.”
“What doesn’t?”
“Mental illness.”
The sound of the words from his mouth make my eyes hot. “Don’t say that.”
“It’s true. I know a lot of vampires have weird obsessive-compulsive behaviors. The world changes faster than we can understand, so we find something to control, some way to put things in order.” He laughs softly. “It’s the only way to feel sane.”
I touch his arm, but he pulls it away to reach for the glasses of wine. “Don’t pity me, Ciara. That’s one thing I can’t stand.”
“What are the other things? Just so I know.”
“I’m not giving you a list.” He hands me a glass, and I sit up to take it. “That’s one of the joys of relationships, finding out what drives the other person batshit.” He clinks his glass against mine. “Tell me one thing you can’t stand, and we’ll be even.”
“Licorice.”
“Two things.”
“Licorice and religion.”
“Religion, because of your parents?”
“Yes. No. That makes it sound like they’re responsible
for everything I am. I’ve thought about religion, even studied it in school, and come to the conclusion that it’s pointless and dangerous. I don’t get why people need it to give their lives meaning. Isn’t life enough?”
“You’re asking a dead guy?”
I take a sip of wine. “This is all just my opinion, of course. What about you? Before you were a vampire—”
“I was a Catholic.”
“Oh.” I wonder if now is the time to ask him about his story. “But when you become a vampire, you end your life. Isn’t that kind of a no-no in Catholicism? Suicide?”
His face goes sad, sending a stake of regret through my heart. I feel like I’m about to meet Elizabeth’s fate, inverting and twisting into a hole that will swallow me up. “You don’t have to talk about it,” I say. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
“Yes, you should have.” He lays his hand over mine. “And no, I don’t.”
He continues to drink the wine. I wait for him to continue. After the first minute I sit back and take a few sips, waiting. After five minutes I realize there’s no winning the waiting game with an immortal creature.
“You don’t what?” I ask.
“Have to talk about it.”
He doesn’t look mad, but he doesn’t look happy either. He just sits and drinks, as if I’ve left the room. Great. First I play games with his brain, then I accuse him of being a bad Catholic. How else can I demean him today?
A change of venue might break my streak of asininity. “Hey, you know what I could go for? Ice cream.”
This snaps him out of his meditative state. He looks at me, smirks, then sings the first line to “Mean Woman Blues.”
I cover my face. “I forgot you can’t taste food. Never mind.”
“It’s okay.” He sets his empty wineglass on the night-stand. “You’ve had a bad day, you deserve ice cream.”
We dress in silence on opposite sides of the bed, though we might as well be on two sides of a wall. I remember how I opened myself completely to him, let him do whatever he wanted with my body and my life. What do I have to do to get that kind of trust in return?
Besides not being a total shitheel, I mean.
“My car’s at the station, so we’ll have to walk.” I sift through my jeans pockets for change. “And my purse is in Elizabeth’s car, so you’ll have to buy. Sorry.”
He looks up at me from the bed, where he’s tying his shoes. “Come here.”
I sidle over to him. “You want to extract payment in advance?”
“No.” He takes me in his arms and kisses me softly. “Ciara, I promise one day I’ll tell you my story. But I don’t want to ruin this night.”
My dread dares to thaw around the edges. I attempt a nod and a smile, and we head out for ice cream.
I know there are other reasons why he won’t tell me. Some are about me, and some are about him. To get past all the reasons at the same time could take careful choreography, an endless emotional negotiation.
This is why I don’t do boyfriends. Too much work.
The diner glows purple, inside and out. The Baltimore Ravens are in town for summer training camp, so every business drapes themselves in the team colors to draw
in tourists. It might be fun one afternoon to go see the team practice, get some autographs. I turn to Shane to suggest it, then remember we can’t ever have a daytime date. Oh well. He’s a Steelers fan, anyway—or “Stillers,” as he would pronounce it.
We stand in the lobby holding hands, just like any normal couple out for a postcoital midnight breakfast, in search of caffeine and carbs to keep the energy up.
A young waitress with a drooping brown ponytail shows us to our booth. Shane sits across from me as she dumps the menus on the table. We order black coffees and a banana split.
When she walks away, Shane props his feet on my bench, one on either side of me. I sit back and rest my elbows on the toes of his boots. The diner’s harsh fluorescent and neon lights accent the feeling of oth-erworldliness about this evening, the sense of time out of time. Tomorrow—later today, I mean—we’ll have plenty of problems to sort out. Right now, I sign a truce with life.
I run a thumb over Shane’s left sole. “Are your feet ticklish, too?”
The corner of his mouth twitches. “No.”
“Liar. I’m going to play with them when we get back in bed.”
“Only if I can do the same to you.”
I shrug. “I’m not ticklish at all.”
“That’s because nothing ever surprises you.”
Was that a dig at my conniving nature? “‘Surprise’ is just another word for disappointment.”
The waitress arrives with our order. I nudge aside the maraschino cherry and dig in. “They use real whipped
cream here, not that canned stuff.” I lick my spoon and mentally catalog the places on Shane’s body I’d like to apply the condiment. Maybe I can get some to go. “Please, try it.”
He nabs half a spoonful of mint chocolate chip, takes a tentative bite, then shoves the spoon back into the bowl. “Tastes like Maalox.”
“Darn, I guess it’s all mine.” I pull the split to my side of the table and keep eating. “My parents used to buy me ice cream after a revival show. I’d always get as exotic a flavor as I could, because I knew the next town might only have chocolate and vanilla.”
“So it wasn’t all bad, then, your childhood.”
“Not at the time.”
He pulls his feet off my bench and leans forward. “What were some of the other things you liked about it?”
I eye him carefully. “I don’t want to go there right now.”
He slides the banana split toward him, out of my reach, then picks up his spoon. “For each good thing you can remember, you get one bite.”
“It’ll melt.”
“Then you’d better hurry.”
“Passing out fliers.”
He hesitates, holding back the spoon. “Explain.”
“In little towns I’d stand on street corners, or go from shop to shop, telling people about the revival. Sometimes the shop owners would give me candy or a flower or a bag of chips, because I was so cute and holy.”
“Good.” He feeds me a large spoonful, consisting of banana, chocolate almond ice cream, and whipped cream. “Next?”
“The carnival atmosphere.”
“Good. You get a bite for each detail.”
“The barkers, selling Bibles and tambourines and prayer books.” Another bite, this one from the mint chip side. “The roadies and the local guys working together to put up the big tent.” Ditto, this time a bit of each ice cream. He’s got the hang of it now. “People from the town setting up booths to sell lemonade or homemade crafts or funnel cakes.”
“I remember funnel cakes.” His mouth opens, moist inside, as he spoons me another bite. “Add that to the list of things I miss tasting. Go on, what else?”
“Testimonies.”
“What’s that?”
“People would stand up and talk about how they were healed, or how they used to be sinners until they discovered grace and shit.” I take another bite. “Some of them were shills, but some were believers.”