Eyes of Ice (Eyes of Ice Erotica Series) (11 page)

Everything had been
ridiculously easy to arrange, a benefit of the digital age. Both Mags and Cecelia had been accepted to Chicago University months earlier, but the semester didn’t start for another five weeks; they taxied down the runway in Chicago during the last hour to confirm their enrollment and register for classes, and both did so on their smartphones. It had been the last time that Cecelia used that phone, as she had thrown it away shortly after sending her parents a text message about where she’d gone. Now she could not recall the exact wording of that message, only knew that she had told them not to worry and not to visit  (
I’m with Mags
) and thrown the device into the nearest trashcan at the airport gate. Mags had said nothing, happily on her phone to her parents and explaining herself with some exasperation, as if it was her parents who were being irrational: “
M-ohm
, it’s no big deal, you can send me the rest of my stuff through the mail!”

From there, the next couple weeks were a blur. Cecelia had moved through
the following days automatically, scarcely able to believe what she had done and increasingly hurt that her parents never arrived to remove her, never cancelled her credit card, and that they kept replenishing the money in her bank account. Yet she managed to sum all that up in a few words to Andrew: “That’s all.”

Andrew held her a little closer
, an arm snaking around her waist. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That sounds very difficult. But also very independent. You should be proud of yourself.”

Cecelia could only nod, trying to swallow around the enormous lump in her throat.
So recently she had been distracted by his naked body and roaming hands, and now she wished for those moments back.

“Now you?” she queried
, recalling his side of the bargain.

She felt his body stiffen
reflexively as he replied: “What would you like to know?”

She returned his question, though slightly abbreviating it: “About why you’re here. In this city.”

“It’s similar to your story, in some ways,” Andrew told her, running a hand over his face. “I was infected three years ago. When I was your age, actually. If I hadn’t met Devon, I might have turned into a monster. I would have either taken myself out or been put down. But Devon … he found me, and took me under his wing. We were in New York, which is a very crowded city for a new vampire, and the clan there is less friendly. Space was limited, I was uncomfortable, Devon uprooted himself. He’s getting his PhD at Chicago University, you know. Physics. That’s all.”

Cecelia closed her eyes, trying to organize her thoughts and take in all this new information.
That’s definitely not all,
she mentally accused. There were so many facts missing in his story. Infection? And how had he met Devon? And why New York? Cecelia had no idea how to ask these questions, and quietly lay there, listening to Andrew’s steady breathing. She realized that she had provided no comforting response of the variety that Andrew had provided to her, and that Andrew must be waiting, tense, undoubtedly wondering and perhaps fearing what she thought of him now.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she said.

It was the last thing she remembered saying before surrendering to sleep.

Six

When Cecelia stepped back into her dorm the next day, wearing
a pair of Andrew’s pants held up by a belt and a black hoodie that Andrew said Alexandra had left in Devon’s room a few weeks ago (“She won’t mind,”) Mags gave a long, shrill wolf-whistle.

“Shut up,” Cecelia
mumbled in an attempt at anger. But she couldn’t help a proud, satisfied smile from spreading across her face.

“Nuh-uh,” Mags refused. “Not when you look like the cat that’s got the cream. Any details?”

“No!” Cecelia snapped, self-consciousness flaring up.

Mags only laughed. “Okay, okay. I thought it was worth a shot. Are you going to classes today, or what?”

Cecelia mentally calculated how many absences she was allowed. “I don’t think so,” she said. Thankfully, Mags was on her way out the door to tackle her own schedule, and didn’t seem too worried about Cecelia’s sudden shift towards truancy.

“We’ll talk later. Call your parents,” she ordered, breezing out of their dorm room with her backpack slung over one shoulder.

Cecelia spent the next six hours in front of her computer, typing and deleting in conflict, her entire body sore.
But a good kind of sore
, she thought, crossing her legs and feeling a twinge of tenderness at their junction. As the day wore on and the soreness grew, her mind became increasingly dulled by the intensity of her thoughts, and she found herself staring at her cursor blinking at her from the screen, hypnotized. When her cell phone buzzed from the edge of her desk, it was seven o’clock, and Cecelia had spent the last several hours in a reverie, eating ice cream and attempting to lose herself in classical music instead of fantasy and replay of the previous night.

Good evening.

Cecelia dropped her spoon loudly into her bowl of ice cream, and Mags looked up from her own desk in confusion. “Sorry,” Cecelia told her. “It’s nothing.” A tiny wrinkle in Mags’ forehead told Cecelia that her friend wasn’t convinced, but Mags went back to her statistics homework without a word.

Hi.

She smiled as she typed the minimal reply. In the hours that had passed between the morning and now, her mind had worked on horror stories: she had imagined never seeing Andrew again, told herself that sex was all he had wanted from her, and nearly drowned herself to depression in dramatic scenarios in which she could never love again.

I missed you.

Well, there could only be one response to that.

I missed you, to
o
, she answered, and waited for her screen to light up again, having lowered the volume and turned off her phone’s vibrate function so that Mags would suspect nothing – or, at least, have no reason to ask more meddling questions.

Alexandra and
Devon have invited us to dinner. It’s tomorrow.

The sweetness from the ice cream faded from Cecelia’s mouth. As she did not reply instantly this time, Andrew seemed to think that this allowed him a second message:

I’m sorry. I thought it was best to be straightforward?

Why
?
Cecelia answered.

He wants to make nice, I think. I hope. And Alexandra likes you.

Alexandra probably likes everybody
, Cecelia thought darkly, but knew that would not be the kind of reply that would advance the ball.
Well, what if Devon is trying to be nice? Who says he can’t square everything between us?
Then her phone lit up with another message, this one clarifying what she already knew:

It would mean a great deal to me.

They’re like brothers
, Cecelia reminded herself, and with a guilty pit forming in her stomach, she knew that she couldn’t refuse. She would have to put her hatred of Devon aside if Devon meant so much to Andrew – there were no two ways about it. Or else she would lose Andrew entirely, a thought that for some reason she couldn’t bear, and feared to analyze.

Okay.

Thank you.

There was a long silence after that. Cecelia set her phone back on her desk after a few minutes had passed, and looked back to the open document before her. She had written only five pages, and knew that they were of a dismal quality, given her level of distraction.
Just as she was about to attempt another sentence, her phone lit up again.

I’d like to see you tonight.

The bottom dropped out of Cecelia’s stomach. She decided to send what was becoming a standard reply, since she knew that Andrew liked to have the upper hand.

What would you like to do?

His reply made her drop her phone and stand up from the desk suddenly, banging her knee on the underside of one of her drawers. With a yelp, she stared at the phone as it clattered to the floor, and Mags exclaimed: “What is
wrong
with you?”

“Nothing!” Cecelia lied.

“You know, I tell everyone that I have a quiet roommate, but if this keeps happening I’ll just have to go to the library like the rest of the unwashed masses,” Mags snapped, the picture of frustration in pink pajamas.

“I’m sorry,” Cecelia said,
knowing that her voice sounded anything but conciliatory. She rubbed her knee, and added more apologetically: “I’ll try to be less noisy.”

“Try harder,” Mags grumbled.
Clearly disgruntled, Cecelia’s friend returned once more to her homework, unaware that Cecelia’s mind was still on her texting. Stooping, Cecelia reached under her desk, retrieved her phone, and stared again at the message which had so startled her:

I want to take you last night. But harder. I want to make you scream my name
again. And again. What would you like to do?

She kept staring for at least five minutes more, stupefied.

I’d like that, too,
she typed out, then immediately erased the words.
I’d like to make you scream my name
was her next attempt, but she was horrified by how forward this sounded and didn’t even save the message to her drafts. This all looked too eager.
This isn’t anything a good girl would think
, she informed herself,
a good girl wouldn’t be tingling all over right now thinking of his touch … if he touched me again like last night ….

I have homework.

It was a truthful yet cold reply, and Cecelia regretted it with profound embarrassment the second she pressed “send.” Aghast, she attempted to cancel the message, jabbing the “cancel” button furiously with her thumb, but, too late: SENT blinked on her screen, with a picture of a smiling mailbox. She stopped herself from flinging her phone across her desk at the last moment, knowing that it would probably result in the end of her friendship with Mags.
Can I take two break-ups in one day?
She asked herself bitterly.

Andrew’s new text blinked on her screen, but it took her a while to build up the nerve to answer it.

            
 
You’ll learn plenty if you see me.

             
              Cecelia’s head spun. Another message, because she hadn’t replied, blinked up on her screen, and she opened it numbly.

I have a whole lesson plan.

Would you teach me
?
she asked.

You know that I would like nothing more. If you’re an apt student.

 
 
I try to be diligen
t
, she answered, her bowl of ice cream, her reservations, and her desire to play hard to get long forgotten.

I’ll pick you up at eight.

At 7:59, Andrew was standing in front of Cecelia’s door, and at 7:10, they arrived in his apartment, though this time they didn’t kiss their way through the door, and the lights were not dimmed. Cecelia walked to the center of what had been arranged to be the loft’s living room, and turned in a small circle to face Andrew, taking in her surroundings as she went.

When she had been here for dinner, she’d been much to anxious to fully get to know her surroundings, and now she was feeling nervousness of a different kind. The area she now stood in contained two mismatched sofas, two large reclining chairs, and a coffee table littered with books and chess pieces. As usual, the apartment was flooded with light from the enormous windows, and Cecelia had to resist the urge to run to look at the pedestrians below.

“No Devon?” she asked.

“At Alexandra’s,” he answered, and rather than drawing closer, he took a seat on one of the couches. “They have what I believe is called an ‘on and off again’ relationship.”

“Which explains Mags,” Cecelia said, nervousness making her stomach flip.
Devon wasn’t here last night either, and last night ….
“Doesn’t he like Alexandra, though?”

Andrew was gazing at her distractedly,
his eyes scanning her from head to toe and back again as if taking stock. Cecelia, suddenly self-conscious, decided that she would like to sit as well, and sat on the second couch to his right, smoothing her dress over her knees.
Is he proving a point?
Cecelia wondered.
About his ability to restrain himself? Because right now I want nothing more than …
she stopped, knowing that if her train of thought continued she would begin to blush, imagining his skin against hers.