Eyes of Ice (Eyes of Ice Erotica Series) (6 page)

             
“Do not,” he breathed to Devon, “touch her.”

             
“But she
knows
,” Cecelia heard Devon respond, a measured note of reason in his tones. “I don’t see many other options. If you don’t kill her, I will.”

             
“I won’t tell anybody,” Cecelia whispered. It was just a whisper, but she knew both men heard her. She felt Andrew’s grip on her wrist loosen, if only slightly, as Andrew’s head turned toward her over his shoulder. “I won’t,” she repeated, firmly.

             
“Let me talk to her,” Devon told Andrew, letting out a short bark of a laugh.

             
Andrew didn’t move an inch, maintaining “You are talking to her,” but Cecelia managed to work her way slightly to the left so that she could just see Devon beyond Andrew’s arm.

             
Devon was grinning wolfishly. His teeth had tapered to points as well, his eyes remaining completely black. Cecelia felt a trickle of sweat run down the small of her back. It was like being face to face with a tiger or a lion, or something so devastatingly deadly that to run would be both futile and foolish.

             
“I knew already,” Cecelia informed him, looking at his pressed shirt so that she wouldn’t have to try and meet those frightening, black holes of eyes. “I suspected. From the moment I danced with Andrew. I … started researching this sort of thing when I first got to Chicago because I heard of the weird deaths and I knew they weren’t, couldn’t be … anything else. And the rumors. And you two – pale and too coordinated and too …” she was going to say “handsome,” a commentary upon another way to attract prey, but instead substituted “… complete, somehow. You’re too young to be so composed and … together with your lives.”

             
Devon laughed, and this time it seemed more genuine. His eyes flicked to regard Andrew, his expression unreadable in spite of his previous gesture of merriment. “She talks. And from what I saw last night, I thought she just glared.” With that remark, Devon took a step back as if to consider them from a distance, and the dinnerware crunched under his highly polished shoes. Cecelia didn’t look down, terrified that she would see the shards crushed to a powder. “She’s still too dangerous,” she heard Devon flatly state.

             
Andrew spoke. At last! Cecelia had started to get the unnerving feeling that he was just some kind of imprisoning statue. “We’re the dangerous ones,” he said, coolly. “She says she won’t talk, and even if she does, who will believe her?”

             
Lots of people
, Cecelia thought in protest.
Forget the school newspaper, I could sell this story to the
Times.
You’re living – well – breathing proof that could get me a Pulitzer Prize.
But rather than saying this, she bit her tongue and watched on tenterhooks as Devon mulled over Andrew’s interpretation of Cecelia’s intentions.

             
“Fine,” he said, at last, and took another step back. “Just remember that I don’t approve. And I don’t like her here. We’ll discuss this later.” His voice remained as cold and deliberate as before.

             
It was only when Devon turned on his heel and left the room that Andrew released Cecelia’s wrist, slowly moving to face her. For a moment, neither of them said anything. Cecelia still felt fear running like electricity in her veins, and she could tell from Andrew’s now-clenched fists that for him, anger was the overwhelming emotion. When he spoke, his voice was clipped with tension.

             
“I’m sorry.”

             
“It’s all right,” Cecelia said, and felt herself walking toward the door. She was impressed that she could still walk, after so recently fearing that her head would be detached from her body.
Heels are no problem after anticipating leaving in a body bag
, she thought with wry and unexpected humor.

             
To her surprise, Andrew laughed. “All right?”

             
Suddenly, he stood between her and the doorframe, somehow moving more quickly than Cecelia’s eyes had been able to track. Shocked into stillness once again, Cecelia could repeat what had becoming a habit of staring.

             
“You’ve had your life threatened,” he told her with calculated calmness. “By a ….” And he swallowed, looking down and abruptly releasing his mask of composure. His brow was furrowed, his shoulders hunched in unparalleled vulnerability.  Automatically, Cecelia raised her hand and cupped the side of his face, the way she would try and draw and comfort a friend back to reality.

             
“Vampire,” she finished. Under her hand, she felt Andrew’s jaw lock into place, as if in further anger. Yet when he raised his head, his brows remained drawn together in confusion.

             
“You are a good girl,” he said almost inaudibly – if she hadn’t been standing close enough to read his lips, Cecelia might not have heard his words at all. As she stood before him, his eyes shifted – like water spilling over watercolor pigment, they diluted to a placid, sky blue.

             
She withdrew her hand and let it drop to her side. “I told you I was.”

             
He walked her to the door with one hand on her waist, his handsome features still contorted in confusion. Cecelia glanced into the kitchen once on her way to the door, and with another pang of panic saw that Devon glowered at her from behind a tumbler of amber liquid. He was lounging against the kitchen counter, expression seething displeasure.

             
“Come back to me?” Andrew was asking.

             
It was the first time that Cecelia had seen uncertainty on his face. But filled with the conflicted emotions of the past hour – the greatest lust and the greatest fear she had ever encountered – Cecelia could not bring words to her kiss-sore lips. She stood, uncertain, outside his door.

             
“Wait,” he said, and produced from his pants pocket a silver pen. “Write your number.” He extended his hand, and it took the numb Cecelia a long moment to realize that he meant for her to write upon his skin. When she finally managed to recall her number, the ink emerged in the color of his Andrew’s eyes. That task completed, Cecelia stepped backwards, turned, and took the elevator to the lobby, leaving him framed in the doorway. She barely remembered the walk back to her dormitory, but for some reason, she felt as if Andrew’s piercing eyes followed her all the way there.

Three

             
When she awoke the next morning, cocooned in a tangled mass of sheets, Cecelia was still wearing her dress. Her heels, she noticed, were right where she had left them – discarded carelessly on the floor, charting her path last night from the door to her bed.             

“Mags?” her
inquiry emerged as a raspy croak. When there was no answer, Cecelia raised herself from her mattress and craned her neck to look at Mags’ bed. Her roommates’ sheets were also a sprawling, knotty mess, but this was their usual state, the way that Mags left her bed every morning.
Every morning.
With a yelp of shock, Cecelia’s eyes located the large clock above their door to confirm her horrific suspicion: yes, she had indeed missed her only class of the day. Guilt washed over her, and she collapsed into her sheets, her muscles incapable of resisting the shame she felt.
I never miss Techniques of Modern Journalism
.

             
The memories of the evening swept over her slowly, immobilizing her in slackness for several long moments while she stared, unseeing, at the ceiling. Still fresh on her mind was the overwhelming terror, the kind of fear that made her stomach clench and inspired a cold sweat, even now. And there was the counterpoint to that terror, that sensation that characterized the night more than the fear she had felt – the sensation of desire in her skin and on her mind, so thick and heavy, and still new and incomprehensible.
Two unknowns in one day
, she thought,
Sex and vampires. No wonder I’m exhausted.

             
For a split second her mind wandered into imagination, and she allowed herself to wonder what would have happened if Devon not entered the apartment and had therefore not interrupted that as yet un-nameable act in which she and Andrew were engaged. What if he had been thirty minutes later? An hour or two? What would Andrew have done to her? Abruptly, she cut off the daydream, determinedly slamming the door in the face of her erotic musings.
Don’t think about it. It’s over. It’s over.

             
Come back to me.

             
The memory of those words hit her unexpectedly. After everything, after uncovering the deepest secret and unintentionally letting her see a hint of the darkest part of himself, Andrew still wanted her to return.

             
But for what?
Her brain asked her in a sinister tone.
For dinner?

             
Cecelia sat up and threw her blankets aside, stumbling to her desk on sleep-weary legs. Her laptop wheezed mournfully there, seemingly having been on all night. At five years old, Cecelia’s laptop had been so mistreated through high school and freshman year that a few hours on its own led to a distinct, acrid smell of burnt plastic.

             
“Sorry,” Cecelia apologized to its battered frame, and cautiously raised the screen to the sound of squeakily protesting hinges. There, on her otherwise Spartan desktop, was a new and untitled document. With a jolt of recollection, Cecelia remembered last nights’ fevered typing, and, opening the document, hastily read over words she could not recall writing:

Vampires: First Confirmation in Chicago

B
y Cecelia Hardwicke

This reporter has first-hand encountered two vampires, previously species of rumor and myth, in the urban metropolis of Chicago. Distinguishing characteristics include increased agility and speed, pale countenance, and dark features. The two individuals encountered displayed mercurial emotions, reflected in dilation and color shift of irises. 

Cecelia frowned.
Not my best work,
she thought sourly,
but I guess post-traumatic stress does that to you.
She glared at her final sentence, which seemed to betray all her bewilderment and lack of information.
Mercurial emotions,
she mused,
well, it wasn’t like Andrew and Devon had been the only mercurial ones last night….

             
Decisively, she slammed her laptop closed.
This is ridiculous. I can’t think about this.
She knew that her mind was still infuriatingly clouded with the memories of yesterday’s sensations.
And I’m still maintaining the
r
idiculous notion that I’m capable of playing the reporter. This kind of foolishness and inattention to detail is probably why I was rejected from the school newspaper in the first place!

             
Her cell phone buzzed loudly from the edge of the desk, and Cecelia answered it absentmindedly, continuing to glumly reread what she had written as her hand fumbled across the scattered papers and books to find the source of vibration.             

Hello. It’s Andrew.
I became impatient.

             
Cecelia felt her pulse quicken as warmth spread through her traitorous body. She was seized with wild impulse, wanting nothing more than to throw all caution to the wind and respond to the solicitous message. The sensations of the day before seemed to echo throughout her body, and with a great effort, she managed to subdue, if not completely calm, the fluttering of yearning in the pit of her stomach.
This needs to be on my terms
, she decided grimly. She tried to push Andrew’s perfect face from her memory.              

Hi, Andrew.

There. Perfectly detached. Perhaps even uninterested-sounding. Aloof. A nervous giggle threatened to rise up Cecelia’s throat, and she shoved it back down with the force of her remaining resolve.

H
is responding text came with no dela
y
:
I was worried about you. I wanted to check and see if you were all right.