The Heart's Ashes (27 page)

“
Why?”

“
You know why.”

“
Because of the spirit bind thing?” My small fist pushed me up
to sit.

“
Yes. You have to move on one day. If you’re bound to me, you
will never be capable of it.”

“
Is it not possible that I’m already bound to you? That maybe
I don’t need to make love to you first?”

He shook his
head, staying calm under my rising air of infuriation. “Not like
this. If you let me have you, you won’t want to live when I
leave.”

“
Then make love to me,” I breathed, closing my eyes and
rolling back on the bed. “Because if we can’t be together, forever,
then I want to be dead.”

“
Oh, how I missed your melodrama.”

“
Time’s changed things, David. It’s no longer just melodrama.
I mean it. I’ll die when you leave.”

“
Die, or kill yourself?”

“
I don’t know.” My lips turned down with thought. “Why don’t
you just make love to me, then kill me yourself.”

“
Ara!” He lifted my head delicately, his sparkling eyes wide.
“Please don’t say things like that.”

“
Why?”

“
Because I love you. The thought of you not existing in this
world is too much for me. I can’t die, and I can’t go on without
you. Please, just live—just be happy, for me?”

“
No, I can’t. I tried that—I wasn’t living.”

He laid back,
pulling me onto his chest; every limb that could possibly touch
entangled like a mess of twisted vines. It felt so right. Which
made it so unfair that it couldn’t be for forever.

“
Can we please not fight about this?” He seemed to be talking
to a distant me, like I wasn’t in the room; his eyes, his touch,
somewhere farther away. “Can we just pretend like we have
forever?”

I was too
tired to argue. I let it go without another word, choosing,
instead, to memorise every imperfection on his chest. Under my
fingertips, his skin rose with little bumps. I didn’t know vampires
could even get goosebumps, and it made him feel so human, so
normal, that I half expected to hear his heart beat.

Suddenly,
David held a quick breath and cupped my hand, stopping its motion.
“What?” I looked up at him.

“
I need to eat.” He appeared by the bedroom door.

“
Really? Now?” I motioned down at my
near-nakedness.

“
Yes. Either I get blood, or I eat you,” he joked, but his
eyes widened for a second.

“
Then eat me.” I sat up, holding out my wrist. “Save a
life—drink
my
blood.”

The light
outside made everything more visible in the darkness of my room;
the morning was near, and though I was exhausted from lack of
sleep, the idea of David drinking my blood made me feel like the
night was new.

He hesitated,
in all his perfectly-toned loveliness, by the door.

“
David, you know you can do it without killing me. You know
you want to.”

Strong, cool
hands slid along the base of my back before I saw him appear. He
lifted me into his lap, wrapping my legs around his hips as he sat
on the edge of the bed. An image alert forced my eyes to close as
he looked into them—the scene of the night his brother kidnapped me
and held me this same way appearing on the backs of my eyelids.

I breathed in deeply, then out. It’s not the same. He may
look the same as Jason, hold me the same, but it’s David’s breath
brushing my collarbone,
his
hands clutching my hips and his skin I can feel
beneath my legs. And I feel safe.

The tension in
my shoulders dissolved.

“
You okay?” he asked.

“
Yeah.” I rested my brow to his. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“
Do you need to talk about it?”

I could see
the concern in his eyes, but it was deeply masked by his obvious
hunger, and I knew he was struggling to play the caring boyfriend
under the strain of the instinct-driven vampire.

“
I’m fine. Are we going to do this or what?”

Ignoring my feistiness, he swept my hair delicately away,
revealing my shoulder. “If I drink from you—” He swallowed. “I’d
need to take a fair bit. It
will
drain you—leave you weak.”

“
Okay.”

“
But, you could drink from me after...” his tone sung with
suggestion.

“
You don’t even need to ask.”

He smiled.
“Okay then. Try not to scream.”

“
Right. I remember, it excites the monster.”

“
Right.” He inched forward, his eyes, his lips hesitant, his
tongue searching the boundaries of his teeth as he lingered at the
curve of my neck, his hands taut with nerves or fear around my
hips.

“
Do it.” I closed my eyes, pressing my skin to his mouth.
“Just bite me.”

His ribs
expanded with a breath, his fingernail racing to my neck, slicing
deeply before his lips encased the skin—forming a seal. Searing
tension rolled up from my curled toes, tightened my thighs,
creeping up through my twisted stomach, into my fingers, which
clutched his back for every breath he stole from me with his
bite.

Sharp teeth
parted the wound viscously; I squeaked, but the ecstasy of the
tight pull and the shiver of nerves—nerves of pleasure—seeped down
my rigid body, relaxing my arms, my fingers, my legs. I sunk deeper
into his hold and rolled my cheek away from his ear, opening my
throat to him, trusting him, this dangerous predator, with my
life.

It was as if I
could hear my own heart beating; two beats, then stop. A breath
held. Two more beats. One more breath. I wanted more. The pleasure
of his lips after so long was like an insatiable hunger. But he bit
so softly, playing games with my desires.

“
Bite me harder,” I breathed, fighting an inhuman urge to
throw him down and bite him back.

He shook his
head, his silky tongue caressing my skin, the muscle in his throat
shifting with each gulp of my life.

It just wasn’t
enough.

Lust or hope
or happiness or anger, I wasn’t sure, raged inside me. I needed,
wanted, craved more from him.

The good girl
in me surrendered to the beastly urge and I pressed my fingertips
to his jaw, forcing his lips off my neck.

“
Ara? What’s wrong?” He breathed heavily, his lips seeping
with red, like the thick juice of berries.

I couldn’t
speak. My playful side emerged; I forced him onto his back and
mounted his hips, my hair hanging in his face as I leaned close.
Blood trickled from my stinging, gaping neck, over my collarbone,
onto his skin—each drop running over the ridges of his chest,
staining the sheets beneath. The whole room seemed to turn beige
then, the colours of the night seeping away with the rising sun,
making the walls, the white sheets and the air feel warm, closed
in, romantic.

But inside me,
the addiction burned stronger, chased here by the weakness of lost
blood, unbearable, intangible, a sordid feeling I didn’t even want
to control. I felt more like David, like I belonged with him, for
once. Like I could take life and not regret it.

His black eyes
watched me, changing again as the green consumed the hunger within
him. He tried to sit up; “What’s wrong, Ara? Did I hurt you?”

I held him
down, a flat palm to his chest.

“
I didn’t use my fangs,” he promised.

“
I know.” I leaned closer. “But I’m going to.”

His fingertip
slipped between me and my eagerness, slicing an exit point for his
blood, approving its leave from his veins to enter my own, to fuel
me, fuel my addiction, to be a part of me as only a vampire
could.

The cold taste
of sweet sugar burned the back of my throat before my lips felt his
skin. My tongue beat my teeth to his flesh and revelled in the
smooth, soothing milk of his blood—making my mouth’s water pool up
under my lips.

Nothing in the
world tasted like this—not even Eric.

David’s blood
was made for me.

I sucked hard
against him, forcing my teeth together.

“
Ara, my love.” He rolled his head back, tangling his fingers
in my hair at the base of my neck. “You have the softest
bite.”

He’d probably
never before felt human teeth, prising open his flesh as his blood
spilled past. It must be a lot rougher, more animalistic to do this
with two vampires—both the predator, both the fighter. And I
imagined, as the breath I exhaled dragged a rise of exhaustion with
it, that vampires must last that little bit longer, too.

I flopped down
on the pillow and David rolled up, resting his body between my
legs.

“
Are you okay?” he asked.

“
Mm-hm.” I nodded, smearing blood across my cheek rather than
wiping it away. “But, you shouldn’t lay there if you’re not going
to make love to me, David—it isn’t fair.”

“
Yeah?” He gave an easy smile, tracing a line down the centre
of my body. “But then I couldn’t do this.”

The muscles in
my legs stiffened pleasantly as he scrolled his fingertip along my
inner thigh. It tickled so much I almost wanted to crawl away.

David gave an
entertained chuckle, doing it again. “I like touching you here,” he
said. “It’s nice that you’re so comfortable with me.”

“
Guess that kinda comes naturally when you let someone drink
your blood.”

“
Yeah,” he said, his lips gently kissing my upper thigh
between words. “Or when you’re in love.”

I rolled my
head to let out a breath, and my cheek meshed against a sticky
paste—reminding me of the gaping laceration on my neck. But the
sting was nothing now, with the pleasant sear of his blood coursing
through my veins and the thrill of ecstasy forcing my every thought
to desires a good girl would never let herself imagine.

I hardly even
worried about how pale my legs might look or the fact that I hadn’t
shaved them today. Even as the warmth of his lips, which were cool
before, touched the border of my underwear, the only thought in my
mind was of us; chest to chest, lip to lip, connected the way I’d
wanted for so long.

“
Ara?” he said, and I looked down at him. “Can I—” He ran a
fingertip over the scar on my inner thigh. “Can I bite you
here?”

I hesitated,
but only for a second. “Yes.”

A wave of
butterflies rolled through my stomach. I drew a quick breath as his
teeth sank in, reopening the skin his brother had once before. But,
even though, in my mind, I couldn’t remember the actual pain of
Jason biting me there—only remember that it hurt so badly I wanted
to die—when David pressed his teeth to the scar and the skin popped
open under them, I felt only tight pressure, like a longing
kiss.

Eric was
right. The lust, the magic of the vampire kill felt only
pleasurable. I wanted to feel his fangs though. I could feel the
strength of his bite and it made me hot inside just thinking how
safe I was with him; how he’d never deliberately hurt me, never let
me get hurt. He was strong. Stronger and more capable than Mike,
and his teeth, though they could make me feel a pleasure that would
see me hate myself in the daylight, could also do great damage to
anyone who wanted to hurt me. Of that, I was sure.

So I laid back
and let him drink from me, from a place I had never willing let any
man be near before. And it felt so right—for at least until the
morning rose completely.

With a soft,
vocalised exhalation, David’s lips moved up my inner thigh, over
the joining bone to my hip—I’m so glad I waxed there at least—then
softly, with his blood-wet kisses, followed the contour of my waist
to just below my ribs. He sank his fangless bite in again, forcing
a lusted breath to escape my lips as I arched my back, pressing
myself closer the same way the girl in the tent at Karnivale
did.

I could feel
it, the way she would have felt. Safe, wanting, loved. She knew she
shouldn’t feel that way, but, at the same time, like me, she also
didn’t care. She wanted to die at his hands, and my thoughts were
just as sick as hers.

“
Are you okay?” David asked under his breath, his voice coming
across with an undertone of a smile. When he looked up at me with
liquid-red lips and jet-black eyes, I rolled my head back and
smiled.

“
I like you like this.”

“
Ha,” he laughed softly, sliding his body over mine until he
came to rest against me. “You always were a little
sadistic.”

I studied his
bloodied lips, considering them long before I said, “Kiss me.” And
he did. Human blood and vampire blood once again mixed in my
mouth—salt and sugar—making a new memory for me to hold onto when I
breathed his sweet, chocolaty cologne. I traced his fang with my
tongue then drew his lip into my teeth, and bit down.

“
Ow,” he muttered into my mouth.

You’re so cute when you feel pain.
It made me laugh so much it was hard to keep kissing. I moved
my lips to the other side of his neck and scraped my nail over his
skin. “Let me try to bite you?”

“
You know, you might actually be able to,” he said
thoughtfully. “I barely needed a scratch before to break
it.”

“
Why? Why are you so weak?” I kept tracing the skin, imagining
cutting through it.

“
I’m weak, this is the first blood I’ve had in nearly a
fortnight.”