Poison Blood, Book 1: Revelation

  Chapter 4: At least I didn’t die a virgin

  Christian’s home was the basement flat of a converted terraced house on a quiet street. It seemed deserted. The night had deepened by the time we arrived so I didn’t really see much of the nearby houses, their lights off. How late was it? Was everyone asleep?

  The first prick of uneasiness trickled down my spine at the unusually silent, eerie street.

  Then we entered his home and I was suddenly comfortable. He was 20, so he must be in his second year of Uni, renting this small flat by himself. People didn’t typically stay on in the University halls of residence after the first year. From his manners and mannerisms, his clothes and accessories, I’d already guessed at wealthy roots, but his home was confirmation.

  Being a studio apartment, it was one rectangular open-plan room comprising bedroom, lounge, and kitchen, with the bathroom/toilet sectioned off at one end. Small though it was, the flat was furnished to look like it was taken out of a magazine. White walls, light wood floors, stainless-steel fittings in the kitchen. Classy. I loved it.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t expecting any company tonight,” Christian said, feigning sheepishness and seemingly trying to tidy the already neat room. “Please sit, Ellie.” He gestured at the small red-leather sofa. It wasn’t too far from the smallish double bed, also upholstered in red fabric.

  I went and perched on the edge of the seat, feeling uneasy again. Now that I was here, I had no idea what I was going to do.

  Was it nerves or intuition that made me consider the idea that Christian had always planned to lure me here? What was he doing on the other side of town tonight? Had he been outside my house? Had he followed me, in the creepy, undetectable way that I imagine he can?

  A stab of fear pierced my gut.

  My stomach clenched and I rose to my feet just as he was about to come and sit next to me.

  “Everything alright, Ellie?”

  “Yes, I mean no. I mean, I’m sorry. Can you give me a lift home? I mean, a lift back to where you picked me up?” I didn’t look at him as I said this and focused on putting my rucksack on.

  “Sure,” he said with a solemn nod.

  “Really?” I was stunned. I didn’t expect him to agree so easily.

  “Of course,” he chuckled. “What do you expect me to do, keep you locked up here?”

  Yes, I thought, that’s exactly what I expected. But I was wrong. Christian didn’t seem at all interested in keeping me here any longer than I wanted to be. “Thanks.”

  “Can I ask something first, Ellie?” he said softly, fixing his strange eyes on me. “You said you could like me–”

  “Yes,” I interrupted. “I could, but I don’t know if I do. I could also not like you. It can go both ways.”

  “It will go only one way,” he said almost arrogantly. “Why else would you have come with me?”

  “I thought I wanted something,” I murmured. “And now, it feels like…” Like an awful lot to do for revenge on mum, I continued in my head. “Feels wrong.”

  “I know I want you Ellie,” he told me simply. “And now, it feels like… Feels right.”

  “I’m sorry, I have to go.”

  “Then I shall have no choice but to chase you.” There was a hint of a threat in his words.

  “Catch me if you can,” I said and made for his door. As I twisted it open, I heard him chuckle behind me. I turned.

  He was smirking. Running his pale, long fingers through his black, spiky hair, he said, “I can catch you with my eyes closed.” I have no doubt about that.

  At the time though, I just shook my head and turned around.

  The next moment, I was twisting around on the spot so fast that I was left dizzy, my knees going weak. I closed my eyes – I thought I was going to have a blackout. I could feel his body close to me, his arms around my waist, but was too disoriented to move from his grasp.

  Before my heart leapt out of my chest, I found myself backed up against a wall. Or was it the door I thought I’d opened? Had he moved me out of the way, shut the door, and then pushed me against it in that one tiny second I thought I’d spun on the spot? It couldn’t be.

  But of course it was.

  “Open your eyes,” he said in my ear. His breath was ice-cold.

  I took a deep breath and I could smell his aftershave. Well, I always thought it was his aftershave, but it was actually his natural scent. Cinnamon and some other sweet-smelling spice I didn’t know the name of. Mmm. Very nice, warm. What a contrast to the chilliness in his breath.

  “How d-did you do that?” I opened my eyes to see his face bending down to my level. My peripheral vision told me his hands were braced against the door now, on either side of me. I was trapped.

  “Do what?” Of course he’d ask that.

  “Oh, I’m not in the mood for this.” I was annoyed by the cracking of my voice.

  “From the extremely fast beating of your heart, the rushing of blood through your veins, the ringing in your ears, and from your ragged inhaling and exhaling, I think you are in the mood, Ellie.”

  “Its fear, you idiot.” I wanted to call him a lot more than that because how dare he know exactly what was happening inside my body?

  “Of course you’re scared,” he assured me. “But that goes away very quickly.” There was a promise in his voice.

  “Listen, Christian,” I pleaded, my voice still shaky. “Not now okay, not tonight.” God, what was I saying? That I didn’t want to sleep with him tonight, but I did in general? Since when?

  Then again, I didn’t know that I could like him, until I said it…

  “You want to wait?” he chuckled. His purple eyes were lightening ever so slightly, becoming less blue and more reddish…

  “Yes. I mean, no. I mean, I don’t know.”

  My head was spinning again. With him so close to me, his arms cornering me, his scent smothering me, his eyes penetrating mine, I swear I felt something close to desire. Or was it actually real, pure, unadulterated desire, and I just didn’t know it because I’d never felt anything like it before?

  I did want to kiss him, I realised. I asked myself if I liked him but I couldn’t say yay or nay. So weird. Just physical then, I surmised. It was the same for him, I bet. He didn’t say he loved me or liked me or cared about me. Damn it, he didn’t even ask why my life was messed up.

  He simply said he wanted me.

  And I sort of wanted him.

  I really had to get out of there. “Please, let me go.”

  Christian looked at me a long time, and I’d bet a lot of money that the blue tint to his purple contacts had completely bled away, leaving just the red film over his eyes.

  “One kiss,” he said eventually, close to my face. His breath filled my nostrils – it was the same fragrance as the scent coming off his skin. It made me feel hungry; my stomach did a flip.

  He smelled edible.

  “If I let you go now,” he whispered, “you will never let yourself be alone with me again and I will never know what it’s like to kiss you. And I would really like to know.”

  I really wanted to know too.

  Know what its like to kiss someone whose breath is so sweet and cold, and come to think of it, whose body is pretty damn cold too. As close as we were to each other on his bike, over his leather jacket, the iciness hadn’t been able to resonate off him like it was now, now that he’d taken off his ever-present jacket and was just in a dark brown T-shirt and black narrow-leg jeans. Not that it bothered me.

  I think my skin was hot enough to cancel out the coldness of his.

  Its not that much different to kissing someone whose breath temperature matches yours, though thanks to mother dearest, I hadn’t had much experience in the kissing department. Christian on the other hand, must have kissed more people than I’d ever encountered in my life. And for years and years and years…

  Now that we were making out, I really didn’t think I was going to leave his flat after all. To
be completely frank, I really couldn’t imagine moving my warm lips way from his glassy ones, break this wonderful kiss. It was just so lovely and fun and exciting and… hot and sexy. I’d never felt as desirable and as wanted as he made me feel. I’d never had a gorgeous 20-year-old guy, or any guy for that matter, single me out, pick me up, and then kiss me the way Christian was kissing me.

  He made me feel so special.

  Kissing him was the best thing I’d ever done in my life, and for a split second, it sort of made me a little miserable that this kiss with a total stranger was the nicest, most satisfying experience ever.

  But his lips made me forget everything, even myself.

  I didn’t know that the touching of two pairs of lips could bring so much pleasure. That his soft, silky black hair would feel so exquisite to my fingers. That freezing cold hands gripping my waist could turn the heat up inside my skin and make my insides dissolve like butter in a scalding pan.

  I just couldn’t get enough of it.

  And to take it one step further, to the next level… Surely, that would be too much for me to handle. Could it really get any better than this?

  Yes. Of course. Much, much better.

  Until afterwards. When I’m lying on his bed, his body on top of me and I’ve just lost my virginity and Christian decides to give me a love bite. He kissed my lips slowly, deeply and then kissed his way down to my neck.

  I’d had a love bite only once before and this was nothing like that.

  It was so much more painful!

  I gasped when he touched his teeth to the side of my throat, close to my right collarbone. Honestly, it felt like he’d pierced my skin and dug right into my veins. Which of course he had, but I didn’t know that at the time.

  At the time, I tried my hardest not to scream from the searing pain that shot off like a burning bullet from where his cold mouth was nuzzling my hot skin.

  Abruptly, the inside of my throat felt like it had been lit on fire. It confused the hell out of me, made me wonder whether I was losing my mind. But when the sweltering heat made its way to the top of my right shoulder, I knew the burning was real.

  Burning on the inside, the flames licked their way from my throat to the rest of my body, bit-by-bit. I opened my mouth to gasp or scream but no sound came out.

  My throat was on bloody fire, how could I speak?

  It was no use trying to push his face off me. Firstly, my arms were feeling a little numb and weak, like they’d been injected with anaesthetic at the same time the internal flames reached them. And secondly, I’d learned while we were in bed together that Christian was incredibly strong and much heavier than his frame suggested. When we were doing it, I’d once wanted to pull his hand from my waist to my mouth so that I could kiss his palm.

  I hadn’t even been able to make it budge one little bit.

  So, I couldn’t scream and I couldn’t force him off me. All I could do was lie there while he gave me a love bite that was somehow incinerating me from the inside. Wait, I’d thought, is it his love bite that’s doing all this? Surely not.

  No way.

  But it was.

  I made an effort to try and move, to speak, and ask what was happening. But my body was weighed down by Christian’s, and the strange numbing, incapacitating sensation crawling all over my body held me firm. The burning intensified to the point where it was so hot inside my veins that I didn’t feel the heat all the time. Like sticking your finger into ice cold, or scorching hot water and not being able to tell if the water is cold or hot.

  I realised it hadn’t been that long since he first touched his teeth to my throat, yet it felt like an eternity since we made love. The thought brought a memory which acted like a momentary distraction from the pain. Before I could focus on any details of the love-making, and without any warning, Christian suddenly growled. It sounded loud to me because he was close to my ear, but I imagine it was a low moan of pleasure, similar to the ones he’d let out when we were having sex.

  Similar, but not the same.

  This growl made me think that he was enjoying the love bite more than he had enjoyed the sex. There was no time to make sense of this because he started sucking on my throat.

  Sucking something out of me.

  I could quite clearly feel… my blood being sucked up from my body and out into…

  Into Christian’s mouth.

  At the same time, the burning feeling in my throat ebbed a little. I sighed.

  Initially, the sucking hurt like hell. I could feel the sharpness of his teeth, the way they’d secured themselves into my neck, the upward pull and pressure, the losing of blood.

  Very quickly though, the throbbing sensation in my veins felt… nice. Hardly feeling the burning, the pain combining with pleasure, the dragging of the blood from my veins and into his mouth felt like a love bite again.

  The best love bite I’d ever had. I sighed again.

  It shouldn’t have felt so pleasant but there I was, my body getting more and more numb, growing cold but ablaze on the inside, mind deducing that I was lying under a blood-sucking vampire who was killing me, and all I could think was that I didn’t want him to stop doing what he was doing.

  At one point it did hit me. I was about to die a fortnight before my 18th birthday, angry at my mother, not on speaking terms with the man who’d brought me up, and never having met, or seen a picture of my biological father.

  A strange thought followed this realisation, and brought an odd sense of relief.

  At least I didn’t die a virgin.