“What will you do, Bones, when one day I finally say no and mean it?” Even I recognized the grimness in my tone.
He looked at me sharply for a moment and then shrugged. “Write you a check, apparently. And then work on changing your mind.”
***
The plane landed at five thirty, right on schedule. We picked up our bags and waited for a cab. Bones was very handy when it came to that; he would just glare at the drivers with his green gaze and compel them to stop. They did, even if they already had passengers. That happened twice, to my embarrassment. Finally we flagged one without occupants and started back to my house. He had been oddly quiet since our little chat. When we were within five minutes of my place, he suddenly told the driver to stop.
“What?” Turning to look at him, I saw his eyes were green again. Great, now what?
“Sit there and face forward. All you see is the road. All you hear is music.”
He used that resonating voice again, the one that caused hairs to sit straight up on my neck, but he wasn’t talking to me. The driver nodded, fixing his eyes forward with a dull stare.
“I am so not having sex with you in this backseat, Bones. Do you know how unsanitary that would be?”
He chuckled and put his arms around me. “That wasn’t the idea. Not that you couldn’t convince me of it, of course. Actually, I was thinking of your family. I take it you don’t want me to walk you to the door and give you a kiss good-bye in front of them? As I said, I could convince your grandparents it was a girl they saw, but that leaves your mum. Somehow I don’t wager you’d want me to hold her down and drink her blood so she’d believe whatever I told her.”
“Absolutely not.” The mere thought of him meeting my mother sent chills of horror down my spine.
The look he gave me told me he didn’t appreciate my vehement response. “As I said, your grandparents think you’ve been to a Bible study with another girl, so that’s what they would have told your mum. Yet you have fresh bruises around your neck. Unless this is a lesbian Bible study the likes of which crowd control would become necessary, those two things don’t mesh.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t keep leaving bruises on me. Then we wouldn’t be having these problems.” The prissy tone of my voice sounded comical even to me. Who was I kidding?
A knowing smile curved his lips. “Kitten, if I didn’t heal so fast, my back would be a river of scars from your nails and there would be bite marks all over me.”
My face flushed and I cast a panicked look at the driver, who still hummed to himself. “Since when are you complaining about that?” I hissed.
“I’m not,” came his instant response. “The point was that you don’t like your family seeing such marks on you. One simple way around that: take some blood from me, and away go the nasty reminders you’ve shagged the undead. Really, pet, I’m being considerate. Doesn’t bother me a bit that you look like you’re wearing a bruise necklace. In fact, I rather enjoy—”
“You’ve made your point!” Exasperated, I poked him. He just eyed the spot and grinned.
“Subliminal message? Looking for a poke? All you had to do was say so. You might not fancy the backseat, but we could go right into those trees and—”
In frustration I kissed him, because at least that usually worked to shut him up. Bones responded without hesitation, pulling me next to him while his mouth moved over mine in a centuries-perfected way that left my head spinning. My arms crept up around him before I knew what I was doing. Then, tearing my mouth away, I attempted to slow my jagged breathing.
“How?”
He drew me against him again and leaned back so we almost reclined. “Kiss me again, Kitten.”
His voice was husky and his eyes were emerald, telling me that he felt the same passion I did. Slowly, I lowered my mouth to his, and right before our lips met, I saw a flash of fang. When his tongue slid into my mouth, I tasted blood. It should have repelled me, but there was something disturbingly sensual about sucking his blood off his tongue as we kissed.
Bones ran his hands down my back, sliding over my hips. His tongue quit bleeding, but I hadn’t stopped kissing him. His fangs were fully extended now, as were other things on his body, and either I had to stop or let him lead me out of the car to finish this in the nearby bushes.
“Bones, no.” Chastity won out this round, and I pushed away from him.
“I want to see you tonight.” The heat in his eyes told me it wouldn’t be for training. Well, not battle training.
“No. I just got back, I’m barely ever home anymore. This weekend I move into my new apartment. These next few days with my family will be all I’ll have for a while. Something tells me my grandparents won’t be visiting often.”
“Where is the apartment?”
Oh, I’d forgotten to mention it before. Silly me forgetting that soon I’d have my own place where no one could track his visitations.
“Near the campus, about six miles away.”
A light sparkled in his eyes. “You’ll be only twenty minutes from the cave then.” How convenient. Bones didn’t speak the last part. He didn’t have to. “I could come to you tonight. No one would see me.”
“No. I’ll call you with the address on Friday. You can come over late after my mother leaves. Not before. I mean it, Bones. Give me a little time. It’s already Monday.”
He took my hand and kissed it, cradling it in his while that green light still glowed in his eyes. “Friday then. I’ll hold you to it. No more running.”
“Running?” Why? I certainly didn’t feel in the mood for jogging.
Then his meaning penetrated. When I got home and looked into my mother’s eyes, I would second-guess a relationship with him all to hell, I knew. He must have known that too. But right now the only face in front of me was his.
“No, I’m too tired to run, and you’re too fast. You’d only catch me.”
“That’s right, luv.” Soft, but with unyielding resonance. “If you run, I’ll chase you. And I’ll find you.”
***
It was a busy week. There was final registration for classes, books to pick up, and the deposit and rental agreement signed with my new landlord. When Friday dawned, my mother actually cried, hugging me to her in bed and sniffling that tonight she’d be sleeping alone for the first time in over nineteen years. I wished I could have said the same.
There were precious few things to pack up. I’d bought a box spring and mattress and a dresser for my clothes. Add a few lamps and an old desk for studying, and that was the whole enchilada. I hoarded as much of the money as possible, knowing I would still have to get a part-time job to make ends meet. When Bones found out about that, he’d freak.
He had been underneath my thoughts all week. To my horror, one morning my mother asked me if I’d had a nightmare the previous evening. Apparently I’d been saying the word “bones” in my sleep. Yeah, it was a nightmare all right, just not what she thought. Mumbling something about graveyards, I brushed her off, but the reality remained. Friday came too fast, much too fast.
My grandparents let me keep the truck, which was nice of them. They had been less than pleased with me lately, but I received a stiff hug from each of them when it was time for me to leave. I was waiting until the last possible moment to call Bones with the address, because the thought of seeing him again made my knees weak. How was I ever going to break this off?
“Be sure and learn good, child,” Grandpa Joe gruffly muttered to me when I started to pull away. My eyes pricked with tears, because I was leaving the only home I’d ever known.
“I love you both.” I sniffed, blinking back the moisture which threatened to leak out of my eyes.
“Don’t forget to keep going to Bible study with that nice young gal,” my grandmother instructed me sternly. If she only knew what she was saying.
“Oh, I’m sure I’ll be seeing her soon.” Real soon.
***
I sat on the floor of my new apartment, staring at the ph
one before I finally picked it up and dialed.
The knock came less than twenty minutes later. Not knowing what to do with myself in the meantime, I’d taken a shower and put on new clothes. With the time apart this week, I’d rebuilt my determination to cease all activities with Bones that didn’t involve a stake. Being with my mother had certainly helped that process. She couldn’t stop talking about how vampires were demons from hell and deserved to die, between admonitions for me to study. My hair was still wet from washing it when I heard him rap on the door. My, but he was prompt.
I opened the door… and all my strong, self-righteous intentions crumpled when I saw him. Bones stepped through the entrance, locking it behind him while pulling me into his arms. God, but he was beautiful with those chiseled cheekbones and pale skin, his body hard and seeking. His mouth covered mine before I could get a breath in, and then I didn’t need to breathe because I was too busy kissing him. My hands trembled when they reached up to grasp his shoulders and then clenched when he reached under my waistband to feel inside.
“I can’t breathe.” I gasped and wrenched my head away.
His mouth went to my throat, moving over the sensitive skin as he bent my spine until only his arms held me upright.
“I missed you, Kitten,” he growled, pulling off my clothes.
All of my carefully rehearsed words on how we could no longer continue this flew straight out of my head. Instead, I ran my hands to the front of his shirt and pulled it out of his pants.
He swept me up in his arms and asked a single question. “Where?”
I jerked my head in the vicinity of my bedroom, too busy feasting on his skin to answer. He carried me into the small room and nearly flung me on the bed.
***
“Well, luv, I wanted to see your place before I bought you a housewarming gift. Little did I know that you’d need a whole bloody apartment.”
Bones was sprawled out naked on the bed, looking for all the world like a fallen angel. He stared at the shabby bedroom with a look of mild disdain. “I should slaughter your landlord for charging you money for this hovel,” he went on.
I wasn’t entirely sure if he was kidding, but at the moment, I was feeling too languorous to be offended. “This from the man who lives in a cave. Hardly a Hilton there, is it?”
He grinned. “Hate to break it to you, but my cave is nicer than this. Anytime you want to go back on that silly refusal to take your cut of the money, just tell me. Never fear; I won’t stop shagging you no matter how many checks I have to write.”
“You actually have a bank account?” That was so… normal.
“Several. Why, want to try to coerce me out of my money? Steal my account numbers and rob me blind?”
“No, but if you have money tucked away, why do you live in a cave? Granted, it does have more amenities than this, but it is what it is.” I had never thought about his finances, but now that the subject was open, I was curious.
He stretched. “Safety, for one. I can hear you coming a mile away when you approach. Good warning enough if some other beastie wants to take a stab at revenge for one of the jobs I’ve done. Or one of the things I’ve done for free, for that matter. Besides, it was only supposed to be temporary. Didn’t plan on staying here this long.”
“What changed that?” As soon as the words left my mouth, I regretted them.
“You know why,” Bones answered softly.
He grasped my shoulders and forced me to face him. I stared at his collarbone, unwilling to look in his eyes. He traced my face with his fingers delicately, as though I might shatter. How true that was.
“Don’t hide yourself, Kitten, look at me.”
Although I would have given worlds to refuse, my pride wouldn’t let me be so cowardly. Always pride before a fall.
His eyes were brown, and something about their lack of vampire green affected me more than if he’d tried to cloud my mind with his power. Maybe he already had. Maybe that was why I couldn’t resist him.
“I meant what I said before. I love you.”
It was unbelievable how three little words could smash through me with the weight of a wrecking ball, and how unfair that they could never change what he was.
“I wish you wouldn’t say that.” My voice was barely a whisper.
“I wish you would,” he replied at once.
I dropped my head against his shoulder in defeat. “Isn’t it enough that I can’t say no to you? That I’ve gone back on everything I believe in by being here with you? God, you have no idea how every time I’m away from you, I build myself up to be so strong, and then it all comes crashing down as soon as I see you. Do you have any idea how hard it is to look my mother in the eye, knowing I’m sleeping with the same kind of creature that raped her?”
“Don’t you dare compare me to him,” he snapped. I blinked, because he looked as furious as I’d ever seen him, and here I was within biting distance. Smart, real smart. “Do I hold you responsible for the evil that humans do? No, because that would be ludicrous. At the same time, although you try so hard to forget, you are half-vampire. Are you not responsible for half the misery the bad ones cause, then? No, because you are only accountable for what you do. When you finally get that through your head, you’ll be a much happier person, if you live long enough.”
Bones jumped up from the bed. Dumbfounded, I watched as he yanked on his pants and then pulled his shirt over his head.
“You’re leaving?” This was a first. Usually it was me who stomped off in a huff.
“Yeah.” Crisply. “Now you can sleep snug and not fret about waking up with any creatures beside you.”
My mouth was still open in disbelief when he slammed the door behind him.
At once remorse filled me, followed quickly by rationalization. Okay, so perhaps I was out of line calling him a creature, but really, I’d called him much worse before.
Not after he told you he loved you, my conscience whispered.
Right, then, bad timing. But when was a good time to call someone a creature? Before or after breaking in the new mattress? Besides, how was I supposed to refer to his species? As the formerly alive?
Anything except creature, monster, or all the other names your mother has called them, that inner voice continued until it felt like I had a proverbial angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other.
Don’t feel bad. Bones is a vampire who beat your head in the night you met—
Because I’d been trying to kill him.
He forced you to endure unmerciful training—
That will probably save my life in the future.
So what! He seduced you, took advantage of you—
Yeah, I was really fighting him off.
You can’t trust him—
But he hasn’t let me down yet.
He’s using you, you fool, just like Danny did!
Then why does he act NOTHING like him?
Miserable, I burrowed into the covers, an ache growing in my chest from how big, lonely, and empty the bed now seemed. The truth was this: regardless of the fact that Bones was a full-blown vampire, I had treated him much worse than he’d ever treated me. Once again, I had been wrong, so wrong. But was it better to leave things the way they were? I’d started today with the goal of ending things between Bones and myself, and now it looked like I’d done a bang-up job of that.
But the thought of never seeing him again made that ache in my chest swell until I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Even if he’s had enough and his walking away is for the best, he deserves an apology from me, I decided, that ache easing a little at the thought of calling him. It was the least I could do, I told myself as I got up and grabbed my robe. Yeah. That’s why I had to call him right away.
But when I got into the kitchen and stared at my phone, I paused. I should probably spend some time actually thinking about what I was going to say before I spoke. If I’d done that before, I wouldn’t be in this situation now. I stood there for several minutes, holding the
phone in a tight grip as I went down a mental list of possible apologies. If only there was a lovely, eloquent way of saying, Hey, know what? I was a total ass and you had every right to leave. But I couldn’t find a way to pretty up those cold, harsh facts, and I was concentrating so hard trying to find one that I didn’t notice the knock on the door until the second one.
I glanced at the clock on my phone. Almost midnight and I didn’t know any of my neighbors. Who else could it be?
I opened the door and let Bones in. With an almost abashed look on his face, he thrust a bouquet of flowers into my hand. I gaped at them, speechless.
“I’m sorry I stormed off like that, Kitten. You’re really blasted young, and sometimes I forget that everything seems only black-and-white at your age.”
The selfish part of me was relieved and wanted to leave it at that. Yippee, he was sorry so I didn’t have to be! But that damned little voice of conscience wouldn’t shut up.
“No, Bones. I was wrong. Very, very wrong, and you didn’t deserve that, so I’m the one who’s sorry.”
With a smile, he laid a gentle hand on my forehead. “You don’t feel feverish, but you must be impaired to have willingly admitted such a thing. Or did you just down an entire bottle of gin and this is drunk-speak?”
That mischievous glint was back in his eyes, and I thrilled to see it even as I pretended to be flippant. “There isn’t any alcohol in the place, thank you very much. And what did you just do? Knock over a florist?”
As I spoke, I looked around for something to put the flowers in. The gesture touched me so much; I was afraid I’d embarrass myself completely and start to cry in front of him. These were the first flowers I’d ever received.
Bones came up behind me. When I felt his arms fold around me, I leaned back into them like steel to a magnet.
“There’s an all-night grocer down the road,” he said softly. “I was in the midst of driving home when I spotted it and decided to pop in. It was either buy the flowers or smash the place, but I had to do something.”