H.T. Night's 8-Book Vampire Box Set (118 page)

“Huh, what the hell happened?” Albert seemed
lost.

“You and I were fighting.”

“I take it that I lost?” he asked.

The entire room laughed.

“You got a good punch in,” I said trying to
be a good guy.

“Dude, you’re a gorilla. You’re the
strongest person I have ever fought. It was like trying to move a
tractor.”

I looked at Albert and said, “It’s not your
fault. You didn’t know that I used to be a professional MMA
fighter.”

“What?” Eli said.

“Are you fucking with us?” Steve asked.

“Nope, I’m actually undefeated as a mixed
martial arts fighter. Both amateur and pro.”

“So, I can sue you?” Albert asked.

“I hope not, but if you do you can have my
grandma, because that’s all I got,” I said jokingly.

“You can have your grandma. Just promise me
you’ll teach me how to fight.”

“Deal. You want help getting up?”

“No, I’m good. I’m going to stay down here
until the room quits spinning.”

Dave brought some ice in a towel and handed
it to Albert, who pressed it to the side of his head where I had
rammed my elbow. He winced.

“That might be all night that you need to
stay down there. But we don’t have all night because the full moon
will be here any minute.” I looked outside and it was about 30
minutes till the full moon. “I guess it’s going to be show time. It
is our last one for the month.”

The group nodded, and we got ready to go
outside and do some midnight exploring in our wolf forms. Albert
eventually got up and I got him a fresh ice pack for his head. He
had a nice bump, compliments of my elbow.

Damn, I loved fighting.

* * *

When I got back from my three-day excursion,
it was a Thursday afternoon. One of the tricky details to our lie
that we gave Maya’s parents is that Army Reserve only met on the
weekends. But then I had to convince them I was part of an Elite
reserve group that was a cross between Army Rangers and Navy Seals
that met once a month on any day of the week. On call, I had
said.

Daniel, Maya’s dad, is a smart man. Luckily,
he didn’t ask too many questions. He just accepted it as something
new that our military was doing. That’s the problem I found with
lying. Trying to cover all the make-believe facts of a given lie
usually ended up with me spewing about twenty more lies to cover
all the bases of the first one. The other side of the coin was that
I wasn’t exactly going to tell them that their daughter was dating
a werewolf. Any lie was better than that truth.

I picked up Maya in the early morning and
then we headed back to my apartment. I think our three days apart
each month added more romance to our relationship. In the car, Maya
and I held hands like a couple of junior high students. At
stoplights, I would sneak in a kiss. I really loved this woman. It
must have showed on my face because Maya asked, “What’s with the
goofy grin?”

“Any grin that is displayed on this handsome
face can never be classed as goofy,” I said in my usual cocky tone.
“But if you’re referring to the irreverence of my smile, it’s
because I am very in love with the woman sitting to my right.”

Maya immediately smothered my face with
kisses. It almost made me send my car into the lane next to ours.
That could have been bad because there was a school bus occupying
that lane.

“You better watch it, Hon, you don’t want to
give this bus full of kids too much of a show.”

“What can I say? I love my man.” Maya looked
so beautiful. She was wearing a lime green top with white jeans.
The more ‘girlie’ she dressed, the cuter she looked. She really
pulled off the ‘girlie’ look. Every day, she looked like she was
going to a fashion shoot. Even her nails were perfect. Even her
toenails. I think Maya groomed herself more than any cat I ever
knew.

With that, I let out a loving sigh. “This is
pretty good, isn’t it?” I asked.

“‘This’ being you and I?”

“That is the ‘this’ in question. Yes. You
and I. I just think it’s odd how we get each other.”

“Do you get me?” Maya asked.

“Of course I get you.”

“So you think you know everything about
me?”

“Don’t I?”

“Okay…what’s my favorite color?”

“Red, because pink is nice, but red screams
‘I’m a color!’ That is an actual quote by the way.”

“Wow, quotes and everything. I guess you do
listen to me when it clearly appears to me that you’re not.”

“That’s my gift. I perfected it in high
school. You give the illusion that you don’t give a shit, but
secretly you’re taking notes on everything the girl has to say. So,
if you’re going to quiz me, I plan on bringing it,” I said
jokingly.

“Okay, I gave you an easy one with the color
question. I think even Josiah would know that answer. Here is a
harder one. What am I most afraid of?’

She was right, that was a hard one. Maya had
been through a lot just in the time she knew me. But I was sure I
knew the answer. “Clowns,” I said.

“Wrong!”

“I’m wrong?”

“The answer is white-faced, happy clowns
that you see in random places,” Maya said, smiling.

I laughed. “You’re right. I was pretty
specific about your color. I took the lazy way out by just saying
‘clowns.’ You did say that quote to me, didn’t you?”

“I told you that clowns in the appropriate
places are okay. I can totally deal with a clown at a circus, or a
little kid’s birthday party.”

“It’s when they are in random places,” I
said, jumping in, and then together we said, “Clowns have no
business shopping in a supermarket.”

“It makes no sense. They are trying to creep
people out,” Maya said finishing the idea with yet another
quote.

We both busted up laughing.

“I guess you do know me,” Maya said. “But
knowing facts about someone doesn’t necessarily say that you know a
person. The question is ‘Do you know my heart?’”

We were almost back to my apartment. I
pulled off the freeway and turned right on to Gypsum Canyon
Street.

“I know your heart,” I said.

“Do you?”

“Of course I do. Your heart is why I
breathe.”

“Where did you hear that?” Maya said.

“Hear what?”

“That line.”

“It wasn’t a line,” I said. “I promise you I
came up with it…right now.”

Maya looked at me and said, “Do you really
feel that way about me?”

“Oh my God, Maya, I love you with every inch
of my soul. It’s all that I am. I can’t believe you would question
it.”

“I don’t question it, Tommy. You dope. I ask
because you have no idea how many jerks I’ve dated. Hearing such
words from a man I feel exactly the same way for scares me. It
doesn’t scare me off. It scares me closer to you. I become a big
messy blob of emotion. That is what scares me.”

“You have nothing to be afraid of.” I pulled
into the driveway of my apartment complex and parked. I looked at
Maya and said, “When I was in high school and even as early as a
year before I met you. I used to hear certain songs on the radio
that would be classified as love songs. I used to secretly mock
them in my head because I would think real life is never like that.
But, ever since I met you, those songs make sense. When we aren’t
together, I often hear a love song and every word reminds me of how
much in love I am with you.

Maya leaned over and gave me a passionate
kiss and said, “Those types of songs made sense to me then, and
what I feel for you now validates my goofy view on love that I
always had.”

“Hold on,” I said. I ran around my black
Mustang and opened her door. Right there in my apartment parking
lot, I picked her up and made my way to the door. I loved the way
Maya’s body felt when I held her. And there’s no other kind of hold
than picking up the woman of your dreams and holding her tight
while she is completely in your arms in midair.

I took out my keys with my right hand and
held Maya in my arms with my left. I opened the door. Maya held on
tight. She was going with the moment as much as I was.

I carried her through the hallway and
through my bedroom door. I gently laid her on the bed, and I began
by placing my left hand up her thigh on the outside of her white
jeans. We kissed and pawed at one another as if it was the only
physical act we understood. I don’t think I ever kissed her more
passionately.

“I love you, Tommy,” she called out as our
bodies and hands began undressing one another. Soon we were both
completely naked. We grabbed the top cover and placed it on top of
our hot, bare bodies. Then Maya was on her back, and I loved this
position and not just for the sexual reason. I love how it makes me
feel that I’m on top of her, knowing I could crush her with my
weight, but chose how much pressure I laid upon her, claiming her.
It was a balance between strength and love. I wanted her to know I
was there, but she also needed to feel that she was safe. I kissed
her mouth, neck, and her shoulders. I was caressing her heart, body
and soul, pouring everything I felt from my lips to her skin. She
was my lover. She was my life. Our heat began to rise, and as our
bare skin touched, a fire raged from inside of me and came out,
igniting our skin together, sealing us with sweat and joy. Flesh to
flesh, we devoured each other in kisses, inhaled the intoxicating
scent of each other. We took turns on our backs, each of us
determining the pace and ferocity of love while on the top
position, the bottom one, the recipient of the intensity of desire.
My held-back passion for MMA rose up as an increased passion for
Maya, almost an electric rage that roared deep inside my loins and
energized me with fierceness for being a werewolf, for being a
fighter who must now only love and not fight, and for being a Carni
in love in a Tandra, the most beautiful woman I had ever been
inside of, or seen, for that matter. Her body, her mind, her kiss –
all were perfection. We were in synch, in rhythm, in harmony, like
a piece of music unfolding a song in delicate touches and urgent
missions that rose up to delight and astound us with the notes that
we played on each other. We were fire, we were water, we were love,
we were desire; we unleashed raw sex that spilled in each other
toward some goal of claiming each other’s hearts in the range of
what could only be an infinity of destiny. I felt her deep in my
soul. A part of me. Forever.

We made love on that night; a deep, tender
love, but a fierce one whose memories would last a lifetime in my
head as “that night.” In her, her scent was now overwhelming to me.
The more I smelled her, the more I loved her. Or perhaps the more I
loved her, the more I smelled her. Either way, her scent was
intoxicating. I was not only obsessed with her scent, I realized
that I must be insanely in love with this woman. She was much more
than my lover, she was my reason for living, for being, for
evolving. She wasn’t just a woman. She was my oxygen.

Just before I knew she was close to a
climax, I rolled her over on her tummy and told her that I loved
her. I kissed the back of her neck and spine, up and down it, until
she was panting and whimpering at the care that I took to caress
her back and neck while I moved my hands to the front of her to
caress her there. Careful to rein in my werewolf urge to bite her,
because, after all, I did not want to make her into a werewolf, I
pressed my lips tenderly to that sweet spot on the back of her neck
that she loved and entered her from behind. I moved very slowly
inside of her womanhood, feeling the pulse and clutch of her around
me as she climaxed over and over and cried out my name like a
prayer, with reverence and surrender.

Dear God, I loved her so much. Only then,
when she said my name and was near weeping, did I release myself
into her warmth, her wet, sweet folds. I said her name into her
ear, with gentleness, but with a fierce possessiveness.

After several minutes, we slid onto our
sides and I held her for a long, long time, listening to her breath
shudder in and out as she came back to earth and murmured her
contentment to me and completely passed out, her back against my
chest. I could feel her heart thudding against me, and when it
slowed and her breathing was even, I knew that she was asleep.
There were no other thoughts in my head except this one: Maya
ministered to me…

* * *

The next couple of weeks went by, and I
decided to make a deal with Maya: I didn’t have to fight; But I
would surely train Josiah to the best fighter he could be. He was a
junior in high school, and had a lot of free time after and before
school. What I heard from Maya was that the guy hated school and
only showed up part time as it was anyway. His entire mind was
focused on becoming the world’s youngest and most successful MMA
fighter.

I knew he wanted to be a professional mixed
martial arts fighter and it would be cool to mentor him and help
his big dream come true. In a way, since I wasn’t fighting now, I
would have a chance to see my own MMA dreams come true by living
them vicariously through Josiah. I wanted to do it not just for
Josiah, but for Maya. She adored her brother, and I knew it would
mean a lot to her to see me take him under my wing, like a brother
of my heart. I wanted to give him every bit and piece of my
knowledge, hold nothing back. I wanted to see him win every fight
and succeed in becoming all that he wished and dreamed. I also
thought that a part of me felt if Maya could see how much fun I was
having training her brother, she might let me give MMA a shot again
when things had calmed down.

Nevertheless, I liked Josiah a lot. He was a
real interesting kid. It was time for me to be the Obi-Wan-Kenobi
to his Anakin Skywalker. I wasn’t training the kid to be a Jedi,
but it was going to be just as dangerous, aside from being shot
with the laser guns by storm troopers’ deal.