Vicious (17 page)

I managed some pleasantries, but with Anna, I never knew if she was enjoying the idle chit chat or if she was utterly bored with my comments on how clear the night’s sky was. Did vampires make chit chat? Did they care about a clear night? She responded often enough to my observations with few observations of her own, but hers always seemed like hard-earned facts you might read out of a textbook. If I said the moon was full, she would reply, “The moon is actually a fraction smaller than it was last night.” How do you compete with that?

There were a few times that I needed to stop for a bathroom break, and I always took the time to purchase some food during these stops since vampires really didn’t think of food often. Anna seemed to be mindful of my needs and began to try to time when they would occur. I thought of asking her if vampires needed to use the bathroom, but my question was answered on the second pit stop. All eight vampires walked into the small gas station with the purpose of occupying its bathroom stalls, and I just stood by in wonderment as they exited. I had to ask her when we got back in the car, bad taste be damned.

“Excuse the question, but do you guys actually use the bathroom?”

She laughed out loud at the question, which made me feel better about asking. The laughter lightened the very air of the car, and some tension in my shoulders released at the sound of it. It jingled in my brain.

“Of course we do. It’s just not quite the same as you. That whole no-bathroom thing goes with the undead myth. See, feel,” she said as she grabbed my hand and pressed it to her chest.

Her skin was warm and rock solid, and I could feel her pulse beating very slowly beneath her rib cage. My pulse quickened and my breath caught in my lungs while I touched her. My face grew hot, and I knew I had to be blushing.

“I live. We live. We consume blood to use for energy like you do with food. Naturally, there is a bi-product that must be expelled, but it is not the same as you or as frequent. I won’t go into detail because it isn’t pleasant.”

I released my hand and didn’t ask anything else about the matter. The bathroom thought had turned from interesting to borderline creepy. But the subject did lead me down a mental pathway I had guiltily travelled before, even though I would never have admitted it to Anna.

Could vampires have sex like a human? Was it possible? Did that interest them at all? Anna seemed to be the picture of restraint, but Lea had said the others had found companions even though she and Anna had not. To watch Marshall and Lulu, you would think you were watching two characters from a romantic comedy with the way they looked into each other’s eyes and embraced openly.

As Anna had said, they were once human, and they were alive. Surely there was some sort of physical need there. I couldn’t doubt or hide from the intense physical chemistry between Anna and me, but I was worried it was mainly one-sided. What if Anna’s reaction to me was just her protective nature? Then again, what if it wasn’t? It was all I could do to not touch her skin again when I looked at her in the driver’s seat.

We reached Dallas in plenty of time to beat the dawn. I was so exhausted from staying up with Anna that I did not even notice the checking-in procedure. I stumbled along behind the vampires with my bag lazily thrown over my shoulder, wishing I could be as awake and alert as they were. I saw Lea and her group break off first and go to a separate floor with their room key in hand. She gave me a look that did not register with my normal bank of Lea’s emotions, and I instinctively edged closer to Anna just to be safe. The look seemed to be nothing because she did not react as they moved to the elevator. Lea had called a sudden and unusual truce, but I didn’t want to take any chances since I still caught her from time to time looking at me in a hungry way. She had tasted my blood, and I supposed she longed for more.

Marshall and Lulu had a room together neighboring a third room meant for Cat and Gabriel. It wasn’t until we had journeyed up one more floor that I realized there was only one room key left in Anna’s hands. She slipped the key in and opened the door when the light buzzed green and we both entered the room together. It was a normal hotel room, and I noticed it had two queen beds in the main area. Relief and panic flooded my senses when I realized this one room was meant for the two of us. I felt too tired to properly process this or what it meant.

Anna nonchalantly dropped her bag to the floor and walked into the bathroom to wash her face without a word. I moved nervously over to the other bed closest to the window and dropped my bag down near the obligatory hotel chair. I quickly tore off my clothes and put on an undershirt and clean boxers before she could come back into the room. I was not sure what protocol called for here, so I erred on the side of caution and changed with her in the other room while I also checked how light resistant the hotel blackout curtains were. With everything secure, I slipped under the cool sheets and tried to relax into the pillow. Why was I worried? I had shared a hotel room with Anna before in a completely platonic way. The same rules applied here, right?

The tired state I was in begged me to sleep, but my nervous anticipation of sharing a room with Anna kept my eyes open and my limbs wired. She stepped out of the bathroom still dressed as she was in the car with a towel in her hand, drying her face.

Anna smiled at me, and those blue eyes worked my nerves up all over again. It was then that she began to undress in front of me. It seemed at first like she was unaware of the intimacy of this act. Soon, I realized as I watched her slowly pull her shirt over her head, allowing me a full picture of her torso in only her bra, that she was doing this on purpose. She had to be.

Everything inside and outside of me stiffened with anticipation, and I do mean everything stiffened. I blushed again and felt my face get feverishly hot when she removed her jeans with her back to me, showing me her black panties that contrasted so drastically against her white skin. I tried not to gape, and I also tried not to jump up from my bed and grab her in my arms. I had to remember Anna was different and much, much stronger than me. What if this was not an enticement? The last thing I wanted to do was insult her. Insulting a vampire could be dangerous.

Seeing Anna walk over to her bed in her matching black underwear made me think this could be nothing else but an invitation. Then, much to my chagrin, she daintily lifted the covers and tucked herself into bed. She bade me good night before she turned out the light.

I laid my head down on my pillow and rolled over on my side, facing away from Anna’s bed. How could I have been misreading that whole thing? A woman had just undressed in front of me while I watched. She’d seen me watching. Surely that was an invitation? I had to remind myself Anna was not a woman, she was a vampire. Anna was a vampire. Undressing in front of others must not be a big deal to her. She was different. I released a frustrated and quiet sigh while I tried to calm my mind and body, even though my boxers had begun to feel a bit tight.

I didn’t hear a thing in the room except for the room’s air conditioner humming away. I was just beginning to relax when I felt the slightest movement in my sheets. I rolled over, alarmed to find Anna in my bed and under the covers with me. She was so damn quiet when she moved. It was dark, but I could make out her basic features, and her eyes shone like blue beacons in the darkness. I knew she could probably see every minute detail of me, and as my eyes adjusted, I could see more and more of her. Anna was nude.

“Anna. What are you doing? You scared me.”

“Did my undressing not work?” She asked this so frankly that only the little, sly smile at the end of her sentence showed me the true meaning of her question.

“No. It did. It really did.”

“Then why did you not kiss me, Grant?” she asked simply with a small edge of hurt in her voice.

She scooted a little closer to me in a small, fluid motion and put her hand on my chest delicately. I gazed at her lovely face only inches from mine and placed my hand on her hip, trying not to squeeze.

“I was worried that was not for me. I didn’t want to insult you.”

“I like you, Grant. I don’t like people in this way, but I like you,” she said abruptly as she looked down. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think Anna was nervous.

“I like you too, Anna.”

A pregnant pause passed between us as I pondered how to proceed.

“So the undressing worked?”

She asked this coyly as she crept even closer to me on the bed. Coy was not a tone I could remember Anna using before, so the look seemed alien to me. I could feel her hot breath, which smelled like the mint of her toothpaste, on my face as she leaned closer to me. Her blond hair brushed my flushed cheek in a way that both tickled me and sent shocks to all of my nerve endings. I lost my control and my timidity as I closed the gap between us and kissed the sweet, frightening angel in the dark of our hotel room.

Fireworks ignited inside the room or inside of me. I couldn’t tell. Either way, I deepened the kiss and grabbed for Anna’s body. I pressed myself against her and squeezed her body in desperation. All of the pent-up anxiety of the past days exploded through my fingers.

She kissed me back with a passion that was only matched by my own as she maneuvered herself on top of me and kicked the blankets off with a supernatural force that sent them across the room to drape roughly over the television. Her breath was ragged with desire, and so was mine. We embraced one another and wound our limbs together for support against the overwhelming and desperate fear of being separated. I flipped her over so that I was on top of her, and our exertions slid the mattress from the box springs as we went crashing to the floor. Neither of us noticed.

We just could not seem to get close enough to one another. She was wine. She was oxygen. She was food and water on a desert island. We fell into a sweet, blissful rhythm that was raw and gorgeous and made for no one else but the two of us.

Chapter Nineteen

Anna

He awoke before I did, obviously. Being a vampire normally meant sleeping throughout most of the daytime hours, if not all of them. Sure there was the rare time when I had to be out during the day, trying to do any sort of banking after dark is ridiculous, but mostly we were confined to a nocturnal existence.

The sun did not fry us like the movies suggested or cause our skin to peel off and burn away, but it did wreak havoc on our retinas. The scientist’s files I had stolen from the prison’s laboratory had observed this purely accidental vampire trait, and the scientists had blamed the phenomenon on our overly heightened night vision. The infected blood that now coursed through my veins had left me with a supernatural ability to see perfectly well in pitch blackness, but it had also somehow given my eyes a severe sensitivity to UV light, particularly sunlight. We were nocturnal, like most hunters.

Like I said, he was awake first, and he was eating a large plate of food on the other bed nearest to the television. The smell of the food wafted into my nostrils, and it left me feeling neither disgusted nor hungry. It just was. I couldn’t remember what eating felt like or what foods I used to enjoy. Watching him devour the meal left me with an ache to be like him for a moment, even for one short moment. What must the satisfying feeling of eating a much needed meal feel like to him?

He was watching some program and looked positively happy and content. I could tell he was doing his best to be silent. Well, he was being as silent as he could be. To us, every miniscule shuffle of fabric or light breath of air could be as loud as someone screaming at the top of their lungs if we so inclined to listen that intently. He had the volume on the television turned down so he could barely hear it, and I noticed he was making a visible effort to chew quietly. I smiled at the effort because he thought I was still asleep and did not wish to disturb me. Humans might call this gesture thoughtful, and I understood its allure now that I saw it up close and personal.

I let him finish his meal in peace as I watched him silently without letting him know I was awake. Last night had been an unusual night for me, and I suspected it had been for him as well. I did not initially have the intention of doing that with Grant when I had selected the one room for the two of us. My original concern had been for Grant’s safety. Lea had called a truce and had vowed to leave him alone, but I knew her very well. Her temper tended to get the better of her in heated situations. She suspected I wanted to change Grant over, but no matter what Lea’s barbaric manners might show, she felt just as sick about condemning someone to a life like this as I did. But she had had his blood, and I could tell she craved it still.

So in the beginning, I had booked this room for us as a way for Grant to have protection, and I had booked all of the rooms for a two-night stay so that we could check out in the evening instead of being pushed out by housekeeping at eleven. However, I had not anticipated how much the energy between us would grow and pulsate the more we were around one another. I didn’t know what it was about him, but he fascinated and aroused me in an exciting and completely baffling way.

Even driving here in the car together while he asked so many silly questions had made me tense with the electricity between us. I had tried not to speak too much because when I spoke, the attraction seemed to double and throb between us. I had not known this sort of chemistry before, especially not with a human.

Lulu and Marshall had fallen in love, even though their love spawned from a primal attachment formed while we were in that barbaric situation at the prison. No one sought out any sort of physical satisfaction in the prison. It was not really a place where you would feel comfortable enough at any given moment, and you were never ever alone. But after the escape, I had watched a sweet love blossom between them, and they had been inseparable ever since. The physical chemistry between them was obvious and visible.