We Own the Night (The Night Songs Collection Book 3) (17 page)

“You mean, what do they have that you don’t?” Tristan sighed.

The question I didn’t want to ask, but had to. “Pretty much.”

He got up from the floor and settled on the couch, in the space created by the curve of my hips. He cradled my face in his hands and looked into my eyes. “Absolutely nothing.”

I tried to read him, but all I got was him looking at me. It was like looking in a mirror, but I looked much better through his eyes than my own. “Then why—“

“Do I do it?” He paused to let me nod. “It’s an animal instinct. It has nothing to do with passion. It’s a need.”

“But why don’t I ever feel that way? Like you can’t satisfy me?” I choked on the words.

Tristan looked up at the ceiling, blinking. “It’s not that at all. What I do with them, it’s not good enough for you.”

My brain fired warning signs not to buy into this bullshit. There was no explanation he could give me that would make this okay.

“I don’t believe you,” I whispered, closing my eyes. His hands were so warm on my cheeks.

He leaned down, kissing my forehead. I usually loved it when he did this, but I flinched. I opened my eyes. Tristan was still close to me, his face filled with sadness.

“I know you don’t.” His voice was little more than a whisper as well. “Do you want to come with me the next time I do it?”

My muscles froze with the shock of his words. Not,
I’ll never do it again, beautiful
, but
do you want to watch
? Really? And I thought Blade was the master of torturing me. Tristan just became the king.

He smiled. He really thought this was a good solution. I wanted to scream. “I’m not trying to hurt you. I want you to see how little it means.”

“But it means something to me.”

“It’s not what we do. You won’t believe me until you experience it.”

Probably not after that, either. “And some girl is just going to let me sit there and watch?” I scoffed.

“Some of them ask for you.” He grinned. “There’s something in this for you, too.”

“You mean there’s something in this for you.” He liked this idea way too much. I wanted to slap that look off his face. “I’m not into girls, Tristan. I’m not going to do some girl on girl thing to get you off.”

His head tipped skyward and he laughed, hard. I sat up and shook his hands away from me.

“It’s about the energy and the blood, Callie. It’s not sex like humans think of sex. You have to stop thinking of it like that. You’re feeding, you’re not proclaiming your love for some person you might never see again.”

My skin burned and I couldn’t look at him, never mind respond. So I was just an all you can eat buffet. He was right. I couldn’t separate the human emotion from sex. I might have made some mistakes, but I never did anything without emotion.

I could feel him inside me, prodding my brain. It was a relief, actually. I didn’t know if I could find words to explain how much I didn’t believe him. “It’s survival, beautiful. Think of it that way.”

Sinking back on the couch, I tried to wrap my brain around that concept. Sex as survival. The blood was an incredible high, and we needed the energy and the emotion of humans. How better to get it than skin on skin contact? Going inside and experiencing their ecstasy?

Something about it still seemed like bullshit to me. It was cheating. Whatever he called it, it was something he needed to get from someone else.

Or did I just have a problem with the fact I couldn’t be Tristan’s whole world? He’d been mine ever since he’d walked into my life.

“What is it about those girls that I can’t give you?” I sounded like a little kid who didn’t understand her punishment. My heart pounded, this was like putting every flaw I had under a microscope and asked the world to debate about what was wrong with me.

If they’d watched that sex video, they probably already were doing just that.

Tristan knew better than to come too close to me. He’d leaned back on the opposite end of the couch, letting the tension that this conversation created sit on the cushion between us. I concentrated on him, hard, and for once he let me in easily.

Was he afraid to tell me? Self-conscious about revealing his own desires? He hugged his arms around his stomach, slumped down a bit.

“It’s their fear, their desperation,” he said quietly. “You don’t have those emotions to give to me. There’s a high to dominating those girls. The adrenaline rush when they realize I’m really a vampire. That’s all they’re good for. I’m not proud of it, but I need it.”

I’d made him reveal his darkness to me, and for a moment, I regretted it. Without a word, I got up and went to his end of the couch to sit. He opened up his arms and welcomed me, almost swallowing me.

“And some of them, the ones who want to use me,” he continued, and I looked up at him in surprise. I didn’t think there would be any more. “To shake their self-centered core, it’s like revenge.”

He didn’t smile, but I could feel his satisfaction and relief of putting it all out there and not driving me away. Tristan had spent his whole life hiding from who he was, and who people thought he was. No wonder he was afraid of the truth. He spent so much time living a lie.

“So what do you want me to do?” I asked.

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.” He buried his face into my hair. “But you’re welcome to come with me the next time I feed from a Vulture.”

T
HE NEXT
night, I went with Tristan to see Immortal Dilemma play. But instead of watching Tristan, I watched the fans. Quite a few of them had their eye on me as well; my roadcase perch on the side of the stage was well known at this point. Now many of them had seen a side of me I’d never planned on showing them. Usually, I shied away from eye contact, but not tonight. I wanted to read their emotions.

Mostly I felt their curiosity and confusion. The more I zeroed in, I could see the images of my naked body against Tristan’s, soaked in blood. Revulsion. I tried not to be offended, I understood. It wasn’t making love on a bed of rose petals, and it was definitely not what I fantasized about before I’d experienced it.

I picked up on one girl more than the others. She was projecting her thoughts towards me, like she knew I’d be able to pick them up. Her envy was so tangible I could taste it. We locked eyes, and dared each other to blink first.

She didn’t stand out from the crowd looks-wise. She was pretty, with big brown eyes and high cheek bones, but if I were to draw a picture for someone of a stereotypical Immortal Dilemma fan, it would look just like her. Her dyed black hair was cut with short bangs and she wore it up in pigtails fastened with black bows. Cleavage spilled out of a corset top, her arms were covered with lace, and the tiniest part of her body I could see, her neck, was adorned with a velvet cameo choker.

She was the one.

Tristan came over to me during Monkey’s drum solo for a kiss. “What are you looking at?”

“That girl, down there.”

Tristan smiled against my cheek. “You found one you like?” He turned around as I nodded. “Good choice.”

“You don’t even know who I’m talking about.”

“Yeah I do.” He grinned at my surprise. “That’s Honey. She’s down for it.”

Honey. I tried not to roll my eyes, because I could still barely take my eyes off of her. With a name like that, this girl knew exactly what she was getting herself into. Which made one of us. Then I remembered her name. She was the same girl who gave me a lap dance on Tristan’s birthday.

“We’re really going to do this?”

“I’m really going to do it,” Tristan said too quickly, making my heart sink. “And it’ll be much more fun if you play too.” He nibbled on my earlobe.

He left me for the rest of the show, my heart pounding. Suddenly I felt shy about returning Honey’s stare. I felt inadequate. Tristan was too excited about this, and from what he said, I was pretty sure Honey was a repeat customer.

It intimidated the hell out of me. What had I got myself into? I didn’t want to share Tristan with Honey, or anyone else. Before, it was about me and him. Now that it was real, it was Callie vs. Honey, and I didn’t know if I could win. I didn’t want to lose everything to satisfy some morbid curiosity.

Would everything change once we did this? How could it not? But there was no going back. I couldn’t back out, because then when Tristan still went with her, I’d resent him for it. We’d fight about, and it would never go away, no matter how much I wanted it to disappear.

The house lights came up, startling me. The show was over, and now I had no control over what happened. Terror paralyzed me. I was the most powerful female vampire in the city, and some Vulture threatened to bring me to my knees. Tristan held out his hand to me and I stared at it, not sure what he wanted me to do.

“Come on, beautiful.” He smiled at me, but looked puzzled. Was he too amped from the crowd to be able to pick up on how I felt, or did he just not care? “It’s time for the next show.”

I nodded and slid down off the road case, smoothing out my skirt before taking his hand. The last thing I needed to do was go approach this girl with the back of my skirt caught up around my waist.

Tristan rubbed his thumb against the back of my hand. I concentrated on its soothing rhythm. My feet dragged behind me as we headed to the holding room. Fans swooned and gasped as Tristan entered. Their energy prickled my skin, making me feel alive again. Making me forget for a minute what I was about to do.

Until I spotted Tony talking to a voluptuous girl with a tiny waist cinched by a corset. Her tight skirt only covered her behind, and the lines on her fishnet stockings led my eyes down to her sky high heels. As my eyes traveled up the back of her body, I saw the black pigtails. Honey.

Tristan led me right over to the two of them. The room swirled around me like a kaleidoscope. Tony looked at me apologetically. He knew something. Honey kissed Tristan on the cheek but she never took her eyes off of me. Tristan murmured something in her ear. I didn’t need to hear it to know what he was saying. Her eyes lit up and a smile spread over her face.

Honey moved to me, taking my hand in hers. Nothing about it was formal, which somehow made it better. We couldn’t start this with a handshake. She leaned close to me, the tops of her breasts brushing against me. “I’ve been hoping you’d do this, Callie.”

I swallowed hard, smiled stiffly, and nodded. Tristan put his arm around me and we headed out of the room, with Honey on the other side of him, talking about the show, and whatever else. Normal.

Yeah, right.

I looked at the girls standing in little bunches, watching the three of us walk away, with their mouths open. For once, I wasn’t the object of their envy.

And that’s exactly what bothered me.

“Where are we headed?” I forced the words out.

Honey shrugged, like she did this every day. For all I knew, she probably did.

“Anywhere you want to go,” Tristan said.

“We need to go someplace without, you know, cameras.” I looked down at my feet, unimpressive in my cloth shoes. “That’s the last thing we need.”

“The only place that leaves is my bedroom.”

Honey’s smile was just that. Smooth and sweet. “After you.”

T
ristan had to be kidding. He wanted to bring this girl into our bedroom and have sex with her in the bed I slept with him in every night?

This was the worst idea either of us had ever had. I wanted to kick myself for being curious about any of this in the first place. Why did Tristan need this? There was nothing about this girl that felt scared or desperate. She was willing. Too willing. The only person showing any fear was me.

We didn’t stop in the living room, why bother, the procession moved straight to the bedroom. I wanted to pull Tristan back and make the whole thing stop. But what if they laughed and went on without me? What would I do?

There was no getting out of this.

No one bothered to turn on the light in the bedroom. We really didn’t need it, the lights from the strip pulsed against the windows, illuminating us all in an unflattering neon glow. Tristan let go of my hand and stretched, his shirt riding up on his stomach. Honey sat down on the bed. I just stood there, not knowing what to do.