“So. Are you, uh, gonna join this coalition, you think?”
“Yes,” he whispered.
“Yes?”
“You think I should?”
“Yes. Yes, I really really do.” She nodded enthusiastically.
“I know you do. I could feel it from you from the start of explaining what little I knew. Now, after all of this? Absolutely. This is the way forward.”
“Yessss,” she squeezed him and kissed his jaw, “Now that that’s sorted, with the finer details to be sorted later, how ‘bout you feed me something that’s actually edible so I can pass out and you can go have your nightcap and talk strategy with Sergey?”
“What do you want me to feed you? Food? Me?”
“Both. I want a tomato avocado grilled cheese with a Tristan nectar chaser. An orgasm or two for dessert.”
He kissed her closed mouth and hard, then it transitioned to wet and deep, his fingers tangled in her hair, their hearts tangled together. They had dessert first, then he made her that sandwich.-12-Birds were singing. Loud. Lots of them.
Kyla’s eyes opened and she saw that all the windows in the bedroom were open, the light off-white drapes billowing with a breeze, and the breeze caressed her face. She smiled big.
She could live another 375 years or more. She could see and do a whole lot in her life. She’d have Tristan by her side. She might get to actually meet her twin brother today.
Someday, and maybe even someday soon, she could have Tristan’s baby. And survive childbirth to actually meet that baby. And maybe it’d be a little baby girl with curly hair and green eyes. Or a dimpled baby boy with blue eyes. Or a dimpled boy with green eyes or a dimpled girl with blue eyes.
God I hope our baby gets his dimples.
And then another and another. They could make babies every year for the next few hundred years, couldn’t they? Would she look older while he stayed young or would she stay youthful? Would she experience menopause at some point or be fertile as long as she lived?
How crazy that so much of what’d happened was related to a vampire’s innate urge to breed? She was now bound to Tristan, he was bound to her, mated for life, and driven to feed him and give him babies. They needed to feed off one another to survive but they could survive for hundreds of years.
How crazy was all of this?
She had time to find things out. She didn’t need to know everything right this minute so she let herself feel the breeze, feel all these emotions. She didn’t want to hide from emotion. She wanted to allow herself to embrace it without overthinking everything.
Joy bubbled up and it felt like it smashed the remaining ruins of the wall she’d spent so long building up around herself.
The ocean looked active, busy, with rolling waves. The sky was busy with birds. It was a gorgeous view. It was a view she’d be very interested in waking up to every day for the next however many days it was that they’d live here. This place could be home. This was the first place she’d been to where it felt like it could become home.
She didn’t have to spend the rest of her life here but she wanted to stay a while.
She also wanted to experience life. Live it. Feel it. Roll around in it and soak up every bit of it. Make friends, experience new things, dance around in circles laughing with uninhibited joy.
She hopped out of the bed and twirled and giggled. Then she felt silly. But she was alone so there was nothing to feel silly about so she twirled again and laughed at herself.
She didn’t know where Tristan was but she could feel him nearby. She somehow knew, instinctively, that he was near and that he was okay.
She made the bed and wandered to the window and stretched, enjoying the scenery for a minute while the rest of the sleepy cobwebs cleared.
After coming out of the bathroom she caught the aroma of coffee. She followed her nose and found a steaming hot cup on the small table beside the bed.
She lifted it, took a sip, reached under the pillow for the dagger, which was in a holder with a clip on the back. She attached it to the waistband of her shorts, better safe than sorry while things were still revealing themselves, and she decided to go find Tristan.
He was outside, doing pull-ups from a low hanging tree branch just outside the door. He let go of the branch and stood, smiling, arms open for her.
She approached, after putting her coffee down on the small wooden side table beside the swing on the front porch. He had a cup there, too.
“Hi,” She got up on her toes, put her arms around his throat, and kissed him on the mouth. His eyes sparkled and his dimples came out.