“You were so hard on me,” I tell him. “You took me from everything I knew and you just…you could have told me right away.”
“You wouldn’t have believed me. Do you want me to apologize for kidnapping you?”
I think about it, then shake my head. “No. Because I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
“And I was a little hard on you,” he admits, a sheepish turn of his lips. “But I had to be. Blow hard on a candle’s flame and you’ll snuff it right out. Blow on it just enough, and the fire will rise, stronger and brighter.” He leans forward and places his lips on mine. “You’re going to burn so bright, Lenore. I can’t wait for you to see it.”
* * *
I must have fallen asleep again, because when I open my eyes, the bed is empty next to me and sunlight seeps in through the edges of the hotel room’s blackout curtains.
“Solon?” I cry out softly, feeling the empty space.
“In here,” he says from the bathroom. “Just shaving.”
I slowly sit up and swing my legs over the side of the bed, feeling the weight of the last twenty-four hours on my shoulders. So much has happened physically and emotionally, so much information, that I truly don’t know how my brain is going to sort it all out.
Coffee will help, I tell myself.
I get up, totally naked, and look around. My duffel bag had been here, along with my computer, but Solon did say he brought them back to the house. So other than my dress, which is ripped clean in half, there’s nothing for me to wear.
“Uh, can you toss me a towel?” I ask him, peering around the corner of the open bathroom door.
Solon is standing in front of the mirror in just his navy boxer briefs, remnants of shaving cream on his face, still leaving facial hair on his upper lip, his chin. Such a vampire look. He eyes me and holds out the razor blade. “When’s the last time you had something to drink?”
I stare at the blade, my eyes skipping back up to his. “When’s the last time you had something to drink?”
He grins at me. “If you’re suggesting the vampire equivalent of a sixty-nine…”
“Does that work?” I ask, totally intrigued, and he’s reaching over to the towel rack, handing me a towel. I wrap it around me.
“In theory,” he says, going back to shaving. “But really, you should feed.”
Hunger flares through me, but there’s this part of me that wills it to calm down, that still finds the blood business as something I don’t want to do until I absolutely have to. “I can wait.”
“You can’t,” he says, finishing up and washing his face. “You’ll be much stronger, think much clearer.” He faces me and takes the blade, slicing the skin across his neck, barely even flinching. “There. You don’t even have to bite me if you don’t want to. Though I rather enjoy when you do.”
I don’t even hear him anymore. All I see is the crimson blood running down his neck, smell the gorgeous scent in the air, and then I’m across the bathroom floor in half a second, wrapping my arms around him, my mouth at his skin.
He moves back until he’s pressed up against the wall and stays still while I drink him down, his arms around me in a light embrace, the occasional moan coming from deep inside him, his breath heavy. In the first few minutes, I am lost to the hunger and thirst, needing so badly to feel sated. But then, when my clarity returns a little, there’s a sense of peace between us, something so strangely pure and whole about his blood giving me life. There is intimacy during sex, but the intimacy when he lets me feed from him is something else entirely.
Finally, I pull away, careful not to take too much from him.
He gives me a weak smile, running his thumb over my chin to rub away the blood.
“Now your turn,” I tell him.
A brow lifts. “Are you sure?”
“I am very sure,” I tell him. “The fact that I have your blood in me, is that going to mess things up?”
He shakes his head. “No.”
“Then it’s settled,” I say, reaching over to the sink and taking the razor blade. I stare at it for a moment; it takes a lot of courage to just willingly cut your own flesh, no matter who you are.
I take in a deep breath.
“So if I feed on you, and you feed on me,” I ask him as I slash at my forearm, ignoring the pain of the cut, “does that mean all we need is each other to survive?”
He gives me a weighted look. “That’s exactly what it means,” he says, his tone grave.
Then his pupils glow red and he’s at me, holding my arm to his mouth, ravenously sucking and biting. Being a full vampire, he doesn’t have the same restraint as I do in this situation, and when I look at his eyes sometimes, they seem lost to the blood, the crimson glow eerie.