Black Sunshine (Dark Eyes 1)

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.

But then, as it happened with me, he comes back into control, and the red fades, and the way he drinks from me turns tender and beautiful.

I love you, I think. The blood is love.

After he finishes, we wipe ourselves off and the both of us look at each other, our eyes bright and shining, and he’s taking me in his arms, kissing me so deeply that it pulls at the strings around my heart.

My hands skim over his hard chest, his carved abs, reaching down between the waistband of his boxer briefs, and—

A knock at the door.

I gasp and we pull apart and I’m trying to smell the air to get a sense of who it is. Room service?

“Who is that?” I ask.

He gives me a wary look. “It’s your mother. I told her to bring you some clothes.”

“My mother!” I squeak. Oh, this won’t be good, not with Solon here.

I hurry over to the door, holding my towel tight around me and open it.

My mother looks at me, tears in her eyes, her face contorting, then she glances down at my chest, and my arm. The white towel is speckled with blood and the cut on my arm is still healing itself.

“I am never going to get used to this,” she says with a shake of her head.

I open the door and she comes in, just in time to see Solon emerge from the bathroom. At least he’s put on his pants.

“Absolon,” she says to him, giving him a frosty look.

“Elaine,” is his clipped response.

They stare at each other for a long minute, both of them tense, hackles raised, moons glowing in my mother’s eyes, a deadly look of contempt in Solon’s.

Then my mother sighs and hands me a garbage bag full of my clothes.

“Here,” she says. Suddenly she throws her arms around me and hugs me so tight I can barely breathe. I glance at Solon over her shoulder and he looks away.