“Because of my blood.” She closed her eyes, reveling in the feeling of him soaping up her back and shoulders but feeling sadness sweep through her.
“Because of you. You and your blood; package deal.”
“How do you know it’s got anything to do with me? It might just be the blood. If it were in a different container it might be just as effective.”
He started to rinse her back. “Here we go again. I know what I feel. I’m crazy about your strength, your tenacity, your snarky smartass potty mouth. Although sometimes it makes me wanna give you a spanking.” He dug his fingers into her bottom. She squirmed. He continued, “The whole package so far. I felt something even before I tasted you, just by the way you looked at me, even. I can feel new things from you on a progressive basis; I’m getting to know you from the inside out. That’s huge, isn’t it? That’s more than blood. Right? Okay… I’ll tell you this as many times as you need to hear it. I.Want.You. All of you.” He shifted her, “You get to the back of the bus and wash me now.”
She leaned forward and he moved. She slid back behind him and he nestled between her legs and lay back against her chest. She soaped up the bath puff with body wash and started to wash his chest.
“Tell me more about you,” he whispered and closed his eyes and looked like he was soaking up the feel of her washing him. She revelled in the feel of him.
“Poor little orphan Annie. You knew that already. I love to read, love movies. I have an insatiable sweet tooth. If I didn’t run I’d probably be morbidly obese. I like to run. Well, sometimes I like to run, sometimes I need to run.” She stopped and felt like there was a lump in her throat, “But you know all that about me by now. I already told you why I moved here…I… don’t want to talk about me anymore. It feels weird. Is that okay?”
“For now,” he said, “I want to know you. I want to know everything. We don’t have to do it all at once. Everyone I talked to all had similar stories about how you keep to yourself.”
“What stories?”
“They all talked about you being strong and smart but standoffish, you don’t let anyone too close, don’t let yourself have fun very often. Your roommate was who called it a personal bubble of steel.”
“I’ve been screwed over,” Kyla said softly, “Like, a lot.”
He leaned forward, “It’s made you who you are. I like who you are. Do my back?”
She started to scrub, appreciating his comment as it was what she believed, too, that your journey shaped who you were.
“You’re a firecracker. I like it. Harder.”
“Yeah?” she giggled and put her muscles into scrubbing, “You got tired of women swooning over you and waiting for you to take them and have your wicked…wicked way with them?” she flicked a wrist to her forehead and fluttered her eyelashes.
“Who’d get tired of that?” he scoffed. She squeezed the puff of soapy water all over the top of his head. He pretended to block his face in mock horror and slid down further so his head was resting on her stomach. His ears were submerged in the water and he looked up lovingly at her.
“Naw, it’s different with you. You’re real, you know?”
“Not really,” she shook her head and fingered through his hair to sweep the bubbles away and swooped water over to rinse it. He turned over so that the fronts of their bodies were pressed together.
“You woke me up. I wanted fingernails in my back; I wanted my name in the air because whoever I was with was acknowledging me, my existence, not just what they were feeling. I just didn’t know it until I felt it. I realized how empty and pointless it all was, all the meaningless sex. I was so fucking bored. I might’ve had something more with female vamps but nothing clicked. The women in my circles are too similar to me. Cold, heartless, diabolical…and I guess that’s not what I want. I went through the motions before you. Fuck, drink, done. Fuck, drink blood, done. They were like warm blow-up dolls that just… took it. It got so predictable. I wanted to do more than fuck.” He let out a sigh, “I don’t know. I just feel different. More powerful, yeah, which is the junkie part, but not just that. I don’t ever want to go back to just satisfying urges. Maybe I’ve always been so sexually insatiable because no one gave me what I wanted until now. You give me what I want. I want more of it. I don’t want it to end. The other night you took the reins? When you tried to make me feel good? Well, that was something. Fuck it was something. You have no clue how bad I needed that; I had no clue how bad I needed that. It brought out even more new emotions in me,” his voice sort of cracked, “I’ve been unsatisfied for years, Kyla. I got a high in the early days from the blood, from the excitement of the plan laid out before me but it quickly lost appeal. Nothing satisfied me. Till you.”