I shiver in his arms. “How?” I’d split myself in half, break myself to a million little pieces if it meant that I could take more of him into me. “Tell me how,” I beg.
Julian walks forward and it’s like before with him holding me off the floor. He stops when my back hits the parlour doors. He kisses the side of my face and then my jaw. “Let yourself go. Take what you want from me.”
I blink in confusion. “What?” I feel like I’m getting drunk with every kiss he gives me. “I don’t understand.”
“Stop holding back.” He moves so we’re looking at each other once more. The moon pours in through the windows and washes us both in its cold light. His skin glows. Maybe he’s lying to me and he’s part angel, some damned mix of demon and angel and that’s why he’s here. Why he wants me.
“Show me who you are. Stop pretending.”
“I-I’m not.”
Julian smirks. “You’re a killer, Maris. You told me yourself. Show me.”
I almost say that I don’t understand. That there’s no way I can show him what he’s asking without hurting him and I can’t do that. Not with him. But when he kisses me again, it’s like he’s reached inside of me and fit a key into a lock. Julian grabs my hips and pulls me against him. I can feel him. He’s hard. He rolls his hips and I gasp into his mouth from the friction.
It’s been two fucking years since anyone has touched me like this.
I’m more than overdue. I’m hungry for more of Julian. The intimacy of being held in a lover’s arm, skin to skin, bodies warm and close. Everything is shared when you’re this close, even the breaths you take. My gasp becomes a moan. I bury my hands in Julian’s hair and pull him down into me.
“Stop holding back.”
“Show me who you are. Stop pretending.”
“Show me.”
It’s like I’m possessed by the spirit of a hornier and freer version of myself. She doesn’t care if she’s about to fuck a vampire or not. She’s going to fuck. I grab his belt and start yanking at it, trying to get it undone. I’ve managed to get his belt off when Julian’s hands come to my wrists and he pulls myhands off of him. His hands are like handcuffs around my wrists. I can’t move.
“No.” I try to jerk my hands out of his. Didn’t he just tell me to show him? “Why are you stopping me?”
“I want to look at you.” That’s all he says before he turns me towards the dining room windows. The curtains there aren’t pulled. I don’t come in here nearly enough to open and shut them, so I left them open. It was easier to see them open when I was outside than to see them closed and remember why I don’t come in these rooms anymore.
The moon is high in the sky. Full and bright. When Julian makes me face the window I close my eyes from the brightness.
“You’re beautiful.” There’s a soft touch at my neck and then again at my lips. When I open my eyes I see him beside me. He’s staring at me like I’m the only thing he sees. Like an expensive work of art in a fancy museum exhibit that’s roped off. A shiver runs through me when he pulls my hair back and lifts it off my shoulders in one hand. Julian leans in and kisses my neck just below my jaw.
I turn to the side and kiss him when he moves closer. “I want you.” I don’t know what he is but I want him. It’s true. That first kiss ignited a hunger in me. I won’t ever be satisfied unless I have this man…this whatever he is under me.
“My mate.” Julian brings my mouth to his and kisses me. It’s slower this time. The frenzied kiss that left me feeling like I was turned inside out is gone. I relax into this kiss. I take my time and so does Julian. When we break apart he gathers my hair in a ponytail in his hand and pulls my head back for better access to my throat.
“I’m a vampire.”
Is he going to bite me?
Do I believe him? Vampires aren’t real. They can’t be but if they aren’t real then what else can Julian be?
Twenty-Nine
JULIAN
Hunger. Need. Desire.
A burning thirst that makes me see double. An ache that makes my knees weak.
This is the kind of shit that you grow out of as a vampire after your first decade or two but here I am, over two hundred fucking years old and I’m suddenly a fledgling again. Maris has that effect on me. When I urged her to show me what she wanted, to reveal who she really was to me, I didn’t know it was going to make me feel this way.
When she grabbed me, yanked at my belt and kissed me so hard that she bit my lip it was like every bit of the control I had cultivated had been stripped away, and in its wake had left me a sniveling awkward idiot.
I’m not saying I was the smartest human when I was alive, but I don’t remember being this dumb.
