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I put my hand on the back of his head and hold his mouth where it is, against my pulse, for one more second. Then I turn my face into his hair.

“Not here,” I say. “Not against a wall in the hallway. Take me to bed, and ask me again.”

He lifts his head and looks at me. His eyes are black, and his fangs are down, and he looks like something out of every story I was ever told not to believe.

He carries me down the hall like I weigh nothing, which to him I probably don’t, and lays me down on a bed that’s huge and old and carved, with dark green sheets that smell like cedar and him. He switches on one lamp, low, and then he stands at the side of the bed and looks at me, and doesn’t move.

“Come here,” I say, because for once it’s my turn.

He comes.

He doesn’t take charge this time. Or he does, but it’s different. He undresses me like he’s unwrapping a gift he can’t believe is his, slowly, my shirt and then my jeans, kissing every inch he uncovers, and the clothes go over the side of the bed one piece at a time. When I reach for his shirt, he lets me. I get the buttons undone with clumsy fingers and push it off his shoulders, and he’s pale and lean and hard all over, cool under my hands, with a long old scar across his ribs that I want to ask about some other time.

When he’s naked and I’m naked and there’s nothing between us, I stop and look at him.

I’ve seen naked men before. Not a lot of them, and never like this, with the lamp on and nowhere to hide and no reason to. He lets me look. He lies on his side facing me and doesn’t touch me, and I put my palm flat on his chest, over the place where a heart should be beating. Nothing. Just cool, still skin, and the muscle underneath it.

“Does that bother you?” he asks.

“No.” I leave my hand there. “It’s just new.”

“Everything tonight is new.”

“Not for you.”

“Yes,” he says. “For me, too.”

I believe him. I don’t know why, but I do.

“I’ve never done this,” I say. “Any of this. I mean the whole thing.”

“I know,” he says. “We’ll go as slowly as you like.”

“Don’t go too slow. I’ve been waiting four days and twenty-three years.”

That gets a real laugh out of him, and some of the tension goes out of his shoulders.

He makes sure I’m ready, with his hands and then his mouth, and he isn’t in a hurry about it. He finds out what makes me gasp and what makes me laugh and what makes me grab a fistful of his hair and say his name like a threat, and he remembers every one of them, I can tell, because he goes back. By the time he moves over me, I’m the one pulling at his shoulders and calling him names, and he’s laughing against my throat.

Then he isn’t laughing.

He braces himself on his forearms above me, his face an inch from mine, and waits for me to look at him.

“Tara,” he says.

“Yes,” I tell him. “Yes. Come here.”

It stings when he pushes into me and I hold my breath without meaning to, and he stops completely. He doesn’t pull back. He just stops, and stays there, with his forehead pressed to mine and his whole body trembling with the effort of holding still.

“Breathe,” he says.

I hadn't realized I was holding my breath.

“You okay?” he asks.

“Yeah.” I look up at him. “You're making that face again.”

“What face?”