Vampire born, p.11
Vampire Born, page 11
ELEVEN
NICK
After consuming the custom cocktail and retrieving the keys for the rental from Graeco, I said goodbye to my mother with a promise to call her in the morning as soon as I’d dropped Sage off at school.
I knew she would be anxious to hear how my night had gone, and I’d be hoping for an update on Papa or news regarding our quest to find a powerful shifter willing to bend the rules.
Graeco assured me the rug had been replaced and the house left spotless as I set out for home. He’d already arranged for the new phone to be delivered to Mam’s estate before he realized she and I had traveled to Manhattan, so he called before I left to have someone courier it from the estate in Garrison to my home in New Windsor. Barring any drastic delay, it should be there before I was.
I drove in silence, too consumed with my own thoughts to even tolerate the sound of the radio.
My dread for what might happen when I arrived at home was only outweighed by my overwhelming desire to be there. I needed to see my wife. To feel her in my arms and breathe in her honeysuckle scent. To reassure myself that she was still there. That she still loved me. Still needed me. Still wanted me.
Of course, the very thing I needed the most could also be my undoing. The risk of physical touch was too great to chance. Even just being in the space with Aria and Sage was tempting fate, but I couldn’t stay away. I told myself it was so they wouldn’t worry, but I feared it was my own selfishness that propelled me toward them. Drawing me closer even though I knew distance would be best.
It didn’t surprise me though. I’d never been able to keep my distance from Aria. My heart had been tethered to hers from the moment I laid eyes on her.
Wooing women had always come easily to me, and it had nothing to do with me personally. As a predator in the natural hierarchy of life, I benefitted from centuries of evolution that had equipped vampires with good looks, irresistible charm, and an allure often described as compelling or even compulsive.
Of course, it also didn’t hurt that I’d been born with the proverbial silver spoon in my mouth, an heir to one of the world’s wealthiest families. There was no limit to the luxury I could lavish upon the object of my affections, and I spared no expense when I wanted a woman’s attention.
All I had to do was decide who I wanted, and I could make them mine.
Until her.
Aria was the first woman I ever met who made me nervous that I wouldn’t be able to impress her.
My appearance seemed to have little effect on her. She wasn’t easily charmed by a compliment or a smile, and she paid no attention to the quality of my watch or the balance in my bank account. None of that mattered to her, and the challenge she presented brought me to life in ways I never knew I was missing.
I’d grown dissatisfied with my existence long before I met her. I’d gone everywhere I wished to go. I’d done everything I wished to do. I owned everything I wished to own.
Time stretched out before me like a dry, endlessly mundane desert—the infinity of which could drive an immortal mad.
But once Aria came into my life, it was as though someone had twisted a kaleidoscope, and suddenly my dull, gray world exploded into multi-faceted colors. Time sped up and began to race against me, for I was certain that no matter the length of her existence as a mortal, it would never be long enough. I would always want more of her.
Having experienced love once before and losing it, I’d sworn to never again repeat the mistake of giving my heart to another, but with Aria, the choice was never mine. I fell head over heels in love with her before I even knew what had hit me.
Perhaps I would have eventually transitioned to mortal anyway, but it became an urgent matter the moment I realized I had no desire to live without her. And it was even more urgent now, knowing exactly what I stood to lose.
The house was dark when I pulled the rental van into the garage. Aria’s Tuscadero pink Jeep wasn’t in its usual spot to the left of me, and I wondered how her test was going and how long I had to prepare before she got back home.
I dropped my keys on the kitchen counter and walked through the living room to the front door, hoping the box with the new phone would be waiting on the porch as promised.
Even with the blood cocktail dulling my senses, I could see well without a light, so I didn’t bother to turn one on as I crossed the floor.
I paused as I stepped onto the rug, turning back toward the lamp so I could flip it on and make sure the match was a good one.
“Where’ve you been?” Aria asked from the sofa, and I whirled to face her, astonished that I hadn’t sensed her presence.
Was the cocktail really so potent that I hadn’t smelled her? Didn’t hear her breath or her pulse as she’d sat only a few feet away from me?
“Why are you sitting in the dark?” I asked, but I didn’t flip on the lamp. I feared her seeing me and somehow knowing I was different, the same fear that kept me from rushing to her like I wanted to.
There was no mistaking the tension in her voice as she said, “You didn’t answer my question.”
She was either angry or hurt. Or both. And she had every right to be. But despite having had the entire day to consider how I would handle this very moment, now that I was in it, I had no idea what to say. So, I deflected back to her.
“Why aren’t you in class? And where’s your car?”
“Really? That’s what you’re gonna go with? Why don’t you just answer the question, Nick? Where have you been all damned day?”
Okay. Definitely anger.
Though knowing her, I understood there was hurt underlying.
“I can explain,” I said. Except I really couldn’t.
“Good. I’m all ears.” She stood and reached for the lamp switch, and I braced myself for her reaction as she flipped it on, certain she’d take one look at me and somehow know I was a monster. A fraud. A failure.
But she didn’t seem to notice. Perhaps she was too mad to see it as she stood there—five feet, nine inches of pissed-off energy, wearing a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt of mine that hung past her hips. Her hair was wet and her face scrubbed clean, and even with her soft lips twisted and her hazel-green eyes narrowed, she was still the most beautiful woman I’d ever known.
I wanted to wrap her in my arms and kiss her, but I didn’t dare. Partly because I feared my own reaction, but mostly because in that moment, I feared hers.
“Well? I’m waiting,” she said, her arms crossed over her chest.
I had to say something. I owed her an explanation. I owed her the truth, or at least as much of it as I could give her. So, I skipped over the whole Surprise! I’m a vampire part and went with the safest portion.
“Okay, um, I’m not sure how to tell you this, but I, uh, I wrecked the van.”
Her facial expression morphed from irritated anticipation to confused dismay. “What?”
“Yeah. It’s, um, it’s totaled.”
“Oh my God, Nick!” The anger was gone in an instant as she rushed to throw her arms around my neck and hug me before immediately pulling back to examine me more closely for a brief moment and then hugging me again. “Are you okay? What happened?”
Even in my synthetically-muffled state, I was hyperaware of how good it felt to have her in my arms. At the same time, I worried I would hold her too tightly and crush her or not tightly enough and raise her suspicions and make her question things even more than she already did. I feared she would see or feel a difference in my body or sense that I had changed.
“I don’t really know what happened.” I pulled back slightly to look down at her, purposely putting a little distance between us. “I don’t have any memory of the accident.”
“What? But…when? Where?”
“I went off the road on Storm King Highway this morning.”
“Nick! That road’s insane. Holy shit. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine, Angel. I hit my head pretty hard, but all things considered, it could have been much worse.”
Considering that I’d actually died and come back as a vampire, it really could not have been worse at all. But I was here, alive, with her. So, I’d take that as a win as long as I could.
“You don’t have any memory of what happened? Babe, that doesn’t sound good. You may have a concussion or one of those crazy brain bleeds that kill people when they don’t even know they have them.”
“No. I, um, no. I got checked out, and everything seems fine.” Is it lying if I don’t mention I was checked out at a laboratory instead of a hospital? “Just lucky, I guess.”
“So…if this happened this morning, where have you been all day? Why didn’t you call me? And why are you so cold?” She pushed my hands together and rubbed them between hers. “Where’s your coat?”
“Oh, I, uh…well, I…” I stumbled over my words, caught off guard by the question. I had no idea where the coat was. I was wearing it when I left the house, but I didn’t have it on when Graeco and Eligio arrived, and I didn’t remember seeing it in the van or on the ground nearby. I hadn’t given it any thought because I didn’t feel cold the way I would have when I was a human, but I should have realized she would notice my body temperature being much lower than normal, now being normal for a vampire. Too bad the blood blend hadn’t done something to make it more moderate.
What had she asked me? Oh yeah. The coat.
“I don’t know where it is.” Instinct told me the best option was to stick as closely to the truth as possible. I wanted to tell her everything, but since that wasn’t feasible, I’d tell her all I could. “I was disoriented after the crash. I didn’t know where I was or what I was doing. I must have taken it off and laid it down somewhere. I lost my phone, too. A new one was supposed to be delivered tonight. It’s probably on the porch. I was headed out there to look for it.”
She pulled back farther and looked up at me, her brow crinkled and her eyes darkened with confusion. “So, wait…you were wandering around after the crash? Like semi-conscious, or something?”
“Yeah, something like that. I made my way back to the van, saw the condition it was in, and then began to deal with the aftermath. You know, arranging for a wrecker. Replacing the phone.” Becoming a vampire again. Slaying a deer. Finding out my father died. Reconnecting with my estranged family. Drinking a couple of blood cocktails. Typical Wednesday.
“And you don’t remember what happened? You don’t know how you wrecked?”
“No. The last thing I remember was driving to the meeting.”
“The meeting!” Her hand flew to her mouth. “Did you not go?”
“Honestly? I don’t know.” I scratched my head, wrinkling my nose as I thought more about it. With everything else that had happened, the meeting had been so far down the list of worries that I hadn’t given it much consideration. But now, the weight of its significance pressed down on me, adding more weight to my shoulders. “I don’t think so.”
“You…don’t…think…so.” She looked dumbfounded, her brows lifted high on her forehead as she blinked multiple times in rapid succession. “You don’t know if you showed up or not?”
“Like I said, the last thing I remember was driving there, and based on where I wrecked, I’d say I never made it that far.”
“But…but…you didn’t call anyone? You didn’t let them know you’d been in an accident? She’ll think you just blew it off.”
I turned and paced across the rug, relieved to see that it looked like the old one. “I didn’t know what to do, okay? I was preoccupied with the situation I was in, which wasn’t at all a normal one. I had no memory of where I’d been and what I’d done. How freaking bizarre would it have been for me to call her up and ask if she’d seen me? Besides, I didn’t have my phone, so I didn’t have a way to call her, nor did I have her information to reach her from another phone.”
“You had my information,” Aria said, crossing her arms again as the tension returned to her voice. “You know my number. Why didn’t you call me?”
All the air drained from my lungs at the hurt etched across her face, and I closed my eyes to block it out as I silently cursed myself for causing it.
“I’m sorry, babe. Truly, I am.” I started to reach for her but then remembered it was best to limit our physical contact. Refraining was so hard it damned near undid me, and my voice threatened to break. “I’ve been in a state of shock all day, wandering around in some surreal alternative reality where I lost time, lost myself, literally. The magnitude of all that needed to be done, of all that had been damaged and lost…quite honestly, I didn’t call you because I didn’t know what to say.”
She seemed unmoved by my plight. “You called Roger and Stephanie.”
“Well, yeah. When I realized I wouldn’t be back in time to pick Sage up, I called Steph to get her from school. I thought then I’d still be able to make practice, but everything took longer than I expected. So, I reached out to Roger and he said he’d cover practice so we didn’t have to cancel, and Steph said she’d take Sage to dinner afterward. What time is it?” I looked toward the clock. “They should be back by now.”
Aria’s arms dropped to her sides, her hands clenched in fists.
“You called two different people and told them something had happened, but you didn’t call me. Your wife. To let me know you’d been in an accident. That you’d totaled our car. That you were having someone else pick up our child from school and feed her dinner. That you were alive and well, which would have been nice to know since I didn’t hear from you all damned day. Did it never even cross your mind that I might want to know any of that? That I might be worried? Scared? Hurt?”
It was killing me not to hold her. Killing me to know how badly I’d hurt her today and that the potential for me to hurt her on a much larger scale still existed.
“Aria, I’m sorry. I messed up, okay? You deserved a call, and I should have called you. I swear I wanted to. You have no idea how much I wanted to, but I couldn’t. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to tell you what had happened.”
I couldn’t hold back any longer without reaching for her, but she stepped away from my grasp.
“You do realize how incredibly ludicrous that is,” she said, her voice clipped with emotion. “Why not just say, ‘Hey, bad news. I crashed our van’. How hard could that be? You never go the entire day without calling me, Nick. Ever. You call me multiple times every single day. Texts, too. And yet on the day you have an emergency, you don’t call. I don’t understand. I don’t get why you wouldn’t want me to be by your side with whatever you were going through. Why you wouldn’t want me to help you! And even if you didn’t need or want my help, why wouldn’t you let me know you were okay? That you were alive?”
No amount of manipulated blood markers could dull the intensity of the emotions exploding inside me, and they flowed from me in a rush of words.
“You have no idea how difficult today has been for me! I almost wasn’t alive, Aria! I could have died. Could have been gone. Never to see you or Sage again. And in ways I can’t even being to explain to you, it hit me today like it never has before that death is final. That when you die, there’s no chance to make things right and say what needs to be said. To make sure the ones who matter know how much you love them. I can’t bear the thought of…”
My voice broke under the weight of my heart’s agony. I couldn’t tell her about my father and the regrets that twisted my insides. I couldn’t tell her about my mother and the guilt that racked me. I couldn’t tell her that after finally finding peace and purpose, it had all been taken from me without warning, or explain to her my fears. Because even though I’d survived the accident, I wasn’t safe yet. I could still lose them.
So, I told her what I could.
“I want to see Sage grow up. To witness what an amazing, incredible young woman she’s going to be. I want to grow old with you. I want to see the world with you. Confronting the reality that I could lose you both has damned near killed me today. I’ve never been as scared of anything in my life as I am of losing you.”
She wrapped her arms around me, and I clung to her more tightly than I ever had before. Maybe it was a mistake to do so. It was certainly a risk, but in that moment, I didn’t care. My defenses were down and my soul was laid bare. I needed her, and she needed me, and that was all that mattered.
“I’m sorry, Angel,” I whispered against her hair. “I’m so sorry I hurt you. That I worried you. I love you. I don’t ever want to lose you.”
“It’s okay,” she whispered back, running her hands up and down my back. “You’re okay. You’re here. I’m here. We’re okay.”
Mam’s carefully curated cocktail must have worn off, because my senses were suddenly in overdrive with my wife in my arms. I noticed everything about her. The way her skin melded to mine, hot meeting cold. The weight of her breasts pressing against me, and the steady but elevated rhythm of her heart pumping beneath them in beats so loud that I could almost hear the rush of blood in and out of each chamber.
I stroked my hands down her back, cupping her rear to lift her hips up against me, and her breath caught as she dug her fingers into my hair, and then she released a sensual moan that nearly drove me insane.
Her head fell to the side as I buried my face in her neck, breathing in the familiar comfort of her scent. Her pulse thrummed beneath her skin, thumping against my lips as I pressed them just underneath her jaw.
And then I felt it. Beneath the stirrings of desire was a different kind of hunger. A different kind of need. One more basic and more animalistic than a craving for sex alone.
Thirst.
My lust and the depth of my emotions for her only served to add fuel to its fire, and the possessive need to claim her in every way possible began to rise within me.
I knew I should step away. That I should release her before I went too far. Before I did something that went beyond repair. Beyond regret.
But the last thing I wanted to do in that moment was make her feel rejected.
