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Twilight hovered over the world.
Owen’s face appeared over the broken window. I could see him quickly survey the scene, and thought he would reel me in like a fish on a line. Instead, he jumped out of the window as well.
He held what remained of the sill with one hand and brought me in to him with his other, tucking me in against his shoulder. He was cold, but for once, I was colder, and clung to his dry clothes desperately for warmth.
With the ease of something like flight, he lifted us both back inside.
When my feet touched firm ground again, my legs gave away underneath me, but Owen kept me upright. All of my limbs were shaking and my head felt like it was about to detach from my body.
Owen scooped my legs up and cradled me as he stepped into the shower and ran the hot water. He wore a fine silk shirt, suit pants and leather shoes, but didn’t seem to care. He stood with me under the water, letting it drip warmth back into my body.
He undid the manacle from my tortured wrist, and I wasn’t surprised when he simply moved it to my ankle. I was surprised when he started gently massaging the life back into my fingers.
He’d changed again. His face had gone the color of milk—deathly pale but with a slightly cream cast below, rather than the more pure white it had been. Water beaded and dripped from his long lashes, making them cling together, star-like.
“Tell me what happened,” he said in a soft voice.
My teeth chattered around my words. “Your nuthouse slave hacked up a chicken.”
“I saw.”
“Then tried to hack up me.”
“I’m sorry. I had no idea she’d become so free from my control.” That concept seemed to trouble him deeply.
It troubled me more.
“It was probably your control that sent her insane like that. Keeping her brain numb, making her serve you. It was worse than being a prisoner.”
Owen gave me a level look. “You would not pity her if you knew who she really was. She was one of my employees until I first realized the psychopath she was. She had killed at least two husbands and one of my waitresses before I turned her into my thrall.”
In death her face had been calm and still, wiped clean. She looked like an aged woman at peace. Was she a murderer? I recalled the gleeful way she had chopped up the chicken’s carcass, the way she’d hunted me, and looked back at him. “Why didn’t you let her just stand trial?”
“Do you really think that is the only justice in this world?” He snorted and I saw his lips curl in disgust. “Do you think I did not try that first?”
I didn’t have an answer to that one.
“Things are never that simple, Strawberry. She was a dangerous woman, her mind lost to violent illness before I took her in. There is no need to pity her in life or death. When the justice of your kind failed, I decided I could not allow her to roam free.”
Tears gathered in my eyes then fell and splattered his chest. “But it was my fault. I tried to talk to her, tried to run away. I made her snap. I killed Loretta.”
“Loretta killed herself.” The words were mild. I felt his arms tighten almost imperceptibly around me.
I squeezed my eyes tightly shut but tears pushed out insistently anyway. “She didn’t have to. Why didn’t you just let her go?” I yelled, angry with him for no reason at all or maybe for every reason.
“Would you rather her be free to torment innocents?””
“Why didn’t you just kill her then?” I knew I was hysterical but I couldn’t seem to stop the angry, bitter words. He paused for a long moment.
“It gets lonely.”
The words opened my soul, cut me to the already raw core of my being. It got lonely in this isolated, windswept little spot of earth. In the long years that made up the centuries. In the dark hours of night without seeing the day.
He was lonely.
I whispered, barely audible over the sound of the shower running around us, “That still gives you no right to hold people against their will.”
Owen set me down on my feet.
“Do you hate me so much, Strawberry?”
My feelings for him were incredibly conflicted. On one hand, I had begun to care about him in ways that would have seemed unimaginable to me but on the other, I longed to be free of his teeth inside my flesh, and to be able to walk in the sunlight unencumbered by fear.
I dropped my head. “No. No, I don’t hate you.”
Owen turned the shower off and carefully dried me down. He wrapped me in a warm towel then left the bathroom without a word. I didn’t move except to sit down on the edge of the bath. I wasn’t sure my legs would support me yet and my abraded toes stung. I felt so incredibly tired.
It was some time before he came back. He returned in dry pants, bare feet, and still buttoning up a new shirt. The moonlight filtered through the windows and outlined his incredible body and handsome face. The bloodsucking thing had kidnapped me and all that but he was undeniable gorgeous. He picked me up and carried me out to the bedroom. I didn’t even try to resist.
The bedroom was spotless, cleared of any chicken remains, or mess from my struggle. I looked around, amazed at how fast Owen could be when he wanted to.
I saw him staring lustfully at the pulse in my neck.
He saw me notice. “I won’t feed on you after all you’ve been through. You need to recover again.”
“No. You should drink. I want you to. I like you better after you’ve eaten.” I didn’t bother anymore with games or tricks. My cards were on the table.
I sat on the edge of the bed.
Owen stood close in front of me and I almost reached up to feel the lines of his stomach muscles I’d just seen under his shirt.
Then he knelt down between my knees. His fingers traced my neck, then where he’d bit my breast, and down to the bite on my inner thigh. I held my breath, and the uncontrollable shivering I’d just recovered from struck again.
He took both of my hands in his, staring again at the damage the handcuff had done, then gently lifted my other hand to his mouth. His lips touched softly against my palm before moving to my wrist.
I barely felt his teeth go in. I just felt the hot rush of blood flowing between us. I swooned, and he caught me around the waist, pulling me tight against his chest, my legs wrapped either side of where he still knelt at the edge of the bed.
With my legs wrapped around him, and his arm wrapped around me, he stood up, lifting us, still clutching my wrist to his mouth and drinking. Desire came knocking again hard between my thighs and I leaned into him, pressing my mouth to his neck.
He bent forward, laying me down on the bed with him on top of me. I could feel how firm he’d become under his pants and rolled my hips into his, my mind blurring away into pleasure.
Owen pulled his teeth away from my wrist, kissing away the blood.
When he rolled off me and sat up, I tried to hide my panting and disappointment.
“I hope I didn’t take too much. I worry about your health,” he said.
I probably looked more feverish than ever right then. “Nah, I’m fine. I hope you, you know, had enough to eat.”
He smiled. Actually smiled. I didn’t realize that was possible. I gawped up at him in surprise. He looked... normal. Like a person instead of an undead killer. His face had color and his eyes had expression. His skin had gone a beautiful warm ivory, but when I reached for his arm his flesh felt cool beneath my fingers.
His hand stroked my hair tenderly and I turned my cheek into his palm, seeking comfort even though I knew he was the reason I needed it.
Too many complex emotions struggled to unleash themselves from inside me. Abruptly I remembered writhing against him in a stupor of passion and blushed so hard my face felt like someone had held a blowtorch to it.
“Soooo,” I finally said, making the awkward silence more awkward.
“It’s odd.”
I blinked then said, “Yeah, being held against my will by a vampire who is trying to kill me slowly is certainly not anything I would have put in my yearbook as a future plan. But it’s more lost-my-marbles than simply ‘odd’ to be honest. ”
He laughed and not just any laugh either, he threw his head back and laughed so hard the skin around his eyes crinkled and I could see his nice even white teeth. The fangs had retracted or something and when he leaned back on the bed it creaked and the mattress sagged beneath his weight.
“You are doing something to me Strawberry. I am feeling things I have not felt in centuries. I’ve never had blood like yours before. I’ve never been so... warm. I don’t like whatever it is because when I drink from you I become weakened somehow.”
“Maybe you should let me go then,” I suggested. “Keep us both happy.”
My attempt at humor fell flat. His lips thinned down to a line and his eyes narrowed.
“My blood probably just tastes good because I like eating nice things. Bring in any old vampire groupie and feed them that fancy food you’ve been giving me and you’d probably get the same result. You don’t need me.”
“No, there is something uniquely special about you.”
His fingers were warm as they reached out and touched mine. I shivered with revulsion and pleasure; the intermingled sensations were disconcerting but not nearly as much as the sight of him looking so human. Dawn began to lighten the windows slightly, rosy little fingers of light barely cracking across the uppermost edges. How had the night passed so quickly? I remembered the story Arabian Nights, how Scheherazade stayed alive by telling the bloodthirsty sultan stories he could not resist. I wasn’t sure what I could tell him that would amuse him so I asked him a question instead.
“How did you turn into a vampire? Is it like they show us on TV? How did it happen?”
“The mythology is pretty close. It hurts like hell. I won’t make you a vampire if that is what you are angling for.”
“Oh darn,” I rejoined in as sarcastic a voice as I could muster. “What a shame, I would love to give up eating crème brulee in favor of a little O neg.”
Owen smiled almost wistfully, and began tucking me into the warm covers of the bed. The fluffed up pillows and thick comforter were like heaven compared to the rough side of the building lashed with rain. I nestled into them, my eyelids growing heavy. Owen sat down above the covers. As he settled in next to me I could not help but wonder what he had been like when he was alive.
That was dangerous thinking. I knew that it was. He was a vampire, purely and simply and even though he looked human he was not.
I probed again regardless. “You didn’t answer my question.”
Owen looked at me. “Strawberry, you should not ask so many questions.”
“If you’re going to keep me here you might as well entertain me. Come on, vampire, tell me a story,” I said the words casually but under my skin my heart was racing. I loved a good story even if it was bound to have a pretty unhappy ending, which it was obvious my own was destined for.
Owen sat still for a while and I didn’t think he was going to talk. Then slowly, quietly, he did. “I fell in love with a woman I thought I would die without. Instead it happened that to be with her I had to die.”
“You became a vampire for love? Then why isn’t Mrs. Vampire still around?”
“She died many centuries ago.”
Oh. Sympathy for him filled me although I did not want it to. I touched his hand, stroking the long sensitive fingers. “I’m sorry. I thought you vampires were immortal. How did she die?”
“I killed her.”
What kind of guy killed the love of his life? Vampire guys. I couldn’t forget that was what he was, and what my ultimate goal was. Escape.
Dawn was not yet reaching our little corner of the world but there was a pearly opalescence that said it would be soon. Owen looked toward the balcony, his face lifted to the sky. “I miss sunsets.”
“You could watch from the window.”
“I do, quite often. It makes me weak though.”
“Is it worth it?”
“Most things that make us weak are.” His lips twitched and I realized something, I hated that he took my blood, battened on me like a leech but I liked the person he became afterwards. Genuinely liked him. It was so weird I could not even form a thought for a few seconds.
I rambled, “Everyone’s going to hurt you, the trick is finding someone who makes the suffering worth it. Bob Marley said that, or something like it, so you know it’s the truth.”
He nodded slowly, a rich sadness torturing his features.
Dawn showed its full face in the glass of the doors. Thin streaks of gold lay on the carpet and he got out of the bed, all the humanity wiped from his face as if it had never been there. One second he was standing there looking down at me, the next he was gone. I saw a blur in the corner of my eye and heard the door open then close but that was all.
I lay there, confused and wrung out. Dawn bloomed fully, the sun rising above the horizon, followed by a band of clear blue sky that showed in the distance. Birds sang loudly and I rolled over on my back.
“I really have to get out of here,” I said to the ceiling but it did not bother answering.