Page 40 of Accidental Vampire

“How, how’d you…”

“Ah,” Richard pulled a vindicated smile. “Feast of the Epiphany.”

“Come again?”

“Tiffany is a medieval name, usually a surname. An homage to the catholic holiday. So, you know…”

Bisou stumbled back in with a screwdriver between her teeth and her arms full of electronic equipment.

“I drank a monk name Tiffany once.” She said around the screwdriver, dumping the equipment in Richard’s arms. “Back in the Old country. Really sweet. Drunk all the time, so he bled like a stuck pig.”

Tiffany eyed the door, rubbing her stomach as if this was too much for her.

“I need these rewired.” Bisou handed the tool to Richard. The whole room ground into action now that there was an objective.

Out of the spotlight, Tiffany edged toward the door until she was close enough to bolt without seeming rude.

TWENTY-EIGHT

TIFFANY

I had developed a pattern. A little circuit that I paced. Letting my bare feet go from the threadbare oriental style rug to the shaggier carpet. The floor beneath was concrete. My feet didn’t like that at all. The cramping had already started, and I felt like my skin was going to peel off. I wanted to strip naked and not have anything touch my skin, but he was here. He was flipping through another dumb paperback. Lachlan was consuming them at an alarming speed, like the man had never read popular fiction before. This one was about a half-breed vampire and a “master” vampire. Whatever that meant. He assured me it was pure fiction.

“If you just…” he said without looking up, and I cut him off with a simple “no”.

This has been the argument of the day - Drink blood, it does a body good. But I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t get over the mental hurdle of bringing the blood bag to my mouth without thinking about all the consequences. So here I was pacing around until blood lust or whatever they called it kicked in. I hated it. I hated everything about this. I hated him most of all.

I hated his long frame stretched out on the battered couch. I hated how he looked so relaxed, and well, refined. He had this fluidity to him. Like his body was just made to be nice to look at and to move well. Even his name sounded nice. Lachlan. It was Irish, I think. Lachlan. The sounds just filled my mouth and rolled over my tongue so nicely. He didn’t seem to sleep much. Was that a vampire thing? At least he was always awake when I was.

I did my best to avoid his eyes. They were this uncanny shade of solid blue. Most eye color has variation. Even my brown eyes had flecks of gold. William, the asshole professor, wrote some dumb poem about it when we started dating. Dating, ugh. We never dated. We had sex in store room closets so that no one would find us. My life was a series of bad choices when my pussy was driving the ship.

Lachlan had great hands, too. The fingers were long and thin, but not knobby at the knuckles. He had that book splayed open in one hand. Pinky and thumb stretched wide to hold it open, his index finger stroking the spine, like he was trying to coax the book to give its best. His other hand stretched out along the top of the couch, one finger tapping out the passage of the words he consumed. But now his elegant fingers were pinching his bottom lip. I wasn’t sure if he was aware of it. It seemed like something he only did in private moments. His lips were full, not those flat slashes of lips that some men have. Perfectly kiss…

Nope.

I turned my back to him and scrubbed my face with my hands. I was so god damn horny. All the time. I rubbed at the stomach cramps. I felt awful. And horny. It was a terrible combination. And drinking blood just made it all worse. Until I passed out. That was the best part, the passing out, because then all these body sensations I didn’t want disappeared. I tried to take some deep breaths to distract myself from the throbbing between my legs.

I heard Lachlan sigh. Could he tell I was horny? That was a vampire thing, wasn’t it? Alpha vampires with super sensitive noses who could tell when you were sexed up and wet? Oh god, don’t even think about that.

He got up from the couch and climbed on to the bed. I licked my lips, watching him arrange his legs. He knelt with his legs wide, sitting back on his feet.

“Come here.” he held a hand out to me.

I shook my head.

“Just come here. Let’s see if we can make it better.” His fingers twitched in a “come hither” move. I swallowed. He waited patiently for me to make up my mind. I took a step closer to the bed, then another.

“Give me your hand. No, not that one, the other.” He took my left hand in his left hand and pulled me onto the bed. “Lay down. On your stomach.”

My heart beat kicking up. This was weird, crawling on to the bed while he held my hand in a firm grip. I held myself stiffly, and he rested our joined hands right next to my face. He kept squeezing it, gently, like our hands had a heart beat of their own. His other hand pinched my shoulder. Right where I always get a knot from being hunched over a computer. He held it with steady pressure. The steady rhythm in our hands and the pinch in my shoulder finally made the muscle uncoil. I closed my eyes with a sigh.

“Warren used to do this for me, he said…” his soft voice died out.

“Who’s Warren?”

“He…” there was a sudden amount of pain in his voice, “He made me.”

“Do you still see him?” I was desperate to know about what vampire life was like, but everything in my head was so jumbled that I didn’t know what to ask.

---