Page 18 of Hot Blooded
“It was my fault, Reign.” I’m a monster.
“You were a sixteen-year-old girl, Tressa. Barely more than a child.”
I realize this is the first time he’s used my name instead of calling me by my more formal surname.
“It was not your fault,” he repeats. His cool fingers under my chin lift my face toward his. He looks tormented. Desperate, almost. “You believe me, don’t you?”
I lift my shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. The truth is, I don’t believe him. I know I’m to blame, and no amount of consoling will change that.
“Does she forgive you? To this day… are you still close?” he asks.
I give a little frown and nod. “Yes. She says it wasn’t my fault. And we’re still close. Although she’s away at college now, so we don’t speak as much as I’d like.” After a few moments, I find my voice, and continue on, “To answer your question from before… Books became my only reprieve. My only way to escape the constant horrifying thoughts that replay on a loop in my brain.”
And horrifying they were, for months afterward, I couldn’t escape the recurring nightmares where I imagined what she’d looked like huddled in her bed. Her small frame being eaten up by flames as she cried out for me. They were terrible visions. I still have those nightmares sometimes. I wake up startled, sweaty, and nauseous.
Reign produces a cotton handkerchief from this pocket and hands it to me. I wipe my tear-stained cheeks and give a loud sniff. I’m messy and human and snotty and emotional. And he’s as refined and composed as ever.
His lips meet the skin of the back on my hand as he presses a soft kiss there. I’ve never imagined a touch from him could be so gentle. “Thank you for telling me.”
I nod.
I’ve upped the ante on our truth-telling game by laboring him with this tragic, heartbreaking story. But strangely? There’s no part of me that regrets telling him. Even though I don’t let people into that part of my story, even though it makes up such a large part of who I am, it’s never something I share. I feel comfortable with Reign, as strange as that probably seems.
“I’ve come to rely on books in a similar fashion—escapism is alive and well when you’ve got a couple millennia to kill.”
I wince and Reign realizes his poor word choice immediately. He presses another soft kiss to the back of my hand in silent apology.
We make quite a pair. Two sad, broken people who find solitude in the quiet of a library. In the stacks of books that won’t judge or ridicule us. In the pages that will transport us far, far away from our depressing lives and into new ones. There’s something romantic about that. Although it certainly isn’t like any romance I’ve ever read while sneaking pages and chapters at the circulation desk. A gothic romance maybe, but I’m not optimistic enough to hope that ours could have a happy ending. How can it? This isn’t a book. This is real life, and if mine has taught me anything, it’s that bad things can happen to good people. All the time, in fact. Books have never let me down, and so, as charming and sweet as this man before me is, the idea that we can have any kind of real future is abstract and obtuse.
I will do well to remember that.
Chapter 10
Reign
I sit perfectly still in the sitting area of the master bedroom watching a hairy spider attempting to consume a struggling moth on the windowpane. The spider remains perfectly still until the moth ventures close enough, then the spider abandons his disguise and goes in for the kill. I’m sure there’s some symbolism in there somewhere, if I care to examine it.
I don’t.
The memory of Tressa’s sad tale, of the way her shoulders shook with emotion. I’d never seen or heard anything so tragic. And I’d been woefully unprepared to offer her any sort of comfort or support. Soothing humans in their distress is never something I’ve encountered.
What should I care if one of them has a bad day? I’m forced to live an unending life of boredom and loneliness, watching everyone and everything around me slowly wither and die. With her… it is different. My entire being aches at her anguish, and I wanted to take it all away. I wanted to smash buildings and tear down walls. I would have gone to the ends of the earth if it meant taking away her pain and seeing her smile at me again.
Gathering her close and holding her was the only thing I could think to do. She’d cried into my shirt, her hot wet tears soaking the fabric. It wasn’t as unpleasant as I would have imagined. I liked having her close. Feeling her warm, breathing in her scent… Feeling her damp tears against my skin… It just felt right.
But even the memory of that reminds me that I need to use caution around her. Even in her sadness, she was distracting. Exceedingly so.
A deep howling hunger calls to me, hollowing my stomach. I need to feed. Soon. Very soon if I’m to survive my tempting new housemate. Even just a few guzzles of warm blood will do to satisfy my dark, deprived cravings. I never take too much. Well, once. Only once. And I still regret that with every fiber of my damned being. I comforted Tressa as best as I could, and then I excused myself from her presence before I did something that would be bad for both of us.
Finally, the spider ensnares the delicate, helpless moth in its many legs. The moth senses danger and tries to flee, but the spider has his ways of luring her back in. Mostly because his web is sticky and damaging to her wings. In a lot of ways, I can relate to this spider. I ruin everything I touch too.
I watch for a few moments more until the moth stops struggling, then I rise from my chair by the window to get myself ready. I have plans with Alastair today, and I’d rather not keep him waiting—it would only give him an excuse to come and see what’s captured my attention lately and I don’t need him meddling in my affairs with Tressa. Things are already growing more complicated than I’d like.
***
That afternoon, I leave my estate at Alastair’s insistence. Agreeing to an outing with him is easier than arguing with him, I finally decide. Plus, he’s made us reservations at a racetrack where we’ll get to test drive sports cars and what can I say? I like fast cars.
My one mistake? Agreeing to let Alastair drive us to the track. It’s an hour and a half journey over the front range, which means he has my undivided attention, which so far he’s used to pester me about my lovely new housemate.
