Page 43 of Don't Bite the Boy Next Door
I join him at the door and reach for mine too, shrugging into its puffy warmth and following him out the door.
My heart feels lighter than it has been in months. But I know if I expect him to open up to me, there are secrets I need to share with him – secrets long-held sealed up in parts of my mind that I never, ever ventured.
And soon, I would have to release them.
I hand him the star and watch his backside as he stands high up on the step-ladder.
‘That is, as Pru would say, one great ass.’
“Anything else while I’m up here?” he looks back down at me, raising a quizzical eyebrow.
“No,” I smile,‘yes, I’d like to bite one of those rock, hard cheeks just for fun’“we can hang the baubles now.”
“More things?” he groans, “I thought the tinsel was the decoration.”
“Oh no,” I laugh, “there’s much, much more. And there’s also this.” I move to the newly recovered couch and pick up the flat, white box that had arrived this morning.
He steps down and shakes his head at me as he opens the box to find his new Christmas jumper.
“Grumpy?” he smirks, seeing a dwarf in a winter wonderland.
“Do you like it?”
“No,” he groans, “but I’ll wear it.”
I laugh and stand back to admire him in the sweater as he pulls it over his head. It’s bright red, the trees a lime green, and the dwarf looks terrible.
“Well?” he sighs.
“I love it,” I laugh.
“God, you would,” he chuckles as he flops into the couch.
Seeing him sitting, happy, for once relaxed and not angry or distant or dismissive, I put aside my festive feel and decide to bite the bullet on a conversation that is long overdue.
“So,” I murmur, turning to the sideboard and pouring us both an eggnog in the tall, etched crystal glasses, ordered and received just last week. “I think it’s time I told you about Solomon, Ryan. I’m ready to tell you, I think, if you’re ready to listen.”
“Tess,” he shakes his head, “you don’t have to…”
“No, well yes, I think I do, and I want to,” I interrupt him hurriedly, “at least, I need to.”
“OK,” he says quietly, sipping his drink.
Carrying my own drink over to the window, I stare outside and take a deep breath. I’ve rehearsed what I need to say, what he should know, given that he is now enmeshed in my family’s long feud with some of the world’s most dangerous and powerful vampires. And I think it might ease some of his worries about his turning, and even assuage some of his guilt over his past if he can hear mine. Also, it can’t really affect our relationship for the worse. Despite his efforts at being nicer lately, I know he doesn’t feel anything for me. I don’t have that fear anymore that revealing just how much of a monster I am will drive him away. He is so far distant now, I don’t think the gap will ever be bridged unless to be cordial neighbours when this is all over.
“I was taken,” I begin, my voice flat, emotionless, “bitten and turned by Solomon when I was a maiden. I don’t know the exact year, none of us do, we didn’t keep track of such things as well as we do now. I was a milkmaid, I lived on a farm with my family in England.”
I watch him in the reflection of the window as I talk. He nods, as though what I have told him so far, fitted with his view of me.
‘That will change soon enough.’
Taking another deep breath, I plough on.
“He took me to his castle, where I met Serena and Pru, and later Charlotte, and the nightmare that was our lives began, and continued, for countless decades, for some of us, centuries.”
“You were prisoners?” he asks.
“We were his minions, prisoners, playthings, gifts for his friends, hunters,” I take a deep breath. “We were sent out to catch and fetch his meals, children mostly. He tortured them for days before killing them. It was his fetish you see, and he supported the debauched needs of other powerful men; kings, princes, lords, rich merchants. Such things we saw, had done to us, were forced to do to others, I can’t even begin to tell you how terrible and depraved he forced us to be.”
