Page 11 of Resurrecting His Soul
“He might think of this other vampire, the one who I’m currently planning to kill,” she tapped her temple, “like a daughter, but I saw how he looked at you in the car. He can’t take his eyes off you, Lis. It’s obvious there is nothing fatherly about the way he feels for you.” Her eyes went wide. “More like he wants you to call him Daddy.” She wiggled her eyebrows and Lisandra gawked at her for a second, then they both burst out laughing.
When they calmed down Lisandra couldn’t help but to look outside again, and when her eyes landed on Ricardo’s just on the other side of the glass, she let them drift down to his mouth and the smirk tugging at the corner of his lips sent heat straight through her. “Yeah,” she said without looking away from him. “I think you’re right. There’s a connection between us, but nothing about that feeling makes me think of him as a fatherly figure.”
She didn’t have to look to know that Allison leaned further over the table. Even the slightest movement where her friend drew closer to her made her scent stronger, but with her eyes locked on Ricardo’s, even on the other side of the French doors, the scent of Allison’s blood was nothing compared to the heat she felt in his stare.
“So, what do you feel?” Allison asked.
Her eyes remained locked on Ricardo’s when she said. “Heat. Pure, scorching, heat, and emotions that I didn’t even know existed that won’t take a backseat for anything now.”
“Damn, Lis.” Something hit her face and broke her eye contact with Ricardo. She looked at Allison just when she threw another balled-up napkin in her direction. “You’ve got it so bad. If I ever needed proof of love at first sight, all I’d have to do is look at the two of you.”
She rolled her eyes but smiled. Even if she wasn’t ready to admit it, Allison probably wasn’t wrong. She usually wasn’t. When the next napkin came tumbling towards her face, she moved fast and caught it. Allison’s eyes went wide and her mouth fell open, and Lisandra winked at her. “One of the perks of being a vampire is speed. Now, I think I owe you some payback.”
They spent the next thirty minutes chasing each other around Ricardo’s guest house throwing napkins, pillows, and anything soft they could get their hands on at each other, making a complete mess of the place. It was the most human she’d felt in the last couple of days, and it helped her realize that, vampire or not, she was still in there, and she was going to make her new life work, and she hoped she’d be even better at it than she’d been in the last. Nobody was going to take her happiness away again.
****
Lisandra dusted the grass and dirt off her back and glared at Allison, who was nearly in tears from laughing so hard. Some friend she was, laughing at her supposed best friend who’d just been tossed a good fifty feet across the field that Ricardo called a back yard. When Ricardo told her he wanted to teach her how to be a vampire, she had not expected combat training to be a part of it. Nor had she expected him to wake her up at the ass-crack of dawn the day after they brought Allison to his guest house, and every day after, to start learning what it meant to be a vampire outside the whole drinking blood thing. They might not have been using weapons, but with their strength and speed she was certain they would be perfect for fighting in a combat scenario. While she knew she would kick ass in a human battle, it had been a week and she hadn’t gotten any better at deflecting or outrunning him. After getting up, she turned to Ricardo ready to rip him a new one, but there was something in his eyes that told her he was more upset about having tossed her across the yard than she could ever be.
“I don’t know why you insist I need to learn to fight,” she said when she made it back to his side. “Just because I’m a vampire now doesn’t mean I’m planning to join some battle squad or the black-market fighting ring.”
Ricardo pursed his lips and reached up, and ever so gently pushed a lock of hair that was blocking her face back and behind her ear. When his fingertips lightly grazed the curve of her cheek, Lisandra felt a lightning bolt race straight through her, and she could have sworn her un-beating heart jumped a few times while he let his hand lightly rest against her face. All too soon he removed his hand, and she felt her heart turn into a hard, cold lump in her chest once again. A dead stone where once it was the beating drum that kept her alive. It was crazy, but she missed Ricardo’s touch the moment his hand was gone and had to link her own hands together in front of her to stop herself from reaching out and grabbing his hand to place it back where it had just been.
“Being a vampire is enough of a reason to need to learn to fight,” he said. “You will meet many people, both human and vampire alike, who want nothing more than to hurt you, or worse. You have to know how to protect yourself. I won’t allow you to be vulnerable to harm. Harm you had no choice in taking on. I took that choice from you when I made you a vampire. I am responsible for making sure you’re safe and cared for, and that includes ensuring you can fight to protect yourself if needed.”
Lisandra gave up on trying to not touch him and reached forward with both hands to claim his face. “You saved my life, Ricardo. I would have died if you had not changed me. If I had to choose between death and becoming a vampire, I would have chosen just as you did. So don’t blame yourself. And if I need to learn to fight to protect myself and my friends, including you, in this new life you’ve given me, then I will learn.”
Ricardo placed his hand over one of Lisandra’s and closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them, the pain she’d seen in his gaze after he’d tossed her across his yard was nothing compared to the anguish pouring out of him in that moment. “Yes, I saved you, but only after I put you in harm’s way first. Melina wasn’t at that carnival on her own. I drove her there; both of us there. Our intentions were the same. To feed and kill. If something about you hadn’t called out to me, we would have turned that carnival into a blood bath.”
“I know that you’ve never had an issue killing for blood. You already told me this. Still, that doesn’t change the fact that you did change your mind. You stopped Melina, and you saved me, and you haven’t drunk from a human since.”
“I’m not a good man, Lisandra. I would have killed those people, and I would have enjoyed it. I’ve been killing longer than you’ve been alive. You can’t just excuse all of that.” He squeezed his eyes shut like he couldn’t bear to look at her anymore.
“Look at me,” she said, and she waited until he opened his eyes. “I’m not excusing your past behavior. It was horrendous. But tell me, did you ever have anyone tell you that you could survive another way? Did your maker stick around to help you learn the ropes?”
“No. I don’t remember my maker. I just remember blood, and I know some of it belonged to people I had once loved. People I’d called friends, even family. That’s why she…” he trailed off.
“You can tell me.”
He shook his head. “No. It doesn’t matter. It was long ago.”
Her heart broke because she could hear the pain in his voice and she knew that he regretted what he had done as a young vampire, and whoever or whatever had happened with the woman he wouldn’t talk about. “It sounds like you never really stood much of a chance. Now you do because I am telling you that you are far more than your past decisions. I would hate for you to judge me by my past because, trust me, I’ve made some really stupid choices myself, and I didn’t have something like blood lust to blame. If you want to be a good man, you just have to make the choice to be good and we will help each other along the way.”
Ricardo ran his hands up and down her arms and gave her a small, forced smile. Still, some angst dissipated from his gaze when his eyes met hers and she felt her lump of a heart jump once again. “I am not so sure that I can forgive myself for all that I have done, but you make me believe I can make better choices in the future.”
He bent his head to hers and Lisandra held her breath anticipating a kiss that never came, or maybe it did, but it was on her cheek, and she couldn’t deny the disappointment that filled her when he didn’t bring his lips to hers. It was ridiculous because she’d been the one to turn away from him the last time he tried to kiss her, so he was probably just trying to stick to her wishes. The thing was, she’d never wanted someone to kiss her so badly in all her life. It was crazy to want that from someone who she had met so recently, someone she was still getting to know, who openly admitted to more than a lifetime as a murderous vampire, but she wanted him in a way that defied all logic. Allison was right. Their connection was something more than a vampire and his progeny. She wasn’t going to say it was the love at first sight Allison had been calling it, but it was something stronger than she’d ever felt, and she already knew she was not going to be strong enough to fight it for long.
“Oh, just kiss and get it on already!” Allison shouted from her seat beside the pool.
A bashful smile tipped up the corners of Ricardo’s mouth and Lisandra was glad to see some of the sadness in his eyes had gone away. Allison had always been good at bringing out the happiness in people, even during their saddest times. Ricardo had done bad things, but she had a feeling there was more to the story than he’d told her so far. Just knowing he didn’t have anyone there to help him like he was doing for her told her he never had a chance. Without him she’d probably be gone, taking out any human in her path too. Just because she had not attacked Allison didn’t mean her blood lust wasn’t still very real, and if Ricardo had turned her and ran off, she knew she wouldn’t have found the strength to fight it on her own. He’d been hurt by more than the world who pigeonholed him into some monster category because of something that had been done to him; something he had no choice in. No, something deeper; someone more important to him had convinced him he wasn’t worth saving. Wasn’t worth loving. Lisandra wasn’t going to let him go on believing that for one more minute.
Lisandra turned back to Ricardo and waited for his eyes to meet hers again. Allison was right. Without another thought, Lisandra reached for Ricardo’s face again, but this time she pulled him down until their faces were only an inch apart, then she closed the small distance between them and pressed her lips against his. When he groaned against her mouth, she forgot that they were outside, forgot that Allison was only a few feet away watching them with what she was sure was a smugI told you sosmile on her face. She threw her arms around Ricardo’s neck and kissed him harder, opening up to him when she felt his tongue draw across her lips. He wrapped his arms around her and pressed their bodies closer together, and she went up in flames. She’d never felt that kind of heat coursing through her body, and she never wanted the fire put out. Which is why when a strange woman’s voice interrupted the best kiss of her life, she ignored all the restraint she’d worked so hard to obtain in her sessions with Ricardo the past few days.
“What the fuck?” a woman’s voice cut through the air. “You break my neck and leave me in some poe-dunk ass town for some lousy piece of ass!”
Lisandra was faster than Ricardo for the first time since they’d started her training. She saw him reach for her, but he was too slow to stop her, his fingers just grazing the fabric of her top as she tore away from him faster than the blink of an eye. She grabbed the woman by the throat and in that moment she realized who the rude stranger was. Melina. Rage took her over, and she threw the woman down against the concrete patio so hard that the cracking of the concrete echoed through the air like thunder. The woman’s eyes bugged out of her head, and Lisandra felt arms wrap around her waist from behind and she knew it was Ricardo. She realized right then that she would know his touch anywhere. It was amazing the number of things she was able to comprehend and accomplish all at once since becoming a vampire. Apparently superhuman multitasking abilities were another vampire perk. Still, Ricardo wasn’t fast enough. Not this time. Before he pulled her away, she’d grabbed the woman’s head and twisted so fast she heard the snapping sound of her neck breaking.
For a few more minutes she continued to fight against Ricardo, but when he turned her around and gripped her face and forced her to look at him it was the concern she saw reflected in his eyes that brought her back from her rage and she felt herself start to shake.
