Kiss Me, Kill Me Page 24

  He was a burst of warm, golden light in a cold, dark tunnel. Wanted, needed, comforting, beautiful—over to soon.

  My love for him was vast. Eternal.

  My tired blanket was getting heavier. It became winter weight. I wanted to keep staring into Greg’s eyes, to touch him, to say all the things…

  I drifted, slipping away where it was quiet.

  I was jarred awake momentarily by a roaring in my ears. Everything was black. Oh, that’s because I can’t open my eyes. My lids were made of lead.

  What was that roaring?

  Greg?

  He shouldn’t make such a racket. It jangled my nerves.

  Need to sleep.

  ‘Ana, do you want this?’ he was yelling.

  What? Want what?

  Greg?

  I’m going to sleep now.

  I love you, my beautiful, precious man.

  Always.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  My eyelids flew open as if attached to springs.

  Melanie (once again sporting her wig) and Scott were peering down at me. Seriously, would these fuckers never give up? Why were they looking at me that way? Were they worried I was almost out of blood and their sucking on me would be short-lived? Fucking vampires!

  Where was Greg? OMG, if they had hurt him, I would kick their asses. I just had to find a way to get off the floor without passing out from leaving most of my skin behind. Maybe I wouldn’t even feel it. I was so numb, I wasn’t sensing the cold at all anymore.

  Stuff it. I’d rip it off fast like a Band-Aid. Everyone knew that was the best way to do Band-Aid-type things.

  I inhaled a fortifying breath, gritted my teeth and jackknifed up from lying to sitting.

  At the same time I yelled, ‘I’ll kill you if you’ve hurt him, you dirty bastard motherfuckers!’ a few things occurred to me. One, that Band-Aid manoeuvre hadn’t hurt at all. Two, I hadn’t lost any skin while leaving the floor. Three, I wasn’t even on the floor but on a bed. Four, the bed was located in my apartment. Five, the parts of me that had felt broken, no longer felt that way.

  WTF is going on here?

  I’d ask questions later.

  I wrapped my hands around Melanie’s throat and squeezed.

  ‘Ana, sweetheart. It’s okay.’ This from Scott, who was gently prying my fingers from his girlfriend’s throat.

  Meanwhile, Melanie was staring at me like she was happy to see me or something. While I was hell-bent on choking the life out of her.

  Maybe I had another head injury and was misinterpreting the situation?

  Wait a minute. She was just hungry, and happy I’d proven I still had some life left in me for her to drain out. She probably preferred her meals warm, alive and struggling.

  And then I heard the most splendid sound in the world.

  ‘Ana, honey,’ came Greg’s deep-velvet voice. ‘It’s okay. They’re on our side.’

  I looked up to see the most magnificent sight in the world. Greg. Standing tall and strong. Brows drawn; face creased with concern. Eyes brimming with love and tenderness.

  ‘Greg,’ I breathed. I uttered his name with awe and wonder and relief and thankfulness. Greg, Greg, Greg, Greg, Greg.

  My hands fell away from Melanie. ‘Thank God you’re okay, Greg!’ This time there was a slightly hysterical note to my voice.

  ‘Me?’ he answered in disbelief. ‘Me? Christ, Ana! It was you we were worried about. You were…’ His voice trailed off and he scrunched his eyes as if shutting them against some vision he didn’t want to see.

  About that. ‘What happened?’ I flicked my attention to Scott and Melanie, because I also really needed to understand what the hell was going on with them. ‘They’re on our side.’ That’s what Greg had said. It certainly hadn’t appeared that way from where I’d been sitting. Lying, rather. Playing popsicle on the freaking floor.

  ‘Long story short,’ said Greg. ‘Desislava found these two.’ He tipped his chin to indicate the confounding vamps sitting at my bedside. She attempted to enlist their help in capturing and torturing you.’

  I remembered N.I.P. blabbering about how nice it would be for my friends to end my life. Personal touch, my ass!

  ‘They pretended to go along with her so they could find out exactly what she was planning,’ continued Greg. ‘They tried to make contact to warn us, but we were overseas, and we’d lost our phones. When Alexi reached them and told them you’d been captured, they attempted to find me before going there.’

  ‘So, Melanie’s not a pain-in-the-ass baby vampire anymore? She’s not a crazed monster? She didn’t kill Scott but turned him instead? And at this point in time, they’re the good guys?’

  ‘No. No. Yes. And yes,’ Greg answered.

  Melanie piped up. ‘I’m so sorry, me darlin’, for the grief I caused you when I ran away and took Scott with me.’ She glanced at the floor, then drew in a deep breath and met my gaze again. ‘I was crazed for a while. Um, we did some…bad things. We’re different now.’

  By bad things, I guessed she meant they’d killed people when they’d been in the throes of bloodlust. I’d quiz her about it later. We were currently doing the long-story-short version.

  ‘So, you guys ganged up on Desislava? That blur of motion and screaming was the three of you attacking her?’

  ‘Too bloody right!’ answered Scott with enthusiasm.

  Wish I could have seen that fight in slo-mo. ‘Would have been nice if someone told me. I was scared witless that it was three against Greg.’

  ‘Sorry, hon,’ said Melanie, patting my hand. ‘A tad busy at the time.’

  ‘The last I saw, Bitchface was staked to the ground with that pole.’

  They all looked at each other. Shifty, sideways glances abounded.

  ‘What? What happened? Is she dead?’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ was Melanie’s tentative reply.

  ‘What. Happened?’ I gritted out, needing details on this particular occurrence immediately.

  ‘After we freed you from the ice and fixed you, Greg…killed her.’ After this response, Melanie slid an uncomfortable look Greg’s way.

  Scott cleared his throat.

  ‘If you guys don’t spit it out right this second, I’m gonna go apeshit!’

  Three quick smirks, there and gone in a blink. Replaced by hard faces and tense jaws.

  Then Greg said in a voice dripping with a cold kind of anger, ‘I did to her what she did to you. I beat her with that fucking pole. I broke her bones. I made every surface of her freeze to the floor before tearing her from it.’ Deep breath in and out. ‘Any skin she had left…I took it with a knife.’ Pause. ‘I made her suffer and wish she had never been born. And when she was raw and exposed and screaming and begging, I cursed her to hell and decapitated the bitch.’ Another harsh breath.

  Wow. Greg took “an eye for an eye” to a whole other level. He was watching me as if waiting for disgust or censure or something. Most times he was smart as hell. Sometimes he was so clueless.

  Yay! I yelled inside my head. My amazing boyfriend did exactly what I would have done. He’s just like me: bloodthirsty.

  Speaking of… I was so bloody thirsty.

  I opened my arms to Greg, saying, ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you. You’re amazing. I would’ve killed that bitch the exact same way. I wish I could have watched and cheered you on. God, I’m so glad to see you. You’re alive. I’m alive. Plus, they’re alive,’ I added with a chin tip towards Melanie and Scott. ‘This is fabulous! And there I was, thinking I was so, so fucked. But here we are. I’m so happy I could burst!’ I was babbling rapid-fire.

  And then Greg was kneeling beside the bed, coming into my arms, wrapping his arms around me while looking bemused, ecstatic, and worried at the same time.

  We needed to talk. A lot more. Right now, I needed to hold him.

  He hugged me fiercely and whispered in my ear, ‘Ana. My Ana.’

  My hold on him tenacious, I buried my face in his neck, breathing him i
n. Mercy me, he smelled good.

  I was so thirsty. And hungry. How long had I been out? Must be days.

  Ravenous. Like, goddamn, I’m gonna die this second. It was worse than the time I went on a soup diet. It was soup-diet times five-thousand.

  Starving so bad.

  Thirsty, thirsty, thirsty, thirsty, thirsty.

  I reared back and struck Greg in the artery with my teeth, opened my mouth wide, latched onto his muscular neck and sucked.

  Gorgeous, delicious liquid spurted into my mouth. Quenching. Satisfying.

  It was better than a Pina Colada. Better than a Cocksucking Cowboy. Even better than a Lava Flow or a White Russian.

  It was warm and wet like…well, like blood. Like sex.

  Life.

  Holy crap! I am actually drinking blood from Greg’s throat. I have actual fangs.

  But sweet Jesus, his blood was the yummiest thing I’d ever tasted. It made me tingle all over. Gave me an unprecedented feeling of aliveness. It was a thrumming in my veins. Electricity in my nerves. It was warm and wet. Hang on, I’d already thought that. Apparently this warm-and-wet-like-sex thing was extremely appealing to me.

  Greg was making sounds like sex. Husky groans.

  I was making sounds, too. Moaning and groaning. Like sex.

  I wanted sex. And more blood. Plus, sex. Blood and sex together.

  A long moan escaped my lips between sucks.

  Then Greg was saying, ‘Get out.’

  No way was I getting out. I wanted to live like this, with my fangs sunk deep into his flesh, his cocktail of life sliding down my throat. I clasped my lips harder. Held on to him harder. Sucked harder.

  ‘Get the fuck out. Now!’ he yelled.

  I kept my fangs exactly where they were but opened my eyes to see Melanie and Scott scurrying from the room. Oh, he’s talking to them. That’s good.

  The space between my legs was throbbing and aching. And contracting. I could come this way. Just from the sucking and the drinking. I moaned louder, higher pitched. It was a please-fuck-me-now-or-I-will-die moan.

  Greg’s answering growl almost sent me over the edge.

  And then he was pressing me back onto the bed. Following me down while my fangs were still deep in his throat. He rucked my nightie up over my hips. I was wearing a nightie sans underwear.

  That’s really, really good.

  He freed his cock from his pants, fisting it, tugging it roughly. Pressing it against me.

  That’s freaking marvellous!

  He pushed inside, sliding slowly into my body.

  I shuddered from the amazing feeling of him working his cock into me. It was electrifying, as if he were switching on all my nerves as he glided past.

  ‘So warm and wet,’ he groaned.

  That’s what I said, I thought. I mean, that’s what I thought, I thought.

  He slid almost all the way out and back in to the hilt. The way he flexed his hips and moved was like a wave. A powerful wave, a force of nature that lifted me up and transported me far out into an ocean of pleasure where I was in him and he was in me. I was buffeted and buoyed up, and then the orgasm crashed into me and took me down deep. Spun me, rolled me. I drowned. In blood, sex and pleasure in the most exquisitely beautiful way.

  My fangs slid out of his throat. I dragged my tongue over the puncture marks.

  Greg made a deep, long haaaaah sound. I loved that sound. I loved the look on his face: teeth gritted, fierce, fanged, almost savage. Love and adoration burning in his gaze.

  His thrusts became increasingly powerful. He fucked like a wild man. His body smacked into mine with a force I previously had not experienced. With a force that might have broken me. Before.

  I fucked him back just as hard. My legs, already raised and bent at the knees, swung back and forth, harder. Faster. My inner muscles gripped him tighter.

  ‘Ana. Fucking God…Ana!’ he yelled.

  And then his fangs sank into my throat and he moaned and sucked and fucked.

  Oh. My. Stars!

  We both exploded, him sucking the blood from me, and me milking the cum from him.

  Soon after, when Greg was sliding his fangs from my throat (I guessed we were using the withdrawal method, ha!), an important question came to me. Why the hell hadn’t he told me sex would be even better vamp-on-vamp? I would have factored that into the decision-making process. Maybe he hadn’t known since this was a new experience for him.

  I’m his first.

  I liked that.

  After he’d licked my throat to stop the blood from leaking out of me, he said, ‘Fucking hell. That was—’ He shook his head. ‘That was incredible!’

  I made an incoherent sound with an exclamation mark at the end, which I’m sure he recognised as agreement.

  As he slid out of me, I made another sound that meant that feels good, but I want you back already. I believe he understood that also.

  ‘So,’ said Greg, rolling onto his side and propping his head on his hand, ‘as you’ve probably noticed…’

  He trailed off, perhaps pondering the best way to address the elephant in the room. Except this elephant hadn’t just waited quietly in the corner until someone mentioned it. It had been dancing a jig and swinging its trunk obnoxiously for some time now.

  ‘When Melanie said that you fixed me,’ I interjected, ‘she meant fixed me into a vampire.’

  Greg bit his lip. ‘Ah…yes.’ He searched my face. ‘Ana, you were dying. I tried to ask you if that’s what you wanted me to do, but you were too far gone. I had to choose.’ His features were creased with worry. ‘I just couldn’t let that happen to you, not when I knew I might be able to save you. I’m sorry if it’s not what you wanted. When the time came, I could not let you go.’ His voice broke.

  I caressed his face. Leaned up and kissed his eyelids. ‘I wanted you to turn me. I would have been absolutely pissed if you’d let me die.’

  Greg’s eyes widened and his brows shot up. There were a few beats filled with incredulous silence, then, ‘You couldn’t have told me that before?’

  ‘Nope.’

  Those brows furrowed down.

  ‘I only decided that day that I’d let you do it. And you were busy giving me the cold shoulder.’

  There was a short, sharp exhale. ‘I’m so sorry about not talking to you. I kind of lost my shit.’ He caressed my temple and tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. In a voice laced with pain, he said, ‘And when I thought I would lose you, I kept remembering the way I’d turned away, how I’d made you cry, how I’d left without saying goodbye…the last words I’d said to you…’

  ‘I’m sorry, too—that I put off giving you an answer. When all the bad stuff was going down, I wanted to kill—I mean kick—myself for procrastinating for so long.’ I’d never throw that term, or anything resembling it, around ever again. No more just kill me nows were coming out of my mouth. Since fate had seemed to be hell-bent on killing me, I shouldn’t tempt it.

  Greg didn’t reply. He stared down at me, his gorgeous face all creased up to hell.

  ‘I was positive that I’d totally stuffed up. I had the chance to be with you—the most beautiful, incredible man, my love, my soul mate—forever. I had the chance to be with you forever and I almost let it go. I almost—’ I got all choked up and couldn’t continue.

  ‘It’s alright, my Ana. Don’t cry. It’s okay now. We can be together. Always.’ His brilliant greens shimmered with tears.

  My tears coursed down my face. No matter that he’d told me not to cry, my tear ducts were stubborn little bastards and were leaking copiously all over the place.

  In a lovely yet futile effort, he brushed his thumb across my cheeks to remove those droplets of regret. More and more replaced them.

  I stroked the backs of my fingers along his jaw. Feathered fingertips down his cheek. Pressed my thumb to his lips.

  He sighed a tremulous sigh against that finger.

  We gazed into each other’s eyes for the longest time, n
ot speaking but communicating nonetheless.

  In that silence, I conveyed that I would never again put off making important decisions. He promised he would never stop talking to me. We told each other we would stick together and love one another for eternity.

  It was the most wonderful and meaningful wordless conversation I’d ever had.

  Then I endeavoured to tell him with my eyes that now that I was a vampire, too, I would protect him, fight for him, die for him.

  He tilted his head, obviously not understanding.

  When I said the words out loud, I realised I’d already done what I’d sworn I would not do again. I’d mentioned the d-word. Fuck off, fate! I yelled in my head before fate had the chance to get any ideas.

  Greg said, ‘You’d better not do that last thing, ’cause I know it’ll kill me.’

  I captured his hand and pressed a kiss to the backs of his curled fingers. ‘Okay, I won’t do that. I’ll live forever and ever, till I’m a crusty old thing. And you’ll never get rid of me.’

  His lips curved up on one side. ‘We’ll be crusty together; it’ll be grand.’

  My lips curved up on both sides. ‘Sounds…romantic.’ #CrustyRomance

  I was happy, deliriously so, but there was one tiny thing that was niggling at me, worming its way in, burrowing through and tunnelling holes in my shiny apple of happiness.

  I didn’t want to ask the question that might ruin the current mood. I might possibly get an answer that would slice and dice my apple. Maybe even turn my happy fruit into applesauce.

  Why the hell am I using apples in a happy analogy?

  The answer to that: Because my brain is so weird sometimes. But that wasn’t the question I needed to ask. I took a deep breath and framed my query in the calmest manner I could manage. There was no complaint in my tone, not the hint of a whine. There wasn’t even a question mark for punctuation.

  ‘Greg.’ Long exhale. ‘You bought a ring for me a long time ago. You didn’t give it to me.’

  I looked at him with non-judgy eyes, with what I hoped was an open face, encouraging discussion without recrimination. I waited patiently for his response. And for my apple to be sauced.

  ‘I’d planned to give it to you when you returned from that conference in Perth. But then I was turned. After I came back to you, it felt selfish to ask you to bind yourself to me because I couldn’t give you what a normal human man can.’