Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 112849 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 564(@200wpm)___ 451(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112849 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 564(@200wpm)___ 451(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
My lips open and close weakly before I manage to say, “What?”
“Darkness.”
My body goes stiff and I stare at him.
“I felt the darkness inside of you.” He’s whispering now, his words enveloping me like a cloak.
He can’t know. He can’t ever know about my darkness. Why it’s there. How it accumulates with each life that I’ve taken, each awful thing that I’ve done.
I clear my throat. “You got that from my tears?”
His gaze doesn’t lighten. “I wanted to feel it for myself. To know you. To know why I’ve been so drawn to you. And now I know. The darkness in me calls to the darkness in you.”
I don’t know what to say to that. Anyone else would have told them he was being a fucking weirdo, but I have no doubt he really can taste the darkness inside of me. I’m just glad that’s all he’s able to see. If he were to get into the specifics…
“I’m going to go pay,” he says, suddenly getting to his feet and disappearing into the restaurant. I wonder if now he feels he said too much.
I finish the rest of my drink and then get up, feeling a little lightheaded from the drinks and emotional vomit, folding up the shawl and putting it on the chair.
“Do you want to take that with you?” Valtu asks as he approaches me, nodding at the shawl.
I give him a look. “I’m not stealing a shawl from a restaurant.”
“I could persuade them to give it to you.”
I bet you can. “I’ll be fine.”
“Then I’ll walk you home. Keep you warm.” He smiles. It’s almost bashful, with just a bit of cunning.
“I’d like that,” I tell him, feeling shy all of a sudden.
Then he holds his hand out for me. His hand. And not only do I feel shy, but my heart is fizzing, as if someone poured champagne in my chest. It’s just his hand, and he’s already kissed me, and yet it feels so much bigger than that. Like to hold onto him is to step into something I may not be able to get out of.
But I place my hand in his and he grasps it tight, his skin both hot and cold at the same time. His grip is strong and I feel butterflies fly up through my veins, spurred on by his contact, a sense of electricity whirling around us.
He leads me back to the street and we continue our walk, side by side, his hand in mine, and I know this might be a vampire thing that he’s doing to me and that’s why he wanted to hold my hand, or maybe it’s just the alcohol and my nerves, but I feel warm, inside and out.
“You know, what I told you back there,” he says, his voice low and thoughtful as we walk, “that I could feel you, know you through your tears…any other woman would have run the other way. What I told you was not normal. And yet I told you all the same. And you haven’t run. Why is that?”
I swallow hard, aware of the quickening pulse in my throat. “I don’t know. Perhaps it’s the same reason why I suddenly unloaded all of my deepest, saddest emotional damage onto you. Any other man would have called me nuts and left. Indeed they have, and for much less. But not you…”
He stops suddenly, pulling me up to him just as we’re on the crest of a small bridge. With his other hand he puts his palm against my cheek, studying my face like I’m some code he’s trying to solve.
“I swear we have met before. I don’t know where and,” he licks his lips, “I don’t know when. I just know that everything you told me, somehow I already knew. Like I know you without…knowing you. Like one day I’ll wake up and all will be revealed.”
It is strange that he thinks he knows me. Maybe I remind him of a past lover. Sometimes I think I get that same feeling about him. But the last thing I want is for everything to be revealed.
He leans in closer, his eyes searching mine, the faint lights from the city looking like fireflies in the darkness. “I am drawn to you Dahlia, like a bat to a flame.”
“You mean moth to a flame,” I correct him, trying not to smile.
He gives me a wicked grin. “I prefer bats. Moths don’t have teeth. I like things to have a little bite to them.”
Then his smile fades and he suddenly kisses me again. There are no tears to taste this time, instead it is a deep and searing kiss that I feel in my bones, a kiss that rewrites both the past and future, and the only thing certain is the present. His lips are soft but firm like the ripest fruit, and there is a kind of soft desperation in him that touches something raw and aching inside me.