We were absolutely not going to see eye to eye about it.
The lights in the theater went down. I still wasn’t sure what they were playing.
“It would make me feel much better about things if you’d feed until you were full. It would certainly win you bonus points.”
He stared at me for a long second. “Thought we weren’t competing.”
“You said you were.”
He was quiet for a second as the credits to a movie I’d seen advertised once began. It was a comedy, an older one from a few years earlier. I’d never seen it.
“We’re in public.”
I smirked. “If anyone came in, they’d just think you were giving me a heck of a hickey.”
He laughed. It was an actual joyful sound.So amazing to hear a vampire do that.I loved the moment.
“You play dirty, Maci.”
I did. That was for certain. “I don’t want to feel your hunger overtake me when it gets too bad. Do this for me, won’t you?”
Tanner bent over toward the screen. “Guess this is our version of making out in public.”
It really was.
Nine
Itried to watch the movie, I really did. But soon my eyes closed, so I just felt what his mouth did to my neck and what the connection between us was making surge through my body. I squirmed in my chair, and he placed a hand on my knee, stopping me. Tanner didn’t want me to move and right then it worked for me to do what he wanted.
Well, it more than worked.Still, I was absolutely not watching the movie.
After a few minutes, he pulled away from my neck, licking the wound closed. He was full. I could feel it in my bones in that way I just could these days.
“Thank you, Maci.” He whispered in my ear. “I don’t think I’ve felt this good since I first rose. I didn’t know I could. So what can I do for you? How can I make you feel good?”
I had to draw the line at actually doing anything publicly. “We’re a little in view for me to do much of anything right now. You sucking on my neck was one thing, but the two of us going at it in the seats seems like a bad cliché I’ll live to regret in no short amount of time.”
He smirked at me, the movie screen illuminating his face in colors and shadows as the film progressed. Tanner had always been so gorgeous, and nothing had changed in that regard. The lines of his face were a little bit hardened, his shoulders broadened. Like Griffin and Caesar, he was more a predator and less the teenage guy I’d fallen in love with all those months and months ago.
“Understood.”
Out of all of them, he seemed the most human when I was around him, yet he was the one who’d lost his voice. He asked me to remember their birthdays, and he’d been the one to hold the gun to his head the longest. For precious seconds, I’d wondered if he considered ending it all before he could become the person in front of me.
What does any of it mean?I didn’t have a fucking clue.
“What does it feel like when you can’t talk? Why does that happen?”
Tanner frowned. “You don’t want to watch the movie?”
“I’ve missed the beginning. I can try to focus on it, if you want me to.” We were enough alone or maybe I was adjusting to the thought, so it wasn’t like we were being bad theatergoers. He’d bought out the whole place, which had to be because he didn’t want to be seen there, maybe coupled with the idea that he didn’t want to go on some kind of killing rampage that ended the lives of every human.
Much as I might be comfortable with the three vampires in my life, I couldn’t forget who and what they were.
Some humans never returned home because a vampire ended their life and then disposed of their body.How many missing persons cases are vampire related?
“It is like there are two parts of me that make up a single entity that ultimately is me. I don’t know if all vampires can feel their dual nature the way I can, but for me, it’s as though I have the part of me that can talk to you, talk to others, communicate with humans and the rest of the world, and the part of me that is purely different. It is only interested in feeding, in killing, and not much else, actually. While the part of me that can communicate observed things, made note of life, the other part of me just won. I didn’t have balance; I had control, and then I smelled you. Suddenly, the part of me that lay dormant awakened and wanted out. But it’s like this part of me slides away sometimes. It’s not painful or difficult, just more primal.”
He clearly couldn’t have gone too far because he’d been able to pair a phone, and he certainly seemed to have a grasp on what happened. I’d never understand it, and that was fine.