Mira (11 page)

           
Mira blushed.
 
“I suppose a little.”
 
Her heart started racing a bit.
 
Would he be angry if he knew she had planned it that way?
 
    
She was trying to read his face, but the shadows obscured any clue to his mood.
 
“Why do you always keep it so dark?”

           
Rillan looked around.
 
“I don’t need light to see the way you do.
 
Darkness doesn’t bother me.”

           
Mira nodded.
 
She knew that.
 
“Well,” she started uncertainly.

           
“Are you truly in such a hurry,” he asked.
 
He wasn’t sure how to take this.

           
“Not a hurry exactly, just…
 
I don’t know.”
 
Her eyes fell on the door to the shaft again.
 

           
Rillan watched Mira do her best to look everywhere else.
 
You simply don’t belong down here, beautiful,
he thought sadly.
 
“Mira,” he asked seriously.
 
“Why are you here?”

           
She looked up at him in confusion.
 
“Because you said—“

           
“No,” he interrupted.
 
“Why did you choose to be a sacrifice?
 
Why did you choose this life?”

           
Mira stared at the shadowy figure in front of the fireplace.
 
She didn’t want to answer that. There were too many sad memories there. “Does it matter?”

           
“Yes,” he responded in an authoritative tone that bit into her.
 
“I need to know why you chose this.”

           
A long pause filled the space between them, while she tried to find a way around the question.
 
There was no point in lying.
 
The only reason she didn’t want to talk about it was because she didn’t like talking about it.
 
She didn’t think it made a difference.
 
“You killed the man who killed my father.”

           
Rillan wasn’t sure he wanted to know who or when.
 
If she felt like she owed him something, that could explain a lot.
 
“I do my assignments.
 
I didn’t kill anyone
for you,
Mira.”

           
She shook her head.
 
“I never said that.
 
I didn’t have anyone left after he died.
 
I volunteered for this because it gave me a purpose.”

           
“Purpose,” he echoed quietly, and then turned back toward the fire.
 
He could certainly understand that.
 
“Far be it for me to impede someone in their purpose.
 
Take your clothes off Mira.”

           
He didn’t watch. He listened, as soft swishing sounds told him that she was complying with his order.
 
Rillan had been longing to take her again since that first night.
 
It felt like ages since any woman responded to him the way that she did.
 
Mira found him terrifying when he turned.
 
He had no delusions about that.
 
She forced herself to bottle the fear well enough that she responded to his touch with something other than fear.
 
She would never know how much that meant to him.
 
When the room went silent except for the crackling noise of the fire, Rillan finally turned around.

           
Mira had her eyes closed. She was waiting for him to descend upon her, fangs protruding from a mouth too large for his face and black coal eyes sunk deep into shadowed sockets.
 
The image in her mind started her heart racing and she waited.
 

           
Rillan stepped up to her.
 
Mira’s chest was expanding and contracting with labored breaths and he watched her breasts rise and fall with the effort.
 
He could guess what she was thinking.
 
Leaning in close to her, he breathed in the scent of her hair, his breath on her cheek making her flinch.
 
She hadn’t realized that he was so close.

           
Mira’s heart pounded in her ears.
 
The vision in her mind grew progressively worse.
 
She imagined his thin pale lips curled back from his fangs, his ears set farther back on his head and his skin almost translucent white pulled tight over his sharply angled cheeks and jaw.
 
His voice startled her.

           
“I know that your racing pulse has nothing to do with wanting me right now,” he said gently.
 
He reached up and stroked her cheek.
 
“In truth, I’m no better than your teachers.
 
I gave you a foul impression of me.”
 
He leaned down and lifted a handful of hair to his face.
 
“I’m sorry.
 
It doesn’t have to be like that.
 
I’ve rarely done this Mira, but I’ll give you a choice.”

           
Mira’s brow had furrowed, and she appeared confused, her eyes still squeezed shut.
 

           
“Look at me.
 
I haven’t changed.”

           
She opened her eyes and found that he was only inches from her.
 
Rillan’s dark blue eyes bored into hers.
 
Mira almost forgot that she was naked until his gaze shifted.
 
She blushed a deep red that only worsened as he smiled.
 
“What,” she asked, as she cleared her throat, desperately wanting something to cool her heated embarrassment.

           
Rillan’s eyes met hers again, and he reached up to cup one breast in a cold calloused hand.
 
Mira shivered as his frozen digits closed around her soft mound and gently squeezed.
 
He circled her nipple with his thumb and licked his lips, anticipating the feel of the firm nub in his mouth.
 

           
“In the past,” he said, and his eyes dropped to the breast he was fondling, “most of the girls who have come here have wanted as little contact with me as possible.
 
So I waited as long as I could, before I went to them.
 
You, however, seem to be capable of dealing with me better than the others have been.
 
So I give you the choice.
 
I need the same amount of blood no matter when I take it.
 
I can either come to you and drain you near death once and a while, or I can come to you and take small amounts more often.
 
You wouldn’t feel the kind of pain and sickness as you did before, but you would have to lie with me more frequently.”
 
As he finished the suggestion, his eyes nervously returned to hers.
 
He had never wanted to read anyone’s thoughts before.
 
She was so strange to him.
 

           
“I don’t understand why anyone would choose pain and sickness, over time with you.”
 
Mira felt his thumb and finger pinch her nipple.
 
This time her racing heartbeat had nothing to do with fear.
 
Mira momentarily lost track of what she had intended to say.
 
“Uh,” she looked into his dark blue eyes. “How often would you need to…” Mira’s voice trailed off as his other chilled hand began to slide along her hip.
 
He stepped closer, bringing his mouth so near hers that she could feel his breath on her lips.

           
Rillan smiled as a little whimper involuntarily escaped her mouth.
 
He neglected to tell her that he had been too annoyed with most of the other girls to bother with little pleasantries like this.
 
They were all so frightened of him that it made him feel as though he was raping them.
 
With the others, more often than not, he took their blood and left their bodies alone.
 
He couldn’t help himself with Mira though.
 
He almost felt alive when his touch was able to cause her such obvious pleasure.

           
Rillan nudged her nose with his own, repositioning her face so that he could kiss her, but he only teased her with his lips, coming close and not quite touching her.
 
To his delight, Mira’s hands snaked up into his hair, stopping his game and bringing his lips to hers.
 
She felt the strange cold of his skin as her lips pressed against his.
 
Heat flooded into his body from hers.
 
Rillan pressed his tongue along her lips, and she parted them, allowing him to taste her mouth.

           
He rolled her nipple between his thumb and finger, and a soft moan bled into his mouth, stopping the kiss.
 
Rillan lifted his head and looked down into her eyes, answering her nearly forgotten question.
 
“The more often I feed the less I need to take and the less sick you will feel from the experience.
 
I leave the choice of timing to you.
 
Come to me when you’re willing.
 
But know that if you don’t come to me, I will eventually come find you.”

           
Mira nodded, not really caring at this point what the rules were.
 
She only wanted him to keep touching her.
 
She had never known anything like this in her life, and she wished that this part would never end, as much as she hoped the feeding would never come.
 
Is his touch worth the price of it?

           
Her obvious compliance only confused Rillan.
 
He wasn’t sure if she was insane, masochistic, or so empathetic that it didn’t matter.
 
He couldn’t make himself believe the later.
 
In truth, in this moment he didn’t care so much about the why.
 
He hadn’t been with a compliant woman in so long; whatever her reasons were, they were good enough for the now.
 
Besides, the conversation would serve as a decent reason to spend time with her later.

           
Cold hands slid across Mira’s heated skin, and goose bumps broke out along her flesh.
 
Rillan leaned in to her and closed his eyes.
 
Her hands were on his shoulders, and he pulled her body against his own, reveling in the warmth of her, even through his clothes.
 
Rillan stroked down her back.
 
His fingers danced over the goose bumps, as Mira shivered.
 
Her breath was coming in heavy waves, and her little hands had fisted in his shirt.
 
When he looked to her face again her eyes were closed, and her head had lulled back across her shoulder, exposing the pale line of her neck to him.

           
Everything in existence momentarily melted away.
 
Rillan leaned down and kissed her neck, tasting her skin and taking in the scent of her arousal.
 
A soft seductive beating just beneath the surface tantalized him.
 
Rillan felt the hunger roll in his stomach and surge through his dead body, as certainly as he felt her heartbeat pounding in her chest pressed against his.
 
Before he could lose his control he pushed her away.

           
Rillan paced across the room.
 
Mira’s look of disappointed confusion was not lost on him as he stood near the fire.
 
He laughed, almost manic as he stared into the flames eating away at the wood in the fireplace.
 

           
“Did I do something wrong,” she asked timidly.

           
“No,” he growled.
 
“Get into the bed Mira.”
 
He could hear her moving to comply with the overly harsh demand.

           
Rillan didn’t even look up at her.
 
He knew full well that his eyes would frighten her.
 
He was about to lose the fight with his hunger.
 
He had waited too long.
 
This one deserves better,
his mind chanted.
 
“Close your eyes Mira,” he said almost too softly for her to hear.
 
“Don’t open them.”

           
“Aren’t you going to,” she paused, too sweet and innocent to say what she was thinking.
 
“I mean before…”

           
If Rillan didn’t already feel guilty about everything he would have started to now.
 
She actually wanted him to make love to her.
 
He wanted so badly to look into her eyes, but he couldn’t allow himself to frighten her any more than he already had.
 
“I’m too hungry right now Mira.
 
Touching you only makes it worse.
 
After the feeding’s done, I’ll pleasure you.”
 
My sweet one,
he added in his mind.