The Blood of Angels: Divine Vampires (7 page)

“No.” His mouth moves over my neck, light kisses, sending shivers through me. “But I want you.”

“Again?” I perk up at the thought.

“Always.” He turns me around to kiss me, pressing me against the refrigerator, the air cold on my back and behind, but his hands roam, heating me up.

“Who was that?” I dare to ask as his mouth moves toward my ear, nuzzling me there. “On the phone?”

“My friend, Char.” He sighs and I know I’ve reminded him of something he doesn’t want to think about.

“What did she want?” I feel something tight in my chest, something that burns, and try to ignore it.

“She’s a he.” Zeph smiles, looking at me in the pale light of the fridge. “He wants me to do something for him tomorrow. I won’t be long, I promise.”

“You have to leave?” The painful thought of being separated from him overrides the sting of my mistaken belief that Char was a woman calling my Zeph in the middle of the night.

“Maybe he can come here.” Zeph frowns. “Maybe. We’ll see.”

“It must be important, if he was calling you so late?”

“I told you, I don’t sleep.” He takes the cream cheese out of my hands and puts it back in the fridge.

“Are you mad at me?”

“No, little one.” Zeph puts his arms around me as he swings the fridge closed. “I’m not mad at you.”

“But you
are
mad?” I tilt my head and look at him, trying to discern his mood.

“No, I just…” His gaze moves downward, as if he’s just noticed how naked I am. I can almost see his thoughts flit over his face, his eyes growing hungry at the sight of me. If that wasn’t enough proof, the boxers he’d thrown on are tenting in the front. It makes me smile.

“Just what?” I prompt, snaking my arms around his neck.

“I only have so much time with you,” he says, bending his head to nip at my bare shoulder, making me close my eyes and tilt my head to give him better access. “And I want to spend as much of it as we can without clothes.”

“Well then we’d better get these off you,” I whisper, yanking at the waistband of his boxers and sinking to my knees on the kitchen floor.

I want to see if he likes my mouth as much as I like his.

And I’m not disappointed.

If the sounds he makes when I take his cock between my lips are any indication, he might even like it more!

“Good morning.” Zeph brushes a soft, cool kiss against my forehead as my eyes flutter open.

“I fell asleep.”

At first I’m not sure what’s real. I’ve heard about dreams but I’ve never had one before. In the darkness, with my eyes closed, there’s Zeph, his hands and mouth and tongue, his presence filling every part of me. It’s all sweetness and heat and I’m lost in it.

And when I open my eyes, it’s the same.

He’s there, holding me in his arms, looking down at me like he’s just discovered the best surprise. We’re in his bed and I remember the night before. The memory comes in like the slow dawning of the day, spreading through me with a warmth and thrill I never knew possible.

“What time is it?” I ask, my chest suddenly filling with a cold dread.

Please don’t let it be time to go yet.

“Morning.” He kisses my cheek, his lips trailing over my jaw. “Six or seven, I’d say. I’ve been waiting hours to do this…”

“Oh I hate sleep!” I sigh, putting my arms around his neck, tilting my head back for him. “It steals so much time.”

“You’re beautiful when you’re sleeping.” He lifts his face to gaze at mine, so much emotion in his eyes it almost hurts to look. “And you’re beautiful when you’re awake.”

“It’s Christmas,” I say, remembering with a smile. The thought thrills me. “Merry Christmas.”

For the first time since I became human, I wonder what Alex is doing. Probably lazing on a beach somewhere in Australia. Fairies can’t really feel the temperature change extremes, but we do love the brightness of the sun. The brighter the better.

“I’m supposed to go to Maya’s tonight for dinner, but I’ll call her and cancel so we can spend the whole day together.” Zeph’s mouth has reached my collarbone and he makes circles with his tongue in the hollow of my throat.

“Dinner?” My stomach rumbles and I sit up on my elbows.

“You have a voracious appetite.” He chuckles, tracing an invisible line down toward my navel with his tongue.

“For everything.” I nod, moaning softly when he takes a detour to my left breast, sucking a pink-tipped nipple into his mouth. “Is that bad?”

“No.” He pauses to look up at me, lips parted, eyes dancing.

“Wait…” I fully sit now, frowning down at him. His head rests in my lap, where the sheet is pooled, and he looks up at me. “Who is Maya to you?”

That feeling I’d experienced the night before when his friend, Char, called, burns through my chest. I don’t understand it. It came up when I thought Char was some woman calling my Zeph in the middle of the night. Now, remembering his fondness for Maya, that feeling is back.

“Maya?” He blinks, surprised. “She’s… she’s just… someone I care about.”

“Care about how?” My eyes narrow and I feel that unfamiliar emotion rising, raging its way like wildfire through my middle. It makes my throat constrict. “As a friend?
Just
a friend?”

“Yes, jealous girl,” Zeph says, smiling fully now, reaching up to touch my cheek.
“Just
a friend.”

“Jealousy…” I let out a pent up breath. “Is that what this is? Why do I feel jealous?”

“Yes.” He nods. “You feel jealous because you thought Maya was a threat. You thought she might take something that belongs to you. But you don’t have to worry, little one. I belong to you.”

“You belong to me?” I trace my finger along his jaw, frowning.

It isn’t true, of course, but I wish it was. I want it to be true, more than anything. He’d called me “mine,” over and over again the night before, as if saying it might make it true. If I could have my Christmas wish again, it would be more than just asking to be human for a day. I’d ask
The Maker
if I could be human forever. For the rest of a human existence with Zeph, however long that might be. Maybe next Christmas, I think, feeling hopeful for a moment.

But I know it’s a silly dream. This day, this twenty-four hours, is more than
The Maker
usually grants any fairy. A wish for a whole lifetime would never be granted.

“I can hear your stomach growling.” He presses his cheek against my navel.

“I’m hungry again,” I confess. That incessant rumbling—it’s so cyclical and persistent! “I think we should go to Maya’s for dinner. It will keep you from having to feed me again.”

“Are you sure?” He laughs, wrapping his arms around my waist and kissing my navel, flicking at it with his tongue, sending goose bumps up and down my arms. I like it. A lot.

“We have until midnight,” I remind him, trying to make it sound like all the time in the world. I wish it felt that way.

“We’d better take advantage of every minute then.” He’s nibbling on my belly, sending little waves of pleasure through my middle.

“Can we have breakfast first?” I ask as my stomach protests again. “I wonder, can you combine food and sex?”

“Your two favorite things.” Zeph grins, sitting up and grabbing a pair of boxers off the night stand. I vaguely remember tossing them there last night after I’d taken them off him. Again. For the fourth time.

“Aside from you,” I reply, grabbing his shirt off the night table lamp. I’d been wearing it the night before and I slip it on now, watching him pull on his boxers. He is a fine specimen of a man, long and lean and chiseled in all the right places. “I still can’t decide which I like better.”

“Wait until you try bacon.” He pauses in the doorway, glancing back at me. “You coming?”

“Soon, I hope.” I hop out of bed, giggling, and follow him down the hallway to the kitchen.

Zeph starts pulling things out of the refrigerator—eggs and bacon and, yuck, even milk.

I watch, standing in front of the open refrigerator with a little plastic bin of blueberries in my hand, while he starts cooking at the stove. I eat the berries one at a time, contemplating the rest of the food. There isn’t much, honestly. Most of it we’d purchased the night before.

“Mmm is that bacon?” I ask, a juicy, intoxicating smell filling the kitchen as Zeph stirs little strips of meat in a pan.

“Mmm hmm.” He’s busy cracking eggs into another pan.

“Hm, what’s this?” I lean in to take a carafe out of the refrigerator, tucked away in the back. It had been hidden by the big gallon of milk. I hold up the red liquid, looking at it in the early morning light. “Tomato juice?”

I remember seeing cans of the stuff at the store with big, juicy ripe tomatoes on the side. I like tomatoes—especially those little grape-sized ones dipped in hummus, like we’d had the night before. I lift the carafe to my lips, tipping it up, the thick, red liquid making its way slowly toward my mouth.

“Don’t drink that!” Zeph grabs the glass container out of my hand, brows drawn together. He puts it on the counter, pushing it to the back.

“Why, what is it?” I frown, taking a step toward the enticing stuff. His denial has made me even more curious—and hungry. “I want to try it!”

“No, Sam.” He takes my shoulders, stepping between me and the carafe on the counter. “That’s… not for humans.”

“What?” I look back at him, puzzled, as he turns me around and steers me toward the kitchen table. “Who is it for?”

He sits me down in one of the kitchen chairs with a deep sigh. I look up at him, waiting for an answer, but he doesn’t say anything. He looks like he’s struggling, trying to find the words.

“Zeph?” I try to catch his eye—he’s looking at a spot on the kitchen tile, not at me—prompting him again. “If it isn’t for humans, then… who… who is it for?”

He squats down, taking my hands in his, and says softly, “…me.”

“You?” I blink in surprise. “But you said it wasn’t for… humans…”

He nods slowly, watching, waiting for my reaction.

“Zeph, who are you?” I whisper. It’s a question I’ve asked him before, and I’ve never received an answer. But I realize, now, I’ve been asking the wrong question.
“What
are you?”

“I’m not human.” He looks down at our hands, joined together. “I guess… here, in this world… they call me a vampire.”

I stare at him in disbelief for a moment and then, I can’t help it, I throw back my head and laugh.

“You can’t be a vampire!” I exclaim, feeling relieved. “Vampires don’t exist.”

“Neither do fairies,” Zeph reminds me softly.

I watch him as he goes back over to the stove to stir around the bacon and tend to the eggs, wondering if he can possibly be serious. I’ve been a fairy since—well, forever. Since the beginning of the beginning. I know everything there is to know about human existence, and I’ve never once come across the mythical “vampire.”

“But… Zeph…” I get up and go over to him, standing at the stove. “Vampires, they can’t go out in the sunlight. And they drink… blood…”

I stare at the bottle on the counter, at the thick red liquid still clinging to the side.

“This is blood?” I whisper, reaching out to pick it up, incredulous.

Zeph just nods, taking it from me and putting it back on the counter.

“You know all those things people believe about fairies that aren’t true?” he asks as he takes out a plate and flips two cooked eggs onto it with a spatula.

Of course I do. I’ve rolled my eyes about those misconceptions and joked with Alex about them forever. Literally, forever. From glowing, mean little sprites to magical forests to pixie dust, the strange ideas about fairies that abound are dizzying in number, and just ridiculous. And then I realize what Zeph is trying to tell me.

“There are a lot of things people believe about vampires that aren’t true,” he explains, putting bacon onto the plate with the eggs and turning down the flame.

I can’t believe I’m entertaining the idea, but suddenly, things make more sense. The way he can read minds. How he could see me, when I was fey. The carafe of blood in the refrigerator.

But I have to deal with my own misconceptions now.

“Sunlight doesn’t kill… vampires?” I ask, following him—and the smell of bacon—to the table, where he puts down my plate, along with a fork and a napkin.

“It can make me tired, if I haven’t fed…” he says, going over to the refrigerator and taking out another carafe, this one filled with orange juice. “But no, nothing can kill me. I’m immortal, Sam. Like you.”

He pours me a glass and brings it to the table. I taste it, tangy and sweet, licking my lips as I look up at him.

“If you’re a vampire, where are your fangs?” I challenge, cocking my head at him.

Zeph leans closer, opening his mouth slightly. One moment, he’s smiling, showing a row of straight, white teeth, and the next, there are two very sharp fangs. They appear behind his canines, almost like a snake.

“Oh, those look sharp.” I reach out without thinking, touching one. “Ouch!”

It’s the first time I’ve seen my own, human blood. It wells up on the tip of my finger, a little bead of red. I stare at it, incredulous, as Zeph takes my finger and draws it into his mouth, sucking gently. The motion makes me light-headed with lust. So does the darkening look of hunger in his eyes.

“Hey!” I pull my hand away, alarmed. “Am I going to turn into a vampire now?”

“It’s not that easy.” He chuckles, going over to the stove and making himself a plate of eggs and bacon.

“You can’t be a vampire!” I say, taking a bite of my eggs. They’re strange, a taste I can’t describe, but I like them. “I’ve seen you eat food!”

“We can eat food.” Zeph puts his plate on the table. “We just don’t need it, like humans do.”

“Do you taste it?” I wonder aloud, taking a bite of bacon. Taste is something that, as a fairy, I’ve never experienced before. “Oh my heavens, bacon! I want more bacon!”

“Yes, we taste it, just like you do.” He smiles, bringing more bacon to me on a little plate. He’s also carrying a little glass of blood.

“How does blood taste?” I ask, watching as he drinks. I can’t help my curiosity, even if I’m a little appalled at the thought.

“You won’t even drink what comes out of a cow’s udder,” he reminds me with a scarlet smile. “You want to drink blood?”

I shake my head, content with my bacon and orange juice. Eggs are all right, but orange juice is yummy and bacon is simply divine.

“Is that why you could see me?” I ask. “When I was fey?”

“Yes.” He nods. He’s eating bacon too. But he’s not drinking orange juice.

“But you don’t see all of us?”

“No.” He shrugs. “In truth, I’ve seen very few of you. Just the fey who are on the margins.”

“On the margins?” I frown, chewing thoughtfully. “What does that mean?”

“The curious,” he says, smiling slightly. “The questioning. The… doubtful.”

“Oh.” I blink in surprise. “Is that what I am?”

Of course, I know I am. Alex would recognize me in those words instantly. Alex is none of those things, but me… I am overly curious. Always questioning. Even doubtful.

“You are… something else.” He leans back in his chair, looking at me, and there’s something in his eyes that hasn’t been there before. Something unveiled. Maybe it’s just relief. There’s an honesty, a frankness about him now. I like it. But there’s something else, too, something that’s been there all along.