Velvet (39 page)

“Tommie, I’m really sorry. About your family.”

He smiled a sad half smile. “I am, too. For you.”

My eyes were watering so I turned to the sink and continued washing plates. He passed behind me and went back to the laundry room. I followed him a minute later, since weren’t that many dishes to clean. Tommie was hard at work on the water heater, concentrating on the pipes. He looked up when I walked in.

“You need anything else?” I asked.

He stood up slowly, his eyes fluttering from me to the water heater and back. He cleared his throat. “Y’know, I may be forward by asking this, but I honest to God haven’t touched anyone since my parents and Jake died. I’ve forgotten…” He laughed nervously, but it was a sad sound. “I’ve forgotten what it feels like. Could—that is, would you mind if I hugged you?”

A part of me thought the whole situation was absurd, but the larger part of me knew what he was talking about. I’d felt this exact way after my mom died. I nodded and he took a step forward. Slowly, he raised his arms, placing them gently around my shoulders like I’d break. He let out a breath and let the weight of his arms pull me closer, resting his cheek lightly on top of my head. I hugged him back because I knew the price of a hug when there was no one you could depend on to hug you freely. I hugged him back because he wanted to hug me. I hugged him back because it felt good.

He pulled back a little and I looked up at him to say something dumb and sympathetic, but then his lips were on mine and I was dizzy and confused and we just stood like that for a moment, barely touching. He pulled away.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and cleared his throat. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

“You didn’t mean to kiss me?” I asked, still in shock.

“No. Well, I mean, I definitely wanted to, I just didn’t mean to actually do it.”

But he was still holding on to me. And I was still holding on to him.

He looked at me again, and for some reason, I didn’t look away. The moment became heavy, and he leaned down once more.

And once again, I didn’t stop him.

He pulled me gently against him and I returned the kiss very, very slowly. Far away, I could hear my phone ringing. I ran my hands up his back, feeling the rippling muscles that came from hard labor, from real work, and he kissed me again and backed me up against the wall and held me pinned there with his body and I didn’t mind because this was what I wanted; this was what I’d always wanted. My phone stopped ringing.

He picked me up, wrapped my legs around his waist, and we crashed back against the wall and his lips were on my neck, my jaw, my mouth. Somehow, we were walking and we were kissing and he set me on the couch and leaned down over me, and my nerves were on fire and I was unbuttoning his shirt and
damn
he looked good and I wondered if there’d ever been a time I’d ever wanted anything else and then I stopped wondering because his hands were sliding under my shirt and lifting it over my head and it felt so nice to have my skin pressed against his skin and I was glad I’d worn a cute bra today. Then his lips were skimming down my throat and chest and stomach and buttons were being unbuttoned and zippers unzipped and I was happy because I’d been waiting for this, for him, and here we were. My jeans were beginning to slide slowly down my hips and I whispered
“Adrian”
against his lips. There was a small breath of frigid air and the
click
of the front door opening, which I couldn’t spare any brainpower to think about, but a voice was calling my name, which caught my attention enough that I opened my eyes.

And there was Adrian, standing in the open front door.

Oh. Shit.

One moment Tommie was above me, the next moment he was gone, and there was the sound of something very solid hitting the utility van outside. I blinked, and looked down at myself. My shirt was gone and my jeans were halfway off.

There was another metallic
thunk
, and muffled shouting.

I shoved my jeans back on, threw my shirt over my head and ran to the doorway. Just as I stepped outside, a hand—not Adrian’s, because I could see Adrian picking himself off the ground ten feet in front of me—clamped over my mouth and I screamed. Before I could figure out what the hell was going on, Tommie threw me over his shoulder and dragged me into the trees, his shoulder biting into my stomach with each step. Moments later, we were in a clearing and I was thrown to the ground, my knees crunching in the snow, and then jerked back with a fist wrapped in my hair. Adrian was two seconds behind us and stopped abruptly. We all stood very still.

“You can’t kill her,” I heard Adrian call from the edge of the clearing, still hidden in the shadows of the trees. “It’s forbidden.”

“True,” Tommie said in a friendly sort of way. “But
killing
her isn’t what I had in mind.”

He was pulling so tightly on my hair I was afraid it would rip right out of my head while my mind was still trying to figure out
what the fuck was going on.

“I will kill you if you hurt her.”

“You need to work on your technique, son—couldn’t even seduce one little human girl. I show up and give her everything she wants—an older, tragic man. She couldn’t keep her hands off me.”

I let a hard breath escape as it finally dawned on me just exactly who Tommie was.

“You didn’t try very hard to make her fall in love with you—” he said, then paused, considering Adrian. A slow smile spread over his face. “Which makes me think you don’t know who she is, yet.”

Adrian didn’t respond for a long moment. “Whatever plans you have for Caitlin, they are done. She is under my protection.”

“Before you go all white knight, let’s talk.”

“I’m not interested in talking. Let her go.”

Tommie suddenly lifted my arms into the air behind my back, pushing my face into my knees and I screamed because if he pulled another fraction of an inch, things in my shoulders would start tearing.

“Don’t make me rip her arm off,” he said pleasantly. “She’ll be fine without an arm, for my purposes. And I know how thirsty you are.”

“Caitlin, stay calm,” I heard Adrian call to me. “He’s feeding off your fear. Don’t give him more than you have to.”

Great, not only was I scared shitless, I was feeding the enemy. And if Tommie—or whatever his real name was—tore my arm off, I would, y’know, bleed profusely. And Adrian was thirsty.

Which meant if the injury didn’t kill me, Adrian probably would.

“Son,” Tommie tried again. “Let’s talk.”

“I’m not your son,” Adrian replied quietly, but I could hear the rage underneath his self-control.

“No?” Tommie asked, wrenching my arms until I screamed.

“Stop!” Adrian yelled, panicked. “Just—what do you want?”

Immediately, Tommie lowered my arms to a bearable height and I sucked in huge gulps of air.

“So you do have manners; I’m so glad your sister was able to teach you something.”

Even though my view was limited to my knees, I could just make out Adrian’s shoes moving closer in my peripheral vision. “You’re not worried the Council will destroy you for this?”

“Not really.” He sounded almost amused. “The Council has failed repeatedly at stopping me.”

The Council.

Mariana, Dominic, Julian—where was Julian? New York, where he always was. Where was Adrian’s sister? Couldn’t they feel what was happening? Why was Adrian alone?

“There’s a lot you don’t know, son. There’s so much that they’ve kept from you.”

“I am the product of your psychological rape, but I will never be your son,” Adrian replied calmly. “You are incapable of love—you can’t even feed off it.”

The way he said it was strange, slow and deliberate, like he trying to tell me something. But he took a step toward us and I couldn’t think about it because Adrian’s dad dug his fingers into my arm like a vise and I screamed.

Tommie was silent a moment. “Then tell me why they haven’t told you who she is. Tell me why she wasn’t better guarded.”

Adrian didn’t reply.

“Tell me,” he murmured, “why they assigned a boy to guard this girl’s life. They were hoping you would fail. They were
hoping
I would kill her—because
they know what she is
.”

“You’re lying.”

Tommie laughed, sounding genuinely amused. “Your Council is so moral, so predictable. If I got her pregnant, if she gave birth to another vampire bastard and died in the process, it would be so convenient for them. Adrian—you were intended to let her die.”

Tommie suddenly let go of my arms. I fell forward with a cry of pain, the blood draining back down into my limbs. He bent down, wrapped his arm gently around my waist, and pulled me up, holding me pinned against him.

“She could love you,” he said, staring furiously at Adrian. “You know how to make that happen.” He tilted my head back and breathed in the scent of my neck. “But if you don’t want her—”

Adrian stepped forward. “I want her.”

I didn’t understand what was happening anymore. I had no clue what was going on.

“Take her, then,” he said, lips murmuring over my neck. “If you want her.”

My head was still tilted back, but out of the corner of my eyes, I watched as Adrian walked slowly in our direction; the silver of his eyes rivaling the stars.

He stopped a foot away as his father kept a tight grip on my waist. Adrian reached out and touched my cheek, his irises burning like suns. I searched his face desperately, looking for a sign, a clue as to what was really going on, what I was supposed to
do
.

Staring me straight in the eye, he was in compulsion mode, I could tell. Jaw set in a hard line, he whispered, “Kiss me.”

Shit, he was really doing it—he was really
forcing
me to do this. Immediately, despite the situation, despite everything, I strained forward, unable to resist his command.

With a delighted laugh his father let me go and I rushed at Adrian, crushed my mouth against his as he pressed his warm body against mine in the cold, dead night, holding me tighter than he’d ever held me before, tangling his hands in my hair, completely unrestrained, and then—

“Stop,” he ordered, and I froze, because I had to. He slid his lips near my ear and whispered, almost too low for me to hear, “
I’m so sorry.
”

But as soon as he said it, he kept moving, lips gliding down my jaw, my throat, across my shoulder, my arm, finally pressing a kiss against my wrist. I winced involuntarily because my arms were a mass of fresh bruises. He held my hand in both of his and turned it, examining my skin in the moonlight.

“She’s bruised,” he said lightly, like he was commenting on a bad piece of fruit. He looked up calmly at Tommie.

And then Adrian punched his father in the face.

His head snapped back, unprepared for the blow. Before I could process this bizarre turn of events, Adrian swung, kicking his father in the face with his motorcycle boot with a sickening crunch.

Blood sprayed everywhere as Tommie shook his head. Recovering quickly, he feinted, tackling Adrian to the ground. They rolled halfway across the clearing, kicking, cursing, until Tommie lifted Adrian by the shirt and slammed his head back against a tree stump with a sound that made me gag. I was frozen in place, still in shock, or maybe Adrian’s command was keeping me from moving, I wasn’t sure. There was a sudden, intense flash of light coming from Adrian’s eyes—somehow he’d pinned Tommie. But the man only laughed.

And with that he blasted Adrian twenty feet into the air, though
how
I couldn’t see. Before Adrian could hit the ground, Tommie made a pushing motion with his hands and smashed Adrian into a tree with a blast of air. He crashed against the trunk, fell to a heap on the ground, and lay still. Tommie advanced slowly, and I knew that unless I did something, Adrian was about to die. I searched the grass around me desperately. Where was a rock when you needed one? No rocks. No rocks?

Shit.

Finding my legs again (maybe compulsions didn’t work once he was unconscious?), I ran toward Tommie and screamed, “I want to go with you!”

Adrian’s father looked up. I knew he could feel my fear, absorb it, but I also knew he could tell I was being honest—at least to a degree. If going with him meant saving Adrian’s life, then yes, I wanted to go with him.

Out of the corner of my eye, Adrian was still. I wasn’t sure if he’d actually passed out or if he was acting. Either way, I was not going to lose him. Not like this.

“Adrian,” Tommie called. “It appears your human doesn’t want you.” He turned his back on his son and smiled. “But she’s going to have to convince me.”

I was kind of amazed at myself in that moment. Amazed that I wasn’t crying. Amazed that I wasn’t shaking. Honestly, I was amazed that I was even standing.

I put my hand on his neck and whispered, “Come here.” He searched my eyes, was satisfied with whatever he saw there, and inclined his face so I could reach him. I closed my eyes. I was calm. I could do this. Adrian was going to die; I could do this.

I brushed my lips against the corner of his mouth.

And then I stabbed him.

I pulled the pencil out of his neck and stabbed him again. I put every ounce of terrified adrenaline I had into it, pushing it halfway through his throat. I’d felt the pencil poking me in the back of the neck where I’d stuck it in my hair after I got out of the shower, as Tommie carried me through the trees. Now, blood dribbled and then spurted from the wounds, and I’d bet money I’d hit an artery.

Furious, he slapped me. I flew three feet and crumpled to the ground, the world going in and out of focus as I struggled to remain conscious.

Gasping in air, I looked up and saw that Adrian, far from being knocked out, had hooked his fingernails into the punctures I’d made in his father’s neck. I looked down again just as he jerked his hand, but I couldn’t stop myself from hearing the skin rip away in a flopping, juicy mass. Terror made me open my eyes again and watch. Neck half
gone
, his father still managed to grab Adrian by the throat and lift him off the ground.