As I go up the stairs to the second floor of Bran Duval’s house, it feels like my heart is lodged in my throat. I’m sure he can hear my rapid pulse. I’m sure he thinks it’s hilarious.
I keep going.
When I reach the second-floor landing, I follow the sound of running water and end up in Bran’s bedroom. There’s a rectangle of light stretching across the dark hardwood floor as the sun rises outside.
Bran should be in bed soon. He might not burst into flames if he’s caught in daylight in his own house, but I’ve heard the effects can feel like the flu to a vampire. I don’t want to be the cause of that. I’d never hear the end of it.
I take a tentative step inside.
I’ve fantasized about being in this bedroom. And I often wondered what it would look like from this side of the window.
The bed is king-sized with a headboard done in rich brown leather. The dark charcoal duvet looks like expensive linen, the kind that when rubbed between your fingers summons images of rainy afternoons in bed, a cup of hot tea in hand, steam rising around your face.
The room smells like Bran, like amber and leather and musk.
It makes my head swim.
Iron tables sit on either side of the bed with emerald green sconces hanging from the wall.
The bed is made, the corners tucked in neatly.
It’s all a goddamn delight.
His neatness makes my nerdy side damn near glow.
In the attached bathroom, the shower turns on.
I turn around the room, trying to drink in all the details before he comes out. There are more black and white photographs framed on the wall above the six-drawer dresser. From afar, they look like landscape photographs, but when I get in close, I can just make out the silhouette of someone in the background.
“My self-portrait phase,” he says, suddenly beside me, and I step back, feeling like I got caught snooping.
“That’s you?” I ask and nod at the center image. The camera is facing the edge of a cliff and a cloudy valley down below. The figure stands at the cliff’s edge, facing a darkening, stormy sky.
Bran nods and leans a shoulder against the bathroom’s doorframe. “Taken in the 1950s.”
The other two images are taken on a bridge and in an underpass.
“They’re incredible.”
“Thank you.”
I shift my gaze to him, looking for sarcasm and finding none.
“Shower is ready,” he says. “I have to go to bed.”
“I really can go home. I don’t have to keep you—”
“Don’t,” he says.
“Don’t what?”
“You’re not going home. You’re staying here. End of discussion.”
I’m not sure why when he talks to me like that, my panties practically turn into a puddle. I usually hate being talked down to. It’s why Kelly and I used to fight so much when I was a kid.
With Bran though, it’s not an older sister trying to boss me around. It’s…almost like he’s protecting me.
But from what?
He stares at me a moment longer, then blinks and shifts away. “Don’t open the blinds. Come to bed when you’re done.”
“You want me to sleep with you?”
“My bed is the safest place for you.” He darts to the nearest window and pulls down the dark blind.
“I’m not sure I believe that.”
“I’ll behave.” He’s a blur as he crosses the room and pulls down the second blind plunging us into mostly darkness. “For now.”
The shiver that hits me morphs into a blazing heat that sinks to my pussy.
Bran tsk-tsks.
I roll my eyes in the dark and follow the bleed of light from the bathroom.
If I survive this night, or rather day, I might start to believe in miracles.
I shut the bathroom door but don’t lock it. What’s the point? Bran could smash through it with nothing but the power of his pinky finger.
His bathroom is as dark and rich as his bedroom with white subway tile done with black grout in the shower stall and around the double vanity. The counter is spotless. There’s nothing on it except for a glass bottle of hand soap.
What a dream.
I tear off my bloody clothes and toss them into the garbage can. No sense trying to scrub the stains out.
When I pull open the glass door on the shower, steam spills out. I duck inside and test the water. It’s scalding hot. I dial down the heat and then get in beneath the stream.
I breathe out. There is nothing like the power of a hot shower when you’re feeling filthy and out of sorts. The water immediately sooths some of my earlier anxiety and fear.
Beneath the showerhead, everything feels like it could be okay.
I soak my hair then use Bran’s shampoo. The bottles on the tiled shelf are black, the writing in French. The soap is pearly white and smells like the woods.
It’s as I’m rinsing the suds from my hair that I hear the shower’s glass door click open and feel a blast of cold air on my backside.
I know it’s Bran before I turn around. “I didn’t invite you,” I say, feeling the distant stir of a thrill at my core, the rapid thump of my heart in my chest.
“It’s my shower,” he says at my ear.
The air is hot, but my skin is cold as his hands trail down my arms and lift goosebumps.
My inner walls clench up as my clit throbs.
“Bran,” I start, not exactly sure where I’m going, but feeling like I need to go somewhere.
His hand follows the flat plane of my stomach, then dips down, down.
I moan. I can’t help it.
It’s the promise of his touch. The feel of him hard at my back.
He cups my mound, and I wiggle against him, trying to rock to leverage some friction. But he tightens his hold on me and presses me against the cool shower wall.
“Needy little mouse,” he says at my ear, his voice rough like rock salt.
I think I knew that if I let him drag me home, that if I stayed here and went up those stairs, we’d end up exactly right here.
I think I knew it, and that’s why I stayed.
I’m not sure what’s going on between us, or if this really is just some ploy to gain my trust, or break me in some other inconceivable way, but I think I’m too far gone to stop it.
I think maybe I want to give in to it regardless of the consequences.
He flicks a finger over my clit, and I tremble beneath him.
“Why are we doing this?” I say to the tiled wall, panting hard now.
“Because it’s fun?” His fingers curl, sliding between my wet folds.
“I think you like torturing me.”
“You might be right.” His hand disappears, and I moan in disappointment. But he spins me around to face him.
Water droplets glisten on his face and in his raven hair. He’s so devastatingly hot that it almost makes me angry.
“Is this part of the game then?” I ask, feeling bold and a little drunk on the moment.
He leans in, his mouth just an inch from mine. “Oh mouse, everything is a game.” And then he kisses me, hard and fast.
I’m suddenly ravenous and blind with the need for him.
This feeling burning through my veins is like shouting at the moon, like running through empty streets after midnight, like stepping on the gas pedal and blasting through a red light.
The thrill is intoxicating.
I don’t care if we don’t like each other.
I don’t care if I’m supposed to pledge myself to the Locke vampires.
Or that I plan on leaving Midnight.
Or that Bran might be twisting me for his own ends.
I just fucking want him. Just flesh and bones and fucking and kissing and—
He pulls away from me and sinks to his knees. I look down to find his eyes glowing that vampire fire.
Fangs protrude from his mouth.
His earlier warning comes back to me, “…my control is growing weak.”
I’m tempting him, and I want to be tempted too.
The thought of him biting me—
“Tell me to stop,” he purrs.
I hang my head back, let the water spray across my body. I’m burning hot and I think a little delirious.
“Not a chance.”
He lifts my leg, draping it over his shoulder, baring me to him and then he sinks his fangs into my inner thigh.
I can’t help it—I hang my head back and cry out in ecstasy.
