chapter Eleven
A howl shredded the peaceful silence of the night, jarring my already rattled nerves. The full moon glimmered between the fingers of the forest trees whose spring foliage had begun to fill in. Instead of leaves, the limbs were covered with kelly-green buds, eager to open. Beyond the tree edge, the wide, sprawling field of Central Park’s Great Lawn invited me to step out of the woods and into the free expanse before me.
I inched forward, then stumbled. My feet had become entangled in the heavy skirt of the white wedding dress I was wearing. Layers of white tulle clasped at me like expensive shackles, and only sheer luck kept me from falling to the ground.
Deja vu.
Another howl, and another. A chorus of wolves sang into the night, and their song drew ever closer. They didn’t sound like they were coming to say hello, either. They sounded hungry.
I hiked up my dress and ran, further challenged by the spindly stiletto sandals I was wearing. I loved sky-high heels as much as any good New York City girl, but I was cursing the name of Manolo Blahnik as I tried to jump over low-lying branches while wearing them.
By the time I was out of the woods my hair was a tangled mess hanging in my face. I brushed the wayward strands back and felt something on my head I hadn’t noticed before. Wrenching the metallic object free of my curls, I pulled it from my hair and got a look at what it was.
A crown. Not a bridal tiara, but an actual crown made of gold branches that looked so realistic I wondered if someone hadn’t dipped willow in gold leaf to make it. In the knots of the branches were emeralds the size of my thumbnail and so many diamonds the damn thing lit up like the Fourth of July even in the bare light of the moon.
The moon.
The howling began anew, and I remembered what had set me running in the first place. I held my crown tight to my chest and began to sprint. Now that I was in the open I could see I wasn’t alone in the field. A few hundred meters away was a man wearing a beautifully tailored tuxedo. His hands were in his pockets and his smile was apparent even this far away.
Lucas.
You know this. This isn’t new. You know this, my mind told me. But all I could think about was escaping the hungry pack that was hot on my heels. The only thing on my mind was getting to Lucas before they got to me.
I held my dress up the best I could without losing the crown and hauled ass across the field. I ran on the balls of my feet so the heels wouldn’t trip me up, but when I was a few feet from him, something brought me crashing to the ground anyway.
“F*ck,” I cried. The proximity of the howls was much closer now. In my fevered imagination I could hear the click of sharp canine teeth and almost feel the panting mouths of the wolves looming over me.
I tugged my dress free of whatever had brought me down, and the white fabric came away a deep crimson red. The more layers I pulled back of the endless gown, the bloodier they became, glistening wetly in the moonlight. A memory I couldn’t quite grasp made me check my hands, assuming the blood must be my own.
My hands were stained with the blood from my wedding dress, but they were uninjured.
“Lucas…I…” Looking over my bare shoulder to seek out the aid of my fiancé, I found him standing behind me staring at the bloody mess covering my lower body. Revulsion was evident in his expression.
“What have you done?” he asked.
“N-nothing,” I stammered, feeling stupid. “I fell.”
“What have you done?” he repeated.
I continued pulling the infinite dress back, and when it finally jerked free, I wished I had left the mystery alone. The grass was black with the thick smear of blood, and my whole skirt was now ruby red and soaked with the viscous liquid. When I gagged, though, it wasn’t because of the blood.
Desmond lay beneath me, his throat open in a ragged tear, his once-white shirt now as vermillion as my gown. His violet-gray eyes, something I loved most about him, were white and dead. His skin, once dark olive thanks to his father’s Mexican roots, was ashy and looked like wax.
The hole in his neck smiled at me like a second mouth.
I tried to scramble away, but Lucas’s legs kept me pinned in place.
“Oh my God.” Pink tears streaked down my face. I fought the urge to throw myself on Desmond, to find a pulse. The second urge was to open my wrist and give him my own blood. Vampire blood could heal, maybe there was…
No. It could heal, but it couldn’t bring someone back if they were already dead.
I sobbed.
“No.”
“What have you done?” Lucas was staring down at me, asking the same goddamned question over and over.
“I didn’t—”
“What have you—?”
“Shut up,” I screamed, covering my ears to block out the broken record of questioning. What had I done? Nothing. I hadn’t done this. I would never do this.
The crown I was still clinging to gave a tug. When I opened my eyes, I found Lucas trying to wrench it from my grasp. “What are you doing?”
“This doesn’t belong to you.” Tug.
“It’s mine,” I snarled, my fingers tightening so fiercely the edge of a diamond bit into my palm. I’d lost Desmond. Somehow I felt if I let Lucas have this too, I’d be left with nothing.
He stooped low, his blue eyes empty of any emotion, and with one mighty yank he wrenched the crown out of my hand. “It’s not yours anymore.”
I woke up with a sharp gasp.
Beneath my cheek was a soft mass of dark chest hair and below that the warm body of a still-breathing man. Strong fingers brushed my hair away from my forehead and trailed down my neck to my lower back, tracing the place where my torso dipped into my bottom.
“You’re okay,” Desmond whispered, soothing me.
“You’re okay.” I turned so I was looking up at his face instead of his groin. Not that his lower half didn’t deserve a good long look over, but it wasn’t my priority at the moment. I smiled in spite of how puzzled he appeared to be, and told myself again, “You’re okay.”
“Unless sleeping has become an extreme sport, I don’t think there’s much risk to my personal safety when we’re in bed.” He grinned wickedly, and his hand moved lower to give my butt a squeeze. “That is, unless you get too frisky. Then you can imperil me whenever you want.”
I looped my arms around his waist and squeezed him, letting the warmth of his body bring my temperature up. When I slept I got cold, not freezing, but I didn’t give off the nice radiance of a human being. I was closer to room temperature, like all vampires.
“You had another dream,” he said, clearly reading my expression better than I would have liked. I didn’t need to be giving my emotions away as freely as I seemed to be doing of late.
“Yeah.”
“Judging by your reaction, it didn’t end too well for me.”
I kissed the trail of hair above his bellybutton as I cast my gaze up to watch him inhale sharply. “It doesn’t matter,” I whispered. “It was just a dream.”
But the fact of the matter was, my dreams were never just dreams. And what was worse, I’d had this particular dream before. My sleeping mind had tried to remind me of that, but I’d been too caught up in the moment to recognize it. When I’d first met Lucas a year earlier, I’d dreamt of running towards him in a wedding dress, only then he’d vanished to be replaced by Peyton. Days later, Peyton had almost killed me.
Now I was dreaming about Desmond’s death, and there was no way in hell I was letting that part of my dream come true.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
I didn’t feel like talking about it anymore, so I straddled his waist, rocking my pelvis against his. Dipping my head down to take his nipple in my mouth, I gave it a teasing bite. “I will be.”
Desmond groaned as I reached between us and wrapped my fingers around his hard shaft. “Looks like you woke up ready,” I teased, rubbing the head of his cock against my opening. Nightmares weren’t the best way to put me in the mood, but the thickness of him so close to me was always enough to make me crazy.
His fingers snaked into my hair, and he pulled my head down, meeting my mouth with his for a feverish, needy kiss. I traced his lips with my tongue, feeding on him, each kiss deeper and more desperate than the last. I wanted to feel him in every part of me, wanted his warmth to smother me. I guided him inside me, and he thrust up while my hand was still around him, the friction doubling as he moved his hips.
I gasped and released him, bracing both my hands on his chest as I found his frenetic rhythm. I leaned back, and his wide palms cupped my breasts, rough fingertips circling each peaked nipple until they were almost painfully rigid. He sat up, lowering his hands to my hips and squeezing almost painfully tight as I rode him, lifting me and dropping me down on his hardness. Each new thrust treaded the line between pleasure and pain, and left me panting.
When his mouth latched on to my already sensitive nipple, I cried out, my fingernails digging into the smooth, hot skin of his back. He bit down the same way I had done to him moments earlier. I continued to make animalistic noises while he dug his fingers into my hips and slammed me down on his shaft.
His own breath came in short pants, his face pressed against mine with his ear beside my mouth. Every time I cried out he thrust harder, feeding off my pleasure until we were both slick with sweat and my throat was raspy from uttering inane commands like, “More, harder, faster, yes.” He obliged every request until at last I screamed and he grunted our mutual release.
Desmond’s face was between my breasts, his hands still locked on my hips as we gasped together for air.
“Good morning,” he whispered into my skin, chuckling slightly since it was six in the evening.
I threaded my fingers through his black hair before lowering them over his shoulders and tracing the hot, damp planes of his back. “You sure know how to chase a bad dream away.”
He licked my nipple, and I shuddered. My whole body felt like it was charged with electric energy and every touch was a shock. Desmond smiled, clearly pleased by the reaction he got from me. “Anytime, baby. Anytime.”
I held him close until the last traces of the nightmare were gone.
Then I let him chase them off again in the shower for twenty minutes, just to be sure.