“Please,” she whispers.
At her provocation, I sink my teeth into her neck. I don’t need too much blood, just enough to make my head stop swimming. And it does, almost instantly. Her hot, sweet nectar rushes into my mouth, drenching my tongue and throat. It’s like sucking honey straight from the comb.
Kat lets out a deeper moan, shock and pleasure ripping through her body, building like an orgasm until she’s shaking and shivering in my arms. If a vampire’s kiss didn’t feel good, we would have died off by now.
But her pleasure is a mirage. My hunger is nothing more than an ache, a pain.
I don’t remember what it’s like to feel both arousal and affection at the same time anymore. There are only glimpses—like scent memories. Here one moment, gone another. Like the curve of Diantha’s waist, flaring into her hips. Or the flicker of pleasure in her eyes as she took a bite of pasta.
Or the desperate way her eyes trained on me when she came back into her body, scared and confused.
I suck harder at the gentle curve of Kat’s throat. I bury my fingers in her hair, pulling her chignon loose. I devour her for just a moment longer, the image of Diantha’s long, dark hair burned into my mind.
Pressed into me like a brand.
Why?Why is the memory of that woman clinging to me?
Why can’t I shake her scent from my mind?
Worse yet, I would do anything to experience it again.
I disconnect from Kat’s neck and seal the wound with a tender stroke of my tongue, and she collapses against my chest,shivering and writhing against me in the aftershocks of pleasure. I don’t lift my arms to hold her.
As Kat’s mouth travels down over my stomach, I try with everything I have to remember the last time Vittoria and I made love. To conjure the sense memories of the last time her mouth met mine.
I lost Vittoria fifty years ago, and now I know she’s gone from Earth. Taken by age, possibly, or disease. Or maybe by the lifestyle we lived together as two wild humans. I wonder if, in her final moments, I came back into her mind. As a human, my nose was slightly larger, crooked at the bridge. My front tooth was chipped from a bad motorino fall. I had a thick and deep white scar through my eyebrow that is now much less defined, only slightly raised. How many years ago was it that she’d been told that I’d died from a lethal combination of drugs, alcohol, and hubris?
And that Orfeo is dead. Her Orfeo.
She would have never recognized this shadow self that I’ve left behind.
Diantha
I dragmyself uphill toward Pandora’s Cup, dead leaves and morning frost crunching under my boots. Cold air stings my eyes and makes me wish, even more profoundly, that I was still at home, snuggled up in bed, nursing my aches and pains between my flannel Kuromi sheets.
Life just keeps fucking going, doesn’t it? Even when your mom is trapped between life and death; even when you work a crappy barista job and have a dissertation due.
Even when you meet a vampire.
I almost miss a step as last night comes shrieking back to me.Vampire.Gorgeous, muscular, shirtless in my house, looking at me like I was a fallen angel.
But still,vampire.
Evie waits for me by the service entrance to the coffee shop, mug in hand, gnawing at her bottom lip. She’s an anxious clairvoyant, not unlike my mom. Where they differ is that Evie’s entirely capable of adult life—she pays her taxes, cleans her kitchen more than once a month, and has never once asked me to spit into a mysterious jar of herbs and blood.
“Why didn’t you text me back?!” Evie is beautiful and kind and thoughtful, but she is alsoveryshrill. Her voice pierces medirectly between the eyes as I crest the hill and I feel my eyelids twitch. “Jesus, Di, you look like you crawled out of Satan’s asshole.”
I grunt. “Ifeellike I crawled out of Satan’s asshole.”
She pushes the mug into my hands. “Thank you for opening with me. I owe you.”
“Did I have a choice?” I take a sip of my cappuccino and let my eyes flutter shut in pleasure. “This isperfect. You owe me nothing.”
“Thanks.” She tosses me a smile over her shoulder, long pinkish-orange braids swinging around as she yanks open the door. We file inside, into the warmth of the café where the air always smells like roasted coffee beans, cinnamon, and whatever Evie used to smudge this morning. “Floor’s a little wet still, be careful.”
“You mopped?!” I pull off my scarf, hat, and jacket before burying my face in my cappuccino and drinking as much of it as I can.
“Couldn’t sleep. I had a horrible feeling last night. All I did was toss and turn until five. Then I was like,fuck itand drove over.”
