“You bit me and called it research.”
“That was one time—”
“Twice.”
“The second time was recreational, and you seem fine with it.”
He laughs again, low and genuine, and the warmth of it moves through every point where we’re joined, which is considerable, and I decide that this is the best I’ve felt since before the night my life changed entirely. Possibly the best I’ve felt, including all the time before it.
“Charlie.” My name in his voice, roughened and close against my ear, my name the way he says it, as if it matters.
“Here,” I breathe back. “I’m right here.”
His arms tighten.
His heartbeat against mine is steady.
The world narrows to the dimensions of this room, this warmth, this man, and I don’t fight the narrowing.
For the first time in days, I don’t fight anything at all.
***
We lie still afterward, the dark around us, his heartbeat under my palm.
I’m listening to it. I’ve been listening to it since the basement, the steady, relentless rhythm of it. Now I let myself listen, without monitoring, without the constant secondary question of whether the hearing of it is hunger or something else.
It is something else.
I’ve known for a while.
Tonight I’m admitting it.
“You’re thinking again,” he says.
“It’s a design flaw. I’ve filed the complaint, no response yet.”
His chest moves under my palm—the almost-laugh.
I press my hand flat against his skin, feeling the warmth of it, the heat of him that is specific, recognizable, and mine now. My vampire nature is quiet. Genuinely, completely quiet, for the first time since I woke up in the warehouse and discovered I’d been turned against my will with someone else’s blood in my mouth. The hunger exists… it will always exist—Crave was clear about this, and I believe him—but it’s present the way breathing is present, the way the cold air is present, but in the background, not the primary voice.
The primary voice is the warmth.
“We’re going to have to figure out what this is,” I say.
“Yes,” he agrees.
“I’m not…” I search for the right word, the honest one underneath the easy one. “I’m not afraid of it anymore. Whatever it means… the fated mate thing. I was. When you toldme, I wanted to argue the universe into a different position. But—” I stop.
“But?”
“But I think I’ve been arguing with it since the basement,” I say. “And losing. And maybe…” The armor wants to come up, the wit wants to step in and make it easier, and I make a deliberate decision to let it stay down. “Maybe losing is okay. If it’s to this.”
His arm tightens around me. He communicates in pressure, warmth, and the quality of his silences. This man, and the tightening of his arm, says more than I need the words to say.
I look at the ceiling, where the shadows from the low fire move in slow patterns across the wood.
Two halves of something impossible.
