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Anxiously, I used it to examine my hair. To my infinite relief, the long black strands were only a little ragged at the top. Nancy had only just begun to cut when I kicked her away so I had lost hardly any hair to her long silver shears.
I smoothed my hair carefully, making certain the left side of my face was covered. It’s all right—everything is going to be all right, I told myself, trying to calm my frazzled nerves. The attack had left me feeling breathless and violated and my hands shook as I groomed myself.
“Well hello, Kaitlyn—have you been here long waiting for me?”
The Deep voice behind me made me whip around. I saw Ari standing there, smiling at me. But when he saw my face, his own grew suddenly stern.
“Something happened,” he said to me. “What?”
“I…it was…was nothing,” I told him, looking down at my feet.
“Kaitlyn, don’t lie to me. I can smell your fear and uncertainty,” he told me. He ran a hand through his own hair. “Dios, I just want to help you.”
“I’m fine,” I insisted again, though it really wasn’t true. “I just…had a run-in with Nancy Rattcliff—that’s all.”
His face grew as dark as a thundercloud and, taking my hand, he led me over to the big leather chair. Seating himself in it, he drew me down to sit on his lap as I usually did.
“Tell me,” he said simply. “Leave nothing out.”
After a moment, I did.
“Nancy and the Weird Sisters caught me out in the hallway,” I told him in a shaking voice. “She said…” I cleared my throat. “She said that you were hers and that I’d better leave you alone from now on.”
“I see,” Ari murmured quietly, although his eyes were glowing gold with anger. I sensed the presence of his Drake in the room with us and wondered if he was angry too. “Go on,” Ari told me. “What did you say to her?”
I lifted my chin.
“I told her I couldn’t promise to stop seeing you but that I would pass her message on to you,” I said.
Ari laughed. “Dios! And I can just imagine the tone you used, too! How did she take the news that she could not ‘have’ me, then?”
I drew a ragged breath—this was where things got hard.
“She…she tried to cut my hair,” I said, dropping my eyes to my hands, which were twisting in my lap. “She said if you could…could see the ugly side of my face as well as the, uh, pretty one, you wouldn’t want me anymore. I mean, not that you want me now,” I went on hastily. “I know you’re only giving me your blood out of a sense of obligation, because of what Sanchez did and—”
“Kaitlyn—look at me,” he interrupted. When I wouldn’t, he lifted my chin and looked into my eyes. Then he lifted the curtain of hair that covered the left side of my face.
“Don’t!” I tried to stop him but he shook his head.
“No,” he murmured. “No, let me see you—don’t hide your beauty from me, Kaitlyn.”
“It’s not beautiful,” I whispered. “It…it’s ugly. So ugly.”
Ari shook his head.
“Never call yourself that. You are beautiful—always beautiful to me.”
Then he pulled me towards him and kissed the scarred left side of my face—gentle kisses that fell like the flutter of butterfly wings across my twisted epidermis. Kisses so tender and careful and yet so sweet and sincere I felt my breath catch in my throat.
And then his mouth found mine.
It wasn’t my first kiss—I’d kissed a boy at summer camp, the year before The Fire—or rather, he had kissed me. I hadn’t liked it much—it had been a sloppy affair with too much tongue. Plus the boy in question had been wearing braces which cut my lip.
Kissing Ari was nothing like that. Our mouths fit together like two pieces of a puzzle and his arms came around me and held me close, making me feel warm and safe and protected like I hadn’t since before The Fire. It was such a good feeling it was almost scary—the same way it felt so intense when I took his vein.
But…what were we doing?
And more importantly, why were we doing it? Why was he kissing me? Did he really feel…that way for me?
With questions spinning through my head, I was the first to pull away. I looked at him uncertainly and then looked down at my hands again. I was panting a little and I didn’t know what to say.
Ari seemed to sense my confusion but he didn’t try to talk or explain himself. He just offered me the side of his neck and murmured, “Drink now, Kaitlyn.”
The thirst overcame me then and I did as he said, sinking my fangs into his neck and losing myself in him completely.
Ari groaned softly and stroked my back with his big, warm hands as I drank and the warm feelings built between us again, but in a different way. What were we doing? I asked myself again, as I drank from him. What was happening between us? Surely this was about more than the obligation he felt to make up for Pedro Sanchez’s wrong-doing. Could it be that Ari really cared for me? Could it be that—
