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I headed straight to the bathroom.
I turned on the shower to let the water warm while I gathered clean clothes. I thought it best to stay ful y clothed rather than put on pajamas, just in case I needed to flee.
I closed and locked my bedroom door and opened the window so that I could smel the fresh night air rather than the myriad bothersome scents saturating the air of the house.
After shedding my blood-splattered clothes and burying them in the bottom of the hamper, I grateful y stepped beneath the hot spray of the shower.
Bathing turned out to be yet another new experience. I’d never noticed the way the jets of water stimulated different nerve bundles beneath my skin. I’d never noticed the way the smel of chlorine hung in the air. I’d never noticed the different berry notes in my shampoo. I’d never been able to see each tiny water droplet that drifted in the steam.
I don’t know exactly how long I marveled over the spray of the water and the feel of it on my skin before I actual y began to bathe. Long enough that I knew my body was impervious to scalding temperatures. Long enough that I knew that time no longer meant the same thing as it had that morning. Long enough that I knew I could not wash or rinse away the events of the day.
Final y—reluctantly—I made myself turn off the water and get out of the shower. I tried not to get too wrapped up in the phenomenon of toweling off, but it wasn’t easy. It seemed as though the rasp of the towel could be heard in the next room and felt al the way to my bones. It was a very perplexing and absorbing experience. I didn’t understand how sensation could be so dramatical y heightened yet pain be so dramatical y dul ed. It was a paradox for sure, but one about which I would not complain. I would simply be grateful.
I’d gotten dressed and was running a comb through my tangled hair when an amazing scent fil ed my nostrils. It seemed as though, for a moment, it held me completely captive.
I stood in the bathroom with my feet glued to the floor. But for the deep breathing—my body’s instinctive efforts to pul the delicious aroma into my mouth and lungs—I didn’t move a muscle.
As if I’d touched the tip of my tongue to something decadent, my mouth was fil ed with the barest hint of ambrosia. That trace, however, was al it took for my senses to converge on the source with an al -consuming, pin-point focus.
With a mind-blowing speed and a frightening intensity, hunger stole over me. It was so powerful I was unable to fight it. I could think of nothing else, nothing but sinking my teeth into whatever carried that scent and draining it until there wasn’t a drop left. I didn’t care that it would inevitably mean death for the human or that there might be fear or tears or pain on the other person’s behalf. I only cared about quenching the thirst, the overwhelming, painful y potent need.
Before I could identify what it was or even give it a second thought, I was on my way out of the bathroom and headed toward my bedroom door.
A voice gave me pause. It lasted for only a fraction of a second, but that was al it took to save her life.
It was my mother.
“Ridley, I’m home. How did it go at Sebastian’s?”
In the deepest part of my brain, I recognized her and it registered that I didn’t want to hurt her. That’s the thought that stopped my feet from moving forward.
My only truly coherent notion was that her blood was not saturated with alcohol. On some level, I was both surprised and confused. Unfortunately, those emotions weren’t strong enough to dul the intense yearning I had for her unpol uted blood. My body didn’t care that she was my mother. My body didn’t care that my heart didn’t want to hurt her. My body only felt, and at that time, one feeling ruled al —thirst.
As I was reaching for the door knob, ready to remove the only obstacle between me and my prey, another scent caught my attention and dragged it away from the door. I whirled around to find Bo standing inside my room, right in front of the window.
In a movement that would be too fast for human eyes to track, Bo crossed the room to me and took me in his arms.
Quickly, he whisked me back into the bathroom and slammed the door shut. Never taking his eyes off me, Bo reached behind him and turned on the shower spray.
My mind was spinning with vague thoughts and hazy sensations, but none of them could compete with my need.
They were slave to that one thing that was infinitely more control ing and dominant than al else.
Thirst.
Bo stepped closer to me, his eyes bubbling black pools of excited anticipation.
“Mr. Hearst,” he whispered and then he gave me his throat.
Without hesitation, I drove my fingers into his hair and my teeth into his neck. With the slight pop of penetration, blood began to gush from his artery into my mouth, bathing my tongue in the thick luscious liquid.
Bo panted in my ear as he wrapped his arms around me, his hands roving my body from shoulder to hip and back again. As his fingers teased my skin, his blood satiated my thirst. But as one fire waned, another was kindled. It gathered into a storm of white hot flames that licked their way along my veins and burned inside my core.
As if sensing the new direction my body was taking, Bo slid his palms down the backs of my thighs and he lifted until my legs were wrapped securely around his waist. In three long steps, he had my back pressed against the cool wood of the door.
Bo leaned into me, his hips grinding into mine. When I tore my mouth from his throat, our lips col ided with a passion that I feared would incinerate us both. His tongue lapped up the residue of his own blood where it coated the inside of my mouth and I felt an explosive heat rising inside me, pouring through me to pool where our bodies met between my legs.
Knock, knock, knock.
“Ridley, I’m home,” my mother’s voice cal ed from behind the door across the room, the door that led to Izzy’s bedroom.
Bo stil ed against me, turning his head away from mine so that I could quietly draw a huge gulp of air into my burning lungs. It was saturated with the scent of my mother’s blood, but it no longer affected me like it had only minutes before.
Bo had seen to that. Once again, he’d swept in to save the day.
Bo leaned back to look at me, desire stil burning in his eyes, hot and smoky. He released his hold on me and let my legs fal slowly down the outsides of his thighs until my feet touched the floor.
I could tel that he was as shaken as I was. It was becoming apparent that we were going to have a difficult time keeping our hands off each other, even more so now that I was a vampire. Bo had never told me that there were other pleasures associated with drinking blood.
