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When he didn’t seem inclined to finish his thought, I asked, “The truth is, what?”
His next words sounded almost pained, as though they were being pulled from him against his will. “The truth is, I quite like making you happy.” He shook his head. “I’m frightened to think too much about what that means, because I honestly can’t remember the last time I wanted to doanythingfor another person, simply for its own sake. And without having an ulterior motive.” His eyes, when they met mine, were so intense I had to look away. “But for you, I would brave a blizzard just to see you smile.”
With his words, something melted inside of me. Sophie’s advice from yesterday—to stop fighting it if something real happened between us—floated into my mind. I was terrible at spur-of-the-moment anything, and from the beginning, nothing about my arrangement with Reggie had been planned. But would a short-term good time, as Sophie had put it, be such a terrible thing?
Or even something more?
I would brave a blizzard just to see you smile.
I might have been an accountant, but I wasn’t made of stone.
So I took a deep breath, and walked around that kitchen table until I stood right in front of him.
Pressing my mouth to his was a risk, but I did it anyway, thrilling at the unexpected pleasure of kissing him without an audience. His breath was cool against my lips as his entire body went rigid with surprise. For a split second, I worried I’d crossed a line, but then his large hands reached up to cup my face, and he started kissing me back like this was something he’d been wanting for a very long time.
“Just when I thought you couldn’t surprise me more than you already had,” he murmured against my lips, laughing a little. He trailed one hand lazily down my side, letting it rest on my hip. I could feel his gentle touch through the denim of my jeans. Every nerve ending in my body was alight with the need to keep kissing him. “I never imagined you would want this with someone like me.”
I frowned at that. I’d never taken Reggie as someone with low self-esteem. “What’s wrong with kissing someone like you?” I asked.
He pressed a kiss to the tip of my nose, and to the apple of each of my cheeks. I kept my eyes open so I could see the blue of his, count the light freckles that dusted the bridge of his nose. “It’s just…unexpected. All of this. You.”
“Bad unexpected?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No.” He paused, then added, “It might add some…complications. But this is the very opposite of bad.”
What did he mean bycomplications? He kissed me again before I could ask, bolder now, his tongue darting out to trace along the seam of my lips. I opened for him on instinct and he groaned, placing one hand at either side of my waist and hoisting me onto the kitchen table as he thrust his tongue into my mouth. I thought back to the night we met, how I’d wondered whether Reggie kissed like the world was ending, and oh, it wasexactlylike that, the way he carded his fingers through my hair, tugging just shy of too hard, as he tilted his head and kissed me deeper, harder. It was like a dam had burst inside him, all the restraint I hadn’t even realized he’d been using swept away with the tide, until I had to pull back, gasping for breath in his arms.
“I want to taste you,” he murmured, his lips finding my jaw, my clavicle, pressing hungry, open-mouthed kisses down the sideof my neck. “God, I’m sofuckinghard, just thinking about how sweet I know you’d be.”
I froze.
Suddenly, I noticed the position we were in—me, on the kitchen table, my legs spread wide. At some point I must have done that for him. At some point, he must have stepped between them. I could feel the truth of what he’d just said, of how hard he was, just from this, pressing against me.
And now he wanted totasteme? I’d had full-fledged relationships that hadn’t included that.
This was too much. This was happening too fast.
I couldn’t move this fast.
He must have realized he’d crossed a line because he pulled back immediately. “I’m…sorry.” He squeezed his eyes shut tight and hung his head. “I just—sorry.” He carded a hand through his hair, tugging on it nervously. “Just because you’re okay withkissinga vampire…no. I shouldn’t have assumed you were also okay with my tasting your blood.”
He gave me a sheepish smile that showed his teeth.
And for the first time since I’d met him, I saw the points of what were very obviously vampire fangs.
EIGHTEEN
Excerpt fromWhat to Expect When You Become a Vampire, Fifteenth Edition
Page 97: The Vampire’s Glamour
One of the most surprising things for many fledgling vampires to discover is that their fangs will only be visible to humans during times of extreme distress, when they are about to feed, and when they are sexually aroused. At all other times, a vampire’s involuntary glamour obscures their fangs from humans. This is widely seen as both an evolutionary advantage and an innate self-defense mechanism (after all, a human who doesn’t see fangs is less likely to try and stake and/or run away from a hungry vampire).
Amelia
The world had flipped onits axis.
My hands shot out to grip the edges of the table I still perchedon. I clung to them like a lifeline, fingers clenching so hard my knuckles went white. If I’d had an ounce of self-preservation instinct, I would have jumped off that table right then and there and run screaming out the door, blizzard or no blizzard.
