Blood Ties (24 page)

It was exquisite torture. His scent
was so thick it was like swimming in water. My center convulsed and I couldn’t help but grind my hips against him and writhe in his arms. His fingers slid down my throat and then abruptly ripped opened my shirt.

I gasped,
shocked. “Michael, maybe we should stop.” Earlier, he’d barely been able to kiss me without going spooky and now he was tearing up my clothing. Wait, hadn’t I been thinking the same thing?

“Why?” he breathed. He kissed the swell of my breasts as he lifted me off the floor. I struggled to push him away before he completely lost control. He ignored me. His breath quickened as if excited by my struggles. I heard the beginnings of a growl rumble out of his chest. His arms held me in a vice. Jesus. This had to be bad.

“Michael!”

He raised his head from my chest. His eyes were wild, dark, his pupils swollen, only a sliver of white of his eyes showing. Fear rushed through me. He could smell it. He immediately clenched his jaw and his face hardened. I didn’t move for several heartbeats. He slowly released his tight grasp and put me down on the bed.
I clasped my torn shirt together, covering myself. For several minutes, he stood there, watching me. I didn’t move, barely breathed.

His shoulders
suddenly slumped and he looked down to the floor, almost as if he was ashamed. “Liz, I’m sorry, that was way out of line. Liz, please … I …” He sat down on the bed and looked away. “My love, please forgive me. I couldn’t live if I hurt you in any way.”

“Michael, I want you. You can’t imagine how much. It’s torture, but at the same time, I’m afraid. What if you lost control?”

His eyes filled with tears. Without hesitation, I leaned against him and reached for his hand.

I didn’t know what more to say. How was this going to work? What kind of relationship could we have? Then a sickness filled me. What if he pushed me away, thinking it was for the best?

He sighed. “It’s late. We should get you back to campus.”

I suddenly
felt sick to my stomach. “No, I want to stay,” I pleaded. “I’ll just drive back tomorrow morning. No one will know.”

“Very well my love.” I heard him take a deep breath. I knew what he was about to say.

“Please don’t.”

He held very still.
“Please don’t what?”

“Don’t tell me to sleep, it’s cheating … and annoying.”
I could be a bit slow sometimes.

He chuckled. “It took you long enough.” He touched his forehead. It was one of his “other” abilities that he
conveniently hadn’t mentioned. It suddenly made sense as to what Selene had been telling me.

“Will you stay with me tonight?”

He answered by raising my face to his, gently pressing his lips to mine.

Chapter 15

I ate Cheerios and watched the sparrows bounce on the patio in the faint morning light looking for leftover pieces of chips. My punk-loving Goth neighbor in the apartment above had started dumping the remains of her bags of potato chips on my patio. Jen thought it was hilarious and started calling her “chippie”. It’d be a lot more hilarious if they were dumping it on her patio.

I flipped through last Friday’s newspaper and
checked my voicemail. Mom had called twice, wanting to hear about my plans for Thanksgiving. There was one from Logan, wishing me good luck on my midterms and reminding me about the party this Friday. He was probably worried I was going to cancel on him. As it was, Friday’s schedule included getting violently ill from lunch. As usual, I was going to take the easy, low stress route.

I left early for my 8:00
a.m. class, happily looking forward to Friday’s food poisoning. Off in the distance ghostly shapes of students materialized and vanished back into the fog. I found a bench outside MacNeill Hall and pulled out my notes for Michael’s class. It was a wasted effort.

I jumped when a dark shape sat next to me on the bench.

“Shit Jen, you scared the crap out of me.”

“You bad girl. Why didn’t you stop in last night when you got back?” Then she began her interrogation. “So how’s your friend? Did you have a good time? Do anything fun?”

Saturday I’d texted her that a girlfriend had flown into Toronto for the weekend and she had invited me to stay with her, all last minute and all. I hadn’t wanted her to freak out and think I’d been kidnapped by something – maybe a vampire. I inwardly snickered.

I watched
a couple students emerge out of the mist. I squinted and pretended to know them to give myself some time to think. “Well, we had a great time. We went to a movie. She loves to cook. She makes killer lasagna and brownies.”

It was too early in the morning to be creative.

“What kind of brownies?”

I scowled. “The healthy ones ... geeze Jennifer.”

She grinned. “Ya know Logan’s worried you might cancel on him. He was bugging me all weekend.”

“I only told him maybe.”

“You know how men are, ‘Yes’ … ‘Maybe’... it’s all pretty much the same to them.” Her cell phone beeped. “Well crap. Gotta go. God I hate morning classes.” She threw her backpack over her shoulder and turned to wave before she disappeared into the fog. That was my cue. I gathered up my belongings and went inside.

I found a seat in front, a definite first. Michael walked in carrying a stack of tests
and walked up the stairs and handed them out to the end of each row. He returned and sat down behind his desk, barely ten feet in front of me, reviewing some papers. I stared at him dreamily. He raised an eyebrow and cleared his throat. It was clearly meant for me.

Heat flooded my face.

I picked a blue test booklet off the top of the stack as they made their way across the row. I couldn’t concentrate. All I could think about was the feel of his lips – the soft feathery touches of his silky hair.

I tried to think of something to get my mind off him.

John.

When I finally figured out how to block his emails
and texts, he’d started sending me letters. I’d done a return to sender on them. Flowers started coming again and they were promptly sent back or dumped in the garbage. I heard a cough. I looked over at my neighbor. She scowled. My pencil was doing a staccato dance on the desk.

The boat-load of irritation was enough to help me focus. I finished the test early, placed it on his desk and then glanced up, repeating a mantra to keep the gushing, “I’m-in-luv” look from filling my face. He gave me a fleeting look, his expression indifferent while he gathered up tests from other students, placing them in a neat pile on his desk. I marched off to my next
class.

I aced the stats midterm. Logan had hit every question. I raced off to Michael’s office to tell him the good news. There was a steady stream of students, covering last minute questions for
his other classes. He’d glance at me through dark lashes and give me a slight smile when a student wasn’t looking. It was driving me crazy and he knew it.

The wave of students finally stopped. The last one walked out the door.

“I understand Logan has asked you to a fraternity party this Friday night.”

Oh hell
.

“I’m not going,” I retorted and turned away
, back to my laptop. Bat ears. He had to have bat ears.

“Why not?”

I gritted my teeth and looked at him. “Why would I?”

“You should go.”

“What?” My mouth dropped open. He was serious?

“You should go with Logan,” he said again.

Crap. Was that one of his “mojo” orders? I let out a gust of air. I’d had enough of that last weekend.

“Why?”

He laughed softly. “It’s obvious you’re obsessed with me. You shouldn’t neglect your friends, or for that matter, any experience of a typical college student.” He grinned broadly. “Besides, we do need to keep up appearances.”

I couldn’t believe what I
was hearing. I raised my voice, “So, let me get this straight. You’re going to force me to go out on dates to experience …," I did a quote with my fingers, “… the ‘college life’ to divert attention away from anyone thinking we’re screwing our brains out?”

I winced, hoping no one had heard me next door.

“I trust you implicitly.”

My voice dripped with sarcasm
, “Is this a command master?”

He broke out into a roar of laughter that echoed in the small office. I’m sure they’d heard that. He tried to look stern but couldn’t quite nail it. “Of course, what did you expect?”

My eyes went wide and I turned away from him in a huff, stunned by his response. I’d thought he’d come back with “No, of course not. It’s only a suggestion,” or better yet, “You silly, I was just kidding.” But nooo, he was dead serious and thought it was enormously funny I had expected anything else. I got up, glared at him, shoved everything into my backpack and headed out the door for the gym. He still had that amused look on his face when I slammed the door.

***

By the time I got home, a rodent run in the gym and two Eskimo Pies from the Hub had placated my urge to break something. Unfortunately, I found Logan leaning up against the wall next to my door, a huge grin on his face. He had timed his arrival perfectly. Great. Now I had a human spying on me. Let’s hope he didn’t turn into a stalker. I didn’t want to lose my tutor.

“Whadda’yat?” I said. See, I was picking up some Canadian slang.

“How did it go?”

“Aced it. You are a God. I owe you big time.”

“No problem, you’re a great tutoree.” Was that even a real word? He stuck his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders. I knew what was coming next. I could turn him down, switch out the food poisoning with a weekend visit with an auntie who lived – hmmm, Alaska was far enough away wasn’t it?

“So, I was just checking to see if you were coming with me to the party Friday night?”

“Of course, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” I blinked. What the hell? Those words had flowed out of my mouth like water. God Almighty. Now I was Michael’s very own personal puppet. If he’d ask me to strip and run through campus naked, I’d probably do it without a second thought.

Logan
grinned and slid his hand up my arm to my shoulder. I stiffened. Just because I was being forced to go to a party didn’t mean it was open season on the touching.

“Great
. What time will you be ready?”

“
Five?” Geesh.

“Cool,
five o’clock it is. I’m really looking forward to it.”

I smiled warmly. “Me too.”

I wanted to kick Michael.

“Well, I’ll see you. I’m off to shoot some hoops with the guys.”

“Sure.” I unlocked my apartment, went inside, and heard the muffled sounds of Jennifer next door, banging around in her kitchenette. I waited a minute or two, then opened the door and peeked around it, making sure Logan had left. I raced over to her door and knocked softly. I heard her light footsteps as they walked to the door. I was greeted by a face covered with some funky green stuff.

I threw myself down on her couch, frustrated that a visit with an auntie
or food poisoning were off the schedule. She nudged a cold can of soda against the side of my face. “What is it now?”

“I said yes to Logan.”

“So, what’s wrong with that? I know you like him.” She popped open her soda and sat down. “What’s the problem?”

I wanted to tell her the love of my life, one of the undead, was forcing me to go to the party with Logan. I couldn’t, for all of the obvious reasons.

“It’ll start with a party and next thing you know, there’ll be a date.”

“It is a date.”

“You’re not helping,” I growled.

“For Heaven’s sake Liz, you’ve already had
dates with him. You hang out with him all the time.”

I stared at her, incredulous. “Coffee doesn’t count,” I snipped. “Hanging out is what you do with friends.”

“Just give him a chance. If he gets too annoying, you can come and ‘hang’ with Parker and me at the party.”

I sat up and put my feet on her coffee table. What else could I say? I was a freakin’ vampire puppet? Not fair, not fair.

“It’s not like he’s going to molest you or anything. It’s just a party for God’s sake, lots of people … beer … music … beer …”

I exhaled loudly and leaned back against the couch.

I listened to Jen talk about her tests while I stared at the flaking popcorn ceiling, sipping on soda. I didn’t want to leave. Alone, I would think about Michael.

Hello, I have his cell phone number. He couldn’t tell me a little call would disrupt my “college life” experience. Problem solved. I waited for a lull in our conversation. She wound down about ten minutes later. I stretched and groaned for effect. “Well, I suppose I’d better go. I’ve got some studying to do. Thanks for the soda.”