American Vampire (17 page)

She cupped her hands around him, stroking up and down in time with the movements of her mouth, and he laid his hands on her head, then pulled them away as if he didn’t trust himself.

It had always amazed Jessa how something so simple as sex could make a person forget everything else. She knew they were in danger. She knew there were a million other things they could be doing to try to save themselves. When Graf stopped her with a gentle hand on her shoulders, she didn’t care about any of those other things. When he carried her to the couch and pulled her jeans off, then her panties, she didn’t care about anything but the way his hands felt on her body, the way his fingers felt stroking the slick, hot flesh between her legs.

“I want to make this good for you,” he rasped against her ear as he pumped his fingers in and out of her. “Just tell me what to do.”

She couldn’t articulate what she needed, not beyond “now” and “please,” but he understood the gist of it. And she was so grateful he had, as he pushed into her, stretched her almost painfully. Then he moved inside her, each thrust forcing the breath from her lungs, each withdrawal dragging new
breath down. She arched underneath him, twisted her legs around his hips, and she almost lost him, but he gripped one of her legs by the calf and hooked it over his shoulder, bent her almost in two as he drove into her. She clung to him, her hands greedy to touch more, to feel the muscles flexing under his tight, cold skin, to know every piece of him before it was all over.

She panted into his ear, moaned her appreciation over and over, until, almost too soon, she found herself back at the familiar and completely alien edge of the pleasure battering through her. In an instant, everything seemed too cold, too hot, too big, too much to feel, and then she burst, screaming, holding tight to his shoulders as he groaned and drove harder into her. As she quaked beneath him, he collapsed over her, his limbs trembling from exhaustion.

Could vampires be exhausted? She laughed at the absurd thought, at the absurd idea of where they were and what they had done. Her back stung from the rough upholstery, her legs ached like she’d run a mile. It had all been so erotic in the heat of passion. Now, it just seemed silly.

“Oh, that’s very encouraging, thank you,” he said, pushing himself off her.

She could only laugh harder, and she sat up, hugging her knees to her chest. “I’m sorry. I was just thinking…you’re supposed to be this supernatural creature, all strong and tough, and here you are,
looking like you’re going to pass out or have an asthma attack from sex.”

“I don’t have asthma,” he corrected. “And that’s hard work. Always has been. You women don’t think it is, because you don’t have to do it.”

“I’m pretty sure I had sex, too.” She scraped her hair back from her face.

“Oh, yes, you did. And you’re welcome, by the way.” He grinned, and it sent all sorts of hot shivers through her.

She wished they could lie there longer, but she knew what was coming.

“So, when do you think they’ll come get us?” he asked, reaching to the floor for his jeans. “I don’t want to get caught with my pants down, literally.”

“I don’t know. They want to ‘gather evidence,’ so I guess however long they need to find proof that I’m guilty.” She pressed her hands against her head. “Oh, God, they’ll find Sarah’s book, and we’ll be doomed.”

“We are not going to be doomed,” Graf said with so much certainty that it was hard not to believe him. “I’m going to figure something heroic out, and you’ll be fine. You said so yourself. You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?”

An unexpected wave of remorse tugged her down from the giddy swell she’d been riding on. “How would you know? I’m a great liar.”

“That you are.” He leaned forward and gave her a
quick peck on the cheek, then stood and pulled on his jeans before strolling to the kitchenette. “You forgot your Coke.”

“What are you doing?” she asked as she limped after him, feeling strangely modest. She reached for the T-shirt he’d discarded on the floor and pulled it over her head. It was one of her father’s old T-shirts, but it didn’t smell like him anymore. It smelled like the cedar drawers of the bureau, and the bizarre absence of scent that clung to Graf’s body.

“I’m thirsty.” Graf knocked the calcified crust from the faucet and ran the water until it turned from sputtering brown to clear. He left it running as he went through the cupboards.

“You can drink just plain water?” She leaned on the counter beside him, watching with fascination as he filled up a mug that proclaimed T
EACHERS
D
O
I
T BY THE
B
OOK
, as though she’d never seen anyone get a drink of water before.

He took a long swallow and wiped his mouth with his hand. “Yeah. I drank the moonshine, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, I reckon you did.” She knew her smile was big and goofy, but she couldn’t help it. “I just had sex with a vampire.”

“You did.” He took another drink, and above the rim of the mug, his eyes glittered with amusement.

She bit her lip. “It was hot, too.”

“That it was.”

They went back to the couch, and she curled in the
corner, using the armrest as an uncomfortable pillow. Graf reached for her, saying softly, “No, come over here,” and pulled her into his arms. She curled at his side, his arm around her shoulders, her head against his chest.

“Are you going to sleep sitting up?” she asked, the pull of slumber tugging at the space between her nose and mouth, the place where yawns always started.

“I’m not going to sleep. But you should.” He kissed her forehead and leaned his face against her for a moment. “You can lean on me.” Tenderly, as if he truly had meant every word he’d said to her before.

She burned with the need to know whether he’d just said those things, promised he wouldn’t leave her, because he was looking to get laid. At the same time, she couldn’t ask, because she knew he would tell her the truth, and the truth might not be what she wanted to hear. She faked a nonchalant laugh and said, “Thanks for not biting me, by the way. On
Buffy
they always want to bite when they’re having sex.”

“I had more important things to do than bite you,” he said with a chuckle that she felt under her cheek. “Go to sleep.”

Love me,
she wanted to order back, and the ferocity of that desire shocked her.

It might be better not to know.

G
raf had played it off like he hadn’t wanted to drink her blood. And Jessa thought she was a good liar.

He paced the room, trying not to look at Jessa sprawled on the couch, but still glancing at her nervously every few seconds. God, the sex had been incredible. If he killed her, he wouldn’t be having incredible sex with her again. Not that he would want to kill her, anyway. He was pretty sure.

Hunger was driving him crazy, and boredom, and the smell of stale nicotine that stained the walls and asbestos tile above his head. He needed a cigarette, and some blood, and even just a
People
magazine would be good after nearly a whole night of silence and worrying.

On top of that, Jessa was expecting him to come up with something brilliant to save them both. He should have told her that he wasn’t brilliant. He was
a good talker, but what good would talking do with a group of hill folk who probably had a combined IQ of a hundred?

But he’d promised Jessa. He had no idea what it was he felt for her, but he didn’t like it. Or maybe he liked it too much. She was bossy and cranky and she lied and had tons of fucked-up emotional problems. But damn it, he was pretty sure that he…

Nah.

He scrubbed his hands over his face and went to the sink. He was so goddamned thirsty. The cup took too long to fill up, so he bent his head and swallowed straight from the tap.

“Graf?” Jessa’s voice was sexy and sleepy. She sat up, scanning the darkness. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he said, and the forced cheerfulness made him sound deranged. “Just thirsty.”

“Yeah, I see that. You’ve got your whole head in the sink.”

Lifting his mouth away from the water was like walking away from a pile of money and naked women, but he managed it and stuck the cup under the stream.

“You’re thirsty for something other than water, aren’t you?” she asked, and there was fear in her voice. Not on the surface, but hiding under the layers of fake sympathy. He didn’t blame her. Being the only human locked in a room with a hungry vam
pire, he wouldn’t have had sympathy for the vampire, either.

“I haven’t been eating like normal since I came to town,” he admitted. “I’ll probably adjust, but it’s like the first week on a diet, I guess. I’m miserable.”

Wow, that was humbling. Telling a human that he had a weakness.

“Do you need…” Her words trailed off, and she swallowed. “I mean, you could drink some of my b-blood. If you need to.”

He didn’t think he’d ever needed anything as much as he needed blood at this very moment, but he couldn’t do that to her. Could he?

No. For one thing, he’d gotten out of control when feeding before. He chalked up those people he’d accidentally dispatched to learning experience, and it didn’t bother him. Vampires ate people. But he didn’t want to risk it with Jessa.

“If you don’t eat—drink, sorry—are you going to be able to stand trial and get us free?” She had a good point, but Graf still wanted to snap at her that it wasn’t his fucking job to save her from the pitchforks and-torches crowd.

He took a long, slow breath to clear his head. He wasn’t angry with her. He was just cranky and hungry. “I’ll be a little weak, but I’m pretty sure it will be okay.”

She was a good enough liar that she could recog
nize his. “You don’t sound okay. And you’re acting like someone trying to quit smoking.”

“Well, I haven’t had a cigarette in a while!” he snapped. “You’re not helping with all this pushing.”

“I’m not helping because you’re not cooperating. I’m trying to help.” Her tone was surprisingly gentle and understanding. It was irritating as hell. “Why won’t you let me help you?”

“Because I might kill you!” He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. He hadn’t just blurted that out, had he? It sounded weak and stupid, like he couldn’t control himself. And worse, she might not trust him anymore. Worse than that, he was more worried about the trust thing than his pride.

“Well…I might die tomorrow, anyway,” she said, the trace of fear gone from her voice. Maybe that was just wishful thinking.

And he felt himself getting sucked into her strange logic, wanting to believe that it would be okay to open up a vein on her and damn the consequences. “I don’t like to drink from people I know. It’s nothing personal. I wouldn’t feel great if I killed you by accident.”

“You’d feel great if you killed somebody else by accident?” she countered.

“Probably not great, but I wouldn’t really care.” It wasn’t the answer she wanted to hear, that much was apparent from the long moment of speechlessness that kept her silent.

Finally, she cleared her throat and said, “That’s not the point. You need something. We just had sex, for God’s sake. The most intimate thing two people can do with each other, and I can’t do something simple like this for you?”

Intimate.
That was a scary word to hear out loud. “It’s not about…intimacy. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t,” she insisted.

“Have you ever been bitten by a dog?” he asked, determined not to win in this battle she was trying so hard to lose.

She shrugged. “No, but it can’t be that bad.”

“Maybe not, but my bite would be.” He came as close as he dared to her and opened his mouth, let ting his fangs slide down. “Believe me, you’ll feel it when these get into you. They’re not precision instruments.”

Her eyes widened in shock as she stared at his teeth. Then she recovered quickly and lifted up her leg to show him a scar. “They can’t be worse than accidentally sticking a pitchfork tine through your foot. I don’t want you to suffer.”

“I don’t want
you
to suffer. My answer is no.” He finished off the rest of his water and tried to coax his fangs back into their resting positions. Fang blue balls were the worst.

He went back to the sink and filled up the cup again, too aware of the hurt in her silence. Com
forting her wasn’t an option, not when she was so willing.

“You’re the first person in a long time who didn’t want me to suffer,” she said with a sad laugh.

He wanted her so badly. He wanted her body and her blood. He just wasn’t sure which one he wanted more.

She got up from the couch and walked toward him, her feet making soft padding noises on the tile floor. Panic rose in his chest, worse than when he’d faced It, worse than the first time he’d been caught in the sun. Panic that she might touch him and send him flying off the edge, and he would hurt her.

She moved carefully, as though she felt the tension that snapped like a live wire in all of his muscles. She opened the kitchen drawers, one after another, until she withdrew something gleaming and metal. A pair of scissors.

The thought that she would cut herself to tempt him made cold sweat pop out on his forehead. He half wanted her to do it, half dreaded that it was exactly what she intended. Walking slowly toward him, she raised the scissors, and just when he thought she would make a cut, she pushed the point gently against his neck.

“If I stabbed you, what would you do?”

The weird turn of the moment took him by enough surprise that he didn’t want to grab her. He kind of
wanted to run from her. “I would…probably cry? Stabbing hurts.”

She arched a brow. “If you were drinking my blood, and I stabbed you, would you stop?”

The answer was yes, but he couldn’t tell her that. Then, there would be no reason to refuse her. Her trust overwhelmed him, crawled inside his skin and forced him to consider things he didn’t want any part of.

She pushed her hair away from the left side of her neck. “Go ahead. I want you to. I’ll make sure you don’t hurt me.”

Little did she know, if she got to the point where she was in danger, she wouldn’t have the strength to stab him. He should tell her that, argue harder against her suicidal wish, even opened his mouth to do so, but what he said was, “No,” and reached out to tilt her head the other way. “Not the jugular. The blood isn’t oxygenated. It’s not as good.”

She uttered a sharp noise of surprise to find herself beneath him on the couch, too fast for her human mind to sort out the movements it had taken to get her there. Her arm fell slack at her side, hand still clutching the scissors, and he gripped her wrist, pulling the point of the blades to the side of his neck as he bent his mouth to her skin. The beat of her heart taunted him, and he seated his fangs against her throat.

“Always here,” Sophia had told him on the night she’d made him. She’d held down a twisting, raving
homeless man and encouraged him to kill—“A mercy killing,” she’d said to encourage him—instructing him to tear not into the main artery, but into the smaller pathways that fed it. “Less mess that way.”

The same heady rush of his first feeding flooded him, gave new strength to his already powerful muscles, new hunger to his already starving body.

She’d said she could handle the pain, but as he bit down, harder, harder, unrelenting until he felt the crisp pop of her skin breaking under his fangs, her body tensed beneath him, an ascending chorus of “ow’s” escaped her, then finally dissolved into helpless screaming. But she didn’t use the makeshift weapon in her hands.

He wanted to tell her that the worst was over, but he couldn’t lift his mouth from the blood that pumped into his mouth, faster and faster as she wailed beneath him. Her blood was thick and sweet; it tasted better if you knew the person and liked them, inasmuch as a vampire could like his food. He’d stopped thinking of Jessa as food, and somehow that made her even more delicious. Her blood calmed the raging thirst in him, a tidal wave over the drought in his mouth, a wash of warm, wet comfort to his shrinking, cracking tissues.

“Stop!” she begged finally. “Please, stop!”

The point of the scissors dug farther into his throat, but he didn’t need that kind of inducement. The pleading in her voice turned the taste of her
blood in his mouth to something spoiled and horrible, too sweet and sour at the same time, like rotten milk. He lifted his head, and she pushed him off her, panting, tears streaming from her eyes as blood trickled from her neck.

The sight turned Graf’s stomach. He got up and went to kitchenette and grabbed the roll of paper towels off their plastic spindle. He wadded some in his fist and returned to Jessa’s side to press it against the two small puncture marks in her skin. Next to them, the dark outline where he’d bruised her with his bottom teeth marred her smooth neck.

He felt like he was going to barf.

“I’m sorry,” she said, sniffing and wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “Wow, you were right. That really, really hurt.”

“I tried to warn you.” He sounded more defensive than he would have liked to. “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

“I asked you to.” Her watery eyes gleamed in the darkness, and he hated himself even more.

He’d promised her that he wouldn’t let anybody hurt her, and then he’d gone and done it. He was just as bad as Derek.

He let her replace his hand on the paper towel, after he checked to make sure her blood was slowing. To focus on something other than how he’d hurt her, he looked at her foot. “How’s your ankle?”

“Umm,” she began shakily, “I think it’s okay. It only hurts when I bend it.”

“I shouldn’t have let you walk on it.” He dropped to the floor and took her foot in his hand, gently unwinding the tan bandage. “I’m going to rewrap this and then you’re going to put it up again.”

He worked in silence, not wanting to look at her face or her trembling hands or her bloody neck. The whole experience had cured him of wanting her blood, that was for sure. It wasn’t any fun to feed off someone you cared about, no matter how good they tasted.

“Thank you,” she said quietly as he hooked the metal closures through the bandage.

He shook his head. “Think nothing of it. I remember being human. The healing time on little shit like this is ridiculous.”

“Not that. I mean, thank you for that, too, but thank you for drinking my blood.” It was such an odd statement, it had to be genuine.

“Don’t thank me.” He didn’t mean it in the way John Wayne said it to the women he rescued in the movies. “I mean, really, you shouldn’t thank me for doing that to you.”

“I learned something from it.” She carefully settled her ankle on the arm of the couch and lay back.

He snorted. “What, that being bitten by a vampire hurts?”

“That you care about me.” Her eyes drifted closed, and he pressed the back of his hand to her cheek, relieved to find it warm. If she had been clammy and
cold, he would have known he’d taken too much. There was only one cure for that.

Luckily, she was just experiencing the natural exhaustion after a painful experience. Her fingers captured his and held them by her face. “Thank you,” she whispered again, before her grip relaxed into sleep.

He pressed his lips against her forehead and held them there, breathing in the scent of her. Not the smell of her blood, but the perspiration and the homemade soap and the skunky smell of the marijuana smoke from June’s bar. They might as well have been flowers and homemade cookies and baby powder; because they clung to her, they smelled that much sweeter.

“Thank you,” he whispered against her forehead. “Thank you.”

From what Graf could tell, based on his own need for sleep, it was sometime around four o’clock the next afternoon that someone came to their cell. It was June, bearing two paper bags. One held cooling ears of cooked sweet corn, the other, a pan of hard bread and Tupperware containers of strawberries and blackberries.

Jessa, dressed in her own clothes, her hair down to hide the marks on her neck, took the bags and slid them onto the counter with a terse “Thank you very much.”

“Why don’t you eat? You must be hungry,” June
urged, guilt written on her face in letters big enough for a billboard.

Jessa turned, sliding her hands into her back pockets. “Well, since I don’t know how long we’re going to be stuck in here, I figure we need to ration it. Isn’t that the smart thing to do?”

“It won’t be much longer.” The way June said it, Graf knew what she meant. It wouldn’t be much longer, not until the trial, but until they wouldn’t have to worry about stuff like food and water and living in general.