Blood Born: Cora's Choice #2 (9 page)

“
So then, this Bentley-sending CEO. His company is legit?” Lisette asked, sounding a little skeptical.

“
Well, I’m going to follow up with Dr. Robeson, but his tests show that my lymphocytes are already returning to normal.”

“
That’s amazing,” she said.

You don’t know the half of it,
I thought.

“
I think the CEO might have the hots for me,” I ventured. That was the understatement of the century. But I had to tell her something about what had happened.

Also, he’s an ancient, blood-sucking vampire who has marked me for life.
Right. That would go over great.

“
Oh?” Lisette asked, her tone oozing with disapproval. “Wouldn’t he be a little old for you?”

What’s a few hundred years, give or take?
Oh, and he bought me dinner just once before we had sex on his bed, only it’s my bed because he thinks I’m going to live with him now or something.

Aloud, I said,
“It’s hard to tell how old he is. He looks younger than he has any right to, that’s for sure.”

“
Huh,” Lisette said. “Well, be careful. You know how those rich douches are—total users.”

He just needs a sip now and again.
Is that so bad?

“
Yeah, I know.” Lisette’s parents were accountants and together made ten times what my grandmother had. Rich was relative, I’d learned. “Look, I’m still recovering, so I’m pretty tired.”
And if we keep talking, I’m going to say something that will convince you that I’ve lost it.
“I know you’re dying to tell me all about your annual Christmas family drama, but I’m still pretty tired. I’ve got to catch a nap. Call you later?” I suggested.

“
Sure thing,” she said. “Bye!”

“
Bye.” I hung up.

I could smell Dorian on my skin, all over me, like the mark that I carried on my wrist.
I had to get it off me. Even that was messing with my head.

Rubbing my arms, I
heaved myself off the couch and headed for the bathroom. I turned on the shower, setting it just below scalding, then peeled off my clothes and stepped in.

The smell of him got stronger for a moment in the steamy enclosure of the tub,
then it came sheeting off under the assault of soap and water. I scrubbed my hair, my face, my neck, my breasts, my belly.

I rinsed the folds between my legs, and then, hesitantly, I felt the opening with my fingers.
I was hardly a novice to self-pleasure, but always before, I had rubbed my clitoris to bring myself to climax. I had never had anything but a tampon inside myself before...him.

I set one leg on the edge of the bathtub as the water poured down over me, and carefully,
experimentally, I slid my index finger inside, up to the third knuckle. I could feel the fleshy walls clasp it, smooth hills and deep furrows. I pulled it out and thrust it in again, but there was no blossoming heat deep in my belly. I slid in another finger, and I felt myself stretch against them, but still nothing like his hands on me, in me. I used my other hand to stroke my clitoris as he had, with the shower rushing in my ears and sheeting across me.

I closed my eyes and thought of his fingers instead of mine, how I must have felt to him, buried deep inside my heat, and then the sensation came, spiraling out of me.
I leaned my head against the shower wall and pressed on, remembering his mouth, his hands, his body over mine. Pushing me. Inside me.

Anticipation coiled more
tightly, sweat springing to the surface of my skin only to be instantly washed away.
His body, with mine, in mine.

I
broke, and the release rushed through me. I kept my hands going even as my legs shook and I panted against the shower wall, water pouring over my face. The wave receded, carrying the pleasure with it, and I slid my hand out of myself and let the water wash my fingers clean.

Then reality came slamming back.

I was, I decided, bat shit crazy. No sooner had I escaped from the—let’s not forget—evil, people-eating vampire’s house than I jump in the shower and get myself off thinking about him.

Idiot.

The snarling force of the thought was like a slap.
I turned off the water and scraped the hair out of my face, grabbing the towel and drying off before I stepped out of the tub. In my bedroom, I threw my clothes into my laundry basket and grabbed an oversized T-shirt and a pair of panties. After dragging them on, I flung myself full length onto the narrow twin bed.

And then I started to cry.
Not the small, hidden tears that I’d so quickly dashed away when I knew I was dying, pushing them down deep inside until I could lock them up. These were heaving sobs that wracked my shaking body until I thought I would break, from the depths of a despair I didn’t know I had.

All the fears of death that I had locked
away came tumbling out all at once. I was alive. I should be happy. But I had never felt so hopeless.

Even if I was cured, I had traded one life sentence for another—bondage to an inhuman creature
who had not just changed my body but could do what the cancer never could by reshaping my mind. He could make me crave the insane, the repulsive, the most hideous perversions that his mind could imagine with only a touch of his fingertips. He wouldn’t even have to order me. I would beg for them, if he wished it.

I knew it, because even lying there in the small, crowded cube of my room, I also cried because I wanted him.
I had scrubbed away every trace of his scent, but I still felt his presence inside my blood and bones.

I’d dared to hope that I could just pick up my life where I’d left off.
But I would always be at his mercy.

Why couldn’t I just
accept death? Why did I have to throw the dice one last time?

The sobs turned dry when all my tears were spent, my throat rasping with grief.
As my hiccupping grew softer, the shrouded silence of the empty apartments pressed down around me until I thought I would smother under its weight.

And I slept.

I
reached for my phone reflexively as I woke, holding it in front of my nose as I dragged my eyes open and willed them to focus. It was nearly noon—
Thursday, Dec 25,
it read.

I’d slept in until Christmas.

I let out a puff of air, setting the phone back in its spot and grabbing the graduation photo that sat beside it, with my Gramma hugging my shoulders as I held up my high school diploma in victory. I’d never expected to see it again when I left last Friday. I’d never expected to see anything again.

“
Hi, Gramma,” I said, stroking the image of my Gramma’s eternally proud, smiling face with one finger. “Merry Christmas. I miss you.”

She had been
a wise, kind, practical woman—a happy one despite the car accident that had robbed her of her husband, her only child, and her son-in-law all in one blow. I had been saved from my dying mother’s body, so Gramma had been the only family I had ever known, though my childhood was haunted by the wedding pictures of the smiling young couple and the snapshots of the grizzled man that hung throughout the house.

She had just turned sixty-three the day I was born and her life was turned upside down.
I remembered my birthdays with a peculiar kind of clarity, each one haunted by the memory of her fearless smile and, in unguarded moments, eyes that grew bright with unshed tears.

I
returned the photo and rolled out of bed with a groan, bracing myself for the difficulty of standing and facing another day.

Except it wasn’t hard anymore.
My muscles didn’t protest every movement, and now that I was awake, I realized that the bone-deep exhaustion that had shadowed me for so long was gone. I pulled a bra on under my shirt and dragged on my favorite pair of yoga pants, throwing my hair into a ponytail.

I felt so…
normal. I’d never expected to feel normal again. Normal, except for the fact that there was a teardrop, as small as my pinkie fingernail and as red as blood, on the inside of my right wrist. Except for the fact that I had to keep the blinds cracked so the light wouldn’t blind me.

I pushed those things out of my mind.
They belonged to another world. One I wasn’t going to go back to. I refused to even think about the possibility.

Not on Christmas.

I grabbed the earbuds for my phone, pulled up the queue of my favorite music, and set it to blast as I rummaged above the refrigerator for a box of cereal. If ever I was ready for some comfort food, it was now. Shamelessly, I grabbed the Lucky Charms that I’d stashed, half-hidden, in the back. Lisette teased me mercilessly about my little kid cereal, but Lisette wasn’t there.

I hadn’t eaten in more than twelve hours.
I didn’t even bother with a cereal bowl. Instead, I got the mixing bowl that Lisette bought to make cookies and I filled it with a third of the box, drowning it in milk.

Bowl
in hand, I sprawled on the couch—not the utilitarian couch that came with the apartment but the puffy one with the big, pastel 1990s lilies on it that I’d taken from my Gramma’s house when I cleaned it out after she’d died. It still had a slightly discolored spot at one end where her miniature poodle Popcorn had loved to sit while she watched TV when I was little.

I was home.
I could hardly believe that I was home.

My phone rang,
interrupting Christina Perri’s warbles.

It was Lisette.
Her name on the display was yet another reminder of everything I’d come back to.

Everything that I might still lose.

No.
I punched the screen to answer the phone.

“Hi, Lisette.”

“Hey, Cora, I didn’t hear from you again yesterday,” Lisette said.

“
Sorry,” I said, relaxing at the sound of her voice. “It seems that my nap ended up turning into more of a marathon sleep.”

“
As long as you’re getting better,” she said.

“
Oh, I am,” I assured her. “Dr. Robeson’s going to be in the office tomorrow, and I’ll see her and get an order for a blood draw.”

“
Good,” she said. “Well, I just wanted to call to tell you Merry Christmas.”

“
Yeah, I’ve probably gotten text messages from like 50 people,” I said. “Those didn’t wake me up, though, apparently.”

“So, did you unwrap my present yet?” Lisette demanded.

Most of our friends had exchanged small gifts before the break, but Lisette insisted that I save hers so that I had something to unwrap on Christmas
day itself. The tiny gift bag was still sitting on the counter where she had left it.

“Not yet,” I said, levering myself up and retrieving the bag.

“You haven’t peeked, have you?”

“
Of course not,” I retorted. “I’m not you.”

“
Ha ha, very funny. Open it up!”

I reached in, past the tissue paper, and pulled out a tiny stuffed rabbit with a heart-shaped label on its ear.

It was so mundane, so delightful and unexpected, that I burst out laughing.

“
Nibbler!” I said. “You found me a Nibbler.”

“
Cheaper than new, too,” she said.

“
I can’t believe you remembered that stupid story.”

Nibbler had been my first and favorite Beanie Baby when I was a kid, and it had been stolen by another little girl in the neighborhood.
I had mourned that stupid rabbit for years, and I had told Lisette about it several months ago when we were talking about our favorite childhood toys.

“
I knew it’d make you smile,” she said.

“
I’ll put it on my dresser,” I told her.

“
What, you aren’t going to sleep with it?” she asked.

“
Ew,” I said.

Our roommate
Chelsea still slept with a stuffed teddy bear, which had become a running joke between Lisette and me since that teddy bear had at this point been a witness to more action than most adult movie stars.

“
Are you sure you don’t want to drive up here and join us?” Lisette asked. “Just for Christmas dinner?”

I blanched at the thought of the chaos of the Bonner family gatherings.
It was wonderful to hear Lisette’s voice, but I couldn’t possibly hold it together at her house.

“
I don’t think I’m up for that quite yet,” I said, “but I’ll probably do something with you before the break is over.”

“
Cool,” she said. “Well, call me if you get lonely.”

“
No problem.” It wasn’t her I would be lonely for, I was afraid.

“
Gotta go. It’s presents time.”