Eternity and a Year (15 page)

“I’ve often wondered that about my family,” he replied. “I mean, I’ve wondered how they reacted after I went missing.”

She sighed miserably. “They thought I knew something I wasn’t telling them. They called me every day for the first couple of months, sometimes twice a day. And they would hint around, like they thought they could get me to reveal something if they asked enough questions. They still call sometimes.”

“I’m sorry, baby,” he said, placing a strong hand on her shoulder.

She straightened beneath his touch. “Maybe I don’t have to disappear,” she said. “Maybe I could still maintain contact—tell them I moved somewhere really far away. Maybe we really
will
move somewhere far away.”

He rubbed her back. “I don’t see why not,” he said, climbing out of the tub to sit beside her.

She sighed and let her head drop onto his shoulder. “I love you, Brendan,” she whispered. “I missed you so bad.”

He reached up to wipe away a tear from her eye. “I missed you, too, sweetheart.”

Chapter Nine

Over the next couple of weeks, Brendan and Carrie began to form a loose plan for their future. As Brendan said, “The south is a pretty crappy place to live if you’re a vampire.” Newly sensitive to the sun, Carrie agreed.

“Let’s head north, then,” she’d said, feeling a dual surge of excitement and regret at the thought of abandoning North Carolina, where she had been born and raised.

So, they lingered, sleeping in the apartment by day and turning to the streets of Charlotte and the surrounding countryside after sunset. During their exploits, which ranged from hunting deer to dipping into the wallets of various criminals, Carrie got a taste of the life Brendan had lived over the past year—violent, lust-driven and bloody.

 
“It breaks my heart,” she said one evening as they sought an hour alone on the third floor of the old warehouse, “to think of you lying here by yourself every day and facing those sorts of criminals on your own every night.”

Brendan laughed. “I think the criminals had more to be afraid of than I did,” he said. “And anyway, I usually avoided them when I could. I didn’t need much cash then. But the days…yeah, they were lonely.”

She reached out and touched his hand.

“I would lie here,” he continued, indicating the dusty floor with an offhand gesture, “and think about crossing town to find you and bring you here, where I could feel your body between mine and the floorboards.” He closed his eyes. “Or sometimes I’d imagine showing up at the apartment and taking you to our bed.”

“You decided to bring me here.” She smiled. He had appeared in front of her on the street, like a ghost, and taken her in his surprisingly solid arms.

“Yeah,” he remarked. “Once I’d decided it was finally time, I couldn’t wait for you to walk home. It was hard enough just to carry you back here, feeling your hot body against mine, without stopping to fuck you in the street.”

Carrie tightened her grip around Brendan’s hand as the tingle of arousal began between her legs. “I was afraid,” she said, “that you might break something inside me, or that my ribs might crack.”

“I was afraid of that, too,” he replied. “But I couldn’t stop.” He squeezed Carrie’s hand in return. “Do you remember the first time we ever made love? When we were human?”

“Of course.”

“I was afraid then, too,” he admitted. “You looked so delicate and soft… I was afraid I might hurt you. I felt like such an…oaf, next to you.”

She laughed softly. “An oaf?”

He grinned. “Well, yeah.”

“I never thought you were an oaf,” she said, stroking his chest with her free hand. “Far from it, in fact.”

“What I’m saying is…it feels good not to have to worry about hurting you anymore. I understand now what you were saying when you asked me to change you, about not wanting to feel fragile.”

“Does that mean you’re going to be rough with me?” she asked, shifting her hand onto his thigh as she leaned in to nip his earlobe.

He grinned and pulled her suddenly into his lap. “Yeah.”

She shivered with delight as he forced her shirt roughly upwards, pawing her breasts beneath the fabric of her bra.

“I was sort of hoping you’d give up on underwear when you became a vampire, too,” he said, negotiating the clasp with savage enthusiasm.

“But I like how impatient you get when you’re trying to get me out of it,” she replied as her breasts sprang free.

Brendan bent to taste one, biting nearly hard enough to pierce the flesh on either side of her areola, barely holding back until her nipple brushed his tongue.

“Ahhhh, don’t…” Carrie protested a second too late, just as his fangs plunged into the soft tissue of her breast. “Ahhh!”

“You’ll heal,” he said.

She sighed as he closed his mouth over her other nipple, denting her rounded flesh. She
would
heal. She had discovered her body recovered much faster and much more thoroughly than it had when she had been human. The wound across her back had closed itself completely during her brief hours of transformation—but that didn’t mean it didn’t still hurt a little. “Stop!”

He did, after a moment’s delay, which somehow managed to be torturously tantalising.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’ll let you have your revenge. You can be rough with me, too.” He jerked his pants’ zipper down purposefully, and the long, pale form of his erection rose from the parted folds of fabric. Carrie gasped as he wrapped one of his hands in her hair and pulled her down to his crotch, tilting his hips slightly so his penis brushed her lips.

She drew it into her mouth with deliberate force, relishing the feel of it sliding between her fangs and the heavy blow of it against the back of her throat. He moaned, flexing his fist so it pulled at the roots of her hair, tightening the skin around her eyes until they were narrowed to slits. She reached up and grasped his testicles, matching his force as she squeezed them, and scraped her teeth along the shaft of his penis as her lips glided over it. He shuddered, moaned, tightened his hold on her hair then suddenly released it, stiffening as he fell abruptly silent.

Carrie opened her eyes and was greeted by the sight of a nest of dark, curly hair. Brendan’s cock filled her mouth, gagging her effectively as she tried to ask what was wrong. She pulled back and his penis emerged from her mouth, slick with saliva, and she turned to look over her shoulder, following his wide-eyed gaze.

“Sophia!” Carrie cried in shock, suddenly conscious of the fact she was on her knees with her breasts bared. “What are you doing here?” She yanked down her shirt, covering herself hastily. The soft rustle of fabric told her Brendan was doing the same, or at least trying to. Judging by the curses he was muttering, his pants were resisting the notion they should close over his raging erection.

Sophia, standing on the top stair in her long, white dress, eyed them with the faintest hint of amusement in her red eyes. “I came to warn you,” she said. “Isadora has returned to the city.”

Carrie’s eyes widened. “She’s still alive?”

Sophia nodded. “I’ve been tracking her since we last met but haven’t had a good opportunity to burn her yet. She’s still very strong and half-crazy with rage.”

“What’s she doing back in Charlotte?” Carrie asked.

“I think,” Sophia said, “she wants revenge.”

Carrie thought she would have gone an even paler shade of white, had she been able to. “On us?” she asked, suddenly re-immersed in the dread she’d abandoned on her wedding and transformation night.

“And me,” Sophia said. “All three of us, I think. She knew you two were living here, and she knew I was following her. Now, she has all of us in one place.”

A heavy silence blanketed the room.

“I have a plan, though,” Sophia began.

Brendan interrupted her. “Sophia, could you please leave us alone for a few minutes?” he asked through clenched teeth, speaking for the first time since her sudden appearance.

Sophia opened her mouth to protest, but Brendan cut her off again.

“We’ll listen to your damn plan in a few minutes!” he said. “Just go!”

She turned and began to descend the staircase with the ghost of a smile on her lips. Brendan seized Carrie as soon as Sophia’s blonde head disappeared from sight, though her footsteps still echoed on the steps.

Carrie gasped in surprise as Brendan tore her jeans roughly from her hips, popping off the button as he bared her legs. Her panties met a permanent end at his hands, split in half and promptly tossed aside into some dark corner of the room where they hung, suspended in a tangle of cobwebs.

He knelt behind her so her buttocks rested snugly against his groin, with the restrained shape of his penis nestled between them. He roughly brushed the opening into her body with his knuckles, teasing her as he dislodged his own button and hastily tore down his zipper, freeing his cock to drop against the round curve of her buttocks with a dull
thud
.

She cried out with pleasure when he entered her and dug her fingernails into the floorboards, carving shallow furrows in their surface as he thrust his hips rapidly, deeply, meeting her flesh each time with a sharp
smack
. In less than two minutes, she was pressing her palms hard against the floor and her buttocks even harder against his hips, urging him deeper as an orgasm seized her, her limbs trembling beneath her own weight and his forceful blows. When her climax ended, her shoulders twinged and her arms collapsed, dropping her face and chest to the floorboards as Brendan continued to grip her hips, groaning loudly as he followed her to orgasm.

Sophia climbed the stairs a few minutes later, clearing her throat conspicuously and letting her feet fall heavily.

“Why weren’t you that obvious last time?” Brendan asked when she appeared.

“I was,” she replied. “You weren’t paying attention.”

Brendan frowned as she smiled knowingly, and Carrie snorted faintly from where she rested against Brendan’s side, fully clothed again. Brendan was dressed now, too, but not quite decent—his erection had refused to subside after their encounter, and it was still visible, hard and long in his lap. She shot it a bewildered, sideways glance. Vampires really were sex-crazy. Not that she could truthfully say she’d mind doing it again…

“So, you have a plan,” Brendan said firmly.

“Yes.” Sophia glanced down at the grimy floor and her white dress in turn and apparently decided to remain standing. “I intend to finish what I started with Isadora, but I’ll need your help to do it—both of you.”

“What do you have in mind?” Brendan asked bluntly.

“Well, I modified my idea a bit when I saw you’d turned her into a vampire,” Sophia said, eyeing Carrie with mild interest. “But to tell the truth, that’s for the best—as far as the plan is concerned, anyway. I want to use the two of you as bait.”

Brendan arched an eyebrow, frowning slightly.

“The idea being,” Sophia continued, “that Isadora won’t know I’ve met with the two of you and warned you yet.”

“Won’t she at least suspect?” Brendan interjected.

“Probably,” Sophia admitted. “But part of the plan is to make it look like you’re both totally ignorant and unsuspecting when she finds you.”

“How would we go about doing that?” Brendan asked.

“Well, you would wait right here,” Sophia said, “like you felt safe and at ease in this building, which is bound to be one of the first places she’ll look. And when she finds you, you’ll be making love to each other.”

Brendan’s eyes bulged in indignation. “What?”

“Just like when I found you,” Sophia continued. “It will seem like you had no idea she was coming.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Brendan said.

Sophia shook her head. “Seeming unaware is essential to the plan.”

“Tell me,” Brendan said in a tone that implied he was humouring Sophia, “what would we do
after
we let Isadora catch us making love?”

“You’d act surprised and let her toss you around a bit, eventually capturing the girl.” Sophia nodded towards Carrie.

“No way!” Brendan said angrily.

“Isadora,” Sophia continued, “will think Carrie’s still a human. She’ll have no idea you changed her.”

“Have you looked at her?” Brendan asked coldly. “It’s obvious I’ve changed her.”

“All we need is a bit of a disguise, and for Carrie to keep her mouth shut,” Sophia insisted.

“I have the contacts,” Carrie said, speaking up suddenly from Brendan’s side. Both Brendan and Sophia stopped their arguing to stare at her. “The coloured contacts I bought last week,” Carrie explained, “to turn my eyes brown. I could wear those to hide my red eyes.” She had ordered the coloured lenses online, anticipating using them in a disguise in case she had to deal face to face with people as she orchestrated her and Brendan’s move north.

Sophia’s plump mouth curved into a satisfied smile. “Excellent.”

“It is not excellent!” Brendan exclaimed, pounding a fist against the floor and sending dust flying onto the hem of Sophia’s pristine gown. “I won’t purposely endanger my wife!”

Carrie couldn’t help feeling a thrill of satisfaction as Brendan argued, despite the fact she wanted him to agree to Sophia’s plan. There was just something about hearing him say ‘my wife’ with such vehemence.

“She won’t be hurt,” Sophia said dismissively. “Even if Isadora tries to kill her, she’ll use a technique that would kill a human, and that won’t work on her now.”

“Isadora hasn’t survived for hundreds of years by being an idiot,” Brendan said tensely. “She’ll realise Carrie’s no longer human the minute she smells her. She has no scent of blood, unlike a human.”

“I’ve already thought of that,” Sophia said. “We’ll smear some on her, beneath her clothing, where Isadora won’t see it.”

Brendan glared at the floor, silent and fuming, as if struggling to come up with a sufficiently outraged reply.

“And when the opportunity seems ripe,” Sophia said, “probably when she seizes Carrie, I’ll show up, douse them both with gasoline and throw in a match.”

Carrie jerked against Brendan, her eyes going wide. Brendan attempted to stroke her hair but ended up pulling it instead.