The Key (Sanguinem Emere) (20 page)

Again the scratching ricochets down the passage to whisper to me and my hands automatically reach to me neck. Where the key hangs. He must have slipped back over my shoulders while I slept. Or passed out. Or whatever the hell happened in that library.

For the briefest of moments I consider letting my curiosity lead me by the nose again but flashes of Levi leaning over me make my stomach churn in response. I can’t do this. Not now. Vertigo strikes me again and I snatch at the staircase railing, holding on for dear equilibrium.

This is absurd. All of this.

I pull myself up the stairs, blatantly ignoring the incessant scratching which sounds to me like an invitation. Or a dare.

I grit my teeth and trudge on.

My bedroom door stands ajar and the light inside flickers slightly as something moves across its comforting glow, almost warming my skin like the sun. Usually I would care about someone in my space. I mean, his space. The space he gave me? But my body is screaming with the effort of dragging myself here. My head hurts and the nausea permeating my system punctuates my discomfort. The dizziness, of course, does not help and all I can think of is falling into those perfectly soft covers and wishing away the last few days with dreams, siphoning off all the bad until all that is left in my head is Dimitri and his soothing voice.

Delilah’s head whips to the door as I walk in.

Her usual smile, edged with relief starts up on her beautiful face but then her expression crumbles as she looks me over.

“You were with him tonight?” Her voice is verging on cold and I flinch away from it. It’s bad enough that my own guilt is hounding me, now I have to face the betrayal in her eyes. My feelings at finding him with that other woman – Saskia – reflected right back at me. I can almost see the pain-spun well opening up in her abdomen, just like it did in mine.

A single tear drips from her eye as she hurriedly wipes it away.

“D,” I try to keep my voice from betraying my worn body, “I’m sorry.”

“Why?” She stoically draws herself up to her full height and slaps a smile back on her features, making sure to allow it reach to her eyes so that there is no uncertainty. My sleeping with Dimitri does not bother her. Yeah, right. “We’re sisters in this. Partners.”

Sisters. I haven’t seen Cecily. She must be just as angry with me as Delilah. Though I can’t really say that. If I’ve learnt one thing at all in the last few days, it is that Cecily is far more intuitive and in control than I’ve ever given her credit for.

I peer at Delilah through slightly hazed eyes, “How can you be so blasé about this?”

She feigns confusion for my sake. “It isn’t being blasé, pet. It’s the way it is. He loves me. But he also loves you. And Cecily. And even Melinda if you can believe that.”

She smirks.

A part of me wants to get what she’s saying and kind of does. A snide comment of “And Addison?” lays itself upon my lips but I choke it down. Then that hint of cultism comes swarming back over me, that we’re all toys to satiate his masculine needs. Can’t let her see it.

I shrug. “Whatever.”

My body leads itself to the bed. That’s all I can describe it as, as I fall onto the softness of it, the opulence just as I pictured it when I was trying to will myself up the staircase. The bed beside me shifts as Delilah’s minimal weight is added to the entire affair and her warm hand brushes my bare skin between my shoulder blades.

The touch is reminiscent of Saskia and I freeze, afraid to move lest I let my friend in on my shame of the past few hours. Of my sudden slutdom. My inability to maintain control of myself around Dimitri and the people he calls acquaintances.

Her hand however moves in rhythmic patterns, painfully like what I experienced earlier. She lets her fingers move to undo the lace binding my chest tightly and slips her hand beneath the fabric, pulling it loose as she slowly exposes my back. I roll over and she smiles at me. Her face illuminated by the lamp-light in her hair as if she’s encased in a glowing golden halo.

She does looks shockingly like an angel in this light.

“What are you doing?” I can’t seem to find the need in me to get away. I know how this will play out. I know this look. I’ve seen it on countless faces. Hers included. But I can’t remove myself from the situation.

I’m just too damn tired.

Though I know the repercussions will be severe.

Her fingers touch my throat. “He really took it out of you, didn’t he?” She says as her eyes focus just below my face.

“What?” My bemusement makes her smile.

“You know, ‘it’.” She whispers as she leans closer to me and brushes my lips with hers. Her breath is sweet. “And what’s this?” She tugs at something around my neck, pulling an object loose from between my breasts.

Shit! The key!

“Nothing,” I hedge as I hurriedly pry it from her fingers and clutch it in my hand. Unsure what to do with it, I can’t let it just lie around where she can pick it up again.

If Dimitri finds that I’ve let it slip into someone else’s hands, he’ll be mad. I don’t want that. I just want more of those kisses. The ones made of fire. The ones that circle around me and make me forget that I am just another girl to him, like all the others.

Too tired for that thought to hurt me now.

Delilah lifts me up and pulls the dress from me, shifting it off of me bit by bit, exposing me to her eyes.

I pull that from her hands too in another wave of that dizzying confusion and wrap the little key in its folds, letting it slide from my fingers to the floor, certain she hasn’t noted the movement as her insistent hands have started hovering over my nakedness like flirting butterflies and her eyes have closed themselves half-way, for all the world like the cat she is. I feel it too, even as I try to stifle my affection for her. Try to fuel my displeasure with anger that she would take advantage of my weakened state. If that’s even what she’s doing.

But I have a feeling it is, though my body is too drunkenly wrecked to respond.

My voice is marked with indecision now, and fear, and uncertainty, as I reiterate my earlier question, the one she ignored with a flirtatious smile, “Delilah, what are you doing?”

She sighs against me, pressing her length alongside mine as she melds into me and her lips hesitate at me ear.

“He hasn’t touched me in weeks. But you’ve been with him. I just want to know if his smell is still on you.”

Delilah pushes her hand between my thighs even as I make to clench them. But the fight has left me, drained from me, been drawn from me and washed out of me as my legs fall open at her command and my hips rise to meet hers. I know I shouldn’t be doing this. I know, too well, that she’s just lonely and that she misses him and that I am her oracle right in this moment. The woman that touched the man she loved. The woman that would love nothing better than to be with him and can’t.

I should not let her do this to herself. I should not do this to her.

Her tongue finds my nipple and my mind and conscience are crushed under the weight of my body’s memory of orgasm. So recent, and painfully and physically exhausting, but so magnificent. Her fingers follow its receding trail as they slip into me. It’s only briefly painful, as my body betrays me almost instantly, warming me, slicking me.

It does not surprise me when, over her shoulder, I see his face, as my hips writhe against Delilah. My lips smile as I chuckle at the hilarity of it all. Here we are, both of us, engaging in something we may regret in only a few moments. All for one man.

Even if that man is a god amongst other men.

So ridiculous that now I see his face when I’m in the throes of passion with someone else.

And then the ice of his fingers strokes my thigh and I begin to understand. He’s really here. With us.

Us.

Delilah looks up into his face and hers turns to the purity of awe. Devotion in the face of divinity.

It’s beautiful.

He crawls onto the bed and places himself between my legs, his arms around Delilah who moans quietly into him as he kisses her and caresses her breast. His eyes find mine and the spell breaks.

Humiliation. Revulsion. Nothing can describe it, identify its heinous core. I am not this.

Despite all evidence to the contrary.

I lift myself away from them, pulling my body as far from the passion as I can manage without looking like I’m freaking out.

Even if I am.

Dimitri lays Delilah down on the bed and moves away from the situation as well, his hand trailing deliberately down her heaving form as he takes his time to leave her wanting more. A smile coalesces on his face as she cries out to the air around her.

He monitors me as I slink off the bed, his eyes catch mine and I stop dead in my tracks for the door.

It’s obvious, if somewhat crude. He won’t let me leave. But it seems he will accept my refusal to participate.

Besides, perhaps this is something I must give myself to.

I keep my eyes on them. These two perfect lovers. These two exquisite creatures joining in ways he and I did only a few hours earlier. Before he left me alone in the dark and cold. I bear witness to their passion and the hurt builds in me again.

But who is being the crueller here? Him or I?

I could shut my eyes, I could converse with myself and erase it all from my memory. Or, at least, try. But I’m searing it in my mind and watching him watch me as he ravishes my luscious, sad friend. The girl who, only moments ago, wanted to do the same with me.

I watch it through to the end. And my heart bleeds. My heart aches.

When they are done, when Delilah has gently lain herself in his arms and fallen to sacred sleep, her expression belying the sweetness of her dreams, I shut my eyes and let the heat of my tears comfort me.

I flinch when his fingers brush them from my cheeks and look up into the sun – or so his face seems to me. Regardless of what I’ve just witnessed.

My head shakes as I whisper to him, “How can you treat us like this?”

He frowns, “I gave her what she wanted.”

“And what about me?” My voice crackles with anger even as I cringe at how juvenile I must sound.

“You were the one who walked away, My Lamb. How can I love you if you won’t give yourself to me?”

He closes the door quietly as he leaves and I hear his final words just before it snaps shut, “I would have given anything to share that with you, Eva. But I will never force you. You are my favourite.”

FRIDAY 22 November 2008… 03:01

Sleep is elusive once more. I drifted off briefly, but my shame brought me back. I don’t even know if I can call it shame anymore. It’s become a part of me, more akin to acceptance of what I am, not shame. I am his. And being his means that there are concessions to be made.

The wildness in Delilah’s eyes frightened me, but I recognised her pain as surely as I have come to understand my own in just the last few hours.

Anything to be near Dimitri. We would give anything, sacrifice ourselves on his altar.

It frightens me. But again I must ask myself, what are my choices? Levi was right. We would rather be miserable in each other’s company with barely a hope of being near him than lose any chance of such comfort again. And if we must take comfort in each other, then that, in and of itself, is a blessing. I’m certain neither of us would have expected his company.

Delilah slipped away during the brief few moments that I slept. The sun has still not come up; I’m afraid that it’ll be night – this night – forever. Stupid, I know, but the coldness of everything touches me and whittles away at the strong woman I used to know. Before Bram and Cecily, and Dimitri. And all of this anarchy.

My reverie is broken as the door to the chamber creaks and I lift my head expecting to see Delilah. But another familiar face pokes its head in, though the hallway is dark and I can only make her out by the slanted cut of her beautiful black hair.

Cecily.

“Hey,” I whisper, not sure why I do so, seeing as how the house is massive and the chances of anyone else being woken up are few and far between.

She stands in the doorway, small and uncertain, it seems to me, but that may simply be that older sister vibe infiltrating my opinion of her again.

“Well, come in,” I force myself not to whisper this time, tired of being tentative and meek. It’s not me. It never has been.

She squeezes inside, ignoring the squeak of the door and closes it gently behind her. I lift the blankets beside me so she can slide in.

Good thing too. She’s freezing cold, like she’s been inspecting the inside of an ice box the entire night. She cuddles up close to me, under my arm and I pull her in tightly. Something’s wrong. She’s too clingy, even for her. Her shoulders are heaving slightly – she’s crying.