Morganville (Justin Bieber)

Chapter 124

"Trust me," I said again. "And you can keep your clothes on if you don't."

We'd done this before, but somehow it hadn't felt so... intimate. I pressed against him, back to front under the covers, and his arms went around me. Instant heat.

I swallowed and tried to remember all those good intentions I'd had as I felt Justin's breath whisper on the back of my neck, and then his lips brushed my skin. "So wrong," he murmured. "You're killing me, you know."

"Am not."

"On this, you'll have to trust me." His sigh made me shiver all the way to my bones. "I can't believe you brought Monica back here."

"Oh, come on. You wouldn't have left her out there, all alone. I know you better than that, Justin. Even as bad as she is--"

"The satanic incarnation of evil?"

"Maybe so, but I can't see you letting them get her and... hurt her." I turned around to face him, a squirming motion that made us wrestle for the covers. "What's going to happen? Do you know?"

"What am I, Miranda the teen screwedup psychic? No, I don't know. All I know is that when we get up tomorrow, either the vampires will be back, or they won't. And then we'll have to make a choice about how we're going to go forward."

"Maybe we don't go forward. Maybe we wait."

"One thing I do know, Ana: you can't stay in the same place, not even for a day. You keep on moving. Maybe it's the right direction, maybe not, but you still move. Every second things change, like it or not."

I studied his face intently. "Is your dad here? Now?"

He grimaced. "Truthfully? No idea. I wouldn't be surprised. He'd know that it was time to move in and take command, if he could. And Manetti's a running buddy from way back. This kind of feels like Dad's behind it."

"But if he does take over, what happens to Michael? To Myrnin? To any other vampire out there?"

"Do you really need me to tell you?"

I shook my head. "He'll tell people they have to kill all the vampires, and then, he'll come after the Morrells, and anybody else he thinks is responsible for what happened to your family. Right?"

"Probably," Justin sighed.

"And you're going to let all that happen."

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't say you weren't, either. Don't tell me it's complicated, because it isn't. Either you stand up for something, or you lie down for it. You said that to me one time, and you were right." I burrowed closer into his arms. "Justin, you were right then. Be right now."

He touched my face. His fingers traced down my cheek, across my lips, and his eyes--I'd never seen that look in his eyes. In anyone's, really.

"In this whole screwedup town, you're the only thing that's always been right to me," he whispered. "I love you, Anastasia." I saw something that might have been just a flash of panic go across his expression, but then he steadied again. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but I do. I love you."

He said something else, but the world had narrowed around me. Justin's lips kept moving, but all I heard were the same words echoing over and over inside my head like the tolling of a giant brass bell: I love you.

He sounded like it had taken him completely by surprise--not in a bad way, but more as if he hadn't really understood what he was feeling until that instant.

I blinked. It was as if I'd never really seen him before, and he was beautiful. More beautiful than any man I'd ever seen in my entire life, ever.

Whatever he was saying, I stopped it by kissing him. A lot. And for a very long time. When he finally backed up, he didn't go far, and this look in his eyes, this intense and overwhelming need--that was new, too.