Saturday morning, Tian showed up with a backpack of everything he owned and his bike and helmet. We hadn't seen much of him since the hospital, when he had made sure to leave a vase of pink tulips in my and Jason's hospital room window. But, we'd made sure he knew how to find us. After helping everyone locate Amon and Ares in the city, the least we could have done was to make sure he had a place with us, if ever he needed it.
With all of us perched in chairs at the kitchen table, with all of us to bear witness, he explained, "The voices of the devils are loud, but I've been praying louder."
It was a good thing Zia hadn't joined us that morning. I could just hear the groan of absolute torture she'd have at that.
He continued. "And God has told me the Coalition is not a place for me anymore. I'll be sixteen in May, and I understand I need to pick a path for myself, and the Coalition is no longer the right path."
Jason, slouched over the table with his head in his hand and his black hair askew from another restless night, rolled his eyes. Rajy had told us that newly changed vampires often clung to old habits from when they were humans, a natural coping instinct. For Jason, that meant cereal every morning, even though his body absorbed none of it. Today's choice looked like miniature cookies, turning the milk beige, but he lost all appetite with Tian's beaming rays of light in his face.
Nekane wrapped an arm around Tian's shoulders. I was honestly shocked when he didn't react in any way except to look at her as she touched her head to his and said, "Tian, sweetheart, you don't need to worry about your path quite yet. You've a long life of different paths to take, and even if you take one wrong route, I'm sure you'll end up where you need to be."
His slanted eyes widened. Pink spread to his cheeks and he dropped his gaze to his lap. "Oh. Er. Um. Thank you...Nekane. I appreciate your wisdom."
She swelled with a thousand watts of affection, dark eyes twinkling—and then she looked to Yuuhi, for some reason, with a face of, 'Can we keep him forever?'
I crossed my arms atop the table. "Tian, do you need a place to stay?"
His eyes widened even more. "O-O-O-Oh, no, Kali, that's—"
Toivo shrugged his big shoulders. "Tian, you've done a lot for us already. I don't care if you think you were acting under God's will. I highly doubt we would have made it to Amon and Ares in time otherwise."
Carmi's arms slithered across the table as he hissed, "And then I can debate you properly."
A little smile pinched Tian's cheeks, so innocent and disarming. "You'll lose, Carmi."
The most indignant of all indignant gasps swelled in Carmi's chest and a rod sailed through his spine. Jason and Yuuhi both collapsed into their own laughs as Toivo landed the gavel of his fist on the table. "It is law."
I warned Tian of the arrest warrants and the likely siege in the house's future. Tian nodded gravely, combing his fingers through his closely-cropped black hair, and said he'd set up protection around the house come Sunday night.
I wasn't sure what 'protection' entailed. None of us did, but he seemed pretty certain about it.
Carmi volunteered to show him to one of the still mostly unfurnished guest rooms so he could initiate stage one of his debate. Tian accepted the challenge with practiced stride and they talked all the way upstairs.
Later, Zia showed up, swinging her van keys around her finger with only the skill that someone like Zia possessed. Behind her was Raven and Rosette. Raven said her sweet hellos to everyone, but she knew exactly where to go to find her boyfriend. Her ear ticked to the sounds of discord that debates on religion often produced, and she heaved a sigh before hefting her twiggy body upstairs.
Rosette flounced right up to Toivo—or, 'flounced' as much as one could with crutches and a solid leg—to show off her sweater dress with its plunging neckline.
She had done her makeup extra nice. I was about to ask why when Yuuhi elbowed Nekane. She glanced the time on the kitchen, gasped, and said, "Oh dear, is it already almost noon? Come, Kali, you need to shower."
"I—?"
She didn't give me a chance to say another word before she dragged me upstairs and ripped off my clothes. "You may or may not consider shaving—it's entirely up to you." My face tingled with heat as she shoved me, down to my underwear, into the bathroom. My head spun with confusion, but I nonetheless obeyed and started up the shower.
The boiling water always felt good, but the shower also lulled my senses and reminded me that I hadn't been sleeping well for the past week. My eyes felt waterlogged, heavy, eyelids hanging low over my eyes. I was afraid if I blinked too long, I'd pass out in the cloud of steam and drown like a turkey.
A gentle knock-knock at the door jerked me awake. "Kali? Almost done?"
Why was my shower being timed?
Or had I actually fallen asleep without realizing it?
I killed the flow and toweled off. As soon as I had the towel wrapped around my body, however, the door flew open and Nekane bustled in with another towel and an armful of dangerous hair-type tools. I stared at the weapons and the doom they whispered as she spread them all out on the countertop. "Straddle the toilet, Kali."
My face burned again, right through the steam that my flesh secreted. I obeyed. It was better to obey Nekane than question her.
She attacked my hair with the other towel before taking a wide-toothed comb to the nest of snarls. She sprayed detangler. Parted my hair. Applied product. Blow-dried with a round bristle brush. Fed me a bag of salted nuts and seeds. Had my hair done in less time than it usually took for me to even brave taking a brush to my tangles.
But she wasn't done.
She set out hair ties and a box of pins and a wide curling iron. She left quite a bit of hair loose as she pulled the rest into a bun, and then she picked up her fine-toothed comb with a handful of pins between her lips.
With my snack bag empty, I said, "Um. Nekane?" She hummed. "Um. I mean. What is this for?"
She hummed something else. I didn't know what it meant and I didn't question her.
She guided my long bangs away from my face, making sure to spray every sweep and every loop she made before and after the pin went in. With the curling iron, she created the perfect amount of loose curls around my face and dangling from my bun, over my shoulder. It must have taken her another hour, with a bowl of hummus and veggies, and then she sentenced me to apply the usual post-shower products as she danced out of the bathroom. She had also left me underwear that I didn't recognize, form-fitting and nearly seamless against my hips.
When she returned, it was with a box that looked like one of Raven's fold-out art bins. When Nekane flipped the lid, however, paints and pencils and brushes were of the make-up kind. She primed my face before lightly lining my eyes. "You don't need any foundation. Your skin is beautifully even, but I can give you a bit of bronzer if you'd like."
"I'm already pretty dark."
She giggled. "I'll do a little so you can see what it looks like." She searched her box and pulled out a deep copper, which she lightly brushed beneath my cheekbones. She wouldn't let me steal a peek, no matter how many glimpses I chanced of the mirror. She kept my back to my reflection and dabbled my eyelids with smoky hues. A paintbrush smoothed color along my lips, and then she stepped back to view her work. "Okay. Good. This way."
I tried again to peek at the mirror, but she grabbed both my wrists and dragged me into the bedroom. Something was on the bed that hadn't been there before, draped across the poof of the duvet.
A gown.
Emerald green, structured, simple yet elegant, with a subtle sheen in the texture. Nekane lifted it into the air, the zipper in the back already undone, and instructed me to step in.
I hesitated.
This dress, or at least one very similar to it, had been on the body of a very slender, conventionally attractive body in Nekane's big binder of dresses. I was so convinced that I'd ruin this dress if I put it on.
But then I remembered Yuuhi on his knees, his hands around my thighs, and I remembered how he told me that my legs were so much more than that model's, and that there were a hundred kinds of beautiful. I wouldn't look like that model in this dress.
I'd look like myself.
Maybe that was okay.
I guided my right foot in first, then my left, and then Nekane lifted the dress up my body. My arms went through the sleeve holes, and then she zipped me up. The fabric was strong. Sturdy. The dress clung to me like it knew my body better than I did, better than I ever could have, but when Nekane hooked the neck, I knew my back was bare.
"Okay!" She grabbed me by the shoulders and drove me to the walk-in closet. "Let's take a look in the mirror now." She pushed open the door and flicked on the light.
I stared at my reflection in the full-length mirror at the opposite end of the closet. I knew it was me. I could still tell it was me, especially as I fidgeted absently with the still-damp bracelet around my wrist. It was me.
In fact...it felt like me times a hundred.
The fabric rustled, the train skimming the carpet as I braved slow steps closer, my feet sinking into the plush carpet. Nekane had kept the makeup light, styled my hair less intricately than I thought. It looked so effortless. All of me. I didn't look like I'd been painted to represent something that I knew I wasn't.
I looked like me.
My fingers and toes tingled. The steam in my chest poured from my lips. I stopped fidgeting. My spine straightened, my shoulders back. No one had to tell me to do it. This was how I wanted to stand, and finally I understood what I'd been missing all this time. It had nothing to do with the dress or the makeup or the hair. It had to do with how I stood, on my own, without anyone telling me to.
Solara always knew who she was, until the end. She knew what she liked and she knew how she wanted to dress herself, and she knew no amount of clothes or makeup could ever change her. Everything she put on, the color she stained into her hair, the way she painted herself, it was all to make her more herself.
And then there was me.
What was I?
I was so many pieces of so many others, but what did that make me?
It made me think I had no place looking in a mirror unless it was to check for black eyes or split lips.
But standing in front of the mirror now, I didn't look like pieces of others.
I looked like me.
"Come on, silly," Nekane said. "You can't spend the whole evening staring at yourself."
I broke away from the mirror. "What is this for?"
"For you, of course. Now get out."
The maternal authority in her voice left me no choice, but when my hand touched the closet doorsill, I stole one last glance over my shoulder. The back of the dress was an open window, showing off the curve of my spine and the subtle ribbons of muscle, all the way down to the heart shape of my sacrum.
"Oh, and, Kali..."
My head swung to Nekane again—she snapped a picture with her phone.
Fire swarmed my face. "N-Nekane—"
She stuffed the phone away in the pocket of her dress and slapped her hands to my shoulders. "Do have fun, and do be careful walking down the stairs. Here's your shoes, one-inch heels just for you, step in carefully. There you go. Out!" She shoved me from the bedroom and shut the door on the train of the dress.
The house was quiet, but the walls clung to the leftover energy of everyone the way bed sheets clung to body heat in the winter. Aromas from the kitchen had made their way upstairs, fresh yet salty, like fish. I lifted the skirt with one hand, braced myself against the handrail of the stairs with the other, and took my first step down. My ankles wobbled on the tiny stilts, but my body adjusted quickly. If there was one thing I had mastered, it was balance.
As the living room and the adjoining kitchen came into view, a man stood from the table, dressed in a sleek black suit with his hands dunked into the pockets of his trousers. He lifted his head when he saw me. I faintly recognized him with his rich brown hair combed away from the type of youthful face that would never know age, a pinch to his dark green eyes as he watched my precise footwork down the last steps. He wasn't a boy playing dress-up, either.
He was a man.
My heels stabbed the tile as I approached. Our toes touched and his smiling lips parted with words he didn't have just yet. His hand lifted and the backs of his fingers ghosted along the line of my jaw. My fingertips and toes tingled again. My chest swelled against the stitches of the dress.
"How do you feel?" he asked.
"I...don't know if I can describe it."
He leaned down. His lips pressed against my forehead. "I can. You look perfect."
For a heartbeat, we were in the forest together, with the fire of autumn leaves raining to the earth all around us, the sunlight pouring across the gold canopy of the trees and filling me up to the brim.
My eyelids parted when he took a step back and I found part of the memory had come true. My fingers illuminated like glow sticks. He laughed at the panic in my face, whatever it might have looked like, and he took all ten of my blazing fingers into his hands. "Kali, listen to me. It's alright. You don't need to be ashamed of this."
"But it's even worse than having a blush reflex like Jason's—" He lifted my hands to his lips and kissed the knuckles. The light swarmed into my hands and wrists. "Y-You're doing this on purpose."
"I am. No regrets." He released my hands to offer me his arm. "Shall we?"
I accepted the gesture and followed his lead past the kitchen, past the entrance into the main artery of the house, deeper into the hall. "What's this for? Where is everyone?"
"I disposed of them." He managed a haughty air, as if courting a queen. "Toivo will make a good floor rug once he's been skinned."
I snorted and made to shove him, but then he directed me into the dining room. I stopped. The globes of the chandelier casted an antique golden light about the room, a candelabra from who-knew-where set on the table, the wicks smoldering. The lanterns he had strung last week lit up the patio outside like sunlight through stained glass windows, a brilliant contrast against the cold gray world outside the tall windows.
He entered the room first and pulled out the head chair to a single elaborate place setting, gesturing to the cushion with a sweep of his arm.
A laugh escaped me. "Isn't this...supposed to be considered highly cliché?"
"Oh yes. Highly cliché." His grin barely contained his own laughs. "I'd say in the top five worst clichés as far as romance novels go, but I've wanted to do this for you the past month. Let me have this."
I couldn't fight the stupid smile on my face as I slid in front of the chair and allowed him to seat me. He whipped the cloth napkin from the plate and draped it along my lap, and I watched him as he moved to the wine bottle, uncorked and breathing, and tilted a steady stream of chardonnay into my glass. He made sure to wipe the mouth of the bottle with a cloth after filling his own glass and said, "I'll be back with the first part of your meal."
The first part.
He slipped from the room and I had to wonder if he was more excited about this than I was. All signs pointed to yes. I was pretty damned excited, but he was positively giddy. My chest swelled with a hundred kinds of affection.
I smoothed down my napkin to busy my hands against the anticipation. When he swept back inside, one hand carried a long, rectangle platter. The other hand carried a much smaller rectangle plate. He set the plate down in front of me and said, "Hashi."
My eyes glued to the chopsticks, mounted atop the groove of a carefully-painted rest. He set down the platter, heavy with a rainbow of sushi, bursts of color against the spotless white of porcelain. I hadn't realized he had taken his seat, his coat draped on the back of the chair, until he lifted his glass. "To complete the cliché, we must toast."
"Oh—uh—I've never toasted." I snagged the stem of my glass. The wine sloshed as my arm jerked into the air.
"I'm taking all sorts of firsts for you tonight, aren't I?"
My usually dependable filter fell out of my mouth, spilling a barrage of consonants and no vowels. I wasn't sure what I'd intended to say. I wasn't even sure I meant to speak. All I knew was the tingle in my fingers and toes, and I willed myself not to light up again.
Our glasses clinked lips. "This night is for you, Kali, no matter how cliché and predictable it is, I think a little predictability is a good remedy right now."
A little predictability.
A little something familiar, even if it wasn't. Something I could grasp and hold onto. Before he touched his rim to his mouth, I said, "Then this night is for both of us."
Our eyes locked and his lips pulled into the crooked smirk that I still fantasized slapping from his face, even while my thighs pressed together. He nodded. "You're right."
We sipped from our glasses. The walls of my mouth prickled with a burst of sweetness, followed closely by buttery oak. He placed the chopsticks in my hand and instructed me how to cradle them instead of throttle, and his hand guided mine as we plucked the first piece of white fish—smelled like tuna—from the plate. I raised it shakily to my lips, nearly dropped it, then shoved the medallion of fish and compressed rice into my mouth.
The tender, supple meat melted on my tongue like butter at room temperature, making my ankles hook together under my chair. He leaned in. "Do you need any soy sauce to go with it?"
I shook my head, relishing the flavor, chewing slowly. I hummed, my handful of chopsticks hovering in the air, forgotten. It had been a while since my last taste of meat. Demons were more carnivores than herbivores by nature, but because of our appetites, there was no way the earth could sustain the meat-heavy diet that we preferred. One demon alone left a huge footprint. For my family, meat was a treat.
And my silence was enough for Yuuhi. As I moved onto the next piece of white fish and juggled it into my mouth, he leaned back, sweeping his wine glass into hand with the pride of success. "I figured you wouldn't need me to dress it up. I usually don't."
'Usually'.
But the only ones he had to cook for before me were Ave and Elliot, and I had a feeling the taste of the culture he had immersed himself in all his life wasn't for Elliot.
The fatty, slightly earthy flesh went down my throat and my eyes dropped.
He must have sensed the way the thought sobered me. His eyes widened and he sat forward. "That was the halibut. Take a piece of ginger and then try the mackerel. It's cured since we're not by any ocean, but I think you'll still like it."
The sliver of ginger was even tougher to grasp, but I managed to feed it between my teeth. The sharp, bitter flavor cleansed my tongue, and I washed it down with wine. Next, the silverfish and the rice to my mouth. The salt and vinegar hit my tongue first, but then the rich oil of the fish claimed every corner of my mouth. I couldn't help the little hum of pleasure, and the way it tickled a smile to his face made my ears hot.
Next was the salmon, then a deep red tuna, and different parts of the tuna, which I noticed was room temperature, so that the fat melted between the walls of my mouth. After I had finished, he stole away the plate, and when he returned, he had a new plate with simple tuna rolls.
We talked about everything and nothing. I poked fun at how this was the first time I'd seen him without a speck of color on his clothes, at least since the funeral. He poked fun at how this was the first time he hadn't seen a speck of black on mine. We talked about how we should decorate the halls. We laughed about hanging Carmi's old crayon drawings, the ones that Raven had kept. We debated characters from 'The Hobbit'.
We talked about everything that didn't really matter. All the nothings and lesser things. In this private world of ours, in this little protected room, even as the sky steadily darkened, we were whole and together and we were two simple people with simple pleasures and simple woes.
I inhaled the last roll and sagged with a sigh. He wasn't finished with me quite yet, however. He whipped a little remote from his pocket and pointed it behind me. I twisted. One of the things that Ave insisted upon for the house was a stereo, and the face of it flashed from 'off' to 'on' in the corner. I blinked at it as a familiar jazzy number started up, a song that Toivo used to play in his car on the radio in the fifties—well, in Rajy's old car.
Yuuhi jumped from his chair and offered me his hand. "Would you dance with me, Kali?" My eyes narrowed at his suave gesture, but my lips curled with a smirk at his wiggling fingers and the way he bobbed on the toes of his polished shoes. Plus, I could feel the wine in my face removing all my inhibitions. My fingers touched his and he couldn't contain his excitement when he yanked me from the chair.
To my surprise, he threw open the slider and took us outside, onto the patio. The lanterns shifted with a light wind, the shadows dancing as if from candle flame. His mouth opened to instruct me what to do, but he didn't have to. My hand wrapped around his, and I guided his other hand to my shoulder while mine joined his back—traditional roles reversed. I took the lead, guiding him in a sweep of the legs and a twirl of my dress around my ankles.
His eyes stayed on mine, even if it was clear to both of us from his hesitant feet and tentative steps that he wasn't a hundred percent sure where I was taking him. His lips formed around the words, ready to speak but not ready to question me. It was the silence between us. It was that we didn't have to speak, that he took his cues from me and let his leg follow mine, that he paused and turned as I did, and that I took the pace slower with the beats so he could keep up.
The question changed in his face. "I should have known better."
"You should have." I stopped us on the ball of my shoe, my hand braced against his back, and I dipped him. He let me, the smile growing into a grin on his face as I held him steady. "Lio was the one who taught Toivo and me how to dance, and we had to use each other as partners."
I swung him to his feet and we traveled again as I said, "We weren't really interested in ballroom dance, I'm sure you can see why, but we found our own uses for it anyway. For Toivo, it didn't change a thing aside from how he impressed girls. But for me, after only a week of training, Rajy said it had changed the lightness of my footwork completely. He said, before, I'd been trying to be more of a heavyweight than I was, and Lio said I was trying to hold too much earth in my body instead of air. A few weeks later, Rajy had me pick out a lighter sword."
"The one you have now?"
"The one I have now."
"It's beautiful to watch." The darkness in his eyes lifted ever so slightly with the memory. "Between you and your brothers. You know each other so well that I can see you watching for each other's usual cues."
The mention of having an audience would always put heat in my face. "It's not really practice for actual life situations anymore. Now, it's just become a game of who can guess the other best based on the signals we tend to make before each move. Rajy was sort of the cure for that, because even when we could beat each other, we never did beat him."
The extra second of silence dropped a rock down my throat, but once the song ended, Yuuhi and I parted, and he said, "Then teach me."
A laugh got me, but when I saw the seriousness in his face, I said, "You're not a swordsman."
"Trust me, I know." He lifted his hands with an easy shrug. "Sometimes you start learning new things when you teach others. Hasn't that been working with Ave?"
It was different with Ave. She wanted to learn because she didn't want to be 'useless'—but the fact still stood that she wasn't naturally inclined toward swords, either. She made guns. She always had a gun with her. She could fire a gun without thinking. Her mind was geared toward a different level of fighting.
But she had thrown a knife at Xue. She at least had that going for her. And while her feet were clumsy and her movements undisciplined, Yuuhi was right. I had been making microscopic changes to my own feet and my own movements based on the errors she made.
My eyes lifted to Yuuhi's again, but I could feel the mischief in my own face. "Okay. Let's have a lesson right now."
He blinked. "Now? I—"
I whirled around, my heels clacking against the pavement as I retrieved the two wooden swords left on the ledge of the unused fire pit. I tossed him one of the swords, silently proud that he caught it single-handedly.
I instructed him on placing his feet and proper stances, but whenever my sword whacked his, he flinched and recovered with a laugh. I couldn't help how I laughed with him before I swatted his leg.
As the night darkened, the mist off my flesh and my lips turned denser. The crisp air felt good as I worked up a sweat, the dress sticking to my body. I was glad for the open back, the extra ventilation.
I batted him around until both of us doubled over, laughing hard enough to promise headaches later. He braced himself against the wall with his shoulder, still sick with laughs as the wooden sword slipped from his fingers to the patio and he touched a hand on his head. "We...should...go inside. I'm—I'm done, look at me, I can't be more done."
"I highly doubt that." I wobbled breathlessly toward him. My sword clacked against his when I dropped it. "Excuse me, miss, but you don't look like you can walk. May I assist you?" I didn't give him the chance to turn me down before I swept him right off his feet, into my arms.
He yelped first, body rigid, but then another bout of laughter hit him and he anchored an arm around my neck. "Well, look what I have. A real gentleman." A huge grin conquered his face as I carried him back inside, and when I rotated, he shut the door after us. "Are you about to carry me off to bed?"
I nearly tripped over my own toe.
I hadn't thought past taking him inside.
Was this it, then? We'd had an evening together, our first date.
This was a date, wasn't it?
Toivo always went out on dates with Ave, but Yuuhi had kicked everyone else out so that we could have the entire house to ourselves.
So, d-d-did that mean...?
"Kali." He unraveled into the shadow, ink that spilled through my arms and reformed him in front of me, toe-to-toe like before. The coldness of the glass behind me mirrored the coldness of the night that clung to his body. One hand stopped the music. His other hand touched my face. Icicles. "Listen, you don't need to panic. I did this for us, in private, so that you wouldn't have to worry about anyone else's expectations. Not even your own."
The sincerity in his eyes eased my nerves. "It's....You did all of this for me. I want to do something for you, too."
His other hand lifted to my cheek and his forehead pressed against mine. His voice dropped to such a whisper that his words tickled my hollow chest. "Kali, don't ever think that you owe anyone anything, no matter what they do for you. This is yours." His fingertips slid down my neck, around my shoulders, and along the underside of my arms. He'd done this a hundred times already, and still I lost my breath. "It's no one else's. Not mine, not anyone's. It's yours, and you're allowed to share it when you want to, because you want to, and not because someone wants you to."
The heat of my breath shivered between us. The tingle returned to my fingers and toes, but this time it brought the surge of confidence that never stayed long enough for me to put to words. I peered up into his eyes. "I've wanted to share my body with you since you first touched it." My mouth couldn't control an anxious smile. "Will you share yours with me?"
The chuckle in his chest rumbled in every empty space in my own chest. He closed the final inch between us and our mouths touched, and I tasted the wine on his lips and the cold November night on his tongue and every laugh we'd shared and every word of tonight. I breathed him in. I pulled him into me, physically and intangibly. My arms wrapped around him and my fingers hooked into his shirt and my back pressed against the glass and it was a shock of cold that hitched the breath in my throat.
Those were his fingers, sweeping along the bend of my lower back, hands that left trails of frost along the wildfire of my flesh. The air in my lungs quivered, and the quiver worked its way up to my jaw.
He pulled away to peer down at me with eyes that yanked out every string that held my bones together. I fell apart at his gaze and the sultry sound of his voice. "We can take it slower."
I wanted him. I wanted him in ways that a thousand words couldn't express. I wanted him in ways that my body didn't understand but my dreams did. My fingers twisted tighter into his shirt. "Damn it, Yuuhi, if you don't throw me down and rip off this dress faster than it took to put on, I'm going to rip off yours."
Had I really just said that?
Had I just said that?
I had, because Yuuhi's eyes widened and my face turned into the surface of the sun—luckily not literally, not yet.
But then his hands closed around my arms and we plunged into shadow. I hated riding the darkness, but I didn't care. Anything to bring us to the bedroom faster. It already felt like I'd been waiting a lifetime for him, a lifetime of sitting in a well-disguised cage and looking up at the sky.
This big estate that we had all picked out felt a little too big for me, a little too empty. But with Yuuhi, I no longer felt like I had moved from a smaller cage to a bigger cage. We had freed each other from our prisoners, and we freed each other again.
#
Rajy had said that demons lost control during sex, and despite all the training Rajy had put Toivo and I through to grip the reins on our inner demon, Yuuhi found a way to cut the reins, and he found a way to make me feel safe enough to do so.
He was gentle, and he was careful, and he wasn't bothered by the things that made me hyper aware of myself, and he let me go at the pace I needed to go at. He never questioned my resolve, but he gave me ample moments to tell him to stop. I never did.
I never wanted to.
I gave him everything that I was in exchange for everything that was Yuuhi.
We laid together in the aftermath, tangled in the sheets and tangled in each other. His body was pressed against mine. Even if he didn't need to breathe, even if there was no rise and fall of his chest or drum of a heartbeat, he was so alive.
Ripples of light flickered off my flesh like coils of mist off the earth, perfectly in tune with the slowing beats of my heart. He watched, and he lifted his hand above my chest and let the sinuous tendrils dance between his fingers.
I rolled my head to see him. His tired eyes were already on me, his parted lips moving into a sloppy smirk. My face turned hot again and my voice cracked when I said "What?" which only worsened the glow in my face.
His chest shook with drunken chuckles. "You're everything I knew you were."
What did that mean? What was it supposed to mean?
I didn't know, but I liked it, and I rolled on my side against him to lift my face over his. "I think I was a little more."
The chuckles blossomed into laughs. His palm swam up the gentle curve of my spine in a way that delighted every nerve ending. "Alright, alright. You were everything I knew you were, and then a hundred times more."
"That's better." Despite the blush clinging to my face, I couldn't help a guilty afterthought. My thighs hugged to him and my eyes shifted to the side. "Um, I...I sort of....You know, demons, they...well, control is sort of..."
His index finger slid over my lips. "I know." But then his gaze unfocused as his thoughts turned farther away. "Kali, I told you we didn't need contraception."
My eyebrows lifted as the memory stole across my mind, foggy in the heat of things, but I remembered. He had thought of it before I had, and Rajy would have keeled over if he'd known I'd almost completely forgotten. That was bad on my part. Very bad. I had convinced myself I was a hundred percent ready for this, but the fault in my preparation was a sign that I still had more to be ready for.
But Yuuhi hadn't forgotten, a safety net under my failure. He stopped me before the demon part of me could fully take over, and he caught my face and told me there was no need to use protection. It wasn't like we could transmit diseases to each other, being what we were, but he had told me there was a reason, and that he would explain after.
I saw in his face that the explanation hurt him, maybe even ashamed him. And for that, I believed him.
It was his turn to let his eyes wander away. "It's...something that simply happens after a while with vampires. We don't consume protein, so...we don't have protein to waste."
I studied his face. He was giving me the neutral scientific explanation, devoid of any honest feelings, but the tightness around his eyes told me another story. "You can't have children."
It took him a heavy moment before he was able to push out, "No. I can't ever give you a family, Kali."
My face softened. My sweaty palms cupped his cheeks the way he did whenever he consoled me. "Yuuhi, you are my family. I'd like to be yours, too."
His eyes lifted to mine. The vulnerability hurt me. He wanted to have children, I could read it in his clenched jaw, in the way his hands gripped me, and it was one of those rare moments where I realized he was a two-hundred-thirty-year-old man with needs as simple as mine, if not simpler—or perhaps more complicated.
I was still just a girl, after all, who was trying to figure out who she was, while the man she loved wanted to settle down with children.
I couldn't give him that, either. I was far from ready to have any children, and this wasn't the best time in either of our lives, too. Not with the promise of bad things in the future.
But I could give him myself.
I pressed my lips to his. A soft, lingering kiss. A simple thing. When I parted, his arms scooped me up and he murmured so sweetly, "You're my family, too."
The words were perfect. Each one. And if I'd had any doubts about how he could love me when he'd had a woman like Ave, I lost them all. He had convinced me.
(Copyright © 2013 Sarah Godfrey & Victoria DeRubeis. Please alert the authors at keyboardsmashwriters@gmail.com if you are seeing this work posted in full outside of SarahandVictoria on Wattpad.)
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