Kissing Corpses (5 page)

“Good morning,” he said. Rawdon stood up and walked towards the door to the back of the house.

“Good morning,” I replied with a smile. “I'll see you tonight.”

The work day that followed was miserable. I nodded off at my desk more than once and kept having to sneak off to the bathroom because of the four cups of coffee I drank. At my lunch hour, I grabbed a package of mini chocolate-covered donuts from the gas station around the corner and ate it before going to sleep in my car. I set an alarm on my phone and after forty-five minutes it took a battle of willpower to go back to the office.

I went straight home after work, and passed out on the couch. It had been twenty-eight hours since I had really slept. I dozed from six until midnight, when Geneva poked me and asked if I was going to go to bed.

“Shit!” I shouted. I ran to the kitchen and grabbed a banana and a Luna bar. I ran to my bedroom, trying to fix my hair and do makeup white eating those two things.

“Where were you last night?” Geneva asked, leaning on my doorframe. “And why do you have Rawdon's car?”

“I stayed too late talking and then...” I took applying lip gloss as an opportunity to think of a lie. I couldn't possibly explain to Geneva why Rawdon couldn't drive me home without revealing the big secret. “He had someone coming to pick him up to carpool to a big meeting so he gave me his car. I have to bring it back.”

“At this hour?” she asked.

“Yes. At this hour.”

Geneva pulled out her phone and started texting. I brushed out my hair and finished with mascara. “Who are you texting?”

“Noah,” Geneva said. “Gotta let him know his sister stayed up all night 'talking' to a new guy.”

“Geneva!” I snapped, “We talked. Seriously. I didn't assume you slept with Jimmy when you stayed out all night.”

“Jeremy,” she corrected.

“Whatever. Guy was an ass. We should just call him Jerkemy from now on.”

“Jerkemy? You wit.”

“I've slept six hours. I'm not at my best.”

“Well hurry up and go bring that car back. It's twelve-thirty. I'm sure Rawdon wants to get some sleep, too.”

I laughed. “See you in a bit,” I said, walking from my bedroom to the living-room to grab his keys. “And don't make things up for Noah. You know how he gets.”

“You're his own personal Rom-Com,” Geneva replied.

“I've already got one busy-body asking too many questions about my love life.”

“Love you, too,” she said, blowing a mock kiss.

I sat behind the wheel of Rawdon's car. I rubbed my face. Then I promptly checked the mirror to make sure I didn't smear eyeliner all over it. I was going back. I was returning to the vampire's home. Home? Domicile? Lair?

When I got to Rawdon's house, I took my time approaching the front door. The lights were on inside. I looked at the little rectangular basement window next to the front steps and realized that it was painted black. Rawdon opened the door before I could knock. His cheeks looked flushed. I wondered if that meant that he had just eaten.

“You came back,” he said.

“I wasn't about to steal your car,” I answered. True, I could have left it in daylight. “Sorry it's late. I had to sleep.”

“Oh, yes. I'm sure you were quite exhausted all day. I apologize.”

“It's fine,” I said. “I allowed myself to stay so late. So early,” I corrected. I dangled his keys between us. He wrapped his hands around the keys, catching my fingers and pulling me close so that he could kiss me.

“You look beautiful,” he said when the kiss was broken. He stepped back into the house and I followed him. Rawdon placed the keys on the table by the door, walked to the jukebox at the corner of the room and dropped some change from his pocket into the machine. The neon lights flashed and he flipped through the cards and chose a song. A bass started up and I recognized the tune immediately. My grandmother was a huge Elvis fan and “Can't Help Falling In Love” was a wedding staple.

Rawdon turned and offered his hand to me. “One dance, and then I'll let you go home and sleep.”

My dance experience was limited to high school dances, and the last of those had been five years ago. I had been to a few family weddings but only once with a date, and I don't think our slow dances had followed any recognized ballroom standard. When I took Rawdon's hand, he pulled me close. He placed a hand on my hip and, with the other hand, held my own. There was plenty of space between us, but the intensity of his eye contact made me feel like he was pressed against me.

Wise men say, only fools rush in.

I didn't know how to waltz, but I quickly learned that very little experience was needed on my part. I shuffled a bit awkwardly at first. He was a strong leader and so long as I moved with his steps, I kept from stepping on his feet.

Shall I stay? Would it be a sin?

I experienced an odd sense of time. I was being transported back fifty years by the music, but the formality of the ballroom dance took me back even further. When the three-minute song was over, I had gravitated farther into his arms.

The jukebox continued with the next song and the dance changed. I dropped my hand around his shoulders and he slid the hand that had rested on my hip up to cradle my back. It was turning out to be more than one dance, but I didn't mind.

Just running scared, each place we go. So afraid, that he might show...

“What is this?” I whispered.

“Roy Orbison,” he answered. “You know,
Pretty Woman
?”

He stepped back and pushed off, sending me backward in a hurry. With a quick snap of his wrists I was back in his arms, my body pressed against his. My heart picked up. I was sure that he could feel it against his chest. My feet slid across the hard floor as we danced. He was completely in control.

By the time the second song had ended and the jukebox had fallen quiet, Rawdon's face was mere centimeters from my own. He ended the dance with a kiss. It wasn't the warmth-- because face it, any heat in his body came from my own-- it was the strength of his embrace that did me in. His arms were thin but incredibly strong and the power of his fingers gripping my back made my knees go weak. He was much easier to kiss than my previous boyfriend, too; Rawdon was only a few inches taller than me. Cody was six-foot-four.

He pulled back, taking my hand and walking me back towards the hall. I started to become hyper-aware of my surroundings. Every room that I could see through open doors in the hall had blacked-out windows. He turned and walked backwards. At eye-contact I stopped noticing what was around me. It was as if my conscious thought dialogue and my awareness of my surroundings had split and couldn't be used at once. If I was cognizant of the room around me, I couldn't think. If I was thinking, I was oblivious to what I was doing.

We were standing in his bathroom and the sound of the shower was filling my ears. I was taking off my sweater and dropping it on the floor. He had slid his suspenders down and was unbuttoning his shirt.

I counted how many days it had been since I had met him. It had been Friday. Today was Monday. Technically it was Tuesday. Was this too fast?

He was shirtless.

Wow, he looked really good shirtless. His body was an ideal from the time he came from. He was thin with muscle built from eating real meat and exercising, rather than whey protein and dehydration. His skin was flawless. I would have to tell Geneva just how good he looked. Or not. Wasn't this too fast?

I was shirtless. He dropped my collared shirt onto the bath mat behind me. “Rawdon,” I said, “We met three days ago.”

“I know,” he whispered, “but it's perfect.”

I was back in my head. His bathroom was incredibly clean. Do vampires lose hair? Do they shed skin like humans? Do they sweat? Do they even pee? He drank blood, right? Surely that had to be digested somehow. Well, maybe he didn't need to use the toilet, but I bet he still needed to wash dirt away once in a while. Did he brush his teeth? Could a diet of only blood give you cavities?

I was totally naked and Rawdon was pulling me into the hot shower. The glass door was covered in steam. He reached over my shoulder and slid the shower shut. At the clunk of the door, clarity came back to me.

Then his body, hot from the shower, pressed against mine and I lost it again. He was very skillful. His lips and teeth found all the right places, sucking at my neck and nipping at my ear as his hands explored elsewhere. He listened intently, adapting to every moan that passed over my lips. When he finally pushed inside of me, I was completely ready for him. I staggered towards the shower wall and my back pressed against the icy tile. I recall being struck by surprise to realize that even that particular part of him didn't have a pulse.

I was toweling off when the strangeness of what had just happened stuck me. He looked back over his shoulder and noticed my focused expression. “What?” he asked.

“How do you even... you know... if your heart doesn't beat? I mean, you don't have blood flow, right?” I asked.

“Magic,” he said. “That's a special trait, actually.” He smiled and crossed to me, still completely naked. “You see, some vampires can fly. Some vampires can transform into a bat. Some vampires have the ability to make love to beautiful women.”

“Dracula?”

“Dracula is an amalgam of several actual vampires and one Romanian Prince. Generally vampires who can salute can't turn into bats. See, we inherit traits from our makers and so the bloodlines can never really mix in a single-parent system, no matter how useful the trait may be.”

“Useful. Like finding women to feed on?”

“If I was going to bite you, I would have done it while you were concussed three days ago. I prefer to think that this trait allows me to hold on to my humanity. Generally, the night walkers who can turn into bats are much more predatory.”

I wrapped a large towel around my body. I had no sense of what time it was, but I knew that I couldn't afford to stay out until dawn again.

“I have to work at eight. Can you drive me home?” I asked.

He looked back at me for a moment, trying to read me, and then nodded. “Of course.”

“I really shouldn't be out so late on a week night.”

I dressed quickly, wondering what Geneva would have to say about me arriving God-knows how many hours later with wet hair and my makeup washed away. With any luck, she'd be asleep.

We listened to classical music and didn't speak as he drove me home. When I chanced to look at him, he was smiling with just the corners of his lips. I tried to talk myself down from my panic. I had rushed into a physical relationship. What was the problem with that? I knew I shouldn't be worried that he would never see me again, now that we had been intimate. He was an old soul. If he had been interested in only my body, he would have tried to feed on me, right?

Rawdon walked me to the door and pulled me in for one last cold kiss before I went inside and headed for my bed. The glowing red letters on my alarm clock informed me that it was after two. I was going to get five hours of sleep if I was lucky. Sleep debt was going to kill me all week.

I crawled into bed and went straight to sleep, but my night was disturbed by strange dreams of bats. When my alarm went off at seven, the absolute latest I could afford to sleep in if I had showered the night before, I was in no shape to go anywhere.

I had left my phone in my coat, so I staggered out to the living-room to find it. I dialed the number for work and left a message that I couldn't come in because of a migraine. I knew that they had seen my face the day before and would believe it.

After hanging up the phone, I had the desire to see the sun before going back to bed. It seemed like a necessary comfort after my few hours of restless sleep. I opened the front door and looked out at the sun, still low on the horizon. I squinted and shielded my eyes. Alright, maybe it was still too damn early to be blinded by daylight. I was about to close the door when I noticed a package on the front step.

Crossing the threshold of the house felt diving into a pool of ice water. The package on the doorstep was wrapped in yellow paper with a big red bow, and a tag on the box was boldly labeled, “Kendall.” The handwriting was not what I'd expect from Rawdon, but I picked the package up and tore off the paper. I opened the package and was surprised to find a glossy box with a photo of an object that looked kind of like a hair dryer. It was a UV Curing Gun for curing adhesives. A UV Light Gun. There was a folded note in the package and I took it out to read it.