Chapter 34 34. Chapter
Elijah
The air froze in my lungs while the heat radiating from our bodies nearly scorched the motel’s damp, mildewed walls. Our kiss was not the gentle dance of romance but the violent collision of two tectonic plates grinding against each other. My mouth tasted her anger, the bitterness of coffee, and that deep, sweet note that belonged to her alone. Aurora was no passive victim in this madness. Her tongue struck back, her teeth clashed against mine, and her hands, digging into my shoulders, wanted both to pull me closer and tear me apart.
Her coat hung open, revealing the leather harness beneath it, a black, intricate web cinched tight against her pale skin. As my body pressed into hers, I felt the cold bite of metal buckles and the hard hilts of daggers through my own chest. The pain, the physical barrier, only further enraged the monster inside me. The knowledge that she was armed against me while my mouth was on hers ignited a perverse, dark thrill I had not been prepared for.
The hand resting at her neck slid lower. My fingers slipped beneath the leather at her collarbone, feeling the hot pulse of her skin beneath the cold straps. Aurora hissed into my mouth, her body shuddering. I could not tell whether it was fear or desire that made her tremble, and in that moment, I did not care. Only the reaction mattered. That I affected her. That the Hunter who wanted me dead was now melting and burning in my hands.
“Elijah…”
She did not speak my name. She breathed it out, in a choked, broken sound that was lost between our kisses.
That sound was my undoing. I dipped toward her neck, leaving her swollen lips. I followed the line of her jaw, rough and greedy, inhaling her scent exactly where her pulse thundered the hardest. Her smell. God, her smell. Like fresh blood on snow, sharp and pure. My fangs ached, my gums tingled with the urge to sink into her. To mark her. To taste again the flavor that had haunted me since the scrapyard.
My mouth hovered open against her skin. My tongue tasted the salt of sweat at her throat. One millimeter was all that separated me from tearing into her flesh. The vampire inside me roared. Do it. Take her. She is yours.
But then Aurora’s hand moved. It slid from my shoulder to the back of my neck, her fingers tangling in my hair. She did not push me away. She held on. That motion, that instinctive, desperate grip, was what stopped me at the edge of the abyss.
Because if I bit her now, I would not stop. If her blood filled my mouth while our bodies burned with this kind of tension, I would drain the life from her. I would kill her. Here, in this filthy room, pinned to the wall, while she clutched my hair.
The realization crashed over me like ice water down my spine.
With a superhuman, agonizing effort that nearly tore my muscles apart, I shoved myself away from her.
The physical separation felt like my skin being flayed. I staggered back a step, then another, until my back hit the small table in the center of the room. I gulped for air, my chest heaving as if I had run a marathon. My hands clenched into fists, my nails biting into my palms, using physical pain to distract myself from the raging hunger.
Aurora stood where I had left her, braced against the door. The sight of her was devastating. Her hair was disheveled, her lips red and swollen, her eyes wide and dark with dilated pupils. Her coat still hung open, the black lines of the leather harness stark against her pale skin and the neckline of her shirt. Her chest rose and fell violently as she fought for breath.
The silence in the room was explosive. Only our ragged breathing filled it.
She did not look at me with anger. The usual defiance was gone. Instead, there was something far worse in her eyes. Confusion. Shock. The realization that she had participated in this. That she had kissed me back.
“What…” she began, but her voice broke. She lifted her hand to her mouth, touching her swollen lips as if she could not believe it had happened.
I closed my eyes, trying to steady my thoughts, but in the darkness I saw her even more clearly.
“Get dressed,” I growled. My voice was deep, rough, and unfamiliar even to me. “Zip it up. Cover that… that damn arsenal.”
Aurora slowly lowered her hand. Shock began to turn into defense. Her eyes narrowed.
“You attacked me,” she whispered, her voice regaining some of its old edge. “You kicked in the door. You pinned me to the wall.”
“And you clung to me,” I shot back cruelly, opening my eyes to face her. “Don’t play innocent, Aurora. You felt it. The same filth I did. Our hatred is no longer enough to keep us apart.”
“That wasn’t… that wasn’t desire,” she denied, but her voice wavered. With a sharp motion, she pulled the zipper of her coat all the way up to her chin, hiding the leather and her skin from my view. But her hands trembled. “It was just adrenaline. The heat of the fight.”
“Lie to yourself if it helps you sleep,” I said, stepping away from the table and crossing the room to the window. I pulled the curtain aside just to stare into the darkness outside, not at her. “But know this. It was a hair’s breadth away. If I hadn’t stopped… if I hadn’t torn myself away… you’d be dead right now. I would have drained you.”
The words were heavy. And true. I heard Aurora swallow hard.
“But you stopped,” she said quietly.
Those two words could have sounded like praise, but to me they were an accusation. I stopped, yes. Not because I am good. But because the thought of losing her, of there being no more green eyes, no defiant voice, no pounding heart, terrified me far more than my own hunger. And that realization was the most dangerous of all.
“Go shower,” I said without turning around. “Wash the smell of my touch off you. And my scent too. Because if I keep sensing you like this, in this concentration… I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to stop a second time.”
I heard her move. Her steps were unsteady but hurried. The bathroom door clicked shut, then the lock turned. The bolt again. A thin, ridiculous barrier between the monster and its prey.
I rested my forehead against the glass. The cold window cooled my skin, but it did nothing to extinguish the fire in my blood. Her taste still lingered in my mouth. I could still feel the curve of her waist in my hands.
This motel room was not a refuge. It was a cage, one I had willingly locked myself into with my fate.
And the worst part was that I no longer wanted to escape.