“Sorry,” I whispered, using all my strength to pry my lips from his neck.
His hands on my back slid below my pants, pressing me even harder against him. His kisses had gotten hungrier and more aggressive, and I knew it was a battle for him to keep from biting me as well. Maybe we had reached the point where we could have sex, but sharing blood was too dangerous. It would be far too easy for me to get out of control, even if I was the one being bled. Jack started pushing down my pants, and my body started to tremble with excitement. There was this odd sense where I couldn’t believe we were really going to do this. I had spent so much time wishing and fantasizing about this moment, and now it was finally here. His lips again mine, his hands all over me, hot and strong, and I had never wanted anything more than I wanted him. I literally craved him.
I heard the bedroom door open, but it was a very secondary sensation. My hunger for Jack blotted out everything else. Fortunately, he was slightly more grounded in reality than I was, and thinking quickly, he pulled the covers up to hide me, since I was almost entirely naked. He had stopped kissing me, but there was this fog over my mind where I could still taste him. It took a moment to clear, and then I realized that Milo and Bobby were standing in the doorway to Jack’s room. Bobby looked embarrassed, but Milo just looked grossed out and disapproving.
“What the hell are you doing?” I was almost screaming. In all honesty, I had probably never been as pissed at my brother as I was then. Of all the times for him to burst into a room, this had to be the worst possible timing.
“What are you doing?” Milo countered, crossing his arms firmly over his chest and glaring down at us.
Jack had moved so he was sitting up, trying to shield me somewhat, even though I had his comforter wrapped around me. I noticed Bobby sneaking an admiring glance at him, and I glared possessively at Bobby and moved so I was more in front of Jack.
“I don’t think that’s really any of your business,” I snapped.
“Whatever,” Milo rolled his eyes. “You both know you’re not supposed to be alone like this.
And for once, its not you I’m worried about, Alice. You could kill him, and he’d be happy to let you.”
His words stung as true, and feeling ashamed, I pulled the blankets more securely around me.
“Everything’s fine. Nothing happened,” Jack noticed my discomfort and tried to reassure me. He tried to rub my back, but I pulled away from him. The heat of the moment had started to fade, and I hated knowing how close I had come to hurting him just because it felt good. He sighed wearily and turned to my brother. “So, what exactly did you want?”
“We came home to tell you something, but then I heard you guys,” Milo wrinkled his nose in disgust, and Bobby managed some kind of nervous giggle. He had started chewing at his black nail polish, and when he caught me glaring at him, he cowered more behind Milo. I’m sure Milo noticed me giving him the same look, but he made no mention of it.
“So what’s this big news?” I asked, purposely sounding bored.
“Jane was at V, and she’s a blood whore!” Milo said, and I didn’t appreciate how excited he sounded about that fact.
“A blood whore?” I questioned, even though it sounded pretty self-explanatory to me, but I hoped it wasn’t.
“It’s like a whore, but with blood instead of sex, and usually there’s no monetary exchange,” Jack explained quietly. He had never liked my former best friend Jane, but he wasn’t eager for bad things to happen to her, and he knew that I still cared about her.
“Well, if there’s no money, than what is she getting for it?” I asked. Milo lowered his eyes in shame, and at first I didn’t understand. It was actually incredibly obvious, but I was still under the fog of my lust for Jack.
“They got hooked on the feel they get from having vampires drink their blood,” Jack answered. He gave me a sidelong glance, reminding me of how amazing it had felt when I had been human and I had let him drink my blood. I had thought that nothing could ever feel that good… but as I listened to the sound of his pulse beating heavily in his veins, I knew there one thing that would definitely feel better.
Licking my lips, I turned away before I let myself think about it too much.
Milo suddenly became shifty and uncomfortable, and at first, I attributed it to my fading thirst, but then I realized it was something different. A few months ago, he had been wounded trying to protect Jane and me from a couple of vampires, and he had been forced to drink her blood to compensate for a blood loss.
Well, he hadn’t really been forced. He had just been unable to resist, and it was one of the most disturbing things I had ever seen. He had been like a wild animal, and she had been moaning with pleasure. So if she was hooked on being bit, he had been the one to do it.
“Milo-” I was about to tell him that he wasn’t his fault, but Bobby had put his hand on Milo’s back, comforting. Then I narrowed my eyes at him, becoming suspicious of what exactly this kid was doing with my brother. “Wait. Is that what you are?”
“No, of course not!” Bobby protested, looking vaguely ill.
“Alice!” Milo snapped.
“What?” I wondered what I had said that was so wrong. “That’s not an unfair judgment to come to, especially after whatever it was you two were doing earlier.” Bobby’s olive skin burned red with shame, but Milo just glared at me.
“That’s a horrible thing to say to him!” Milo yelled at me.
“What?” I repeated, growing more confused.
“Imagine how you would feel if someone had called you a bloodwhore,” Jack looked at me.
There was something veiled in his eyes, and he quickly looked away. It made me think that somebody had probably called me a bloodwhore, and I wondered if that somebody had just been rescued from Finland.
“Sorry,” I mumbled without looking at Bobby. “I’m just looking out for Milo’s best interests.”
“Whatever,” Milo said, but he didn’t sound as angry as he had before. “Just get dressed, and we can talk more then. I’m not a big fan of talking to you when you’re naked.”
Milo put his arm on Bobby’s back and gently ushered him out of the room. He gave us a warning glare before closing the door behind him, meaning that we better just concentrate on getting dressed or he would bust back in. Jack and I just sat in silence for a minute, letting the weight of what we had almost done and the news about Jane settle in.
“So what exactly does being a bloodwhore entail?” I asked. I had started pulling back on my shirt, and I watched sadly as Jack did the same. “I understand the basic concept, but like… I don’t know. How does it work?” Running my fingers through my hair to smooth out the tangles, I thought of something that made my stomach twist. “I mean… you’ve had bloodwhores before, haven’t you?”
“Most vampires try it once or twice at least,” Jack replied evasively. He got out of bed and readjusted his clothing, purposely avoiding looking at me. “It’s fairly common.”
“Alright.” I swallowed and remembered that I had to take it all in stride when dating a vampire. “So how do you go about that? You just… what?”
“Well, they’re usually hanging around the club. They know what the scene is.” Jack had begun pacing the room, pretending to do things like readjust a picture on the wall or move something on the night stand.
The conversation was making him uncomfortable because I had mentioned that he had done it once, and though I did my best to hide it, he could tell how much that upset me. “You can just go there and find a girl.
Or a guy. Whatever you’re into. Take them to the back room at the club or back to your place. Wherever you’re most comfortable. Then you, you know, bite them. When it’s done, you go on your way, and they sleep it off. Or do whatever they want.” Jack shrugged. “It’s pretty simple.”
“So how would Jane find out about a place like V?” I asked, trying to push past how cavalier Jack was about that.
It was probably the use of the word “whore” that made the most uncomfortable. And that I knew how amazing it felt when he drank my blood, how I could feel some of what he felt, and how he could feel everything I felt. It was the most intimate act on earth, and he had just casually done with random whores he had picked up at a bar. I swallowed hard and refused to think about it.
“If she hung around downtown long enough, and now that she knows what to look to for in a vampire, it’s only a matter of time.” He fixed a piece of tape on his Purple Rain poster, then looked back at me.
“It’s the like it is with any other drug.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked edgily.
Apprehension settled over me. As soon as Milo had mentioned that Jane had gotten involved with vampires, I hadn’t been thrilled by the idea. But I had just gotten so used to Jane being reckless and having her name associated with being a whore that I hadn’t thought much of it. If Jack was showing even a shrapnel of concern for her, it meant things were pretty bad off, and he was looking very severely at me.
“Bloodwhores are addicted,” Jack explained. “So they’ll do really dangerous things for it. I mean, letting a vampire to bite you is pretty dangerous itself, but it’s not the worst thing you can do. They’ll do riskier and riskier behavior, and even if they don’t, they’ll simply crave it more and more.
And there’s only so much blood loss the human body can take. The lifespan on a bloodwhore is fairly short.”
“You’re saying that Jane could actually die?” I sat up straighter in bed, and my mouth suddenly felt very dry.
“No. I’m saying that… unless she gets out of that lifestyle, she will die,” Jack said quietly.
Time seemed to stop for a moment. It wasn’t until somebody threatened to take her away that I realized how much she meant to me. Jane was vain and self-absorbed and a bitch most of the time, but underneath that, she had always been my friend and capable of real emotion. She had become much hotter and much cooler than me when we got to high school, but she never ditched me, even when I kind of hoped she would. No matter who was at a party or what they thought of me, Jane always brought me a long, and most of the time, she stood up for me. She tried her best to make me as cool as her, but I fought it every step of the way. When we had been attacked by vampires a few months ago, she had even saved my life. She had just never believed that she more than a pretty face or stronger than being a stuck-up bitch.