“I can only be twenty-six for so long before the neighbors start to notice,” Ezra elaborated, but it still took a minute for it to sink it. They were never going to age, but everyone around them would, and they’d see them remain perfect forever. “We move every five years so, but we’ve been staying in the Minneapolis area for quite awhile.”
“In fact, I’ve never lived anywhere else,” Jack added.
“You were born here?” I gave him an odd look. For no real reason, I had just always kind of imagined that he was a transplant from California or Vegas or something like that.
“Well, Stillwater, actually, but it still makes it tricky living that close to my family.” He had said it casually, like it was no big thing, but something had just dawned on me, and he noticed the shift in my expression. He sighed and realized that he’d probably said a little too much. “We can’t see our families. We change, at first, to look better, and then we don’t change at all.”
“And it’s too hard watching them grow old.” Ezra had somehow managed to take something that was really terrible sound at least vaguely soothing, but my heart still clenched. I looked over at Mae, standing over the stove and chatting amicably with my brother, and realized the full ramification of what he was saying. “It’s better to cut ties sooner rather than later.”
“It’s not as bad as it sounds.” Jack put his hand on my shoulder to comfort me, but I just shrugged it off.
There were things that I hadn’t thought about when I got involved with them, and I’m sure there would be even more things that would come up later.
Nothing about this was going to be easy.
As if to solidify my point, Peter suddenly walked into the kitchen. His jeans and shirt were slim fit, revealing the slender lines of his gorgeous body. His blazing green eyes landed on mine, for just a second, then flitted away, like he couldn’t stand to look at me. He tucked a flyaway hair behind his ear and surveyed the mess in the kitchen. Just being this close to him made my skin tremble and my blood pound heavily in my ears. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Jack flinch, but for once, I didn’t feel it. When Peter was around, he eclipsed everything else, including the feelings that I sometimes borrowed from Jack.
“What’s all this?” Peter gestured to Mae’s attempts at cooking. She’d been too distracted with her food preparation to notice him walk in, but when he spoke, she shot him a nervous, startled look.
“I’ll call you back,” Mae muttered into the phone, then quickly hung up and dropped it in her pocket. “Peter, you’re home!”
“I am.” He chewed the inside of his cheek, and I could tell how deliberately he had to keep from looking at me. Desperately, I wanted him to look at me, though, and I wondered how he could even fight the urge. For me, it was so overpowering that I could barely breathe. “Am I to assume this is a feast for my return?”
“Peter, she knows,” Ezra told him quietly.
His eyes turned on me sharply, sending a rush through me so rapidly that I felt dizzy. Behind me, I heard a stool clatter to the floor, but I didn’t look back to see Jack storming out of the room. Peter didn’t really seem to notice either but walked slowly over to me, his eyes never leaving mine.
“So, you’re feeding her now?” Peter was looking at me, but he was asking someone else, not that anyone bothered to answer. He reached out and touched a wet strand of my hair and breathed in deeply. “And she’s showering here too. Is she living here now?”
“No.” Ezra let the word hang in the air, and Peter just kept staring at me.
In the back of my mind, I was aware that there were other people in the room, and it should be embarrassing that Peter was looking at me so intently in front of them, but somehow, it wasn’t.
“So you know we’re vampires?” Even though he started to smile at me, there was an underlying edge to his voice. “You know that we kill? You could’ve just as easily been food for us, but with a bit of luck and chance, you’re standing here instead.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. I could feel heat radiate from his body in a way that the others seemed incapable of. My skin tingled and that tugging feeling had encircled my heart. Every single part of my body screamed out for him, and painfully, I was starting to believe that he didn’t feel the same way.
“Why are you here?” Peter asked huskily.
“I-I-I want to be,” I stumbled. He had occupied my brain and it was all but impossible for me to form a competent answer. His scent, tangy and tantalizing, washed over me, blinding almost all my other senses.
“You want to be,” Peter repeated flatly. “You want this?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but then I felt his hand around my throat.
There was a rush of air and then I felt something hard slam into my back. It took me a while to realize that he’d picked me up by my neck and pressed me against a wall. His eyes burned with conflicting passions, but all I could really feel were his fingers on my throat, and the way my pulse felt pumping underneath them. His eyes were ravenous, and I knew he had the exact same thought.
“This is really what you want?” he snarled.
This time I couldn’t answer because his hand was so tight on my throat. I couldn’t even breathe, but I barely noticed. He was pressed up against me and I could feel the hard contours of his body against mine, and his intoxicating smell suffocated me. If I stayed like that for too long, I would probably die, but it seemed completely worth it.
Without warning, Jack slammed into Peter, sending him flying across the room. My lungs burned as they filled with air, and I leaned back against the wall, gasping. Peter had stumbled back into the fridge, but he quickly regained his footing and flew at Jack. Jack was ready for it though and lunged back towards Peter, pushing him back away from me once again.
“Jack!” Mae wailed, sounding utterly panicked.
Ezra stepped forward to intervene, so Peter backed down but only slightly.
Jack stood between Peter and I, his body unbearably shielding me from Peter.
For his part, Peter had a look of barely controlled rage contorting his beautiful features. He held his fists tightly clenched at his sides, and he glared past Jack at me.
“He’s not going to hurt her!” Ezra hissed at Jack, and both of them stepped back a little bit, but neither was willing to relinquish his stand entirely.
“He had his hand around her throat! She couldn’t breathe!” Jack insisted.
“I would never let her die!” Peter shouted incredulously. “I could feel her heartbeat and it never waned!” Then something occurred to him, and he took a step closer to Jack. “What do you even care? How did you even know she wasn’t breathing? What did you do?”
“Stop!” Mae screamed and ran in between the two of them. Ezra had still been standing off to the side, trying to let them sort it out on their own, but Mae put one of her hands on each of their chests. “Nothing happened, okay?
Nothing!”
“What the hell is going on?” Peter looked to Ezra for an explanation. “Why does he care about her? Something’s wrong. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.”
“We don’t really know what’s going on,” Ezra admitted quietly, casting a look back at me. “This is unlike anything I’ve ever encountered.”
Peter studied me curiously, and my heart started to speed up. I saw his eyes register it, and then I heard Jack moan. Instantly, Peter’s eye flicked over to him.
“You’re reacting to her!” Peter didn’t sound angry so much as bewildered.
He leaned in closer to Jack, eyeing him up. “You didn’t bite her?”
“No!” Jack groaned, exasperated.
“How is this even possible?” Peter was totally amazed. When he looked back at me, his eyes softened and grew even more confused. That didn’t help slow my already quickened pulse.
“Alice!” Jack snapped.
“I can’t help it!” I lamented.
“Jack, go over there,” Mae commanded, pointing to the far side of the dining room. He grumbled something in protest but did as he was told. She walked over to me, looping around me and hugging me to her.
“She might have… somehow become attached to Jack,” Ezra explained slowly. Pain and confusion spread over Peter’s face when he looked back and forth from me to Ezra. “She reacts the strongest with you still, but it seems that some of it may have transferred.”
“How is that even possible?” Peter repeated, and Jack scoffed.
“Why do you even care?” Jack growled. “You don’t even want her!” His words sliced through me like a knife, and I flinched, so Mae tightened her arms around me. What hurt the most is that I knew he was right. Peter only felt things for me because his body made him. He didn’t feel anything real for me at all.