To Love a Vampire - A.K. Koonce Page 0,41

from the agony that I just released into him. He bites my neck lightly, a hum of a growl still pulsating over his lips and into me. I shudder a breath as pain flashes into me but it doesn’t hurt, it’s a different kind of pain. A good pain. My back arches against him as I slowly release the breath I was holding.

He flicks his tongue over the shallow puncture wound, healing the wound instantly and I feel my body hum to life. An energy and warmth spread through my heart and settles under the flesh beneath his mouth.

“Fallon, I,” he says kissing back up my jaw as I grind my hip against his.

I pull his hair roughly until we are face to face again and his lips are against mine, his tongue tinged with a faint copper-like taste. His hips align with mine perfectly and I can feel him against every inch of my body, his fingers digging into my thighs as he holds me to him.

“Fallon, I love you,” he says in a harsh whisper—more words that my mind isn’t grasping at the moment.

But he stops kissing me abruptly, pulling my attention back to his words. Replaying them in my mind until the meaning surfaces there.

His mouth is parted and his eyes are wide as he looks down at me. His lips are swollen from kissing me and a trickle of blood clings to his bottom lip. He licks it away as he slowly releases his hold on me. My feet touch the ground, I’m grounded again. I can think again.

My heart pounds hard against my ribs.

Did he really just tell me he loved me?

“Why did I say that to you?” He asks, mirroring my own confusion.

What he just said stings against my chest but I don’t know why. We’re friends and his thoughts are just as chaotic as mine are.

“Did you mean it?” I ask in a quiet and nervous voice.

He licks his lips again and takes a step back from me, my hands fall away from him and hang numbly at my side. He swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

Then he nods heavily before taking another step back as he looks at the dry leaves at our feet.

“Yeah, I did,” he says and looks back at me, his wide and terrified eyes searching mine.

For the first time, I see fear there. Mixed in with the severe white and brilliant silver, there’s fear. My heart both melts and shatters all at once and I’m not able to form thoughts or words.

He loves me?

“I have to go,” he says abruptly.

“Asher, wait.”

I reach out to him, my fingers slipping through the cool air, but he’s gone before the words even leave my lips. Quietness and confusion are all that surrounds me.

“So wait, wait, wait,” Luca says, repeating herself for probably the third time now as I recall one of the most embarrassing moments of my life to her.

Again.

“So just to be clear, the super sexy hybrid, throws you against a tree, kisses you – which, by the way, I’m going to need a bit more detail on – bites you, confesses his love for you and you do what?”

“Nothing, I-”

“Nothing, right. Yeah, good choice.” Her nose wrinkles as she nods enthusiastically at me.

She takes a large bite of a red apple. The crisp crunching sound lingers in the air around us. We sit at a dinner table, just the two of us. People mill around us laughing and eating and enjoying the cool evening weather.

Asher didn’t visit me last night. I slept alone in a fit of nightmares that attacked my mind, waking long before the sun rose in an attempt to escape them.

“Can we talk about something else now?” I ask in a defensive tone, raising my eyebrows and my voice all at once.

“I don’t know, I don’t think anything else will be as entertaining as this,” she says, dripping sarcasm into every word.

She’s right, my humiliation and his anguish won’t fade anytime soon.

Why did I freeze up? Why didn’t I say anything? Anything. Because anything would have been better than saying nothing to him.

God, his face. I never want to see his face like that ever again. Because of me.

I push my plate away from me, folding my arms on the wooden table, wishing I could throw my head down and pout like a child. But I can’t, and Luca won’t let me.

“But, just so we’re clear, after he said I love you—”

I lean my head back,