So Annoying!
25: Tsk!
So Annoying!
Outside the window, the full moon still hung above a city that knew nothing, about vampires and Jinn and a girl whose blood bridged two worlds, about a seal that opened not through magic but because the right person stood before it and didn’t step back.
And inside that small apartment, Delia, who was too tired to protest anything tonight, leaned her head back against the sofa and closed her eyes.
With a faint smile she was not fully aware was on her face.
Delia did not fall asleep immediately.
She lay in her bed with open eyes staring at the ceiling, listening to the city sounds slowly fading into night silence, trying to convince her brain that everything needing processing today had been sufficiently processed and now it was time to rest.
Her brain disagreed.
The fifth scroll.
The name Aleksander.
The yes that came out of Alexander’s mouth without defense.
Three sips and the way Alexander did not immediately pull back afterward.
The Latin sentence he spoke with a tone Delia could not fully translate but her body responded to in ways that had nothing to do with her linguistic ability.
Too much.
Too dense.
Too…?
“You’re not sleeping.” The voice came from the corner of the room.
Not startling, Delia had half-assumed Alexander was still awake, because a nearly thousand-year-old vampire did not need sleep the way humans did.
“Neither are you,” Delia replied to the ceiling.
“I don’t need sleep.” “I know.” Delia turned her head toward the corner.
In the darkness, a pair of red eyes glowed faintly, no longer frightening, just there, like a star that had wandered into a room too small for its size.
“Alex…” “Hmm.” “Earlier when you paused at the second sip.” Delia stared at him.
“You saw something.” A brief silence.
“Yes.” “Not about Hassan and Gisel.” Alexander did not answer.
But he did not deny it either, and with a creature nearly a thousand years old who had learned how to hide things, not denying was a clear enough admission.
Delia sat up in her bed.
Her blanket slipped to her waist.
Her hair, which had been tidy earlier, was now messy again from tossing and turning for the past hour.
“What did you see?” she asked.
Alexander moved from his corner.
Soundless steps brought him to the edge of Delia’s bed, he did not sit, just stood there with moonlight from the window hitting half his face, the other half remaining in shadow.
“You,” he finally answered.
Simple.
Without ornament.
Delia stared at him.
“I’m there every full moon.” “That’s not what I meant.” Alexander stared back, his eyes red and deep and containing something Delia had never seen before on a face she had started to memorize like the layout of her own apartment.
“Your blood tonight was different from before.” “Different how?” “More honest.” A brief pause.
“Or maybe I’m just now able to read it correctly.” Delia did not move.
Alexander sat on the edge of her bed, not an action he asked permission for or announced, just happening in the way things between them over the past few weeks always happened, organically and without lengthy verbal negotiation.
The distance between them was now only a palm’s width.
“Our blood contract,” Alexander said softly, “doesn’t only work one way, Delia.” Delia furrowed her brow.
“What do you mean?” “I can read your memories through your blood.” His eyes did not move from Delia’s face.
“But the resonance flowing through this contract, it’s not just information.
Something else travels with it.
Something that can’t be filtered or controlled because it’s not part of the consciously designed contract mechanism.” “Something like what?” Alexander did not answer immediately.
His hand, cold, always cold, moved toward Delia’s face.
Stopped one inch before touching, as if waiting for something.
Delia did not pull back.
And his hand touched the side of her face, very gently, in a way different from all previous touches that always had clear contexts behind them.
Not to guide.
Not to check.
Just touching.
“Feelings,” Alexander finally said.
“That travel through that resonance.
From both directions.” Delia’s heart beat in a rhythm she did not recognize as her normal one.
“So you…” her voice came out softer than she planned, “…can feel what I feel?” “And you can feel part of what I feel.” Alexander lowered his head slightly, his face closer now, close enough for Delia to feel its coldness on her cheek.
“You just haven’t realized that’s what you’re feeling.” Delia tried to remember all the moments over the past few weeks when there was something she could not attach to any clear source, warmth that did not come from within herself, calm that appeared at illogical times, a pull toward something she could not explain with any rationality.
Oh…
Oh, no!
“Since when?” Delia whispered.
“Since the contract was formed.” His thumb moved very gently on the side of Delia’s face, one small movement that felt far larger than its physical size.
“I thought you already felt something.
You just didn’t know what to call it.” “I still don’t know what to call it,” Delia admitted honestly.
“That’s okay.” Something on Alexander’s face moved, not a full smile, never a full smile, but something in that vicinity.
“We have time.” And Delia did not know who moved first, whether she tilted her head up, or Alexander lowered his further, or both moved simultaneously in a way that made the question irrelevant, but the distance between them that was already not much finally ran out.
Cold…
That is what Delia felt first.
Alexander’s cold lips meeting hers, a sharp and startling contrast that then stopped being startling because her body adjusted at a speed she hadn’t planned.
Slow.
Very slow…
As if Alexander was leaving room for all possible responses and waiting to see which would come.
What came was not rejection.
Delia’s hand moved up without conscious instruction from her brain, touching the side of Alexander’s face, feeling his too-perfect cheekbone under her palm, and Alexander responded in a way that made Delia’s entire nervous system update its definition of what it meant for someone to be fully present in one moment.
His one hand was still on Delia’s face.
The other moved to her back, slowly, with measured pressure, pulling closer in a way that gave the option not to be closer if that was what Delia wanted.
That was not what Delia wanted.
The kiss changed, from gentle to something deeper, warmer even though the temperature did not change, more like a conversation long delayed and finally begun.
Delia felt something in her chest loosen, tension that had been there far longer than she realized, too used to its presence to even feel like tension anymore.
Alexander breathed in through his nose, a movement Delia felt more than heard, and his lips moved to the side of Delia’s jaw, tracing very gently down to her chin, to the side of her neck that was not where he had bitten earlier, the other side, the side without any marks, the new side.
Delia sighed, a small sound that escaped without permission, and her own ears responded by turning red.
Alexander stopped.
Not because he was rejected.
But because stopping at a certain point in a certain way was a deliberate choice.
Delia could feel it, could feel the way Alexander held back something far larger than what had just happened, controlling it with effort that was real.
His forehead touched Delia’s forehead.
Both silent at zero distance.
“Not yet,” Alexander said softly, the exact same sentence he had said in those early nights, but with a completely different tone.
Not a rejection.
More like a promise spoken very carefully by someone who knew its weight.
Delia breathed in.
Let it out slowly.
“Annoying vampire,” she muttered.
A real laugh, short, sincere, the first time Delia had heard Alexander’s laugh not half-hearted, came from his throat.
His hand on Delia’s back did not move.
“Yes,” he said.
“Indeed.”