“No.” He rubbed my back, his distracted eyes on the roof, his other arm at an angle under his head.

“Does it make it hard then, to be here with me?”

After a lengthy pause “Yes” was all he whispered.

“David?”

“Yeah.”

“We need to get undressed. We’re making the bed wet. And I’m kinda cold.”

“Oh, damn.” He leaped to his feet. “Sorry. Didn’t think of that.”

“‘S’okay.” I shrugged one shoulder, staying where he left me. “Except…I might need some help—to get my clothes off.” I looked down at my body suggestively. “They’re all sticky and tight.”

David, with a shaky breath, knelt on the bed beside my hips, barely disturbing the covers, and leaned close to my face. “You’re asking too much of me, Ara.” But, despite his hesitating touch, he reached down and tampered with the button on my jeans as I rolled my spine, pressing my shoulder blades into the mattress to lift my shirt over my head, feeling cooler with my skin completely open to the air—the air in front of his gaze. He blinked a few times before shaking off whatever thought he just had, then forced his attention back to my jeans, smiling a moment later.

“This won’t work.”

His hands left my waist, moved down and lifted my ankle, then rolled the boot off my foot and peeled my sock away.

“Mm. Sexy,” I joked, with a giggle.

“Well,” he said, hooking his fingers into the back of my jeans again, “now that part’s over—”

Hiding giggles behind my hands, I lifted my hips, letting him shuffle the sticky denim down my thighs—stopping to push my underwear back in place as the jeans dragged them down, leaving me cool and shivery—covered only in little bumps of angst and a pair of wet underwear. Wet, totally unfashionable, old-and-comfy undies.

“Look at you.” He shook his head softly, his deep, whispery voice filling my heart with its presence. He smiled then, standing up, tinkering with the button on his jeans. “You may be half emaciated, Ara, but you are still very beautiful.”

I pinched my hip, still able to grab a little bit of flesh. “I’m not emaciated.”

“No.” He landed beside me, his hands taking his weight as his almost completely bare flesh touched my quilt. My quilt. Finally. “But I don’t ever want to see you this thin again.”

“Yes, Boss,” I said, and as much as I didn’t want to, I had to shift away from the spot we were laying, inching up the bed to the pillow—away from the moist circle of left-over lake, hoping David would follow me.

As I rolled my cheek into the pillow, smoothing an itch away, David appeared beside me, comfortable and relaxed. We laid nose to nose, our knees tucked up, touching, our hands gathered to our chests.

“I missed you,” I said.

He nodded. “I know.”

The cold took hold of me then, opening the door to exhaustion. I sniffed and snuggled closer to my vampire, raising a hand to trace the side of his body, stopping on his jocks. “How did you get these dry?”

He smiled. “I put new ones on.”

“I didn’t even see you do it.”

“I know.” His smile became wider for every second we stared into each other’s eyes; months of separation becoming rolled into so many thoughts driven by our desires over that time. My breath mimicked those thoughts, flooding me with heat and a tight tingle, centering at the core of my body. But, as he obviously read the desires playing out in my mind, a dense cool replaced the smile in his eyes. “Stop thinking that way, Ara.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

“Because of the spirit bind thing?” My small fist pushed me up to sit.

“Yes. You have to move on one day. If you’re bound to me, you will never be capable of it.”

“Is it not possible that I’m already bound to you? That maybe I don’t need to make love to you first?”

He shook his head, staying calm under my rising air of infuriation. “Not like this. If you let me have you, you won’t want to live when I leave.”

“Then make love to me,” I breathed, closing my eyes and rolling back on the bed. “Because if we can’t be together, forever, then I want to be dead.”

“Oh, how I missed your melodrama.”

“Time’s changed things, David. It’s no longer just melodrama. I mean it. I’ll die when you leave.”

“Die, or kill yourself?”

“I don’t know.” My lips turned down with thought. “Why don’t you just make love to me, then kill me yourself.”

“Ara!” He lifted my head delicately, his sparkling eyes wide. “Please don’t say things like that.”

“Why?”

“Because I love you. The thought of you not existing in this world is too much for me. I can’t die, and I can’t go on without you. Please, just live—just be happy, for me?”

“No, I can’t. I tried that—I wasn’t living.”

He laid back, pulling me onto his chest; every limb that could possibly touch entangled like a mess of twisted vines. It felt so right. Which made it so unfair that it couldn’t be for forever.

“Can we please not fight about this?” He seemed to be talking to a distant me, like I wasn’t in the room; his eyes, his touch, somewhere farther away. “Can we just pretend like we have forever?”

I was too tired to argue. I let it go without another word, choosing, instead, to memorise every imperfection on his chest. Under my fingertips, his skin rose with little bumps. I didn’t know vampires could even get goosebumps, and it made him feel so human, so normal, that I half expected to hear his heart beat.

Suddenly, David held a quick breath and cupped my hand, stopping its motion. “What?” I looked up at him.

“I need to eat.” He appeared by the bedroom door.

“Really? Now?” I motioned down at my near-nakedness.

“Yes. Either I get blood, or I eat you,” he joked, but his eyes widened for a second.

“Then eat me.” I sat up, holding out my wrist. “Save a life—drink my blood.”

The light outside made everything more visible in the darkness of my room; the morning was near, and though I was exhausted from lack of sleep, the idea of David drinking my blood made me feel like the night was new.