Page 103 of Love Lives
"You could sound a little more enthusiastic. You wanted this, remember?"
"I did. I do." Aldrich rose from his chair, approached me and pressed a kiss to my forehead. "I like that you can be a pain in my ass. And you can definitely interpret that sentence whichever way you want to." He touched my arm before stepping past me. "C'mon. Let's go back to sleep."
Did he really think I was going to let him off the hook this easily? "Where were they buried?" I asked, getting us back on topic as I followed him.
"A sleepy small-town left of nowhere and to the east of nothing."
"If you won't go there then..."
"Then what?" Aldrich challenged. "Exactly what are you gonna do to me?" He lay down on the bed and I sat next to him, letting my gaze travel down his body.
"No sex," I said. "Until you go."
Aldrich actually laughed at that. "You think I can't wear you down again, armadillo?" His fangs flashed as he spoke and I knew he wanted me to see them. He was making a point. I kind of hated that he was right, but he was. I loved what he could do to me with his teeth, with his body, way too much to keep from touching him forever.
"Fine," I relented. "In that case..." I draped my own body across his, taking his hands in mine and interlacing our fingers. If I couldn't motivate him with punishment, maybe a reward would do? "Promise me you'll go and I'll..." I glanced at his fangs again before speaking on. "I'll let you fuck me."
Aldrich's eyebrows rose. "You want to bottom?"
Every time you bite me.I bit my tongue before the words could tumble out of my mouth, but Aldrich must have seen something on my face anyway, because his expression turned predatory.
“C’mon, admit it,” he urged.
“Only if you—“
"If I fly across the country and offer empty words to an empty grave? Trust me, that's not the kind of closure I need." His hands found my ass and dug in. "And you don't really want to wait that long, do you?"
"Don't change the topic on me."
"Not changing the topic at all," Aldrich claimed, but I could tell his mind was miles away from where it had been only minutes ago. In one swift motion, he rolled us over until he was on top of me. "If we both want this, why wait?"
"Because I want you to feel better.”
"Oh trust me, this'll make me feel better." Already, his hands were shoving under my shirt, pushing it up and exposing my skin. My cock thickened in my boxer shorts, reacting to his touch, to the weight of him on top of me.
But I wasn't going to let Aldrich steamroll me just like that. "If you promise to... I don't know... at least try going to the cemetery and..." One of his hands traveled down past the waistband of my boxers. How the hell was I supposed to think like this? I was about to protest when Aldrich stilled, considering me.
"There's something you don't get."
"What do I not get?"
"That this isn't something you can fix by making me visit a graveyard. You know what I've done. That's not the kind of thing you just apologize for." He paused. "I don't even really feel sorry. Except maybe..."
"Your sister?" I asked.
He didn't say anything, but then, he didn't have to.
"You've saved a lot of people too," I reminded him. "If you hadn't stopped Vlad..."
"I know that." He put on a smile. "It's not a math problem, though, and even if it were... I've killed more people than I've saved, and I've also ended the vampire race. Not the way we first interpreted the prophecy, but think about it... no new vamps means we'll eventually die out."
"Does that bother you?"
"I don't know if it does," he said with surprising sincerity. "But I'll get over it. I know that I will. You'll just have to put up with me thinking about it from time to time. There's no quick fix for this. Stop looking for one."
"I wasn't looking for a quick fix," I protested, then realized that I had been.
"You can always take my mind off things if you want to," Aldrich reminded me, and then his hands started moving again, one on my nipple and one finding my cock. I groaned, because he knew exactly how he needed to touch me to makemeforget everything I'd been thinking about.
