Dark Secrets (Dark Secrets #1)(125)
Author: A.M. Hudson

“So that’s it? You’re making the decision for me?” I turned to face him.

“I have to, Ara. I’ve been watching, waiting, scanning your thoughts to find some hint of promise for us. But you don’t, anywhere in your thoughts, want to be a vampire. And yet, you keep making me wait for your answer. And stupidly, I keep waiting.”

I had nothing to say. He was right. Life was just too important. I’d seen it in action; the beauty, the magic it had to offer. And I feared, if I gave that up for immortality, I’d never forgive myself, or worse, never forgive David. “Just give me two weeks more. For forever, please? Just let me have the last two weeks.”

“Two more weeks?” He stepped back. “While you spend those days with another man—one you happen to love?”

My head hung in shame. “Please don’t hate me for loving him, David. I loved him for such a long time before I ever even knew you existed.”

“I do know that.” He exhaled, stepping into me. “I just…I suspected it. I’m actually angrier at myself, Ara—for not listening to my own gut—again.”

“What would you have done if you’d asked me and I’d told you I loved him?” I rolled my face up to look at him. “Would you have left?”

“That’s the stupid thing about all of this.” He sighed, casting his gaze to the heavens.

“What’s stupid?”

“That, even if you had admitted your feelings for Mike—” he touched my cheek and smiled, “—there’s no way I’d have left you.”

“Then don’t leave yet.” Hope filled me. “Give me the nights—for two more weeks. Please?”

“You don’t even need to ask. You know I will. How can I not savour those last few nights?”

I melted against him again. “Thank you, David.”

After a moment, he turned my face so my blue eyes met his shimmering green windows. “I just need to hear you say it, though—from your own lips.”

“You mean…that I’m not coming with you?”

He nodded.

“I haven’t made my mind up yet.”

“Please stop playing these games, Ara-Rose. Tell me the truth.”

“That is the truth, David. My mind makes up its mi—well, my mind makes decisions all the time, doesn’t mean I agree with them.”

“Stop it.” He drew back a little further. “Ara, just say it. Just tell me you’re not coming with me.”

“No. Because that’s not what I’ve decided on.” I folded my arms.

David turned away from me, extending his arm to grasp a tree branch. “You will eventually have to say it, Ara. Either way, a decision has to be made. Wholeheartedly or not.”

“Okay, then…ask me on the last day of our two weeks—that way I can be sure you’ll stick around.”

“The night of the Masquerade?”

“Yeah. It’s perfect.” I carefully touched his elbow until he turned his face to me. “You can ask me on the last dance.”

“The last dance?” He dropped his hand from the branch, his brow staying up in an arch of mockery. “On the last stroke of midnight?”

I nodded, smiling. “Perfectly corny.”

He grabbed me gently by the arm and pulled until my chest fell against his. “I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

“That wasn’t really yelling, David.”

“No matter. I shouldn’t speak to you that way, despite how I feel.”

“I yell at you all the time.”

He laughed. “But you’re harmless. When you yell, it’s merely amusing.”

“Thanks. Glad to know you take me so seriously.”

“Only as serious as you take me.”

“Hey.” I slapped his chest softly.

He laughed. “So, I guess that means you don’t take me very seriously.”

“Not really.” I smirked, then remembered the gift I had in my pocket.

“Gift?”

“Stay out of my head, vampire!”

“Make me.”

I ignored that and reached into my pocket, keeping my hand there, unsure if I should do this. “It’s a little corny, but—”

“I like corny.”

“I know.” I smiled warmly. “I figured the old guy in you might like it.”

David’s lips quirked up on one side, his eyes lighting with curiosity. “You’re getting good at keeping your mind clear when you want to hide something from me.”

“I know.” I grinned and pulled out a small white square of cloth. “You know in movies, how the fair maiden would sometimes give her knight a handkerchief?”

“Well—” David swept the beads of water through his hair, “—it wasn’t a custom that started in movies, but, yes?”

“Um…well, since you have this strong set of beliefs about staying with me at night, I figured you could at least take a part of me home with you.” I pressed the cloth into David’s palm. “It has my scent on it.”

He sniffed it. “So that’s why you were sleeping with this under your pillow the last few nights?”

“Yeah. You saw that?”

“Yes. I thought you might have had a cold or were…crying.”

I pouted, reaching back into my pocket. “No, I’ve actually had this diabolical plan going all week.”

“Plan?”

“I…it isn’t just my scent I want you to have.”

“Okay?” His brows pinched with confusion; my shoulders lifted as I clamped my index finger onto the pin in my pocket, then drew my hand out. “Ara!”

“This is my perfume,” I said quickly, before he could get mad, then dropped a dollop of blood onto the hanky. David’s fingers tightened around mine for a moment. “It’s the best way I could think of to give you a part of myself.”

“You silly, sweet girl.” He shook his head, then kissed mine. “Thank you.”

Ouch. “I must’ve pricked it pretty deep.” I squeezed the base of my finger. “It’s still bleeding.”

“Don’t squeeze it—you’ll make it worse.” He pocketed the hanky and took my hand, pausing for only a moment of hesitation, then slid my fingertip into his mouth, closing his lips tightly around it. His smooth, tepid tongue pushed my nail up to the roof of his mouth, sliding slowly down the length of my finger; he closed his eyes, his shoulders lifting with each calm breath. I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t worried he might lose control. There was no urgency to his touch; just a deep longing that I could feel emanating from his skin, coming off him in waves.