Dark Secrets (Dark Secrets #1)(126)
Author: A.M. Hudson

He opened his eyes as he slid my finger past his lips, dropping a gentle kiss there. “Ara, you taste amazing—like a creamy dessert wine. Sweet and yet so powerfully intoxicating.” His eyes changed colour around his words, just like they did in the storage closet at school; the green became darker, encircling the growing pupil, almost entirely consuming the whites of his eyes. “I can’t keep doing this.”

I stared up at him, blinking each time his warm breath touched my lashes. “Doing what?”

“Telling myself not to touch you, not to…to want you—to drink from you.”

“Oh God, David, don’t you know how badly I want that, too?”

“Yes. And that’s what makes it so much harder for me to refuse you.”

My eyelids fluttered involuntarily. “I don’t want you to refuse me.”

He tried an accusatory glare, but the look washed away quickly as he ran his tongue over his lips one last time and the history of my blood clearly fell against it. “Fine.”

“Fine what?”

The vampire surfaced within his eyes; he cupped the side of my neck, his body inches from mine, his breath suddenly weighted, fast. “I’m going to drink from you. But not with your clothes on.”

I looked down at my jeans, then back up at the vampire. “Huh?”

“Vampires like skin; we need skin. If we do this with clothes on—” he looked away for a second, “—when I get carried away, I might rip them off you. I don’t wish to explain to your father why I’m bringing you home naked.”

“Oh.” I laughed, but a sudden sinking feeling shot through my arms, like a hot blast of toxic, adrenaline-inducing drugs.

“It’s okay.” He placed a steadying hand over my heart. “I won’t do anything to hurt you. You have my word.”

“I know. It’s just—” I disentangled my fingers from their ball-grip. “It’s just that no one’s ever seen me…naked before.”

“Are you uncomfortable?”

I nodded.

“Why?”

“I’m…I’m afraid…that you might be…disappointed.”

I tensed, waiting for him to laugh, but he only slid the backs of his fingertips along my cheekbone and stared deeply into my eyes, reaching down to take my wrist with his other hand. “What if I were to undress, and suddenly you decided I was not as…hot as you thought?”

“What?” I smiled. “Impossible. You’re totally hot, and besides, as if I’d care. I love you.”

He smiled down at me. “Precisely.”

“Point taken.” I frowned at myself. “Naked then?”

“Yes.” He released my wrist and fingered the base of my tank top. “Naked.”

My shoulders rounded, hunching slightly as he lifted it, revealing the strip of white skin above my jeans, then my belly button and my ribs. I stiffened all over, realising I hadn’t planned my undergarments to suit this kind of…misbehaviour.

“Don’t worry,” he said with a laugh. “You won’t be wearing them for much longer anyway.”

And so many pictures of all the things we would do ran through my mind; I knew David could see each and every one of them.

I lifted my arms above my head, and a breath of a smile swept across my lips as David dropped my top to the wet grass and stepped back, shaking his head.

“Ara, my love.” That look warmed his entire face. “You are incredibly perfect.”

I quickly covered my purple and pink candy-striped bra. “Even in a bra from the same boutique as Bozo the Clown?”

David’s burst of laughter caught me off guard, making me smile. He reached out, took each of my hands, and pulled them away from my ribs. “This—” he nodded to my bra, “—is just another thing that makes you so damn sweet and cute. You’re seventeen. I didn’t expect black lace.”

“But, I look like a flamboyant zebra.”

“You look beautiful.”

“Well, I feel naked.”

“Well, you’re not—yet.” His eyes slowly drifted to my jeans. “May I?”

“Mm-hm.” I nodded, holding my breath.

In one yank of my button-fly jeans, the denim parted, revealing my pink underwear. I drove my thumbs into the waist and shimmied them down my hips, feeling the air cool my skin where the rain made it soggy under my jeans. David watched, his eyes falling past my underwear to the apex of my thighs, down my skinny white legs and to my knees, his lips splitting into a grin when I carelessly stumbled and tripped, kicking my ankles free with about as much finesse as a drunkard.

As I stood expectantly in front of him, more naked than I’d ever been with anyone, the whirling winds circled the clearing, sweeping my hips, my arms, my belly, touching all the places I knew David was dreaming about. And for the first time in my life, I felt beautiful before his eyes.

The patters of rain stopped completely then and the beads of water glistening in David’s hair and over his lashes looked almost out of place. His golden skin showed through his white t-shirt, made almost see-through by the rain, hugging the curvy bulk of his chest and arms. He spread the collar and slipped it past his head, peeling it away, all sticky and soggy, from his skin, then dropped it to the grass beside my clothes. I smiled at the pile; he smiled, too.

The sun wandered in for a peek at this innocent step toward danger, making the water on David’s skin sparkle. He looked as though he was starring in the wrong storybook.

“What’s funny?” he asked.

“I like the sun on your skin.”

He angled his arm outward and studied it, running a hand down the droplets, his eyes flashing to another thought for a second.

“What?” I asked.

“What’s what?”

“What were you just thinking?”

“Oh. Uh—just that…” He laughed. “I hope the rain didn’t soak through my jeans.”

“Why?” I asked, watching him unbutton them.

“Because,” he said, slipping them down his hips. “My briefs are white.”

“So?” I said, but as soon as I heard my own words, the white of his shirt, all see-through with the water, registered in my mind. “Oh.”

He winked and tossed his jeans aside, allowing me a moment to scrutinise. My waterfall gaze drifted over his broad shoulders and the tight skin across his chest, down the cagey ripples of his ribs, stopping at the thick band of his underwear. Above those, there wasn’t the obvious six-pack I kind of expected, just that nicely contoured ‘V’ leading up smoothly to his ribs.