HE could barely remember her name. But the sheets were still warm from her body heat, a welcome difference. His bed had been cold for the last couple weeks. Other than an answering smirk in the face of her shy smiles as she quickly pulled on her clothes, he hadn't moved at all since she'd woken up, dressed and left. Her floral sent still lingered in the air. He'd have to change his bedsheets.
Jon finally rose to his feet and stretched, his lean muscles tightening, before ambling to the connecting bathroom. He turned the shower spray to the maximum and zoned out, letting his mind wander as the cold water saturated his dark brown hair and sluiced down his face. Stepping out of the shower, he grabbed a towel and wrapped it around his hips, covering the lower half of his toned body.
Once he was dressed in a button-down burgundy shirt and dark wash grey jeans, he headed downstairs. The living room was empty, the air cool from the low setting of the central air unit. The thick black curtains added to the coolness as it blocked out the imposing sun.
Movement came from behind him, shifting the stillness of the air although the silence remained undisturbed. Robb was back. Trying to sneak up on him. As if he could.
"Jonny Boy, long time no see?" The words shattered the silence.
Even though he couldn't see the face belonging to the voice behind him, he could hear the smirk in her tone.
Sansa.
He spun around in an unbridled response to hearing her voice, his head spinning and heart in his throat. The pair hadn't met since their failed relationship left him bleeding on his knees. Three hundred years ago. He quickly schooled his features, burying the longing in his grey eyes; tearing his heart off his sleeve and hiding it away.
"What are you doing here?"
A woman of auburn hair and light blue eyes stood before him. "Big brother couldn't turn me away." Sansa shrugged as she advanced toward him, a seductive sway guiding her slender hips. "And, I missed you."
"Save it, Sansa." He huffed at her soft purr, and turned away, striding toward the oversized black couch, widening the distance between them as she paused in the center of the dark grey room, studying him. He'd been down this road too many times, and it always ended in heartbreak . . . for him.
A smile forming in the face of his rebuff, Sansa persisted. "Come on, Jonny, do you think I would come back to this dead town just to play games?"
"Playing games is all you ever do." A bitter taste seeped into his mouth.
She rolled her eyes. "I needed some distraction. You sprung up a proposal on me. I panicked. I can hardly apologize for that." She pouted at him.
Jon glowered at her. "Panic gripped you for the past three hundred years?"
Sansa sighed, her arms crossed. "Fine. Be moody." Her gaze swept the dark grey walls, black furniture, and solid wood flooring of the living room, before her focus returned to Jon. "I'm going to take a shower." A naughty grin spread over her face. "Want to join me?"
Jon rolled his eyes. "No, Sansa, I do not want to join you." He ignored the tiny voice in his head protesting otherwise.
"Suit yourself." She shrugged, shooting him another impish grin before disappearing up the stairs.
Jon released a sigh as soon as she vanished out of sight. Three centuries later and her hold on him remained strong. Her voice both a dagger that tore him apart and the sweet magic that healed him.
He knew very well there was no point in fighting against Sansa's apparent wish to make herself at home. Yet simply waiting around for her to emerge from the shower, damp and dripping, was more than Jon was willing to bear. He grabbed his keys and quickly ditched the premises entirely, to prevent any sticky situations.
The black Audi blinked to life as he entered the three-car garage. He pressed another button and a click sounded as the driver's door unlocked. Jon threw the door open, the force vibrating the frame of the car. Flashing was easier, but he needed the extra minutes to think. The wind roared in his ears, pushing in through the open windows and snatching at his hair as he slammed on the gas. Outside the window, trees rushed by in a blur, seeming to disappear as the car flew down the road.
Despite the sprawling area his home encompassed in the heavily wooded outskirts of Winter Town, he was routinely able to cut what should have been an hour drive into town into a fifteen minute hurtle.
Winter Town's welcome sign came into view and Jon gradually lightened the pressure on the gas. He parked his car in the lot next to the post office and headed for the main streets. The forest hovered in the distance, rising up over the low-rise buildings.
The town square boasted neatly paved sidewalks, lined with mom-and-pop stores run by descendants of the original owners. A tiny bar, a small movie theater, and a modestly-sized shopping mall were the greatest sources of entertainment—and were always guaranteed to be overflowing as soon as schools and work let out. All three held little appeal for him. His only plan when he'd left the house had been to put distance between him and Sansa.
Daenerys—whose last name he never cared to remember—appeared in his line of sight as he stepped into the town square. A promising distraction.
"Hey, you," Jon said, falling into step beside the elflike blonde.
Daenerys barely suppressed her groan of disappointment and quickened her pace. "Really, Jon? You have nothing better to do than to be a nuisance? Ugh!" She entered the two-level fully enclosed mall and he trailed in behind her. She spun around, glaring at him with violet eyes that seemed to beam lasers. "Leave. Me. Alone."
Jon didn't regret his reputation among the town's college-aged female residents: "Mr. Heartbreaker", "the bed 'em and leave 'em guy". Some girls were happy to make their way into his path. Others, like Daenerys, actively avoided him. His habit of constantly teasing her might have played a role in her displeasure at his presence. But with so little to do, Jon couldn't deprive himself of having some fun. He could always start a clean slate . . . soon.
"But we just started having fun," Jon chided her.
"No, we are not having fun, you are having fun being a nuisance!"
"Don't be such a buzzkill, Daenerys." He strode ahead, dodging some giggling teenagers as he gazed around the carpeted lobby at the different shop outlets; their brand names displayed in bold, bright letters above the entrances. "What are we buying?" he asked.
"Ugh!" Daenerys pushed past him, the muted burgundy carpet swallowing her footsteps.
Jon smirked. It was so easy to get under her skin.
Daenerys darted through the first level of the mall, weaving between the other shoppers. She gritted her teeth whenever she turned to find Jon keeping pace behind her, before ducking into another outlet.
Jon played her constant shadow. She was a fellow student that he shared several classes with in the town's single community college. The type that spent the entire lecture whispering and sending texts, but somehow still managed to pass.
She beelined to the escalators, wiggling between a middle-aged couple and a preteen texting on her phone, before starting up the moving staircase two stairs at a time.
"Hey," Jon grinned from behind her as she checked to see if he was still there.
"Get lost," Daenerys groaned. She entered a shop with a display of beachwear in its windows, spending minutes studying every little detail of the selections as she moved through the different racks at a snail's pace. "This is cute," she muttered to herself, picking out a pink two-piece swimsuit.
Jon shook his head. "Bad idea."
Daenerys' gaze shot to him. "Really? Or are you just being a jerk again?"
"You can wear it if you want people to laugh at you." He waved a hand dismissively at the swimsuit. "It's your choice."
"Screw you," Daenerys snarled. She kept the bikini she'd chosen, and continued on her search. After spending some time silently traveling from shop to shop, the silver-haired girl paused between clothes racks to turn and look back at Jon. "If you're going to stalk me, you might as well be useful. Hold these," she said, reaching for him with an armful of clothes.
"Yeah, I'm done. Clothes shopping isn't my thing, except if I'm going to be ripping it off." Jon mockingly saluted, then left an amusingly frustrated Daenerys without another word.
The day seemed to have grown brighter as he stepped out of the mall, the sky had turned a blinding blue. He felt around his clothes, checking if he'd tucked his sunglasses into one of his pockets, but the only lumps he felt were his keys and his phone. With a shrug, he headed back toward the parking lot, maintaining his trademark smirk as he strutted through the narrow, tidy streets, despite the vicious rays of sunlight beaming down on his cool skin.
Though his last proper meal was some time ago, he'd fed recently enough that the sun wasn't yet a danger. As a vampire, he would have been perfectly content spending a thousand years without encountering another miserable sunny day. Winter Town's selling point was its cloudy days and cooler temperatures; it never rose above eighty-five degrees, even during the most punishing days of summer elsewhere. After taking a moment's shelter in the shade of a building, he retrieved his phone from his pocket, and texted Robb—his best friend and sidekick for the past four hundred years—a short message:
Get home. NOW.
Robb needed to get his dead ass home if Jon and Sansa were to face each other again. Only with Robb serving as a buffer did that event seem feasible. Then again, perhaps Sansa had brought home some entertainment to pass time and wouldn't even notice Jon's presence . . . or lack thereof.
He tightened his jaws. He wasn't chasing after her anymore. That was over. It was just too bad he wasn't done loving her. If Sansa confessed she still loved him and was ready to rekindle things from where they'd left off, Jon would cut out his dead heart and hand it to her in a human heartbeat. He'd loved her for four hundred years. He would never stop.
Jon arrived back at the hulking stone mansion and squared his shoulders before entering. He bared his teeth at Robb as soon as he saw him.
The fucker had the nerve to return his death glare with a careless grin.
"Why?" Jon growled.
Robb raised his hands in a placating gesture. "Easy buddy, I couldn't just refuse my sister shelter."
"You could," Jon disagreed. They both knew it was empty words.
"Just stay out of each other's way and everything will be fine," Robb cautioned.
Sansa's playful seduction flashed in Jon's mind. "I don't think she got the memo."
He gritted his teeth at Robb's minimal display of sympathy. "Sansa will be Sansa."
Sansa will be Sansa. Didn't Jon know that better than anyone?
Sansa's games had enthralled him at first, during their early days. Back then he'd been a twenty-one-year old student of astronomy. Life sucked, and he was searching for a bigger picture and purpose beyond his existence as an abandoned boy forced to work for a wealthy family until he'd finally went off to university at eighteen.
While out camping, he'd stumbled across a mysterious, auburn haired girl with eyes as luminous and pale as a blinding summer sky, and lips as red and tempting as the apple that damned mankind. Or at least he thought she was a girl, until she attacked him; her ankle length powder-blue and white lace gown a bright blur of color rushing toward him and throwing his world into a reality that suddenly failed to make sense.
Robb had appeared like a bolt of lightning, dragging his sister away, urging her to control herself. In his urgency, he'd forgotten to wipe Jon's memory of the attack.
Horrified but intrigued, Jon had returned later, searching for the pair.
His reckless bravery piqued Sansa's interest, or maybe he had simply amused her, but she'd kept him around. Before the year let out she transformed him—to Robb's horror. But Jon had been more than willing to leave his human life behind and dedicate his existence to Sansa. And she'd allowed him. Until he had wanted more.