Standing and adjusting the shirt around me, I step towards the door and Dimitri reaches out and takes my hand.
"You should probably wash up a little. You're covered in blood," Dimitri says, moving his eyes over my half covered body with a smug look. My upper body is covered in blood, and I remember that I forcefully removed myself from him mid-feed.
I smile and head across the hall to our bedroom, walking promptly to the bathroom, taking a face cloth and running it under the water before wiping at my neck first. Dimitri follows behind me and picks up another one, wetting it and spinning me to face him, gently rubbing at my chest with gentle strokes with a small smile on his face.
"Why are you smiling?" I ask with a small laugh, moving to wipe my stomach as he continues to wipe my chest and breasts.
"You're so beautiful," he whispers, and the coldness that is continuously in his voice is vacant, and his voice has the same softness as a distant memory. I bite my lip to hold back my smile, but I know that he can hear and feel the fluttering of my heart.
After cleaning myself up, I get changed into jeans and a t-shirt and head towards the stair and descend with vigour. Eddie isn't awake yet, but he is stirring.
"Out," I say, walking closer to Eddie, gesturing for the others to leave the room.
"Why?" Delilah asks, placing her hands on her hips and trying to look intimidating. I roll my eyes and stride towards her, gripping her hair and throwing her against the wall, cracking the drywall.
"When I tell you to do something, you do it! I am just as much in charge as Dimitri is," I snarl, slamming her back against the wall again before releasing her and she slumps to the floor with wide eyes. I growl at her before turning my attention back to Eddie, moving to sit on the opposite couch. The others have left the room, and Delilah has scrambled away, throwing me a deathly glare. Dimitri steps into the archway and Delilah saunters over, and I can hear her complaining to him.
"What Roza says, goes. I don't want to hear you complain about her decisions again," Dimitri says coldly and brushes past her, standing behind the couch Eddie is on. I lean forward and rest my elbows on my knees, waiting for him to wake up, listening carefully at his breathing.
"How long did it take for me to wake?"
"About an hour, but when you woke, you were ravenous," Dimitri said, crossing his arms and leaning against the back of the couch. I nodded and stood to ask Dominic to go and find something for Eddie to eat before moving back to my spot on the couch.
I still am trying to wrap my head around what happened. Why could we see into each other's minds when feeding off each other, and is it just us? And why do I have this warm feeling in my chest? Gnawing on my lip, I bonder this further until a finger my lip from its confines of my teeth.
Focusing on the face in front of me, I give Dimitri a half-smile as he caresses my lip. "Do you feel different?"
"A little bit, I can't put my finger on what it is, though," he whispers. I nod and snap my eyes towards Eddie when a groan passes his lips, and Dimitri moves back behind the couch, ready for him to fully wake. Eddie shifts on the couch, moving his head and fingers before his eyes snap open and he sits up, turning to look at me.
He bolts off the couch, flying towards me and Dimitri latches onto him, yanking him back to the sofa and forcing him to sit. A part of me is genuinely happy that Eddie is one of us now, I missed him, and his skills will be beneficial.
"Hey Eddie," I say calmly, showing him a smile. He struggles against Dimitri's grip, the need to quench his thirst driving him to snarl at us. Thankfully, Dominic has arrived with what looks like a club-goer from down the street, no doubt using compulsion to convince them to come with him. Bringing the man to stand in front of Eddie, forcing him to his knees, I not to Dimitri, and he lets go of Eddie. Eddie stands up and makes a move towards me before stopping and inhaling deeply, catching the smell of blood in the air. He lowers his gaze to the man on the floor before him, and instinct takes over.
He lunges down and latches onto the man, drinking greedily and making a mess of the floor. He drains the last drops from his first skill and stands up, blood staining his shirt and running down his chin, and his gaze lands on mine.
"Welcome to the dark side, we have cookies," I chirp and a smile cracks across his face. He was always a sucker for Star Wars, and he would say that all the time when we talked about the movies.
"So this is what the big deal is all about," he says, nudging the corpse to the side.
"Yes, understand now?" Dimitri asks, and Eddie looks over his shoulder to see him.
"Well, well, well, Belikov. It's nice to see you," Eddie says and turns back to me. I stand up and step over the body and pull Eddie into a hug, drawing a low rumble from Dimitri. I roll my eyes at him and whisper into Eddie's ear. "Welcome to the team."
After locating the Dhampir community in Michigan, Dimitri, Eddie, and I lay in wait for the perfect opportunity.
"Will these even work?" I ask as I sit on the counter in a gas station bathroom as Dimitri pops brown coloured contacts in my eyes.
"We are about to find out," he whispers and steps away from me to get a good view. Wearing some natural looking makeup to add colour to my pale skin, and wearing a short sundress, Dimitri and Eddie look me over.
"You know, aside from the pallor skin, you look like you did before you were awakened, hell the contacts are almost a perfect match," Eddie says with a low whistle. I smirk triumphantly and hope off the counter. A week into his new life and Eddie has taken it well. Extremely loyal to me – and by extension, Dimitri, he has stepped up and turned over every dirty secret he knew about what was going on at court.
He explained in exquisite detail that Lissa had been doing extensive research about how Spirit can revive the dead and had been talking to other Spirit users about old legends of being able to restore Strigoi. While I laughed when Eddie first told me this, I confided in Dimitri later that night that the notion scared me. I don't want to go back to that life, of having to walk one step behind someone like a common dog.
"We should get going if we want this to work," Dimitri says, but has a peculiar look on his face.
"What is it?"
"To make this believable, you have to look like a bloodwhore," he says, and looks at Eddie, tilting his head in a gesture for him to leave. Looking to me for approval, he leaves the bathroom quickly, and I can hear him walk outside. Dimitri steps closer to me and presses me back against the counter, creeping a hand into my hair and tilting my head back gently.
My breathing becomes slightly laboured in anticipation of what is to come, and I close my eyes, ready to embrace the high, but he doesn't bite me right away. He places kisses from my collarbone to my shoulder and neck, whispering to me in Russian before sinking his teeth into my skin. A small whimper passes my lips, and I clutch his duster in my hands, using that to ground myself to him.
I'm looking down at myself pinned to the matt, and Dimitri's gaze flicks to my lips before moving back to my eyes, and I part my lips oh so slightly. His inner monologue is different than I thought it would be. He wants to kiss me, but his morals pull him away from me.
Opening my eyes as he breaks the connection, he wraps his other arm around me to hold me to him as I come down from my high. Releasing my head, I roll my head up to look in his eyes and let out a scream when I feel a white-hot pain blast through my neck.
"Shh, it's ok. It's just for a few seconds," he whispers, and I struggle to get out of his arms. Wiggling out of his grip, I snarl at him and push him against the opposite wall, my arm pressing against his throat. The sudden movement causes him to drop something to the floor, and it clangs against the concrete. I look down to see a small silver chain with a cross lying on the floor, and Dimitri's hand covered by a glove.
"I had to keep the puncture marks from closing completely, they can't heal right away if we want them to believe you," Dimitri says staring into my eyes as I narrow them at him.
"You could have warned me," I hiss, and he shrugs his shoulders.
"You wouldn't have let me do it." He says, brushing my hair off my face and kissing my lips softly. I sigh and wrap my hands around his neck, pulling him closer to me as our tongue dance against another. The longer I kiss him, the warmer my chest feels, and I gasp for air when we pull away.
"Ready?" he asks. I nod my head and check my reflection in the mirror before stepping towards the door. Here goes nothing.
Getting Randall out of the commune with the promise of relocation to a hotel room was easy enough, but the whole time I just want to vomit. He is sleazier than Adrian, and the only way you can tell that Dimitri is Randall's son is because of the structure of his jaw and cheekbones. Randall is drunk, and the smell is putrid in mixture with his expensive cologne. Sliding the key into the lock, I open it and lure Randall into the room, using compulsion to make everything that much more alluring. Once the door is shut behind him and locked, I flick the lights on, smiling to Dimitri, sitting on the armchair in the corner of the room.
"Randall," he says, standing up and moving closer to us. I move to the side to let Randall get a full view of Dimitri, and Randall is so drunk he stares blankly at him. Dimitri doesn't let a moment go by before cracking his fist across Randall's face, blood spurting from his nose and mouth, spraying me and the wall I'm standing against. I sigh and wipe the blood from my face and lick my fingers clean. This has to be the most disgusting blood I've ever tasted in my life; it tastes stale for blood fresh from a wound.
"Who the hell are you?" Randall growls, holding his hand to his gushing face, flicking his eyes between us. Dimitri walks closer and grabs him by the collar of his shirt, lifting him from the ground.
"Your worst nightmare," Dimitri growls, shoving him back against the door.
The room is destroyed, blood staining the walls and carpet, the bedding is torn, and chairs overturned. I took no part in the destruction of the room. Dimitri beat Randall within an inch of his life before literally ripping him apart. Not an ounce of blood was drunk, and it stained the white carpet in pools throughout the room. After observing quietly, I slid off the counter in the kitchenette and crawl over to where Dimitri sits with his head in his hands against the wall.
"Comrade?" I whisper, kneeling in front of him and pulling his hands away from his face gently. His body is vibrating and move my face down to look into his eyes.
"Dimitri? Are you ok?" I ask, cupping his face and tilting his head up to look at me. He flicks his eyes up to my face and let out a shaky breath, pulling me closer to him.
"He's finally dead," he whispers into my shoulder, and I nod, stroking the back of his head. We sit like this for a few minutes, holding each other in silence. "I don't understand why I feel like this, I should feel this," he whispers, and I tense up, pulling back to look at him.
"Like what, baby?" I ask.
He looks up at me, his eyes swimming with emotion that I didn't think I'd ever see. "Closure. I feel closure, but I also feel relieved to know that he will never lay a hand on any other person again. He will never darken my mother's doorstep again," he chokes out, I pull his face to my chest, kissing the top of his head and soothing him.
What is happening to us?
A/N: I am the only one who is editing this story, so there may be some errors. Hope you all enjoy it!
Disclaimer: I own nothing