Hey everyone!

I am so sorry that I am so bad at updating. I'm going to be honest and say that I find it really hard to motivate myself and I find it really difficult to publish what I write because I always feel like I can do better, that what I am writing is never good enough and I feel guilty giving you stuff that I am unhappy with. But then you guys are all so supportive and amazing that I feel like I can't let you down. This is going to sound so embarrassing and cheesy but I feel like I have to say it. Honestly, thank you all so much from the bottom of my heart. This story wouldn't be where it is now without all of you - you guys really inspire me and motivate me to actually write and I want to thank you so much for that. I'm not going to make any false promises and say that I will update soon but I will say that I do intend to finish this story and that, no matter how long it takes or how long it gets, I am determined to see it through.

Also, major shoutout to Back-To-Paradise, who is translating this story into French! I am so, so flattered and unbelievably grateful like wow, holy shit that's amazing!

Anyway, without further ado, here is chapter fourteen. Sorry it's so short but I tried to make up for it with the fact that it's mostly just pure fluff.

Rated T: language, mildly sexual themes/suggestions (holy shit I think this is the first time it's ever been rated lower than M?).

As always, constructive criticism is welcome!

Enjoy!

Chapter Fourteen

When I woke up, it felt like death itself was clinging to my skin.

I groaned, a low, miserable sound, sitting up slowly in a cocoon of blankets I had no memory of wrapping myself in. I blinked once, twice, in confusion before the memories of the previous evening made themselves known to me.

I didn't panic this time. I didn't freak out, cry or scream. It was like I was used to it, used to waking up with fresh new horrors to face. That thought was the one that almost sent me careening into a breakdown but my control over my emotions was better than I thought – I was practically a panic attack veteran by now and it was with a horrifying familiarity that I fought one off and calmed down.

The room was lit by the soft, yellow glow of a small lamp. The bedroom was large, clean and had the signature minimalist style of Godric's last house. It was elegantly furnished, with a large king sized bed, two bedside cabinets, a mirror that almost entirely covered one wall and a plush, stiff looking armchair.

Sat in that armchair was Godric, watching me intently, his face as heartbreakingly beautiful as ever. He seemed to be continuing his exploration in modern fashion, wearing a simple pair of dark jeans and a grey sweater. If I were an artist, I would have immortalised the scene on canvas. The way the lamp cast one half of his face in shadow and lit the other half in a golden luminosity. The way it played with the color of his eyes, one burning a bright, searing blue, the other as dark and murky as the ocean.

We stared at each other. I probably looked like a deer in the headlights, eyes wide and scared, my hair a tangled, gnarly mess. He studied me with an intensity no human could ever hope to achieve. His eyes ran over my face, my hair, my body before coming back to my eyes. I had gotten better at reading him, I think, if he felt like letting me in, and the slight downturn of his lips, the furrow in his brow, the narrowing of his eyes all told me he was concerned. Worried. For me.

"Amelia," he said, voice hoarse, "Milia."

I couldn't stand it, the pressure of his gaze, the laser like focus, like I was gazing into the sun. I looked away, examining the bed sheets.

"Amelia," he said again, voice stronger this time. I blinked and he was in front of me, kneeling by the bed and angling his face low so he came in my field of vision, forcing me to look at him. I sighed and raised my eyes, staring into his crystalline ones from my position above him. He tenderly, oh so tenderly, cradled my face in his hands, with a softness that made something in my chest clench.

"Amelia Kent," he said, voice almost a whisper but firm, reverberating with a power so ancient and unstoppable it made my blood race, "I swear to you, we will find out what happened last night. I swear to protect you. There is not a creature in existence able to touch you if you do not wish it, not while I walk this earth."

Honestly, I had no fucking clue how to respond to that.

How could I say anything? What do you do when a being older than Jesus Christ swears, like some medieval knight, that he will do everything in his power to protect you? Was there a protocol for this? What was the etiquette for these situations? Was there a handbook I could read?

He smiled slightly, softly, fondly. "Do not fear, I do not expect a response from you. You do not have to say anything if you do not desire to."

I mean, that was nice and all but it didn't help much. I still had no idea how to process it. I sat there and gaped at him, mouth opening and closing and sputtering in shock.

He chuckled, letting my face go and stood in one smooth, graceful motion. "I will leave you to freshen up."

He turned to leave and I lunged forward, grabbing his hand. "Don't go," I whispered, staring at him with big, pleading eyes.

Something in him seemed to break, crumble and before I knew what was happening he was under the covers with me, limbs entwined with mine as he held me close.

I could feel the hard line of his body, the solid press of his muscles against my side as I curled up on his chest. He smelled of the ocean, of sea foam and a sea breeze, of something wild and unrestrained. It made my breath shudder out of my lungs as I melted into him and decided that I never wanted to leave. He pressed a delicate kiss to my forehead and laced his fingers with mine, holding me firmly.

And in that moment, nothing else existed but the feeling of him next to me, intertwined with me. He existed and I existed and that was all I had to worry about.

We stayed like that for hours, not talking, not needing to, pressed together and drawing comfort from each other's presence. It was as therapeutic for him as it was for me. I wondered when he was last held like this, when was the last time he lay with a woman so innocently, if ever. It was a painful thought, that maybe, in all his long years, no one had ever wanted to hold him like that and it made me press myself further against him.

The door slammed open, interrupting our quasi- therapy session. Eric strolled through, casual and confident, handsome as ever. He looked at us, cuddled together on the bed and offered his usual mocking sneer. "Cute."

I could hear Godric huff from under me, "was there anything in particular that you wanted, Eric?"

"I don't want anything but Miss Suicidal here has a visitor,' Eric said as he jerked his chin at me.

I scowled at the nickname and gave him the middle finger before attempting the long and arduous process of getting out of the bed with both a broken leg and arm.

Godric, chivalrously and after giving Eric a warning look, helped me, gently guiding me from the bed to a waiting pair of crutches. I huffed and groaned and griped about how frustrating it was to be unable to move as freely as I usually did and Godric hid a fond smile into his hand when I cursed a blue streak at how fucking difficult the crutches were.

We made it to the kitchen, where my doom in the form of a blonde woman who looked like she belonged on the cover of 'Vogue' awaited me.

"Amelia," Leanna hissed, fury turning her normally grass green eyes a shade that belonged in the depths of a forest so dense and tall, sunlight never touched it. "If you ever do something so fucking stupid again I will rip your beating heart from your chest."

Weirdly, as far as "I'm glad you're not dead" speeches go, hers wasn't the worst I had ever received. I gave her a watery smile and threw myself into her arms, her body cold and hard, like any vampire's but also familiar and comforting. She smelt like expensive perfume and pine needles.

"I'm sorry," I whispered and held her closer when she pretended not to notice how my voice cracked.

After a few moments, Leanna gracefully pulled back and then launched into one of the worst lectures I had ever been on the receiving end of (which was saying something because in my short life I had done a lot of stupid shit). As Leanna described in horrific detail exactly what she would do to my spine if she ever caught me throwing myself in front of a vampire again, I began to wonder, not for the first time, about her past. If she had ever been a mother. The nagging tone she used to scold me suggested she had been.

Living with vampires was not what I had expected.

Not that I had spent a lot of time imagining it but sometimes, right before I drifted off to sleep, or in my darkest, most private moments, I had fantasied about what life would be like with them.

For one thing, adjusting to an almost nocturnal schedule wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. Maybe it was because I was naturally a nighttime person anyway, or maybe it was all the night shifts I had been stuck with as a rookie but in no time at all I found myself waking in the late afternoon with no problems at all.

That doesn't mean, however, that living with vampires didn't have it problems.

For one thing, they were endlessly fascinated by everything I did. The main occupants of the house were Godric, Eric and I, with the occasional visit from Leanna and Pam (who I was not allowed within a five foot radius of). Godric was obsessive with my safety and pretty much never left my side – the only time he ever felt comfortable leaving the house was when Eric was there to guard me.

It became painfully clear to me after only a few hours with them that Godric and Eric had never lived with a human before. Theirs eyes would follow my every movement as I ate, watching me in the way a scientist observes their life's work. Godric liked to inform me, with no small amount of delight, the exact digestive process my food underwent, the nutritional value of everything I ate, its manufacturing process and history at every meal. I have no idea why the simple act of eating my dinner was so interesting but Godric seemed so genuinely excited by it that I didn't have the heart to tell him that I just didn't care that apples first evolved in central Asia.

Something they found particularly amusing was the human need to brush one's teeth. For reasons beyond me, this provided them with endless entertainment and I had to lock them out the bathroom whenever I did it because their staring was getting very annoying very quickly.

Godric was much politer in his interest than Eric, unsurprisingly. He watched me with a soft, warm glow in his eyes, drinking in every detail of my mundane life like he was dying of thirst and only through understanding me, and by extension, humanity, would he be saved.

Eric, on the other hand, liked to pretend that he didn't care at all, that my irritating human ways were insignificant and meaningless, more proof of how weak we were but it was difficult to believe him when he watched me with the same intense focus Godric did from the corner of his eye.

There were some things we did not talk about – my injuries, their blood in my veins and the whirlpool of problems that came with that; the way it felt like I wanted to rip my skin off some days from being kept cooped up like a delicate, caged bird; the way one of them would sometimes disappear for days on end and come back with a hard glint in their eyes. We maintained a careful balance that even Eric was careful not to break and the longer it lasted, the more fragile it became until we could all feel the threads slowly starting to unravel. Still, no one said anything.

We slowly settled into a comfortable routine – I would wake up in the early afternoon, freshen up, shower, potter around until they rose with the setting of the sun. At first, they had no idea what to do with me and we had spent a number of nights sitting in an awkward silence until eventually Godric had straight up asked me what humans did for fun. The way he said the word fun, like it was unfamiliar, foreign and strange to him broke my heart and I took it upon myself to become the official entertainer of our small party. I would make Godric have the time of his fucking life or I would die trying.

It was unexpectedly challenging. Eric refused to do anything that wasn't inappropriate or mildly dubious and Godric simply wanted to try everything. We had movie nights and game nights but it was infuriatingly difficult to find something that would satisfy all of us. The human concept of fun just didn't seem to overlap with the vampire concept and it didn't help that I was slowly becoming more and more manic the longer I was kept locked inside.

And then, one hot summer evening, when the air had been suffocating and my clothes stuck to my skin, in a fit of desperation, I had suggested we play a game of cards. This was the single biggest mistake of my life.

"Cards?" Eric had asked, a glint in his eye that I had not liked. Had not liked at all. "Like poker?"

That was the moment my fate was sealed.

Eric and Godric played cards in the same way a general planned a war. Merciless, calculating, brutal. I never stood a chance. If I thought they were going to go easy on me or take pity on my poor, easily read doe eyes, I was sorely disappointed. They swindled me for all I was worth, and then some, and snickered when I complained about it. They had had lifetimes to perfect their skills – I was given days. Ironically, I would bet my life savings that they were counting cards. If we were playing with real money I would be millions of dollars in debt. It did not take them long to take advantage of this.

It was a bit cooler that evening – it had rained earlier that day and I sat in a pair of soft cotton shorts and a long sleeved t-shirt. The table we played at was solid and old and looked like it cost more than my family had ever owned in their lives. There was a small scratch on the surface that I liked to play with, tracing it over and over again with my fingers. The hand Godric had dealt me was fucking awful but this time I was determined to win. This time I would keep my face blank. This time I would keep my voice steady. This time, no one would call my bluff.

"How about we make it interesting this time?" Eric asked, a sly smile on his lips.

I felt my heart start to pound in fear of the unknown and turned to Godric in the same way boats turned to lighthouses to guide them home in the dark. Except Godric wasn't a lighthouse this time – he was the sharp, jagged rocks fishermen wanted to avoid.

Godric was a mystery to me. I had assumed that the more he got to know me, the less interested he would become. So far, the opposite had proven true and in the oddest of ways. The more comfortable I got around him, the more free and unguarded, the more I made stupid jokes or patted him on the hand out of reflex or squealed in fear at a spider, the more drawn to me he became – like a moth to the flame. I didn't understand it, half the time I didn't even realise it – this strange power I held over him but mostly I found myself drawn to him too. The way his eyes crinkled in the corners when he smiled, his boundless fascination with the world and just the sheer amount of knowledge he had. The way he found the worst, most ridiculous puns I had ever heard absolutely hilarious but frowned adorably, like a lost puppy, when I showed him modern comedies. The way everything he did was thought out meticulously and lightning fast – the way he could analyse every flaw and advantage of every action, all the possible outcomes it could have and which was most likely, all in the time it took for me to blink. I was in complete awe of him, and the strangest thing of all, he seemed to feel the same way about me.

The only reason I even knew all of this was the way he would look at me – the way he would deliberately let me catch him looking. Sometimes, not often, he would stare at me with a hunger so deep, so consuming and bottomless that it made everything in me freeze. Made something in my chest clench. Made my heart stutter to a stop before restarting again in a wild, rapid rhythm. He stared at me like he wanted to drown me in him, like he wanted to grab my very soul, hold it to his chest and never let go.

So when I turned to him, in what I thought was a small, innocent, harmless game of poker in the hopes that he would put a stop to Eric's shenanigans and instead found him giving me that look, his eyes far darker than normal and threatening to drag me into their endless depths, with a devastatingly ravenous gleam, I said the only thing I could. "Oh shit."

He smirked in a way I imagine the devil does right before he steals your soul, "have you ever heard of strip poker?"

Oh ho ho ho - things are getting heated.

So the fact that they avoided all the drama of the last chapter and all their problems is very deliberate - no one wants to open that particular can of drama just yet. It's nice for them to pretend, just for a little while, that everything is kind of ok.

Sorry for the lack of Eric in this chapter but he stole the limelight last time and it's Godric's time to shine!

I loved hearing about your theories on what happened with fire and some of you are getting very close and picked up on the right details but I won't say anything more because I obviously don't want to spoil my own story :P.

Thank you so much for reading!

Next time: Milia somehow (wink wink) loses most of her clothing and the mystery surrounding her slowly starts to unravel.