He knew me, knew how I fought.  The first thing he’d done was restrain my hands, or more specifically, my vicious nails.

“Why are you doing this?” I panted at him.  I was still struggling, but not as hard now.  I’d quickly worn myself out.

“Why won’t you let me comfort you?” he said, the words mumbled into the top of my head.

I don’t know how, I thought.  Even if I wanted that, wanted to pretend with you long enough to feel better, I don’t know how.

But I said none of it.  Instead I kept on struggling in his hold.

Finally he let me go, and I turned away from him to stare back out the window.

“You were always like this.”  His tone was fond, damn him.  “Even when you were just a scrappy little kid.  Always so extreme.  You take things either with a stoic face or you lose your mind.  Never any middle ground.  I miss that, you know.  You always challenged me.”

I had nothing to say to that.

“But today,” he continued, voice going softer with a tender emotion that he had no right to, “give me some middle ground.  Let me comfort you, or at least, comfort me.”

“Please,” he said, closer now.  “Comfort me.”

I blame the please.  Hearing that word coming from those lips was hopelessly disarming to me, so when he pulled me to him again, I didn’t fight him.  I laid my head over his black, traitorous heart, and let the tears fall.

I was weary of trying to suppress them, and they came out freely for a time as I quietly sobbed against my enemy’s chest.

How could you find comfort in the soul that had shattered you?

I didn’t know, but perversely, I found it anyway.

Eventually I pulled back, not looking up at him, eyes trained on the wet spot I’d left on his beautiful suit jacket.

My hands went to my face, feeling at my cheeks as I realized that my makeup was in ruins.

“I’ll need to go upstairs and redo my makeup when we get back,” I said blankly.  My mind was worrying about something small in an effort to avoid thinking about something big.

“Well, there’s no hurry.  The bloodsuckers will be there all day I’m sure,” he murmured, and not so much the words but his proximity had me stiffening.

His face was moving closer to mine, then closer.  His hands cupped my face, angling it up to his.

I kept my gaze pointed down, but it didn’t matter.  He wasn’t concerned with my eyes.  He wanted my lips.

He took them unrepentantly, passionately, devouring me like he always did, as though he’d never have enough.

And I let him have them, the fight gone out of me.  I’d always had a weakness for his kiss.  That’s why I hated them so vehemently.

I started shifting, falling against my seat back, though there wasn’t far to go.

It was the damnedest thing.  Every time he kissed me, all I wanted to do was lie down flat on my back.  That urge was quickly followed by one to open my arms, and then my legs.

It was a natural inclination.  Instinctual and all the more powerful for it.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-ONE

“I have to remind myself to breathe—almost remind my heart to beat!”

Emily Brontë

PAST

“Let’s ditch school,” I told Dante.

“And do what?”

“Go watch movies at my grandma’s house.”  She wouldn’t be there.  She was gone from seven a.m. to seven p.m. every single working day like clockwork.

And Dante never said no to movies at my house.  It had become our thing lately.

In fact, it had become my favorite thing in the world.

He shrugged.  “Fine.  Whatever.  I’m not in the mood for school anyway.”

We walked back toward my place leisurely, side by side as we strolled, so close that our arms and hands kept brushing against each other.

The third time it happened, he took my hand and laced our fingers together.

A thrill ran through my entire body, and I couldn’t hold back a smile.

Neither of us said a word about it.  He’d been doing it more and more lately when we were alone, but we never talked about it.

We’d been doing lots of things when we were alone together that we never talked about.

Nothing like what his mom had suggested, in fact all of it could be called more or less innocent, just physical contact that kept progressing, lingering until we couldn’t seem to stop.

But he’d never even kissed me.  I was starting to worry about it.  From what I heard other girls talking about concerning boys, it seemed like if he wanted to he should have tried to by now.

It didn’t take us long to walk to my grandma’s house.  Okay, house was a generous term.  It was a rundown two-bedroom trailer on a plot of land that belonged to Dante’s family.

Still, it was the only place we had where we could be alone.

I let him pick out the movie.

He chose Gladiator even though we’d already seen it like five times.  But neither of us actually cared what we watched.  The movie was not why we’d started spending all of our free time doing this.

I turned it on and Dante sprawled out on the couch, his big body taking up most of it.

As much as I complained about how fast I was growing, he was growing much faster.  He towered over me, and his lean body had started to develop muscles I couldn’t help but notice.

And as fast as he was growing, he was still as graceful, as comfortable in his own skin as he’d always been.  I hadn’t seen him suffer through one awkward faze yet.