“What are you doing?”

“Something hurts.” He craned his neck around, stretching it so far it looked uncomfortable. “In my lower back. But I can’t see what.”

“What do you mean something hurts?” I walked over to him. Vampires feel pain, but it usually only lasts a few seconds, unless it’s a major injury that takes a long time to heal, or we’re really low on blood, which slows the healing time.

“I don’t know. But it hurts.” He kept moving around, so I put my hand on his back.

“Stop. Let me look.”

When he finally quit moving, I saw it. In his lower back, just above the waistband of his pants, he had a large bump. A wooden splinter from the broken chair downstairs had gotten lodged in his smooth muscles, and it looked angled like it was digging in is spine. Only a bit of the end was sticking out, but I grabbed it with my fingers and yanked it out.

“Ow!” Jack winced. I held the splinter up to him. It was about half an inch thick and three inches long. “That was in my back?”

“Sure was.”

“That sucks.” He inspected it for a minute, then set it down the dresser behind him. When he started pulling on his shirt, I stopped him.

“What are you doing putting on your shirt?”

“What are you doing?” Jack grinned, raising an eyebrow.

“I don’t know. After I saw the way my kid brother whooped you tonight, I thought I’d see if you wanted to try your luck against me.”

“Sorry. I can’t fight you.” He bit his lip when he smiled, his blue eyes appraising me.

“Cause you know I’ll win?”

“I don’t hit girls.” Jack shrugged helplessly.

“That’s probably a good policy.” I stepped towards him, and he laughed. “Too bad that won’t stop me.”

I put my hands on his chest. He reached up to wrap his arms around me, but I pushed him back. Not hard, but he stumbled back and fell onto the bed. I climbed on top of him, straddling him between my legs, and he put one hand on my hips. My hair fell into my face, and using his other hand, he tucked it behind my ears.

“What’s all this then?” Jack asked, smiling up at me.

“I don’t know. I feel like I haven’t seen you much lately.”

“You haven’t,” he agreed. “You’re gone all the time.” He tilted his head, his expression growing more serious. “What have you been doing, Alice?”

“Training a lot,” I said. I didn’t want to talk about this, not now. This wasn’t the time when I wanted to lie to him. “I don’t know. I’ve been around.”

To silence anymore questions, I leaned down and kissed him. His lips felt hesitant on mine, so I pushed against him, but his skin remained cool.

“What?” I stopped kissing him.

“Are we okay?” Jack asked.

“Why wouldn’t we be?”

“I don’t know.” His forehead crinkled with confusion. “I feel like we’ve been fighting a lot lately, and I don’t know where you go.” He swallowed. “I feel like… something’s wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” I reassured him. “I love you, remember? I chose this life to spend eternity with you, and it’s only just begun. You can’t start questioning it already.”

“No, I’m not questioning it.” His smile came more easily now. “And yeah. I know you love me. I just… you’d tell me if something was going on, wouldn’t you?”

“I tell you everything, Jack,” I lied, and it hurt a little to say that. It used to be true, and it would be again, but right now, I just couldn’t tell him everything.

“Good.”

He reached up, burying his fingers in my hair, then pulled himself up to kiss me. This time, his kisses felt like they always did. I loved the desperate way he kissed me, like he was afraid to stop. Hot tingles spread over my skin, and my stomach fluttered.

When he sat up, he kept his hand on the small of my back, holding me to him. Barely taking his lips from mine, he slipped off my shirt, pulling it over my head. With surprising dexterity, he unhooked my bra, and pressed my bare skin against his. My flesh seared against him.

His heart pounded hard and fast, echoing over my own. He flipped me on the bed, so I lay on my back, and somehow, he slipped my pants and panties off in the process. He struggled to undo his own, and my fingers worked quickly to unfasten the button.

He laughed, sending fresh tingles through me, and then his lips were all over me. Kissing my belly, my chest, my shoulders, my neck. I raised my chin, allowing him to bite me if he wanted, but he didn’t. He hovered over me, his faded blue eyes meeting mine.

“Not this time.” Something in his smile looked sad, and his regret came off faintly, buried underneath his excitement. “For once, I want to love you the way you were meant to be loved. Without all the… vampire stuff.”

“I don’t understand.” I reached up, running my fingers through his hair and my thumb on his temple.

“I know.” He laughed, but it had a strange hollow sound to it that broke my heart. He looked at a spot above me instead of at me. “I turned you into a vampire without giving you a chance to learn what it really meant. And I said I did it to protect you, and I did, but maybe…”

“I know you did it because you loved me and you wanted me with you always.”