Chapter 2 - Show Me Your Desire

❀ Maeve ❀

The thick scent of eucalyptus clogged my nostrils, and I sleepily blinked my heavy lids open.

They quickly snapped back shut, however, when I saw the figure seated across from me. My environment, and the attack, came back to me in waves.

The first vampire I’d managed to find had forcefully fed from me on our first encounter. Surely this wasn’t how it was meant to go. Dread squeezed my chest as I tried to think of a way to escape.

Form shifted beside me, and I felt his suffocating presence hover from above.

Cold air tickled my skin from a soft draft.

“I know you’re awake. I will not harm you,” his voice, a breathy rumble, reached me.

Rich talk coming from the source of my lightheadedness.

I opened my eyes, no use pretending to still be unconscious. He’d probably heard it from my erratic heartbeat.

His face was closer than I’d expected, black curls falling from his forehead and just barely touching my own. Blood-red eyes, slightly luminous and hooded in an almost drunken expression, stared back at me.

His proportions were devastatingly unfair, with a straight nose, thick rosy lips, and a sharp jawline clenched in an expression I could not name.

He drew back, his arm snaking under my back to lift me into a half-sitting position. He supported my weight, cradling me.

“Who are you?” he asked, brows pinching closer in confusion. Or curiosity?

My mouth felt sticky when I tried to speak, and I tried to fight the weakness still settled in my bones.

“Maeve,” I managed a croak.

He fed me water from a pitcher nearby and handed me a slice of aromatic rye bread, which I wolfed down, feeling stronger with each bite.

I stared at him warily, like a cornered mouse in a cat’s line of sight. Orange light flickered over his pale skin from a candle on the ground. Two eucalyptus incense sticks stood in the candleholder.

“Who are you?” I returned his question.

Instead of answering, he raised his arm to brush my hair back, and I flinched at the contact.

“I will not harm you,” he repeated.

“You already did. Why did you do that? Were you starved?”

I rattled the questions one after the other. His violence earlier contrasted so much from his caring attitude now, almost as if he were a completely different person. But I knew better. He was a vampire that could kill me at any time, if provoked, or for no reason at all.

“I apologize for my behavior earlier. Your scent… it called to me. Almost as if…” his brows pinched again.

“I need a tutor,” I blurted.

I had no idea how long I had been passed out for, and since he already fed from me, he owed me service. I only hoped he wouldn’t be the type to take advantage of me. But he had not drained me to death and had nursed me back to health, so maybe he was a better option than going out to find another vampire in my weakened state.

For some reason, anger, or displeasure, flitted across his face.

My fingers curled into the simple mat we were sat on. Maybe that girl was right. Maybe he didn’t want me because of how I looked.

He didn’t look at all how I’d expected. I had never seen a vampire before and had imagined them to be wild and terrifying. He looked different, clean and well kept. Even his features and mannerisms held a regal quality to them.

“Tutor? Why?” was his simple question.

“I am to attend the mating ceremony soon, and I need experience to be chosen amongst the twenty maidens to be presented to the inner court. You already took my blood, so you owe me service.”

“Do I, now?” he drawled. Amusement pulled his full lips upward, but his eyes did not crinkle. His eyes were cold as death and as still as my heart in that moment.

“Or I–I could just go,” I stammered, trying to rise. “I bothered you in the first place. For that, I apologize.”

He rose with me, his form towering until my head stopped right at his chest. I felt so small, praying to all the old gods that he would just let me leave, since he didn’t seem keen on returning service.

“If I let you leave, will you continue your search for a random vampire tutor?”

I stared down at my feet, refusing eye contact so as not to provoke him further.

“Yes. I don’t have a choice.”

“Very well.”

My head snapped up. “What? You’ll let me leave?”

There was that smirk again.

“Of course not. I will… tutor you.”

“Oh,” I said simply, pinching the fabric of my dress between my fingers.

“Do you have reservations about that?”

“No. It will last three days. W-will you be available all three days?”

“To the best of my ability.”

That wasn’t good enough. I needed to maximize our time together. The other girls had been taking lessons for more than a week. I’d watched them sneak off to District 3 through my window before my mother had suddenly decided yesterday that I was to join them. I had no idea what vampires did in their spare time, but I had little.

I made eye contact to communicate this to him, but that crimson gaze burned the words off my tongue. I averted mine.

“All right,” I whispered, sweat gathering in my palms.

“What do you wish to learn?”

“Everything.”

“Very strange tradition,” he mused to himself.

A large, cold hand came up to wrap my neck, tilting my face to meet his own monochromatic one, his eyes and lips the only sources of color on the blank canvas.

Pale, almost white skin stretched over the sharp angles of his face, framed by dark curly hair that I suddenly felt the urge to feel with my fingers.

“Feel.”

“H-huh?”

“Feel my hair,” he crooned.

My breath caught. Could he read my thoughts? Did bloodfeeding give him that ability over me?

“I cannot read your mind. I only noticed your longing stare toward my curls.”

Oh. He was good. Or maybe I was that easy to read.

With an almost imperceptible nod, I reached for his hair. My fingers disappeared into the strands, swallowed by the deep black abyss.

“Have you ever pleasured a man?”

I swallowed, still kneading his hair, parting and tugging it slightly. “No.”

“Have you ever pleasured yourself?”

At that, I balked. Would he think I was hopeless not having any experience at all with anybody else but myself? Sometimes, when my head buzzed with imagination and my body with want, I brought myself pleasure, but that was it. No boy had ever shown interest.

Famously known for being anemic and wolfless, I wasn’t exactly popular.

“Yes,” I affirmed.

His grip tightened slightly at my throat, sending a rush of excitement through me. With his other hand, he took my hand out of his scalp and pressed his lips to the back of my palm with his eyes closed. He looked like a literal angel, save for the fangs that grazed my skin. A thrill rushed through me from the spot, pooling in my core.

“Soft. Promising. You have no idea what you could do to a man.” His eyes opened and met mine, like melted rubies in a sea of white.

“Thank you,” I breathed, my heart doing somersaults at the compliment. I had hope, at least.

He suddenly stepped back, leaned against an outcropping of the wall, and crossed his long, muscled legs.

“Show me how you bring yourself pleasure.”

“W-what?”

“To be able to bring another to release, you must first know your own body, and what you enjoy.”

“I know what I enjoy,” I argued. “There’s not much time. Aren’t you going to…”

“Fuck you?” he cut in, his head tilting in challenge. “Sensuality is not to be rushed, little one. Let’s see what we’re working with.”

Only two people had ever seen me undressed, myself, and my mother.

My fingers curled tightly around my dress, shaking with tremors. I lifted the fabric slightly, exposing my shins. A little higher, my knees. They buckled.

What if he didn’t like what he saw? What if…

“Beautiful,” he whispered, almost too low for me to hear. His eyes glinted in the shadows, pinning me with a predatory stare that filled me with confidence.

I raised the fabric over my head.