100% Freshie Chapter 14 --PG-13

[librarian_7]

Disclaimer: The characters from Moonlight are copyrighted by CBS, and no infringement is intended.

Special note: This work takes place in the world of Moonlight, but your favorite vamps are not the main focus. Sorry about that; try to enjoy the story anyway. You might be surprised.

100% Freshie

Chapter 14


The initial slight pain was past, and Danni sank into concentrating on the gathering pleasure of the vampire’s bite, nestling back against his shoulder, in the circle of his arm, as he suckled on her wrist with increasing avidity. The sensation traveled directly from his wrist to her center, and she squirmed in his lap, savoring her own response, and enjoying the arousal she was obviously creating in the vamp. Outside their dim niche, the sounds of the club seemed distant. She could only picture the ice blue of his eyes, but the thought of that gaze served to enhance what she felt. And if her mental picture put those crystal eyes in a handsome face framed with bright golden hair, and not the medium brown of the head she clasped, well, that was surely her business. She knew her own release would be felt and enjoyed by this vamp, she’d been told how such reactions sang through her blood. God help her, she loved it.

She narrowed her concentration until her whole consciousness was focused on the feel of the vampire’s mouth at her wrist, the lap of his velvet tongue at her skin, the sweet flow of her blood past the subtle graze of his teeth. He sucked harder, pulling the blood more quickly. The hand she had rested against his head, fingers tangled in his hair, slipped down, and she could feel the muscles of his throat move smoothly beneath her fingers. She swallowed involuntarily, licking her lips, her breathing irregular. She could feel her pulse pounding in her ears, throbbing, racing. The vamp shifted his grip, steadying her as she shook in his arms and tried to bite back the moans. His free hand slipped higher up her thigh, fingertips slightly beneath the hem of her short skirt, stroking the top of her thigh-high hose.

Danni was so lost in the moment she never felt her phone vibrating at her waist, and it took several seconds for her dazed brain to assimilate the ring tone.

“I don’t want the world to see me
‘Cause I don’t think that they’d understand
When everything’s made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am.”

Then it sank in. Iris. There was only one number that rang with that song. Only one, and it had been months since the last call. She’d almost accepted that she’d never hear her phone ring like that again.

With a sound suspiciously like a sob, she tore her wrist away from the drinking vamp. He looked up at her questioningly, his eyes fading back from ice blue to warm brown even as his tongue ran across his lips gathering a last few drops of her blood. Danni leaned over and impulsively planted a kiss on his mouth, tasting the salt and copper of it still warm on his tongue. “I’m really sorry about this—you are okay, aren’t you?” He nodded slowly, not quite up to speaking, and she was just as glad of that. “You were wonderful,” she said, sliding off his lap with a quick caress to his cheek. “But I’ve got to go.” Even as she turned away, she was grabbing for her phone. Too slow, of course she’d been too slow. She felt a sudden flash of resentment against her companion, but squelched the thought as unkind. He’d been very nice to her really. Still, she could call back. Even as she looked at her phone, it began to vibrate telling her she had voicemail. The message was short, but she reveled in hearing Will’s seductive tones.

“Hey, babe, meet me at Pulse!”

Danni looked around eagerly, searching the crowd. Will was here, somewhere in the same room. Usually, after feeding a vamp, she felt languid, spent. But knowing Will was here, knowing she’d see him at any moment, was like a shot of adrenalin. She scanned the room eagerly, trying to make her poor mortal eyes pierce the darkness to find him. Maybe she hadn’t looked hard enough. Maybe she wasn’t looking in the right direction. She brightened—his message hadn’t specified a time. Maybe he wasn’t here yet. That raised a question. Should she migrate toward the entrance in hopes of seeing him as he came in? Did she have time to run to the ladies lounge and check her makeup, her dress? Maybe—

From behind, there was a tap on her shoulder, so delicate she wasn’t sure if she’d imagined it. She whirled, startled, and found herself staring into a pair of turquoise eyes set in a face that might have been carved from marble. Expressionless, or was it slightly sad? Danni was frozen in place, not knowing how to react, wondering how he wanted her to react. She’d learned so much more about vamps, since he’d been gone, and she knew now that they often had expectations about humans, and human reactions. Not necessarily reasonable reactions, she’d discovered. And at this moment, she wanted very much to pull out whatever reaction would be most welcomed. Maybe. She thought about throwing herself at him, but at once a vision of Hunter, beautiful Hunter, wrecked and ruined without him, floated up. The memories of how he’d left them. Maybe slapping that marble face was a better reaction, more rational, but she couldn’t bring herself to it, quite.

So they stood, eyes locked, ignoring everything else in the universe but each other, neither knowing what to expect. Danni knew he had to be aware of her heart beating so hard she feared for the first time in her life that it might burst and shatter into a thousand shimmering pieces inside her chest. Hearing it, Will still couldn’t interpret it. To his ears, it might be happiness, it might be fear, it might be anger. But he knew within him, as he knew her blood, that his Danger—if she was in any way still his—had a forgiving heart, a loving heart. At least, she had when he left.

The marble mask cracked a bit. He twitched one corner of his perfect mouth, in the smallest of crooked smiles. And he lifted his hands from his sides, palms open, far enough to invite her, to welcome her into his embrace if she chose, but slightly enough that if she refused him, no one else would know.

Even the vampire was surprised at how quickly she moved into his arms. He wouldn’t have thought a human capable of such speed, but there she was, pressed against him, her warm cheek over his heart, repeating brokenly, “Will, Will, oh, Will.”

And even though he’d been unsure about returning to Los Angeles, even though he’d debated the wisdom of seeing his old freshies again, he found his arms going around her, stroking her hair, moving it gently back beneath his hand. As he did, she tilted her head, offering her throat in the movement of a practiced freshie. He could smell her blood so strongly, smell the other vampire and the fresh wounds on her wrist. He could see the newer marks on her throat. He closed his eyes and dropped his head down to smell the skin at her neck. He did not hunger, did not thirst for her, not now, but he ran his tongue over the skin that bore those scars, fading as only the scars of a vampire’s bite did, quick to heal, and leaving traces it almost required the eyes of a vampire to discern.

Tasting her skin, smelling it, he was aware of her loneliness, her desolation. It saddened him even as it perplexed him. He had forgotten, he supposed, too much of what it was to be human, and ever since Firefly’s death he had tried hard not to care about the mortal girls. There was no point to it. They would leave, or die, and he would go on, ageless, emotionless, cold and perfect in a world that was changing now faster than he could easily comprehend.

Somewhere within him, though, it was as if some little, long-imprisoned piece of his soul was slowly beginning to chip its way out from the wall he’d built to contain it, and this girl, this insignificant, awkward, unschooled hick of a girl, was a part of it. Maybe she was digging a tunnel in from the other side.

He suspected they needed to talk. Privately, and at some length. As it was, while weeping freshies were hardly a novelty at Pulse!, Will was acutely aware that there were any number of undead eyes on him, including, if his nose wasn’t playing him false, those of the vamp Danger had been feeding only a short time before.

“Danger?” the voice was just loud enough to be overheard in the noise of the club.

Great, Will thought, sizing up the brown-haired vamp who reeked of Danger’s blood. Practically a fledgling yet, and thinking he could possibly interfere between an older vamp and his freshie. It was counter to established custom. Weren’t sires these days teaching newbies any manners? He fixed the newcomer with a baleful stare, flashing more than a hint of fang as he almost snarled, “Back off.”

The young vamp smiled ingratiatingly and obediently backed away a step or two. “Hey, man,” he said, “just making sure the freshie’s willing, you know?”

Danni lifted her head at that. “It’s fine, Tyler,” she said. “Really, it’s all good.” At that, the younger vamp nodded curtly and disappeared.

Will looked down at her, a little bemused. “Still winning the heart of every vamp you meet, I see.”

Danni had a quick flash of Javier, and another of the vamp who had removed him as a threat.. Mick had dropped by a couple of nights later, had somewhat awkwardly expressed his thanks for what he termed her “kindness.” She put that all out of her head, and smiled wryly at Will. “I’ll take that as a compliment, I guess.”

Will wiped his lips with his free hand, keeping the other arm firmly around her. She’d changed a great deal from the inexperienced girl she’d been such a short time ago. He really did want to get out of Pulse! before the conversation got any more out of hand. And there was no question of taking her back to the apartment. Emma was there, unpacking. He’d dropped her off not an hour before, and he wasn’t ready for the girls to compare notes. Not yet. Not before he’d had the chance to talk to them. Which reminded him…

“Where’s Hunter?” he asked. “She around here somewhere?”

Danni turned a white face up to him, shocked. “You mean you don’t know?”

His reply was slow. “Ummm. Know what?”

This time, when Danni trembled against his chest, it was not from any pleasant emotion, and Will could sense the change in her. “She’s gone,” Danni murmured, hiding her face from him. “She’s just—gone.”

Neither of them spoke for a minute, the time stretching painfully. Will’s arm tightened around her until she could barely breathe. On his part, he was trying to process the wealth of information contained in two words. He’d known they should talk; this made it imperative. “I think we need—to go someplace private.” Will knew he was going to have to take her to his own home. He rarely allowed anyone, stranger or friend, to know the location, but obviously, this was a time that called for an exception.

In the hour before dawn, Danni found herself wandering aimlessly around a rambling old house in the hills, exploring. Will had told her to leave him for a while, and hadn’t indicated that anything was off limits. His house was like him, filled with beauty, with beautiful and rare objects, but somehow cold, somehow remote. Maybe it was because he’d been gone, because he hadn’t really lived here for years, but Danni doubted it. His heart was sleeping, and she wondered what it would take to wake it.

Will sat with the unearthly stillness of the vampire, that quietness of the predator, the outward calm of the immortal. Inside, however, his thoughts were racing, trying to wrap around all that Danger had told him. It was funny, Will thought, that he’d been so sure he was doing the right thing. Maybe he had been, for himself. Then again, the rightness of his intentions of a few months back had to be weighed against his present pain, and the pain those two girls had suffered from his abandonment. It crossed his mind that Serena might not have made the best choice, when she Turned him.

There were times when he really wished he got more from alcohol than a reminiscent taste. He could use something to dull the pain, and the one anodyne for him, Danger’s sweet blood, he couldn’t face asking for. Not now. Even so, he could feel Danger’s agitation settling into the sleep of exhaustion, somewhere in the depths of his house. He couldn’t remember the last time a human had slept in this house. Decades, at least. Will decided it was comforting to him, somehow, the steady beat of her heart, sounding quietly in the background of his thoughts. He knew that ultimately, as with all his kind, he was alone, but for now, even in this pain he felt, the presence of this human soothed him. He was going to have to stir soon, he was going to have to get that girl home, so that he could hide from the universe. Or maybe he should let her sleep, maybe he should simply continue to stare out into the fading night, thinking, regretting, grieving.

[francis]

Danni’s rapture in being bitten is described wonderfully here. And Danni seems to have the upper hand here, really, pushing the vamp away, and later dismissing him easily.
And then the confrontation with Will. He is so surprised about her sadness.

Maybe she was digging a tunnel in from the other side.

I loved that line.
Will finally finds his heart again, feeling pain and regret, letting a human in. Might be a start.