Instead, I moved his hand and tried to put a little space between us. It was the last thing I wanted to do, but I had no choice. He wasn’t mine yet and I wasn’t his.
I still belonged to Regan.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“I have to tell you something and it will sound crazy, but you need to know before we can go any farther.”
“What is it?” he asked and backed away from me slowly. “You’re scaring me.”
“Can we turn on the lights, please? I want to see you when we talk.”
“You hated what I did for you tonight. Didn’t you?” he asked as he switched on the light.
His head hung low and his shoulders caved in toward his stomach. I heard the hurt in his voice, and it killed me. The way I wanted to make him happy over anything else told me I already knew what my decision was. All that was left was to tell him the truth and see what he wanted from it. It was the scariest thing I had ever done and what he said when I was finished would lay out the rest of my very long life.
“I didn’t hate it. I loved it. I love being here with you. When I’m not, you are all that I think about and I don’t know how much longer I can keep going on like this.”
“Like what? I don’t see what the problem is. You like me and I like you. The only thing stopping us right now is you. I’m trying here, but it feels like everything I do backfires on me and pushes you away.”
“No. It isn’t like that at all. You only know part of me.”
“I don’t get it.” His hand went to the back of his neck and I watched his fingers rub away the tension I could smell building in the room.
“Let me explain and you will. But,” I said and put my hand on his, “I need you to be very open minded when I talk. This isn’t easy for me, but I care about you too much not to say something.”
“I’ll try.”
“Thank you.”
His hand didn’t move out from under mine, but he wasn’t fully there with me either. I could hear his mind racing in all different directions and it was killing me. The thought of him getting up and making me leave after we talked occurred to me and it made me feel ill. If anything was going to come for us, he had to know it all and fully understand the risk he would be taking too.
“Am I going to need a drink for this?” he asked.
“Probably, but can you wait until we are done talking? I need you sober for this.”
“Sure.”
“I’m not what you think I am. I’m sure you’ve noticed a few things that have seemed off to you.”
“Only the fact you hardly eat, which I brushed off as a girl thing, and your hands are always cold.”
“There’s a reason for both of those. And there is a reason I haven’t been able to go farther with you. Trust me, I’ve wanted to.”
“I know. I could feel it and then feel you stop it. I wasn’t sure why, but you were worth it to me to wait even when I didn’t want to.”
“This will sound extremely odd, but please believe me. It isn’t an excuse to string you along and this isn’t something I have been taking lightly. I’m,” I started and took a deep breath before going on, “a vampire.”
“A what?” he asked and tried to stop his laugh. Doubled over, almost falling out of the chair, I waited for him to compose himself before going on. When he looked up and saw the annoyance on my face, he paused. “Are you serious?”
“Very. I was turned by my mate, Regan, over a hundred years ago. We have a ritual we do every year where we go out and each find one person to lure and seduce. Once we have them, we spend months getting them to fall for us and trust us. It’s only after that, and when the moon is full in October, that we bring them both back to our house, get them into the basement, chain them up, and then play with them.”
“Play with them how?’ he asked as he slid his chair a little farther from me.
“We tease them, sometimes have sex with them or on top of them. We let them know we will kill them before they leave our place, and then Regan and I would celebrate and make them watch.”
“Why?”
“It was what he wanted to do, and he said it would bring us closer together. I believed him and loved him, so I wanted to make him happy.”
“How could that make you happy? That’s what a monster would do. You’re not a monster.”
“Dylan, I am a monster. I can’t hide what or who I am. It would be as impossible as you hiding who or what you are. And I would be lying to both of us if I said I didn’t like it as much as he had.”
He sat there with his eyes facing the floor and he didn’t say a word. I tried to read his thoughts, but he was so shut off from me, all I got was the silence that filled the room. The wall building between us was killing me more than anything Regan could have done to me. I wanted to run through it. To comfort Dylan and make him see how much I had fallen for him over the past few weeks. I wanted to get in his head and hear what he was thinking to know what way to go. He had two choices. He could accept me and change, or he could tell others about Regan and me and come after us. Both scared me equally and both would change my life forever. I hoped he would accept me in more ways than not, but the thought of him doing that and me having to make the decision on what to do with Regan was slowly killing me inside. For all the myths, vampires not having a heart was the biggest. I knew I had one because Dylan sitting there in the silence was breaking it.
“Why are you telling me all of this?” he finally asked. I had to strain my ears to hear him and even wondered if I had imagined his voice. “Why?” he asked again.
“Because for the first time ever, I don’t want to go through with it.”
“I’m glad for that, but why?” He lifted his face up and locked eyes with me. I didn’t turn my face or look away. I wanted him to give me his full attention for what I had to say next. It would determine everything.
“Because I love you.”
“Can you even love anyone?”
“Yes, I can, and I do.”
“Why me?”
“I don’t know why you. I knew there was something when I was able to start reading your thoughts. I knew it even more when Regan was having a hard time trying to read mine the other night. I am slowly fading from him and bonding with you. I don’t know where to go from here. Only you can determine that for me.”
“How? What can I do to ‘help’ you?” he asked making the fake quotation marks in the air.
“I need to know how you feel about me. After knowing what I am, do you still like me?” I held my breath and waited for his answer. It didn’t come quickly.
“And if I do? Then what?”
“Then we have to make a decision and it won’t be easy on me.”
“And this is on me? I thought I had found a normal girl and one I liked. Then you come here tonight after disappearing for days and spring this hard to believe story on me. What do you want me to say to you? That I believe you? That I still like you? Or that none of this matters and I will be your little toy until you decide to kill me?”
“I want to know how you feel and if we even stand a chance at this. If we do, then there is more I have to tell you.”