Chapter 5

Lisette woke to the sound of knocking on the door. She stood, stretched and stood in front of the door in the blink of an eye before pulling it open to let Aurelia come in.

            “Good morning!” Aurelia said brightly, holding up a paper bag and a cup holder with two coffees in it. Lisette smiled and stood back to let her pass, as she walked by, a whiff of the beverages met Lisette’s nose and she realized that it was chai tea, not coffee. She relaxed with relief that it wasn’t the dark, bitter beverage that humans seemed to like so much, Lisette couldn’t stand the stuff, not that she really cared for any kind of food or drink.

            “Morning, you’re awful perky.” Lisette responded as she closed the door and followed Aurelia to the kitchen while rubbing her eyes with one hand and running the fingers of the other hand through her hair.

            Aurelia’s smile fell slightly, “I was just excited to see you, that’s all.” Lisette was quick to try to reassure her friend that it was fine.

            “I didn’t mean it like that, I’m just not much of a morning person I guess.” Aurelia’s smile widened again and she pulled one of the cups from the holder and passed it across the counter.

            “Well, maybe this will help some, it’s like heaven in a cup,” she took a sip of her own Chai and closed her eyes with a look of pure bliss on her face. Lisette took a tentative sip and was pleasantly surprised to find that the tea actually tasted pretty good, even to her. It was velvety and smooth like it had steamed milk in it and the spices seemed to caress the senses giving the drinker a sense of pure happiness.

            Lisette sighed happily and pulled out a bar stool while the smells of cinnamon, cardamom, clove and ginger filled the house.

            “I thought you’d like it. Nothing like a Chai Latte and a gooey cinnamon roll to get your day started.” Aurelia told her as she pulled a box out of the paper bag. Sure enough, it contained two huge, gooey cinnamon rolls smothered in cream cheese icing that was melting all over.

            Lisette let out an audible sigh, knowing that she wasn’t going to be able to enjoy this the way Aurelia expected her to. Fortunately, Aurelia seemed to take it as a contented sigh as she cut the cinnamon rolls into quarters and passed one over to Lisette before taking a seat on the other bar stool. After a few moments of silence Aurelia swallowed a piece of cinnamon roll and opened her mouth to speak, stopping for a moment to wonder, once again, if she should say something.

            Finally her desire to share won out, “I had a dream about you last night.”

            Lisette nearly dropped her Chai on the counter, “You did?” She tried to look casual as she turned to look at Aurelia. “What about?”

            Aurelia chewed thoughtfully, “We were sitting in your living room talking about something- I don’t remember what- but the feeling between us was so comfortable like we’d been together forever. I think I was trying to convince you to do something that you didn’t really want to do, but needed to. Then you left and I stood at the back door watching you cross the yard…”

            Lisette held her breath, waiting for the rest, “And then what?”

            Aurelia shrugged, “And then I woke up. The conversations we had are so fuzzy now, but I know we were in disagreement about something I wanted you to do.” Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment at admitting that she’d been dreaming about her new friend.

            Lisette sighed in relief, “That doesn’t sound so bad,” she gently elbowed Aurelia in the ribs in a teasing sort of way and gave her a warm smile.

            “I’m glad you’re dreaming about me and not someone else,” she said quietly.

            “Me too,” Aurelia replied, nearly inaudibly, but Lisette heard and saw the bright pink flush across Aurelia’s cheeks as it got darker. She wanted nothing more than to take Aurelia’s chin in her hands and press gentle kisses to her lips, but before she could act on the thought, Aurelia hopped up from her seat to throw away the box from her cinnamon roll which she had finished without Lisette noticing.

            Lisette sat and watched as Aurelia went over to the sliding door and looked out, wrapping her arms around herself. She was trying so hard to remember her dream and hoped that being in the same place might help, but it didn’t. It only became fuzzier as Lisette secretly invaded the privacy of her mind and made her forget a little more, the way one would normally forget a dream after being awake for a while.

            “I really wish I could remember what it was I wanted you to do…” she whispered and Lisette couldn’t understand why she wasn’t forgetting the parts she wanted her to. But while she was distracted, Lisette took the opportunity to close the box containing her cinnamon roll and throw it in the garbage, she could taste it, but it wasn’t a pleasant taste like she imagined it was for Aurelia. It was overly sweet in a not-so-tasty-to-a-vampire way.

            Lisette also took the opportunity, to come up behind Aurelia and wrap her arms around the other girl, kissing her cheek.

            “Maybe you wanted me to do this,” she whispered, kissing back toward her ear and eventually toward her neck. Lisette was glad that she’d eaten recently and wasn’t going crazy over the pulsing arteries in Aurelia’s neck, but she could feel the blood began to pump faster under her lips and hear Aurelia’s heartbeat quicken.

            One quick check in her mind let Lisette know that all thoughts of the dream were forgotten for now and that she was completely focused on what they were doing here and now. Aurelia turned around in Lisette’s arms and pressed her lips to her neck in return, going the opposite way that Lisette had, starting at the neck and working her way up to the ears, the cheek and eventually pressing gentle kisses to Lisette’s lips.

            “This is what I wanted you to do…” Aurelia whispered in-between kisses, but Lisette realized that it was just something she’d been wanting since she’d arrived; it no longer had anything to do with the dream.

And then, without warning, Lisette’s fangs slid out while they were kissing and she jumped back like she’d been shocked, but not before one of them had scraped against Aurelia’s lower lip.

            Then she actually was shocked when she realized that she’d moved much farther away than she’d intended and had done it too fast.  She could almost hear the click as something came together in Aurelia’s head.

            “I wanted you to eat, you were so cold and if you ate you’d be warm again…” once again Aurelia trailed off in an almost dreamy way and Lisette tried to make her thoughts fuzzy once more, but instead Aurelia seemed to be putting the pieces together slowly, but surely rather than forgetting.

            “That’s not possible.” Aurelia suddenly said, matter-of-factly.

            “What’s not possible?” Lisette dared to ask.

            “You can’t be…” Lisette knew what Aurelia was thinking, but she certainly wasn’t going to encourage it, if she was going to figure it out on her own, so be it, but she wasn’t going to help.

Moving very slowly, almost as though she was afraid that she’d scare Lisette, Aurelia crept closer, keeping her hands in view and taking slow, deliberate steps.

            “Open your mouth,” she made it sound more like a suggestion than a demand.

            “Why?” Lisette asked, moving her mouth as little as possible. The fangs weren’t going to retract, she wanted this human girl so badly she could almost taste it and it wasn’t her blood that she wanted either. If she were alive her heart would have been pounding in her chest, and that’s when she realized that Aurelia’s heartbeat was nice and steady. She wasn’t scared or worried, she was perfectly calm as she inched toward what she had to have guessed was a vampire.

            “I want to see your teeth. If you were going to kill me you’d have done it by now, we wouldn’t still be making out in broad daylight. Now open your mouth.” This time it was more of a demand and Lisette slowly let her jaw fall, but didn’t bare her teeth the way a normal person would. With a sigh of frustration, Aurelia reached up and pushed Lisette’s bottom lip out of the way to see what she was looking for.

            She gasped and stepped back with her hand over her mouth which was like a metaphorical bucket of ice water being thrown on Lisette. The moment of wanting was over and her fangs retracted, she stood there just waiting to see what Aurelia would do next. If she panicked she could be put into a deep sleep and her memories could be erased, hopefully, now that the dream wasn’t going away the way it should have, Lisette was suddenly unsure of how she’d handle the situation if Aurelia decided to freak out, or worse, expose her to the rest of the town.

            “Please don’t freak out,” Lisette pleaded quietly, but Aurelia just stood there silently, nearly as still as a statue, staring. Lisette was the one slowly creeping forward this time, holding her hands up and keeping her mouth tightly shut except to speak.

            “I promise I’m not going to hurt you, the thought never occurred to me I swear.” Lisette swore and finally, slowly, Aurelia nodded and allowed Lisette to get closer to her. Her heartbeat was wildly out of control and the sound was loud in Lisette’s ears, but when Aurelia finally removed the hand from over her mouth, the look on her face made Lisette gasp.

            “You’re not afraid of me at all!” She exclaimed as Aurelia’s eyes dilated, and she flushed further. “You-” she broke off, hardly daring to say the words.

            “You want me…” she trailed off barely daring to believe it was true until she heard Aurelia’s heartbeat pick up even more and her eyes fill with desire.

            Aurelia’s mind was going a mile a minute, she didn’t know how or why, but the idea that Lisette could be a vampire turned her on so much that she could barely stand it. If the things that she knew were possible vampire traits were true, then Lisette could probably hear her out-of-control heart, not that she’d need to, she was far from blind and the flush across Aurelia’s cheeks was a dead giveaway if the desirous look she couldn’t wipe off her face wasn’t.

            “You want me.” Lisette said again, this time sounding sure of herself, not questioning. In a move faster than she ever thought was possible, it was Aurelia who pulled Lisette into her arms and began to kiss her again. Lisette’s passion flared up as quickly as it had before and her fangs slid back out.

            In a brave move, Aurelia ran her tongue across one of the fangs, causing Lisette to shudder with pleasure, the movement caused her fangs to press into Aurelia’s bottom lip, drawing blood. There was that bucket of ice water again, as Lisette moved to stand several feet away before Aurelia realized what had happened.

            “What’s wrong?” Aurelia asked, but her own question was answered as she tasted the blood on her lips. She reached up and touched a finger to her lips, then pulled it back to look at the blood mixed with her saliva before holding her hand out to Lisette.

            “Does this bother you?” She asked curiously.

            Lisette shook her head, “It doesn’t bother you that I just bit you and drew blood?” It was Aurelia’s turn to shake her head.

            “You didn’t do it on purpose, it’s not like my lip is exactly the optimal spot to bite if you were trying to hurt me.” Lisette didn’t understand how Aurelia could be taking all of this in so calmly and said as much.

            “I don’t know,” Aurelia responded, “All I know is that I want you so bad right now it hurts.” Lisette stood dumbfounded, unable to find words to say in response.

            “Don’t you want me, this?” Aurelia asked in a small, unsure voice. Lisette nodded, but still remained frozen to the spot.

            “Then what’s wrong?”

            “Nobody has ever just accepted what I was. I’ve only known you for a few days, this is all happening so fast and you’re so beautiful…” she trailed off without knowing what else she could say. In a flash she was in Aurelia’s arms again and this time her kisses were appropriately urgent as she got caught up in the wave of passion between them.

            They had dragged each other down to the floor and were both half dressed before Lisette managed to pull away.

            “We can’t do this. You’ve never done this, you’re not thinking straight.”

            “Don’t tell me what I’m doing,” Aurelia argued, reaching out as Lisette took a step back.

            “Really, do you understand what it means if we do this? Have you ever been with anyone at all?” The last question was more gentle, but still enough to finally catch Aurelia’s attention and slowly she shook her head.

            “I’ve always known that there was no knight in shining armor or Prince Charming for me, Lisette, I didn’t know that this was why, but I always knew I was different. Now you’re here and my body is craving you like nothing I’ve ever felt. This right here, this is right. Nothing in my life has ever felt as right as being with you feels right now.”

            “Aurelia look at me.” Lisette said quietly and watched as the human girl raised her eyes to meet hers with no hesitation.

            “I am a vampire; I’m over two hundred years old. When you die I’ll still be here wandering the earth, neither alive nor dead. I drink blood to survive. You really want your first time to be with someone like me?”

            “Yes,” the answer came with no hesitation whatsoever. Aurelia was clearly the kind of person who followed her heart no matter what. It took everything Lisette had to stand up and pull her shirt back on.

            “Okay, so let’s say that you really can be ok with all this,” she gestured to herself, “It’s still no way to start a friendship or anything else that the two of us could become. I want us to build something beautiful together, something unbreakable and binding. I want do to this the right way, take you out for dinner and a movie, bring you roses just because it’s Wednesday, I want us to have a relationship that you’re completely comfortable with, not just hot sex with a stranger.”

            Lisette held her breath waiting for Aurelia to answer and when she finally did, there was a look of confusion on her face and Lisette nearly burst out laughing at her response.

            “But you don’t eat dinner, do you?”

            “I just told you that a vampire wants to court you and all you can think of is that I don’t eat food?”

            “Court me? That’s cute; you really have been around for a while haven’t you? Nobody says that anymore.”

            “Can you focus on what I’m saying please?” Lisette begged with an exasperated sigh.

            “I get what you’re saying. I don’t care that you’re a vampire or that you don’t eat…” she stopped to think for a moment, “Although that would have been nice to know before I brought you Chai and a cinnamon roll.” Lisette threw her hands up in surrender.

            “I don’t know how you’re okay with this, but fine, you get what you want for now. Not the sex part,” she threw in before Aurelia could get the wrong idea, “but if you want to have a relationship then I guess we can do that.”

            “Fine, I’ll take it.”

Lisette ran her fingers through her hair, “I have no idea how this happened, I’ve been here for a week and already I’m in a relationship.”

            Aurelia laughed, “You make it sound like it’s a bad thing.”

            “You really don’t think this is all happening too fast?”

            “Of course it’s happening fast, but it just feels right to me, like I’ve been waiting for you all of my life. Doesn’t it feel right to you?” With the words out of her mouth Aurelia almost didn’t want to hear the answer as Lisette pondered her response. It was as though time was standing still as Lisette looked deep down to find her true feelings for the other girl.

            Finally her answer came and Aurelia let out the breath she’d been holding.

             “Yes.” Lisette said with a smile and opened her arms to welcome Aurelia into them.