Hunted (House of Night #5)(29)

"Yeah, I am. Even though I didn't really expect to." His grin mirrored mine. "I mean, come on. It is a little old school, what with the vamps being monsters and all."

My mind instantly went to Neferet, whom I considered a monster in a beautiful disguise, and to my unanswered questions about the red fledglings, but I pulled my thoughts away from all that, not wanting darkness to intrude on this moment with Erik. Refocusing on Dracula, I said, "Well, yeah, Dracula is supposed to be a monster and all, but I always feel sorry for him."

"You feel sorry for him?" Erik was obviously surprised. "Z, he's pure evil."

"I know, but he loves Mina. How can something that's pure evil know love?" "Hey, I'm not that far in it yet! Don't give it away."

I rolled my eyes at him. "Erik, you have to know Dracula goes after Mina. He bites her and she starts to change. It's through Mina that the Count is tracked and eventually--"

"Stop!" Erik said, laughing as he grabbed me and covered my mouth. "I wasn't kidding. I don't want you to tm and a="0ell me how it ends."

My mouth was covered by his hand, but I knew my eyes were smiling at him.

"If I take my hand away, do you promise to be good?"

I nodded.

Slowly, he uncovered my mouth, but he made no move to step away from me. It felt nice to be close to him. He was gazing down at me, with a small smile still tugging at the corners of his mouth. I thought about how hot he was and how glad I was that we were together again, and I said, "Want me to tell you how I wish the book ended?"

His brows lifted. "How you wish? Which means you won't really be telling me the ending?"

"Cross my heart." Automatically, I crossed my heart. We were standing so close that the back of my hand brushed his chest.

"Tell me." His voice had gone deep and intimate.

"I wish Dracula hadn't let everyone come between him and Mina. He should have bitten Mina, made her like him, and then taken her away so they could be together forever--and lived happily ever after."

"Because they're the same and they belong together," he said.

I looked up into Erik's amazing blue eyes and saw that all the kidding had gone out of them.

"Yeah, even if bad things happened in their past. They'd have to forgive each other for the bad stuff, but I think they could have."

"I know they could have. I think when two people care about each other enough, anything can be forgiven."

Obviously Erik and I weren't talking about fictional characters from an old book. We were talking about ourselves, testing each other to see if we could actually make it work between us.

I had to forgive Erik for being so awful to me after he'd caught me with Loren. And he had been horrible, but the truth was I'd hurt Erik a lot more than he'd hurt me--and not just with Loren. When I'd first started dating Erik, I'd still had a relationship with Heath, my human boyfriend. It had pissed Erik off that I had been seeing him and Heath at the same time, but he'd believed that I would come to my senses eventually and understand that Heath was a part of my old world, my old life, and that he wouldn't fit into my future like Erik would.

And Erik had a point. Now that the Imprint with Heath had been broken, which I knew for sure because he and I had had a very ugly scene when I ran into him just a couple of days ago at Charlie's Chicken (of all places). My ridiculous mistake in having sex with Loren had had a domino effect of messing up lots of things in my life. One very big mess-up was the painful way it had broken my Imprint with Heath, and he'd made it clear he didn't ever want to see me again. Sure, I'd warned Heath about the Raven Mockers and Kalona being loose, told him to get himself and his family to safety, but it was over between Heath and me, just like it had been over between Loren and me (even before he'd been killed), which is really how it should be.

I continued to meet Erik's gaze. "So you like my version of Dracula?" "I like your ending--the one where the two of them are vampyres and they have a happily- ever-after, especially because they care enough to get over their past mistakes."

Still smiling, Erik bent to kiss me. His lips were soft and warm, and he tasted like Doritos and Mountain Dew, which wasn't as nasty as you might think. His arms went around me, and he pulled me close, deepening the kiss. It felt good to be in his arms. So good that at first I managed to tune out the little alarm bells that were ringing in the rational part of my mind as Erik's hands slid down my back to cup my butt. But when he pressed me hard against him, grinding intimately into me, the lovely warm fog he'd started inside me began to clear. I liked him touching me. But what I didn't like was the feeling that his touch had suddenly become too aggressive, too insistent, too she is mine, I want her, and I'm going to have her now.

He must have felt me stiffen because he pulled back, gave me an easy smile, and then said, "So, what are you doing up here?"

I blinked, disoriented at the instant change in him. I took a little step away from him and grabbed my pop from where he'd put it on his chair, taking a big gulp and pulling myself together. Finally I managed to say, "Oh, I, uh, came to talk to Darius and see if my cell would work." I fished into my pocket for it and then held it up like a dork. Glancing at it, I could see three bars lit up. "Yea! It looks like it might!"