I think we were both hoping the meeting with Albert would offer some insight into how to help Quinn, or maybe just some reassurance that his future isn’t as cursed as we feared. Even with my caution and the warning in Cam’s expression, I certainly didn’t expect the outcome to be so bleak. And I’m not the optimist in this relationship, so I dread to think how Quinn is feeling.
I could have taught him not to fear immortality. I’ve certainly adjusted well enough, and it’d be even easier with someone there by your side. But the uncertainty? The years spent wondering when it could happen, if your body will give up before you make that final transition to the undead? I can’t help him with that. I’m not sure I could cope with it myself.
I trail a finger gently over the warm skin on the back of his forearm and he turns to smile at me, but there’s something missing from the expression. There are no creases at the corners of his eyes, no depth to his dimple. We pass a field of cows and he doesn’t point them out.
I feel like I can’t quite catch my breath even though I haven’t depended on oxygen since the nineteenth century. Ihaven’t had my fill of his humanness yet– I’m not sure I ever will– but I would trade it in a heartbeat if it meant keeping the essence of him, the undefinable qualities that make him Quinn.MyQuinn.
He blows out a long breath and slips his arm around me. I fold into him in an instant, resting my head against his chest as we watch the world go by. It seems a little dimmer than it was on our journey out. He smells so familiar, that warm combination of spearmint and salt and spices, that it should be easy to ignore the tang of something bitter and acrid that lies just beneath.
It’s the scent of fear.
I’ve smelled it on him before– every time I’ve taken blood from him, in fact– but this is a deeper fear, so consuming that it’s difficult to concentrate on anything but the burn of it in my lungs.
I pull him closer as the train speeds on. I’m out of my element here. Normally I’m well versed in reassuring people, in healing them– I’ve done it for over a hundred years, after all. But nothing I’ve done in all that time has prepared me for this.
Quinn’s terrified. I don’t need to be able to smell it on him to know that.
And I haven’t the faintest idea how to make it better.
* * *
It’s late afternoon when we get back to Whitby, and Quinn keeps striding straight on past Flowergate. He doesn’t stop, doesn’t even look in the direction of Bitten, just keeps heading on through the back streets and up the hill towards my flat.
‘Come up with me,’ I whisper, just in case his particular stage of transition requires an invitation. He nods, very slightly, as if that was his intention all along.
I close the door to my flat and we fall wordlessly into each other, his mouth soft against mine while insistent hands move from my hips to my waist to my face, never settling, always seeking more. He’s mapping me,memorisingme, filling his lungs with the scent of me, like this is the last chance he’ll ever get.
When he begins to undress me it’s deliberate and reverent, with no sign of the urgency from the other night. His eyes stay mostly on mine, occasionally roaming over a part of me he’s uncovered.
‘Let’s pretend we have all the time in the world,’ he says quietly, before he pulls my dress over my head and kisses my bare shoulder.
I turn, catching his lips with mine. ‘What if we do?’ I mutter against them.
He doesn’t answer.
His hands go to his own shirt buttons and he pops them in turn, shrugging out of it as my fingers find the warm skin of his stomach and feel the muscles ripple and flex under the surface. I trace the path of his aorta, straight down the middle of his torso, its deep thump radiating through his entire body. It’s steady, like a metronome, like a reminder that whatever happens, he’s here now. He’salivenow.
He carefully strips me of the rest of my clothes and kicks off his own jeans and boxers, pulling me with him onto mybed. His breath catches as we come back together, the lightest of trembles to it. He kisses my jaw, my neck, thesmall hollow between my collarbones. He whispers my name so quietly that I almost don’t hear it.
I reach between us and ease him into me, my mouth not leaving his even for a second, even through his momentary pause. And then I’m moving, or maybe we both are, slow, indulgent rolls of my hips that push him deeper and bring us closer. He murmurs something I don’t catch, a bitten-off sound he breathes into the crook of my neck.
His arms gather me up, holding me together, pulling me in. I feel like I’m flying and like I’m grounded all at the same time, at once weighed down and weightless. Like I’m falling, and he’s catching me. Perhaps that’s exactly what’s happening.
I didn’t know that sex could be like the sex we had the other day, but I didn’t know it could be like this either, all quiet words and loaded silences. It’s a conversation we’re having– the most meaningful of any of them– and though neither of us is speaking a word, I know exactly what he’s telling me. It’s there in the pattern of his heartbeat, in the whisper of ragged breaths on my skin, in the unwavering strength of his arms caging me.
I’m too afraid to even think it, to consider what that would mean for me if anything happened to him, but I know it. And though I’m too scared to name it, I still try like hell to say it back.
As his rhythm starts to falter, he stops kissing me, pulling back just a little way but keeping his eyes on mine. The intensity is almost too much. I feel like he can see all the way into my soul. Like he’s reaching in and making his mark, his name scrawled onto the walls of my heart for all eternity.
And then I’m breaking, splintering into pieces in his arms while he loses control entirely, driving into me in short snaps before reaching a shuddering climax with the ghost of my name on his lips.
We don’t move for a long time. He buries his face in my shoulder, his fingers tracing featherlight circles on my skin as I soak up every last ounce of his warmth, of his body alive against mine.
When he finally pulls away, he looks for me, as if I haven’t been pressed up against him this entire time.
‘I’m in love with you,’ he whispers roughly as his eyes search mine. ‘I thought you should know that.’
A lick of flame heats my sternum, its warmth rippling outwards until my whole body feels like it’s glowing. How improbable that five simple words could have such an effect on my physiology.