Vitality (Vitality Series #1)

Chapter 18 Dancing with Fire

Layton brushed his lips slowly over the mouth of the boy he'd just lured from the dance floor. All it took was a passing look, and the boy had followed after him. Layton had forgotten what it was like, the simple human touch without mortality's gain. He thought he enjoyed it. Only just earlier, his lips had touched her skin in the same manner and had brought this on. Layton thought he might have loved to kiss for hours once when he was young. Now he couldn't think of the last time, before this night, his lips had touched skin without massaging nourishment from it or strategically inducing pleasure into someone to break their avenues apart. Maybe kissing was nourishment... once. Maybe there was mortality gain from it.

As he tried to find his memories of it, blood ran down from the boy's mouth, pooling over Layton's hand as he held him there by his throat, tight against the wall in the same hallway he had just been in with her.

Who was Layton when he was with her? Who was he becoming?

He was beginning to feel disgust for them now, not even been able to feed on this one. And disgust of himself for running around with that other... thing. Her. He had let his flesh soften under her talons. A barricade had to go up and hide him away where she could not touch; that had to remain; he would persevere. But why did it seem that chaos festered as the distance grew between them? He took in the sight before him, trying to will himself into what he was supposed to be, what he knew, his eyes going back and forth from violent to shaky, a deep loathing setting in.

And with barely a flinch of muscle he squeezed harder, willing it harder. The boy's eyes protruded from their sockets and blood poured out from every orifice, until the boy was not a boy but a pile of flesh. They were all just a pile of flesh. Even her. If he blinked his eyes, she wouldn't even be that, only bones. Disgust. Loathing.

Layton dropped his hand, staring down somewhat satisfied because he could feel nothing for it. This is what it was supposed to be; this is what he would remember when he had her. He turned to head off and caught Verina's eyes. His eyes hardened from agitation, and his chest tightened. He ignored her presence and went to leave.

"Are you trying to prepare yourself for her?" Her words came to him, slow and haunting.

He didn't say anything.

"You ordered Gabriel and I to leave her, though you led her here, back to Lithium. Will you not work on her yourself?"

He slowed.

"Help me understand what is happening, and what is to come of us. Is there a path back?"

"I'm not sure myself, Verina." He twitched his neck. "But it will be done." He gave her one look over his shoulder, a determined promise — a look that gave her more than what he'd intended to portray, one that told her the daunting forces he needed to endure to do it — and he went.

"You're driving her to madness," she whispered to his receding shadow. "She'll lose what you seek."

"And what has she done to me?" His words breathed out deeply over the growing distance.

When Layton arrived at Ava's, she was leaning over the edge of the back patio alone, looking up at the sky. He wondered what she was thinking about. Pensiveness crept inside. How lovely she looked standing there; a golden leaf broke off the tree, falling into the same air that played around in her hair and robe. He wondered if she was chilly...

This unsettled him. He almost turned to go.

It wasn't only the way she was standing, or the wispy way her face looked when she was far away in thought and no one was around — that rare moment her guard was down completely. Or the way she smelled and tasted, which he craved at that very moment, wanting to take her right then. There was something inside him that was humming because she was there. But why?

No. He knew why. It wasn't anything but that; it couldn't be.

Then he was behind her, and she was in a trance before she knew he was there. He turned her around. In his reserve, there was a dead look in his eye, but it did not hold. An unruly and wild pulse grew underneath his composure with every minute spent close to her. His hand rose to touch her face, but stopped... as if he'd disintegrate her. After a moment of looking over her features in some state of dazed interest, he laid his hand over her anyway, harder than he intended, down her cheek, and pulled up her chin. Frustration simmered beneath at the feel of her between his fingers. Mmmm...

"Tell me what's inside of you — your desires."

Her voice carried to him in a whisper, lost echoes in a canyon guided by his command only. "...To protect myself and the people I care about."

His eyes squinted. This was not usually where the beginning line of desires started. Where were the rest? He couldn't believe someone of this nature could be so simple. And he began to unsteadily wonder what would come next. A slight shake took his hand, almost a desperate curiosity. "Deeper than that."

She didn't answer.

"Deeper," he growled, gripping her harder.

"To be able to love and to be loved, truly."

Layton swallowed.

He pulled her face in line with his, entwining his fingers through her beautiful strands more gently, lost in calculation over her body and face and inside her expanding pupils. She was so soft and fragile in his arms. There was a pleasure to it, almost as if it sponged the deep callous of his being. He brought her a little closer. He'd forgotten the pleasure of that as well. He inhaled her sweet smell, in and out, as he continued to hold her, and thought of how long he could stay like that; the length of time seemed to go past calculation.

"I had thought you a little hellcat, and here you are — maybe only a little bird this whole time, only wanting to sing and fly." He let her go, her body falling from his arms. "A wingless bird then. Whom I need to fly." He took her off her feet before she collapsed, and put her over his shoulder, taking off from the ground, and disappeared into the dark sky with her.