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You wake screaming, clawing the air in a desperate bid to escape the creature pinning you down, its limbs wrapped around you, its snarling breath hot against your ear -
“Hey! Hey, it’s alright, you’re alright.” A strong hand curves around your shoulder, the other pulling you free of the sheets twined around your body - bedsheets, not limbs, and as that realization sinks into your brain your eyes jerk open to see a man leaning over you, his dark hair wet and slicked back from his face and his eyes -
His eyes are gold.
Vampire.
Your fear must show on your face. The man removes his hands from your vicinity, holding them aloft and giving you a smile that might have been reassuring were it not for the sharp points of his fangs glinting between his lips.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he tells you, and though your guts churn with disbelief, you’re painfully aware of how easy it would have been for the man to drain you dry while you lay unconscious, if he’d truly wanted to. “I found you in the road. You were unconscious, bleeding. Your arm… “
He gestures to your left arm, and it’s only then that you notice the gauze wrapped around it. He had tended to your wound?
“A subsider,” you mumble, flashes of your attack bubbling to the surface of your mind and shortening your breath. The creature - for that’s all it really was anymore, all trace of logic and civility erased in favor of its all consuming thirst for blood - had caught you off guard during a run into the city for supplies. You had managed to dart out of its reach eventually, but not without its claws rending your flesh.
“You were lucky,” the man says solemnly. A drop of water moistens the back of his neck and he reaches up to wipe it away. You’re immediately envious - how long had it been since you’d had a hot shower? “Any longer in the street, and you would have succumbed from blood loss. Or - “ He trails off meaningfully, looking a little chagrined at the thought, but you know what he’s implying.
If another vampire had found you, you might not have lived to tell the tale.
“Why did you help me?” Your voice is small, trembling, weak. You’ve been running for so long, hiding, scavenging, surviving. Alone. It had been months since you’d even had contact with another human, and yet this man - this vampire - had saved you. Why?
The man’s brows furrow over his striking eyes, a soft breath escaping his lips before he answers, “Because you needed help.”
You laugh. It’s a little strangled - with shock, with surprise - but it’s a laugh. The man’s lips twitch at the sound.
“That simple, huh?” you mumble, something heavy and hurt and afraid easing from your shoulders, if only for now, if only a little. “What’s your name?”
The man’s lips quirk into a smile. He offers his hand to you, and when you take it, hesitating only a moment, his skin feels cool to the touch.
“Edward Dalton. Pleasure to meet you.”
*
Edward, you swiftly learn, is a strange sort.
Strange for a vampire, anyway, though it’s not as if you could boast of having met many to compare him to.
His work as a hematologist kept him away for much of the night, or hunched over papers full of medical jargon you could scarcely understand when he was home. He was researching a blood substitute, he’d told you - the best chance humanity had for survival, as little of it that remained.
It seemed too much to hope for, but you listened to him speak of the process with rapt attention, anyway, and with each night that passed without a suitable breakthrough, you did your best to lift his spirits. This project was important to him - saving humanity was important to him - and for that alone you found your distrust and your fear about sharing such close quarters with a vampire subsiding the longer you remained in his presence.
You settled into a routine. Your arm needed time to heal, your body a chance to recover its strength, and so you remained within the walls of Edward’s home, safe from the prying eyes of other vampires who would seek to capture you and haul you off to be farmed for blood.
It was easy to forget those dangers existed when you were curled up on Edward’s leather couch, or wrapped in the warmth of his borrowed clothes. Your own had seen better days, the jacket, shirt, and jeans you’d been found in tattered and stained from endless months spent on the run. Edward had offered you his closet, and though it had taken some digging to find anything other than suits and slacks, you’d managed to find a soft sweater and lounge pants that fit you well enough.
“They suit you,” he’d told you that first night, after you’d emerged from the shower with wrinkled fingers and toes, having spent ages just enjoying the sensation of hot water against your skin.
You’d merely mumbled your gratitude, caught off guard by the expression on Edward’s face - patient, kind, so far removed from anything you’d ever expected yourself to find in the presence of a vampire.
You did your best to repay his kindness in what little ways you could - tidying up while he was away at the lab, watering the many plants dotted around his home, helping him locate books or documents that he needed whenever he found himself working late into the day.
It was a peaceful existence, if also a strange one. Your arm continued to heal, the depth of the damage the subsider had done to you slowing its recovery, and yet Edward tended to you dutifully every night, applying fresh bandages and administering painkillers whenever your injury called for them, and keeping himself rigidly in control whenever the scent of your blood seeped into the air.
You watch his face on one such night, your elbow cradled in the palm of his hand while he studied your wound, his fingertips easing over the gashes left behind by your attacker, a pile of fresh bandages on the couch between you.
“How does it feel?” He eases your arm up and down, watching for any signs of pain or discomfort on your face. His skin feels cool against yours, his golden eyes so intent upon you that you struggle to hold the contact. His hair, usually so carefully slicked back before work, has fallen into a bit of disarray, strands of his fringe falling before his eyes and leaving him looking… disheveled. Soft.
You clear your throat, flustered. “Still a little numb,” you tell him, your voice little more than a murmur. “But it’s stopped throbbing.”
Edward smiles, and there they are again, the sharp points of his canines peeking from between his lips. They had frightened you that first night, and still did, if you thought too hard about them, but the sweet curl of his lips was enough to put you at ease, and so was his voice, soft and thick with satisfaction when he rumbled, “Good.”
He sets about rewrapping your arm, his touch gentle, careful not to harm you. You find yourself arrested by the sight of his face, his golden eyes, the line of his jaw, the stubble framing his mouth and the glint of those teeth, barely visible between his parted lips.
You haven’t seen him drink any blood since your arrival. You know he does it, needs it, had even seen the containers chilling in his fridge, which had led to his sheepish explanation that the liquid within had come from animals, not humans. He didn’t touch human blood.
“If you needed it… “ you start, fumbling as his striking eyes shift to yours. “I - my blood, human blood.” His lips part, fingers stilling against your arm. You continue before his reaction could chase the words from your throat. “If you needed it, you could have mine. I would give it to you.”
It isn’t a lie, a ploy, or anything else but perfect honesty. If he needed it, craved it, you would offer yours, and do it with a smile. He had saved you, clothed you, protected you. You could do this for him, if he wanted it from you.
Edward shakes his head, swallows, squeezes gently at your arm. He’s thinking about it, you can tell, and there may well be a part of him that longs to accept the offer you’ve just laid at his feet, and yet his voice, when he finally speaks, is firm in its refusal. “Thank you. Truly.” He hesitates for a moment, but reaches for your hand and folds it between his, his thumb brushing your pulse. You wonder if he can feel it jump. “But your blood is your own. I would never ask for it.” His nail drags across your pulse - unintentional on his part, but it still sends a pleasant shiver down your spine. His eyes gleam in the low light. “You’re safe here.”
Safe.
When had you last felt safe? When had that feeling been anything but an illusion, clung to in the deepest and darkest of nights in a last-ditch effort to keep yourself from falling apart?
Something breaks in you, then, your last bit of hesitance, of fear, sloughing off you like old, dead skin. You find yourself gravitating to Edward’s side, the spaces between you shrinking. Your shoulders brush as he pours through an academic journal on the couch and you read through one of the many books on his shelves. Your eyes linger when he emerges from the shower, hair wet and steam-heat clinging to his skin. The sleek lines of his suits and the motions of his fingers as they work his tie begin to fester in your dreams, leaving you flushed and aching when you wake in the night.
All of it you could ignore, suppress, if you had not caught those golden eyes lingering upon yourself in turn. Edward wasn’t exactly subtle in his attention, though his eyes would dart away whenever yours drifted too close. If anything were to be done about the limbo you both had found yourself in, it would undoubtedly fall to you to take the first step.
And so you swallow your nerves and your doubts, and you take his hand just as dawn begins to spread her fingers across the horizon.
“The bed is big enough for two,” you murmur, and though it’s a struggle to hold Edward’s gaze, brilliantly gold in the dim light of the living room, it’s easy to give his hand a gentle pull, nudging him away from the couch and the nest he’s made of it since the night he brought you home.
“Are you sure?” His voice is soft, the expression on his face even softer.
You smile. “I’m sure. C‘mon, let’s go to bed.”
Edward’s bed is more than large enough for you both, with plenty of space left over, and yet you use your hold on his hand to tug him against you. You shiver as his bare skin brushes yours, his hands and feet as cold as the rest of him, but before he can murmur an apology and ease away, you settle in closer, your back tucked against his chest.
“S’alright,” you whisper, your eyelids already growing heavy with sleep. “I like you close. Feels safe.”
What little tension Edward had been carrying eases completely at your words, his soft breath fanning against the top of your head before his body melts against yours, knees slotting behind yours and his arm easing around your waist. You twine your fingers with his, pressing his hand to your heart, and hope the steady beat of your pulse soothes him as much as his presence soothes you.
You sleep, and when you wake in the early hours of dusk, it’s to Edward’s chin tucked into the curve of your shoulder and his hand curled around your hip.
He’s leeched a little of the warmth from your skin, though he’s still pleasantly cool to the touch, the rasp of his stubble against your neck spilling heat into your belly.
His hips shift against yours, a raspy breath warming your neck as the bulge in his sleep pants presses against your backside.
“Edward?” you breathe, your pulse thumping, goosebumps erupting on your arms at the sensation of the vampire rolling his hips against yours.
“Hmm?” Edward’s voice is a low rasp, sleep-mussed. It takes him a moment to realize where he is and what he’s doing, but once he does, you feel his body go rigid against yours. “Shit - “ he curses, making to move away from you and mutter apologies, but you refuse to let him get that far.
“Keep going.” You fumble behind yourself and make a grab for his hip, tucking him firmly against you. Your hands are shaking with need. “Please?”
There’s a moment of silence, a moment where you linger on the precipice of need and desire, body practically thrumming with it, and then Edward is slipping against you with a soft groan, a litany of surrender, and you’re both lost to it.
His hand returns to your hip, fingers strong and sure, gripping you, urging you to meet his thrusts.
“Fuck.” It’s a murmured curse against your ear, Edward’s clothed cock fitting perfectly against your ass, the length of him like a brand even through the fabric that separates you.
You hurry to divest yourself of that last, thin layer, pushing your pants and underwear down your thighs and nearly crying with relief when Edward does the same. Even here, his skin is cool, and yet you moan at the sensation of his bare cock slipping between your legs and brushing teasingly against your sex.
You grope for his hair, wrapping desperate fingers around the dark strands as you writhe together, the room slowly filling with the sounds of your pleasure and the scent of sex. Edward’s lips find your shoulder, parting against the line of your throat, and oh god, you can feel the wetness of his tongue flicking against your skin and the prick of his teeth, teasing, tasting.
“Edward,” you moan brokenly, wanting him to bite you, to mark you, to take you, but not knowing how to do more than gasp and cry and roll your hips, smearing your sex with the wetness coating the head of his cock and drinking in his rumbled groans like the sweetest wine you’ve ever tasted.
“You’re so warm.” The words are breathed against the shell of your ear, raspy, needy, hungry. “Feels so fucking good.”
You moan your agreement into the depths of your pillow, gasping as Edward’s hand migrates from your hip to your belly, dragging up and along your chest until smooth, cool fingertips can roll against your nipples, leaving them puckered and aching.
“You too.” Your voice is shot, gravely with want. “Feels good. Wanted this.”
“Me too, sweetheart.” Edward’s mouth falls to your throat once more, lips parting against your skin. “Me too.” He tongues at your pulse, teeth pulling gently at the skin, not nearly hard enough to break and draw blood, but enough to tease at the possibility.
It’s all you need. Your voice breaks on a ragged cry as your orgasm ripples through you, back arching, eyes slamming shut in blissful agony. Edward’s name spills from your lips in a garbled moan as his fingers abandon your chest to trace along your sex and find your entrance, the slick of your shared fluids allowing him to slip easily inside and the sensation of your walls pulsing enough to wring a litany or curses from the vampire’s throat.
“Fuck, fuck, that’s it, sweetheart, that’s it.” His hips snap in rhythm to each throbbing pulse of your body, his breath warm against the ball of your shoulder.
You’re speaking nonsense, garbled words and desperate pleas for Edward to use your body as he sees fit, bite you, drain you, paint your skin with his cum, whatever he wants, please.
Edward gasps your name, his body stiffening against yours. His teeth touch your shoulder, dragging along your flesh, and then he’s coming, painting your inner thighs with his release.
You’re both left breathless in the aftermath, sinking into the bed in an exhausted slump. You turn in the circle of Edward’s arms to find his face devoid of the usual stresses that mar it, his lips curled in a blissful smile and his golden eyes heavy-lidded and hazy.
You laugh, a breathy little burst of sound that spills softly into the space between you. Edward echoes you with a quirk of his brow, sated and amused and dreadfully affectionate.
When he cups your cheek and reaches over to kiss you, it feels far more intimate than anything you’d just done, his lips moving sweetly against yours, stubble ticklish against your skin.
He tries to avoid touching you with his fangs, but you give him no choice, your tongue flicking against the sharp points of his canines with careless abandon. Your body thrums in renewed desire at the growl he releases against your lips, and with a laugh that breaks into a moan, you pull him into your arms.
It’s going to be a long night.