Dare I?
By Kallysten
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2007 Kallysten
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written consent of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
The right of Kallysten to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First Published 2007
All characters in this publication are purely fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Edited by Mary S.
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Dare I?
Anna is just about to thread the gold hoop of her earring through her earlobe when her doorbell chimes its three tones. Her heartbeat picks up instantly, and at once her hands start shaking too much for her to put the earrings on. She lays them down on the dresser, gives the mirror a final glance to make sure she looks good, and hurries to the door. She doesn’t even try to calm her thoughts. It never works.
The door swings open to reveal Chase. His smile widens when he sees Anna, and the butterflies in her stomach fly a little more erratically. His hair is windswept, and the light in his eyes tells of the joy of hunting. It was this same light that attracted her the first time she saw him. In the following weeks she was sometimes scared of it, just a little, but she has gotten used to it and to what it means. It has only been eight months, but sometimes she feels like she’s always known him.
“Ready, lovely?” he asks, offering her his hand, palm up.
With him, the question is far from innocuous. Once, in the middle of winter, he took her to the beach, and built such a roaring fire in the sand that she never felt the cold, even when their clothes fell away. Another time, he taught her to ride a horse after she had casually mentioned a few days before that she had always wanted to try horseback riding but had never had the chance. He told her he had a surprise in mind for her this night. She has been wondering what it was for almost two days.
She slides her hand into his. “Ready.”
He uses his hold on her hand to gently pull her over the threshold and into his arms. Immediately, his mouth descends on hers for a quick but fiery kiss that makes Anna melt. A little lightheaded, she rests her cheek on his shoulder for an instant and closes her eyes. She can’t imagine what her life would be like today if she had never dared to take that first step toward him.
* * * *
A bit of lettuce and a crouton dangled precariously from her forgotten fork as Anna stared in turn at the two women in front of her, who continued to eat their lunch as though one of them had not just said anything remarkable.
“What do you mean, I don’t know how to have fun?” she asked Jessie. “Of course I do! I’m having lunch with two of my friends in the best restaurant in town!”
Jessie’s mouth was full, and Carol took the opportunity to answer in her stead. “And when at the best restaurant in town, you order a Caesar salad and a glass of water.”
Anna looked down at her plate before glancing at her friends’. One had ordered some fancy fish in a red sauce that looked delicious, and the other was finishing a plate of shrimp prepared in five different ways. Compared to that, her salad did seem a little bland but that didn’t mean anything.
“You always order a salad,” Jessie pointed out before Anna could protest that she hadn’t been very hungry. “It doesn’t matter where we go, that’s what you order. I love you girl, but you can be really predictable sometimes. You need to learn to shake things up!”
“You’re not getting any younger,” Carol added, and on Anna’s dark look she grinned. “OK, none of us are. But getting older doesn’t mean we can’t do anything fun anymore or have to eat like rabbits!”
Anna let out a quiet snort at that, drawing a reproving glance from the passing maitre d’. She felt herself blushing as she dropped her eyes back to her plate and speared a piece of lettuce with a little too much strength. She winced at the sound of her fork hitting the porcelain plate.
“And what is it that you do to have fun, Miss Soon-To-Be-Happily-Married? Other than deciding twice a week on a new color for our dresses?”
Her tone was snippy, and Anna regretted her words as soon as they passed her lips. Bitterness at soon being the last of her group of friends not to have a significant other had surged out of nowhere. She was usually good at hiding how much she hated being single again, but to be put on a defensive stance had made that tightly controlled jealousy come to the front. She glanced up at Carol, ready to apologize, but her friend merely smiled at her with a slight shake of her head that said more than words could have. Then her eyes widened and took a devilish glint as she leaned forward over the table, looking in turns at Anna and Jessie.
“You want to know what Johnny and I did last Friday?” she whispered. “You’ll never guess!”
Jessie and Anna shared puzzled glances.
“We went to The Edge!” Carol continued after merely a second, her excitement piercing through her quiet words.
Anna’s eyes widened. There were a few dancing clubs in the city, but On The Edge was the most famous—or infamous—of all. Elsewhere, vampires were tolerated as long as they didn’t show their fangs; at The Edge, though, as the club was nicknamed, they were openly welcomed by an owner who reportedly lived with not one but two vampire lovers. Many humans who went there returned with bite marks on their throats and stories of intensely erotic if not always sexual encounters. But as much as Anna looked, she could see no scar on Carol’s neck, and it was hard to believe that the glowing bride-to-be would have slept with a vampire.
“You went to The Edge with Johnny,” Anna repeated, still incredulous and just a little bit in awe. “Did you…you know…meet vampires?”
Carol’s eyes were sparkling. “Of course. The place is filled with them. They even serve blood at the bar! It was pretty weird to see. And when we were dancing, we kept trying to guess who was a vamp and who was human. I danced with one while Johnny was getting a drink but the vamp left when he came back.”