So I'm Not a Vampire? Ch. 05

Hey Everyone,

So this is the completely edited version of So, I'm Not a Vampire? Thank you searchingforperfection for helping me edit the entire So I'm Not a Vampire? novellette. All future stories I post on Lit are stories that will not be published. If you have questions, concerns, or just want to say hi, feel free to message me.

-Rosi

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Chapter Five: Red-Headed Slut

I picked up the mirror and saw my reflection. Then I turned it toward Bane and saw ... his reflection too! I whirled on him and poked him in the chest. "Are you trying to make fun of me?"

I felt his chest rumble beneath my finger before he doubled over, laughing uproariously. I couldn't help what I did next, but I wasn't a bit ashamed. I started pounding away at his shoulders, shaking my head wildly. "You asshole! Mocking me! Laughing at me!"

Of course the big, strong vampire didn't even feel my attack, and after awhile my hands started to hurt. My hands. Not his shoulders or his back, but me.

Bane slapped his hands on his knees and pushed himself up. He wiped at the tears leaking from the corner of his eyes. "Truly, habibi, I didn't think you would fall for it. But you are just so..."

"Gullible? Naive? Stupid?" I supplied without hesitation, just jonesing for another reason to hurt my fists hitting him.

"Young." Bane shook his head ruefully as he stuffed the mirror, garlic, and other vampire lore crap into a bag and tossing it near the door. "You are not jaded like so many others. It's refreshing to see through your eyes."

I nearly blushed, but suppressed it with every fiber of my being. "Can you really see through my eyes? Is that one of your vampire talents?"

Bane shook his head slowly and sat on the edge of his bed. "No. Only half of what you know about vampires is true, Peaches. I only say half because your generation has truly gone above and beyond to romanticize us."

"Ah, so you don't sparkle in the sunlight?"

His eyes darkened, and I could see even more of that red color. "No. Neither do we turn to ash or explode."

I plopped down next to him and kicked off the flats he'd bought me on our mad dash down to D.C. Outlet malls were great things, my favorite invention since Shazam. "What happens, then?"

He cocked his head and smiled. "Nothing."

I rolled my eyes so far back, I thought they might get stuck for a second. "You're shitting me. So you can go out in the sun and nothing happens?"

He shrugged lightly and reached over to pull my hair back over my shoulder. "Yes. It is just easier to feed with the cover of darkness. People tend to overlook an entwined couple in an alleyway at night."

I swatted at his hand and pointed a finger at his red-brown eyes. "Ah, ah, ah. Didn't I say I wasn't on the menu?"

His lids lowered and his tongue snaked out to wet his bottom lip. "I was thinking about eating you in another way."

Whoa! Bane was hitting on me, and not just a little, but, like, full-blown-sensual-attack-on-the-senses hitting on me. I backpedaled both mentally and physically, and ended up falling off the bed and landing hard on my ass. I rubbed the small of my back and glared/blushed up at him.

Did I want to have raw animalistic sex that even Jeaniene Frost's Cat and Bones would blanch at? Hell yes. Triple, quadruple, and the next number after that—yes! But would I? To quote rap artist Drake: Hell Yeah, Fucking Right. Just not at that moment; there were too many things still floating in the air between us, things that he'd either avoided or I'd been too distracted to ask.

"None of that, vampire." I wagged a finger at him and used my most stern voice, the one I used when the kids I babysat acted up.

Bane gave me a patient look and helped me up. I didn't sit on the bed again, because, well, I'd rather not tempt fate. Instead, I went to the living room, sat down in a chair that looked like it cost more than all the furniture in my apartment plus my rent, and nodded to the chair across from me.

Bane poured himself into the chair, actually draping himself over the piece of furniture like it had been made especially for him. I just barely resisted rolling my eyes again. "Question time: are you a vampire?"

"Obviously."

"Am I actually dead and not like a zombie, mutant, or other TV show monster?"

He frowned at me and leaned forward in the chair. "Didn't we already do this, habibi?"

We had, but I trusted his answers about as much as I trusted a hungry shark not to bite me. Still, I'd watched enough CSI and Law & Order to know that if a criminal was asked the same question long enough, they eventually told the truth. True, this wasn't an interrogation and I was by no means an interrogator, but fish out of water adapt.

"No, they die."

I snapped my head up to him and enunciated every syllable: "Stop. Reading. My. Mind."

His eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared. "What do you want to know, Peaches? I haven't hurt you or done anything against your wishes, so what is it you're afraid of?"

Everything. Change. The unknown. The list went on and on and on. One of the reasons I liked movies and TV shows was that I knew, somewhere in the back of my mind, that they were fake. At the end of the day, the actors got to go home, kiss their babies, make love to their spouses, and do whatever they wanted. My situation was different, super-duper different. I couldn't just click the remote and change the channel on my life; I had to live with this.

Wow. Shit just got real.

I felt the blow like a physical punch to my stomach. My mom, my family, my job: all of it was just ... gone. Even back-stabbing Rob was gone. And I was with a vampire who knew I wasn't a vampire, but not much else.

I stood up so quickly my chair teetered on the verge of toppling over. I glanced at Bane, who raised a brow at my abrupt rise. "You want a drink?" Speedy Gonzalez would have been impressed with the rush of words. "I'm dying for a drink. Something strong. Scotch? Never had it before, but I heard it's strong. What do you want? I don't think the mini-fridge has—"

"Super speed." Bane interrupted me like I was supposed to know what the hell that meant.

"Huh?"

He moved from the chair to the mini fridge in less time than it took me to exhale. He had two glasses in his hand, a battalion of little bottles on the counter above the fridge, and was mixing something as he spoke. "Super hearing. Mind control and mind reading. Super healing. The ability to—"

"What are you talking about, Bane?" I snapped as I marched over to him and his little potion making station.

"The powers of a vampire. You were wondering about them, weren't you?"

I had been, but I never thought he'd answer me. Wasn't there a vampire code or something that forbid him from spilling secrets? I was just about to ask him when he turned and handed me a glass that looked like it had tea in it.

"A Red-Headed Slut." Bane's lips quirked at the death glare I shot him. "I think you'll enjoy it."

I did love the drink, but the name I could've done without. I downed the concoction in two swallows and slammed the glass back on the counter. "What's your point?"

I eyed him up and down, lingering on spots I shouldn't have. Then I remembered something very important, something I'd forgotten. I was a super lightweight, and a very horny, touchy-feely drunk.

"Don't worry," Bane said as he poured me another drink, handed it to me, and ushered me to the couch. "I prefer my women sober and consenting."

I snorted, but sipped at the drink instead of just chugging it like I wanted to. "Why'd you tell me your powers?"

He shrugged as we sat on the white-leather sectional, and I tried to be very careful and not spill my drink all over the place. This was one of the reasons I'd never been a bartender: I couldn't hold my liquor worth a damn. I blamed it on the fact that my parents hadn't let me drink until I was twenty-one. I never built up immunity.

I could feel that warm sensation that came with drinking moving through my body. Whatever Bane had made was strong, like, really strong. That, or I was super weak. I was thinking the former, given the number of mini bottles of liquor he'd used.

I was getting tired, too. My thoughts were starting to blur together in that nice haze before a sort of twilight set over me and everything made me horny. Clothes—oh, they were so constrictive, like boa constrictors around my body. It would be so nice to shed them, throw them away. I reached for the hem of my top. My drink shook in my other hand and my head spun like I was on a Tilt-A-Whirl.

"Time for bed," Bane announced as he took my drink out of my hand, placed it on the coffee table next to the couch, and yanked my top back down.

I giggled like a shy schoolgirl in a B-rated porno. "Oh, good, I was wondering when I'd get to see that disco stick of yours." Did my words sound slurred?

"Uh huh." Bane stood up and picked me up, one arm under my knees and the other under my neck. The world tilted and everything was upside down. Then it started bouncing. Bump. Bump. Bump.

"Ya know." I raised my finger but couldn't see what I was pointing at. I hoped it was Bane, because I was talking to him. "I thought vampires would be old. Talk with like a Pennsylvanian"—that wasn't the right word, but I had forgotten it—"accent and wear capes and stuff. But you're Black. Is that racist? Am I a racist?"

My whole left side tingled and it freaked me out until I realized Bane was chuckling. Then I was free floating, falling, a bird crashing down onto a soft mattress. I rubbed my body against the comforter, dying to feel it against my naked skin.

"No, it doesn't make you a racist," Bane chuckled as he pulled back the comforter and sheet. "It just makes you wrong. I'm Egyptian."

I rolled on the bed until my foot grazed Bane's torso. I tried to focus on his form, but it was blurred. I closed my eyes and let my foot do my seeing. I'm pretty sure my eyes would have bugged out at the hard thing under my foot and between Bane's legs. He might be Egyptian, but his thingy was definitely Black.

"Now that's racist and stereotypical." I felt Bane's hot breath ruffle my hair before I was picked up again and thrown against the pillows at the headboard. Then the sheet and comforter were pulled over my body and tucked around my head. "But I think a better description is long, thick, and hard."

My panties burst into flames. I swear they did! I'd bet all his blue Monopoly money that I'd just had an orgasm from hearing him describe his dick. Fan-freaking-tastic.

I reached out for him, desperate, horny, and exceedingly drunk now. I couldn't even form a sentence. "Cock?"

But he pulled back, and a sudden darkness engulfed the bedroom. "Goodnight, mystery girl."

I burrowed deeper into the bed, a sudden wave of exhaustion hitting me from left field. "Don't you mean Red-Headed Mutt." I couldn't even be sure if those were my words. It all sounded like a garbled mess, half-mumbled into the pillows under my head.

But apparently Bane heard it, because he laughed his head off all the way back to his room.