Tomiko, of course, wasn't bluffing when she said that she had the phone number of that Mister Caius guy, so the whole issue was sorted out in literally five minutes. Right after that entire blonde-bitch vampire coven plus my ex poured out of the studio.
Messed up my feng shui, you know, and then went right back to doing whatever it is they're usually doing, like nothing happened.
Right after that, Alice called, and Rosalie herself reported to me. Turns out, they decided to keep marinating them there a bit longer, hoping that Edik or Alice herself would still join the Volturi. And for now, nobody except Tomiko and me knew that we were completely safe—at least from the Volturi, for fucking sure.
I was mentally exhausted, I hadn't had sex in long enough for it to affect my emotional decision-making, and Rosalie's supernatural pull on me was no joke either, though of course I was able to track it whenever it was happening.
Long story short, one word led to another, hand in hand, cheek to cheek...
And that's how I ended up in bed with Rosalie Hale. Obviously, my new kitsune-mojo, her attraction to me, and the absence of her hubby around did the trick.
Supernovas exploding inside, and all that shit.
My pulse was off the charts, and her skin under my fingers wasn't just cool—it was ice-cold. Hard, dense, like highly polished graveyard granite with no hint of capillaries or warmth underneath. But my new fox perception, sharpened after all those months of woods training with Tomiko, didn't give a shit about the corpse-like cold. Rosalie's scent—a slightly pungent, frosty citrus mixed with a heavy mechanical trail of antifreeze and wet pine needles—hit my brain harder than moonshine. My breaks failed completely.
Rosalie was breathing heavily, raggedly against my neck. She didn't need oxygen—it was just a simulacrum, an animal reflex picked up from humans—but that icy stream of air on my skin finally made me lose my goddamn mind. Her lips clamped onto mine with such force that I heard my own jaw creak.
If she had lost her grip for even a second, I would've been in deep shit, but she was clearly controlling every bit of her lethal strength.
Echoing the emotional storm, memories from my past life stirred in my head. I remembered myself perfectly well in a different role. But right now, I was trapped in a girlish body that this immortal lady could easily use like a ragdoll. Luckily, my fox regeneration had long since turned my recent fracture into ancient history, and my body responded perfectly, so I wasn't worried about my bones snapping.
Our clumsy attempts to get comfortable in the tight space of my bed looked more like wrestling than romance, but holy fuck, it was the best thing that had ever happened to me.
Rosalie took what was hers hungrily, giving me the freedom to do whatever the hell I wanted with her responsive body. Her unnaturally hard fingers initially slid under my gray T-shirt, squeezing my ribs until muffled, involuntary groans escaped my throat.
I had never felt such a wild contrast—hot, sweating, groaning human vs. her absolute, frozen, lifeless marble nature.
My past male experiences, and the experience with Lillian too—they were tossed into a corner, nervously smoking. Booty-calling the most beautiful girl I know while the Volturi in Italy are making a psychological clusterfuck out of her vampire clan, including her giant husband? Top-tier performance and an impending shitstorm, or so I suspected.
When it was over and I finally collapsed against the broken headboard of the bed, the room was spinning.
Rosalie settled next to me, throwing her leg over me, my palm still resting between her thighs, casually stroking her on the remnants of my energy. I was completely done, totally spent, but this madness wasn't letting go just yet.
She lay completely naked, looking literally like porcelain in the semi-darkness, and her eternal "sucked-on-a-lemon" facial expression was completely gone, smoothed out.
Rosalie was laughing softly—definitely at me, because she wasn't tired at all—and I couldn't stop looking back at her dark eyes, though I periodically interrupted myself to kiss her neck, collarbones, and chest. Meanwhile, my breathing was completely shot, and my body was just trembling in weakness, despite this half-assed fox regeneration of mine.
Of course, we had agreed beforehand that this meant nothing in the grand scheme of things.
But her gaze and touches periodically felt like something more than just getting off. I noticed it, yeah, but chose to ignore it.
At least I won't regret a damn thing when I die next time.
***
She left before dawn, dissolving into the rainy twilight of Forks, leaving me spread-eagled on the bed. But the next day, my zen was completely obliterated, and from the most unexpected side.
I was sitting in my room, lazily skimming through a medical reference book, when there was a knock on my bedroom window from the outside. It was Tanya, and the moment she took a single step inside, her nostrils flared hungrily, almost convulsively.
She didn't need to catch me red-handed. The whole palette of that wild night was hanging in the bedroom air even after airing it out.
That frosty citrus, the distinct trail of antifreeze, and, most importantly, the concentrated, unmistakable smell of pure sex.
Her golden eyes darkened in a fraction of a second, filling with a charcoal, almost pitch-black depth. Being a femme fatale for five centuries, getting rejected with a lecture about the rotting of souls, only to sniff out a fuck with another vampiress? One who already has a partner?
I think Tanya didn't give a flying fuck about the fact that Rosalie consciously chose to try only sex and wasn't trying to sway me toward turning or becoming a third wheel in her and Emmett's dynamic.
She seemed completely crushed by these smells; Tanya suddenly looked smaller. All her predatory grace vanished somewhere, giving way to such a dull, hopeless, human anguish that distorted her beautiful face. At first, it made me uncomfortable, and a second later, I just genuinely felt sorry for her.
"Her," she said softly, almost soundlessly, and there was no anger in that dry voice—just some strange, painful sadness.
I sighed and gathered my thoughts. My past experience told me that women's tears—even without actual tears present—were the worst weapon against my emotional constipation, but I couldn't watch her suffer without trying to smooth things over.
"Tanya," I stepped closer, trying to speak softly, without my usual sarcasm. "This is different. You deserve more, and you'd want more. You know it yourself, you said it yourself."
Tanya didn't move, continuing to hypnotize the floor by my feet. She looked so lost and depressed that I took another step, reached out, and touched her shoulder, then her cheek with my palm.
Tanya slowly raised her head. For a second, it felt like she was submissively accepting this meager affection.
Her cold palm covered my fingers, and the corners of her lips twitched slightly downward.
The world blurred at lethal vampire speeds. A sharp, blinding flash of pain ripped through my wrist, and a stream of pure, unadulterated Russian curses burst from my throat.
Tanya locked her teeth into my arm with a dead, beastly grip, biting through skin and tendons with a distinct, wet crunch. In her darkened eyes, the human sadness was instantly replaced by the blind, fanatical madness of a predator. Her saliva—icy vampire venom—splashed straight into my bloodstream like burning acid.
The leech clamped her jaws tighter, literally pumping the infection into my veins, hard and selfishly trying to lock my soul into an immortal body just like hers.
I didn't know if it was just her instinct, if she snapped, or if she planned it, but of course I tried to fight back, which yielded zero results—she was just stronger, even with all my initial power.
Inside my chest, right where my tailed alter-ego was sleeping, a massive pulse of rage exploded, and I tried to push the magic I already knew forward and outward.
My shield finally worked, blasting the bitch away from me.
Naturally, I kept fucking cursing, holding my throbbing, aching arm, squeezing the blood and trying to somehow burn this goddamn mess out from the outside.
My fox regeneration wasn't about to submissively swallow the vampire sludge, and it, of course, began trying to burn it out.