Fangs for the Memories(4)

I dropped my keys in the little crystal bowl, shut the door behind me, and closed my eyes as I slid the lock in place. My apartment was my sanctuary, my safe little corner of the world that I kept to myself. I’d spent years creating a warm, calming environment in soft blue and green tones, light fabrics, and plush, comfortable furniture. This was where I retreated when the world got too loud and I needed to restore myself with rest and quiet. And iron supplements. Lots and lots of iron supplements.

I brewed a cup of chamomile tea, then went upstairs and ran a nice hot bath. I stripped out of my shop-cleaning clothes and stood in front of my mirror. I wasn’t under any self-loathing misapprehensions about my looks. I was what my dad called a stunner. I never had an awkward phase. I wasn’t vain about it; it was just the way it was. I had a certain elegance of features—good cheekbones; soft, clear, peachy-pale skin; wide, deep-set blue eyes; and a waterfall of smooth, wavy red-gold hair—combined with an hourglass figure that made some aspects of life easier . . . and other aspects much harder.

My parents pinned certain expectations on me because of my good looks, and none of them were exactly what you’d wish for in terms of your parents’ ambitions for you. They didn’t want me to be a doctor. They wanted me to marry a doctor. They made it pretty clear that while it was “nice” that I got good grades in high school, I was being sent to Northwestern to earn my MRS.

It was that sort of low expectation that kept my self-esteem in balance.

Staring in the glass, I fanned my fingers over the raw red patches on my throat left by Dick’s stubble. I sighed. Stupid, stupid girl.

I twisted my coppery hair into a knot on top of my head and slid into the just-short-of-scalding bath. I didn’t bother with salts or bubbles. I wasn’t in the mood for flowery scents or foam mountains. I just wanted to soak, to feel clean. Sinking until the water hit my chin, I winced at the sting of it on my scraped skin.

What the hell had I been thinking?

Dick Cheney was charming and winsome and naughty. I did not need charming and winsome and naughty. I’d had a pant-load of all that from Mathias Northon. And that had ended badly.

“So very badly,” I murmured, making little bubbles ripple over the surface of the water. I sank further and let my face slide under, enjoying the warm sensation of the water soaking through my hair to my scalp.

Mathias had been my European History professor at Northwestern. He taught evening classes, naturally, bringing tales of his ancient childhood to life with his lilting Nordic accent. Picture a well-built, paperback-romance Viking in jeans and a faded corduroy blazer. He tied his wheat-colored hair back with a strip of leather he claimed he’d been carrying since the seventh century.

I was an innocent teenager out in the world on her own for the first time and confident in my ability to make my own choices. Which, of course, translates to: I was a total idiot. I had fallen into the classic undergrad trap, plunging headlong into an ill-advised affair with a man who “understood” me as the “mature and independent woman” that I was at the ripe old age of nineteen. He assured me that it was the “bright inner light” of my soul that drew him to me and not the delicious rarity of my AB-negative blood.

Well, to be fair, he also liked the way I did his laundry.

I broke through the surface of the bathwater, sweeping my hands back over my wet hair and wiping my eyes. I leaned back against the rim of the tub and wished I’d brought vodka upstairs instead of tea.

By the end of sophomore year, I had been practically living in his off-campus apartment, providing his evening meals, folding his socks, and grading his tests. I was basically an unpaid-teaching-assistant-slash-human-juice-box. When my parents found out that I was “consorting with the undead”—thanks to the ill-timed surprise visit to the dorm room I was barely living in—they cut me off. Completely. They just couldn’t risk someone from the club or church or my dad’s business circle finding out that their child was tainted by association with vampires. For all intents and purposes, I was no longer their daughter. No tuition. No mention in the annual family newsletter.

So I was an uneducated, unpaid-teaching-assistant-slash-human-juice-box.

My parents couldn’t have made it easier for Mathias to take advantage of me if they’d written him a manual. Without their support—financial and emotional—I was so vulnerable that I was open to anything he suggested. I officially moved in with him—without any other faculty knowing, of course. He didn’t want anyone to “misunderstand” what was happening between him and his former student. And I went willingly because I was just so grateful to have someone who I believed loved me for me.