Page 22 of Road Trip with a Vampire

Zelda: It’s just been a long day of driving and I’m only checking messages now

Zelda: I’ll check in again tomorrow night

Zelda: And please let me know if there’s anything going on with the studio/goat yoga event that I need to know about (I know, I know, you have it under control, but I can’t help but worry)

That taken care of, I put my phone on the nightstand and stretched out fully on the mattress.

It was more comfortable than I’d expected, given how nasty the room was, with sheets that were soft enough I could almost forget they smelled like wet dog.

Or perhaps I was just that tired. Fortunately, texting my friends had gotten me out of the anxious headspace I’d been in.

I closed my eyes, on the cusp of falling asleep even with the dim overhead light still on.

Distantly, I heard the shower shut off and then Peter rummaging around in the bathroom.

I opened my eyes a crack when he stepped out of it.

What I saw had me opening them the rest of the way.

Peter. Miles and miles of pale, muscled torso. A skimpy, threadbare motel towel slung dangerously low on his hips. And nothing else.

He looked like he’d been carved from marble. His body certainly belonged in a museum, anyway. He was big everywhere , his thick body suggestive of a person who’d earned his muscles through regular strenuous physical activity rather than in the gym.

I watched transfixed as a droplet of water from his wet hair landed on his chest and slid down, down, down. I told myself to look away. I didn’t.

In hindsight, I should have set ground rules for how we would dress when sharing a hotel room. Then again, how could I have known that Peter would think parading around half-naked in front of me was a good idea?

He seemed oblivious to the fact that I was awake and gaping at him as he riffled through his duffle bag. “Ah, there it is,” he muttered. I watched as he grabbed a shirt from his suitcase and tugged it over his head.

Then he ditched the towel—but not before I had the good sense to squeeze my eyes shut tight. When I opened them again, he was wearing his jeans from earlier that day.

And staring straight at me.

“Zelda,” he stammered. “I…I thought you were sleeping.”

“I wasn’t,” I admitted.

We locked eyes. The panic I’d felt over having seen so much of his body was reflected back at me in his stare.

He looked away first. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” I said. “It’s fine.” It was more than fine. The image of him emerging from that bathroom like a god who was somehow stuck in the world’s shittiest motel room would be emblazoned in my mind forever.

He nodded. Bit his bottom lip. “Would it be okay if I slept in here after all?” Peter wouldn’t look at me as he fidgeted with the bottom hem of his T-shirt.

My heart rate kicked up. “Yes,” I croaked, voice breaking on the single word. I winced and cleared my throat. Tried again. “I mean…yes. Yes. Of course.”

“It’s colder outside than I’d anticipated,” he explained. His gaze flicked to mine, darted away again. “Only in the twenties.”

I sucked in a breath through my teeth. “That is cold.”

“I have a higher cold tolerance than most people, of course, but…” He dragged a hand through his damp hair. “Even I have my limits.”

That didn’t surprise me. I’d heard stories, of course, of vampires technically surviving temperatures that would turn even the hardiest of humans into Popsicles.

But those stories also suggested the vampires were never quite the same afterwards.

And I knew from my extensive time with vampires that they could become slow and lethargic quickly in temperatures much below freezing.

It probably had something to do with the way the blood flowed in their bodies. Or rather, the way it didn’t flow. I didn’t know; I wasn’t a scientist. Regardless—if Peter wanted to sleep here tonight, I was not about to turn him out.

I glanced at the space beside me on the bed. It was a queen-size mattress, big enough for two people to sleep without touching. In theory, anyway. It had a dip in the middle, likely from too many years of use, and that was dangerous.

What if gravity took over while we slept, and we rolled towards each other in the night? I didn’t know what I would do if I woke up in the morning with my face pressed into that glorious chest.

But Peter seemed uninterested in sharing the bed. Something that could have been relief but felt more like disappointment washed through me when he grabbed the pillow I wasn’t using and tossed it to the floor.

“You can have the sheets and the blanket. I’ll take the bedspread,” he said.

“It’s thick enough, it should protect me from whatever horrors lurk in the carpet.

” Before I could object and tell him this arrangement wasn’t fair to him, he was gathering up the bedspread and creating a makeshift pallet for himself on the floor, as far away from the bed as he could get it.

This was for the best, I told myself. It would be beyond weird for us to sleep together, even if all we did was sleep. We could, of course, have created some sort of pillow barrier between us—but those things never seemed to work as intended in romance novels.

“Good night, Zelda,” he said softly from his spot on the floor.

I was exhausted but it still took a very long time for me to fall asleep.

It was probably the coffee I’d had at dinner.

I had finally drifted off when I was roughly awoken by Peter’s terrified shouting.

I sat bolt upright in bed in a panic, reflexes on high alert. I looked towards Peter, who lay on the floor, head thrashing back and forth on his pillow.

He was having a nightmare.

I threw off my covers and went to him. His eyes were squeezed tightly shut as he shouted and thrashed, and I knelt over him, gripping both of his shoulders in my hands. His body’s chill bled through the thin cotton of his T-shirt, his shoulders solid as granite beneath my touch.

“Peter,” I said, my voice low and urgent. “ Peter. It’s me. Zelda. You’re having a bad dream. Wake up.”

He gave no sign that he heard me. He continued thrashing, shouting garbled words I couldn’t make out. I shook him again, harder this time.

After another terrifying few seconds, in which I considered filling a glass with cold water from the bathroom sink and throwing it in his face, he opened his eyes.

The raw fear, the vulnerability, I saw in them stole my breath.

“Zelda?” The sound of his ragged breathing filled the room.

“I’m here,” I said. “It was just a dream.” My hands still rested on his shoulders, but I made no move to snatch them back. On instinct, I began to run them gently along his upper arms in soothing motions. He held himself as still as a statue.

“A dream,” Peter repeated, sounding dazed. He stared up at me as though I were the only safe thing in this world.

“Yes.” I hesitated, not sure if offering comfort was a good idea or would even be welcomed.

But I’d woken up from terrible nightmares many times myself.

They could be dreadful when you were all alone.

I knew what comfort from another person could do, what it could mean in moments like this.

Even if the one offering it was a virtual stranger.

I sat back, putting some distance between us. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Peter blew out a long breath, then sat up, scrubbing his hands over his face. Whatever his nightmare had been, he was fully awake now. “I don’t remember much.” A long pause. “I think it might have been a memory. It felt too real to have just been a dream.”

My eyes widened. “That’s good news. Right?” Without thinking, I reached out to touch his shoulder again. His eyes widened a little when my hand made contact, but he didn’t pull away. “Your memories are returning.”

Even if some of them are frightening , I thought but didn’t say.

“I don’t remember much,” he said again. “Just that there was someone in my dream I really did not want to see.” He shook his head. “Beyond that, nothing.”

The frustration in his voice was palpable.

“It’s something, at least,” I said, hoping my words were reassuring. “But I’m sorry you don’t remember more.” And then, because it felt like the right thing to say, I added, “If you want to sleep in the bed after what just happened, you can take it. I’ll sleep on the floor.”

“No, it’s fine,” he said. “But thank you for the offer. And for…everything.”

His voice had taken on an earnestness that made me blush.

Slowly—so slowly I could easily have pulled away if I didn’t want it—he reached up and clasped my hand, which still rested on his shoulder.

His touch was marble-solid and ice-cold, the calluses ringing his palm suggesting that whoever he’d been before, he’d been no stranger to hard work.

A rugged man, perhaps, not someone used to an easy life spent indoors.

Who had he been? I wondered. As Peter held my gaze and gave my hand a gentle squeeze that belied his obvious physical strength, I found I really wanted to know.

I should have looked away. Wished him good night and gone back to bed.

I did none of these things.

The kiss was featherlight, just a gentle press of my lips to the corner of his mouth that sent currents of sensation arcing through me.

His mouth parted on a surprised gasp, but he didn’t pull away.

His lips were so soft, the mint of his mouthwash and the way his hand gripped mine were twin tethers to reality and to the fact that this was really happening.

The only problem was, I wasn’t sure if it should .

That thought had me pulling away, putting space between us.

“You…you gonna be okay?” I asked, breathless.

He nodded very slowly. Then he looked beyond me to the window.

The curtains covering it were as threadbare as the rest of the room, letting us see the night sky almost as clearly as if we were out there ourselves.

The sun still hadn’t risen, but the faint yellowish streaks at the horizon said that it would soon.

“I think so,” he said. He sounded as winded as I felt. “Yeah. I’ll be fine.”

“Okay. Well, good night, then.”

“Good night.”

A nervous giggle escaped me. A giggle ? What was the matter with me? I hadn’t giggled in centuries. “Good night for another hour or two, anyway.”

He chuckled. He was nervous, too. Then he lay back down on his makeshift pallet. “Good night for now.” A pause. “Zelda?”

I had already climbed back into bed. “Yes?”

When he spoke again his voice was barely above a whisper. “Thank you.”