fangednconfused (fangednconfused) wrote in birthrightrpg, @ 2021-12-22 16:05:00 |
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Entry tags: | derek mitchell, maddy rigby |
Baseline
Who: Maddy/Derek
What: Swap Plot
Where: Las Vegas, Maddy's Apartment
When: Takes Place Beginning of Plot
Content Warnings: High - Mature Content (Marked In Scene)
Texts to Maddy:
-So I think I might be human again? And I don’t know if it’s temporary, permanent, or related to this spell situation.
-I couldn’t drink my blood, my teeth are normal, and I can feel my heart beating. Also I’m kind of clumsy.
Texts to Derek:
-fr?
-Holy shit balls…
-Idk what to say. Is it scary? Amazing? I wanna see you (and inspect your pulse, it’s for science, don’t make it weird)
Texts to Maddy:
-Really weird, mostly. I called off work. I feel like this is a call off work situation.
-Plus what if this is the one night where someone like tries to rob me or something? That would suuuuck.
-Anyway I can come over if you want.
Texts to Derek:
-Yes please! I must have teleported too much yesterday. I’m dried up. I can’t even send myself the pickle jar.
-Buckle your seatbelt. ;)
Texts to Maddy:
-omg I just realized I can’t run into random dangerous situations anymore. I actually have to be careful.
-I’ll be there soon (driving the speed limit).
Human. As Maddy sat cross-legged on her couch, the flatscreen TV paused on an awkward still, she tried to process this piece of information in the context of the day. The mass text incident had brought her into the fold of all things magical in the area. Derek’s heartbeat and lack of fangs seemed like a step farther than, say, sprouting a tail or pulling a ‘flying Michael’ out of Lost Boys, but… was it?
She rolled a bag of potato chips and cinched them with a clothespin. Her boyfriend was human, a man who could walk comfortably in the sun, who needed oxygen and a well-balanced diet, who lost foot races and couldn’t be patched up with the undead version of a Capri Sun if he had a bad night. The least she could do was shake the crumbs off her top and fix her eyeliner.
Maddy clambered off the couch, yanking her sweater overhead as she went to her bedroom.
After sending the last two texts, Derek got into his car and, as promised, carefully made his way to Las Vegas and Maddy’s building. He didn’t really think he was going to get into an accident — at least, he really hoped not — but it was strange to have a certain sort of feeling of invincibility taken away. Despite spending a bulk of his unlife wishing he weren’t a vampire and only recently having come to terms with it, he really had taken it for granted. It was too soon to really tell if he wanted this change to be temporary or permanent. It seemed like a mild case of ‘be careful what you wish for.’ He secured a parking spot, locked up the car, and entered the foyer of the building, heading for the stairs and climbing them until he reached Maddy’s floor, sending her a text to let her know he had arrived as he did so.
The sound of footsteps carried into the hallway. “Welcome!” Maddy cried, yanking open the front door with the enthusiasm of a surprise party planner whose guest of honor had just arrived. The cheap brass knob came off in her hand, its screws striking the carpet and going for a bounce. “Oh shit… this place is the worst.” She disassembled the varying bits of hardware and set them in a basket by the door. “Come here. Let me see you!” Maddy grabbed his (warm?!) hands and pulled Derek across the threshold into her apartment.
“Oh my gosh, you look so—” Hale? Hearty? “Pink.”
He glanced down at the door knob in her hand before his attention was diverted, as it usually was, by how amazing she looked. Derek was slightly taken by surprise at how insistently – and firmly – Maddy tugged him through the door, but grinned and chalked it up to enthusiasm, which was always welcome. He leaned down and pulled her into a lingering kiss before commenting, “I think it’s all the circulation? It’s so weird.” Close to her like this, he couldn’t sense or hear the things he usually did, like the rhythm of her heart or much beyond the shampoo she used in her hair. Everything was so quiet. “And this,” Derek added, guiding one of her hands to the center of his chest, where his pulse was still slightly elevated from climbing the flights of stairs in a rush to see her.
“Whoa!” Maddy grinned as his heart thumped under her splayed hand. She stuck two fingers up to Derek’s neck, too, to get the full experience. What were two hands for, if not filling them full of boyfriend pulse? There it was again, bumping away. She stared at her hands with an awed expression, then up at Derek’s face. “That’s incredible. Don’t get me wrong, I love your lifeless heart, too, but it is pretty cool…” She threw her arms around his neck to give him a big squeeze. “We should do everything,” she bubbled, hugging away. “Anything you can’t do when you’re a vampire. Run around naked in the sun. Get really ripped. Gargle holy water. Snuggle a cross.”
Derek laughed, wrapping his arms around Maddy and returning the hug, burying his face momentarily in her hair. “That all sounds great…I think,” he told her, pulling back so he could look at her. “But at the same time, I guess I’m kind of worried about becoming too attached to it. You know, if it is temporary.” It was a mindset that was difficult to escape, and tangled up in the contradiction of accepting that he was a vampire and nothing would ever change that, and the undercurrent of longing that never fully went away. “I know I should just enjoy it while it lasts,” he added.
And then he remembered something that she had mentioned in text. “You said you teleported too much yesterday?” Derek asked curiously, letting his hands fall so that they rested on her hips.
“But that’s what I’m saying!” Maddy bounced on her toes. “What do you do when you’re on your dream vacation? You don’t sit around thinking, oh, I better stay in my hotel room, I don’t want to get used to Fiji. You use up every minute of it, because it’s temporary!” She planted a kiss on him again. “Don’t worry about me and the stupid teleporting thing. Who cares if I have to crawl around to find my shoes. This is about you.” She thwacked his chest. “Oh my god… you have to sleep over tonight so I can find out if you snore.”
Oh. That made sense. Derek’s previously concerned expression morphed back into a grin as he rocked back slightly on his heels from the playful blow to his chest. “Treat it like a vacation, got it,” he said, nodding. “We should take a road trip to a beach. I haven’t gotten a sunburn in forever,” he added, now obviously warming up to the idea, his enthusiasm growing as he spoke. “We can drive during the day now without me getting all tired. And I can prank Facetime my parents while it’s all sunny out and tell them the whole vampire thing was just a phase and I’m over it.” Then he paused, thinking that last one through. “Okay, that might actually be mean rather than funny. I’ll circle back to that one.” Derek took a deep breath, mostly because he could.
“Anyway, of course I’ll sleep over,” he told Maddy. “We should start now. Well, not so much the sleeping part, but you know.”
“OK what do you wanna do first? I called off, too.” Maddy stepped onto the cushion of her couch to make herself taller and rested her palms on Derek's shoulders. Whatever it was, she was game. Across the room, her phone lit up silently; the texts hadn’t stopped coming and there seemed to be a mild sense of chaos unfolding as the phenomenon spread, but Maddy didn’t want any part of it. At least not yet. In their bubble of existence, Derek was warm and breathing with a beating heart and she didn’t want anything harshing the mellow. Not even the fact that it felt like she’d smoked PCP.
Derek looked up at Maddy, his head a whirlpool of different thoughts tugging him in multiple directions. He had no idea where he wanted to start. All he knew was that he was starving, and wanted to keep kissing her, and was excited for the sun to come out. He didn’t even know if he could sleep, let alone snore. “I don’t know,” he told her, wrapping his arms around her waist, his gaze shifting from her face, to the different eclectic design elements that surrounded them as he tried to figure it out. It was odd; as a vampire, he could be all over the place, but it was less intense, a milder version of the way he had been as a human. Now he was filled with a restless sort of energy that he wasn’t sure how to focus, and it seemed to be exacerbated by the rest of his senses becoming duller, which didn’t really make sense since that meant a lot less stimuli. “I need help deciding. Maybe we should write stuff down on little slips of paper and pull one out of a hat.”
And then his mouth curled up in a grin as he looked back up at her, pulling the blonde closer. “Is your roommate home?”
“Noooooo…” Maddy crooned. “Why? You want me to model the hat?” Her fingers twirled in the waves of his hair. Her smile was full of mischief. She’d be happy to throw on a pair of trousers with suspenders and heels (hold the shirt). Or maybe he wanted to get high. That had to be different, or at least easier. She leaned down and stole a kiss at the side of his neck.
He tilted his head automatically when her lips went to his neck, his gaze drifting up toward the ceiling as that particular mental image popped up. It wasn’t a bad idea, but it did nothing to help him focus. And then Derek grinned. Maybe focusing was overrated. He seemed to have come to some sort of decision. “Come here,” he told her, wrapping his arms around her securely and steering her around before falling back onto the couch. His intention was for Maddy to sprawl over him, and though it wasn’t as smoothly executed as he was usually capable of, it got the job done. His fingers grazed through her hair and swept down her back, tilting his head upward to press his lips against the spot on her neck between her collarbones. There was a flush of warmth that ran through Derek as he touched her, something he marveled at in its novelty. He wanted to see what else she could bring out.
“You’re so amazing,” he murmured, not for the first time and certainly not for the last.
Maddy smiled into his hair. “No, you.” It was an awkward landing; one of her knees clung to the edge of the couch. The other was between his thighs. She repositioned herself more comfortably… Okay, wow, the breath on her neck was warm and damp, and it tickled. “Hey,” she said softly. “This means you can get just as sweaty and out of breath as me. Give me one of those hands.” She caressed the length of his arm until she got to Derek’s hand and lifted it to place a few soft, open mouthed kisses on his inner wrist. Maddy leaned back and pressed her fingers into it. “Hold still,” she giggled, “I’m getting a baseline.”
“Yeah, but I doubt I’ll look as good as you,” he told her, watching her mouth connect with his wrist, her breath just as warm as his was. He couldn’t help but think of the last time he remembered his heart beating like this, though under entirely different circumstances. It was like being in a movie that had been paused and forgotten, and someone had randomly come along and pressed play. Derek also couldn’t help but wonder what parts of his personality were wholly informed by him being a vampire, and if he would react to situations differently, or if being human meant reverting back to the ‘old’ version of himself. Being turned had, admittedly, imbued him with a strange sort of confidence. The worst had happened, he had died technically, so what else was there to worry about? Would that go away? He tried to get out of his head and be there, fully, with Maddy.
“What do you think?” he asked, smiling as his fingers flipped through the locks of her hair. “Too fast, too slow…?”
** Begin Adult Content **
Maddy gave him an open-mouthed look of shock. “Ridiculously slow. I should be ashamed of myself.” She gave him a blue-eyed look of adoration while she kissed his palm, subtly touching one of the lines with the tip of her tongue. Her fingers slipped between Derek’s and guided them underneath the soft knit of her vintage sweater. It was a quick trip up her stomach and rib cage to where she rested his palm on her bra, which was lacey and thin, on the decorative rather than functional end of the spectrum.
That little zap to her nerve endings made her squeeze his knuckles. One of them audibly popped. “I’m sorry!” she laughed. “Are you okay? They didn’t turn you into Mr. Glass, did they?”
That definitely got his attention. As his fingertips brushed over the lacy material, the tactile sensation and the way Maddy looked at him made him shift a little restlessly beneath her. Derek hardly even noticed the squeeze. “I’m okay,” he assured her, his other hand dipping beneath her sweater, too, grazing the soft, warm skin of her stomach. “More than, actually,” he added, meeting her eye as he dragged his thumb over her nipple.
“Oh my god,” she whispered, a slight smile on her face. Her breath quickened. A flood of chemicals raised her blood pressure and she felt her neck and chest explode with pink blooms. Derek got a rise out of her quicker than anybody; she hadn’t figured out exactly why, except that he seemed completely earnest, wide open with his heart and what he was thinking, and it didn’t hurt that he had that face and voice. Maddy pretended to look curious, but it wasn’t easy to concentrate. “Have I mentioned that you’re fine as hell?” She put her fingers under his chin and lifted it. “I mean, come on.” Maddy kissed him gently. She opened the angle of her hips and strained to get closer to his waist.
“Yeah?” Derek asked, his smile growing at her words as he ran his nails lightly over her stomach, next to her belly button. “So are you. In case you couldn’t tell.” He deepened the kiss as his hand cupped her breast fully, his tongue sliding past her lips. At the same time, the fingers of his free hand grasped some of the material of her sweater from the inside and tugged Maddy closer, his hips lifting slightly. When he was with her, it was difficult to decide where to put his hands, his mouth, so he settled on letting them roam.
Her fingers combed into Derek’s hair. “Uh huh.” Maddy’s mouth parted to kiss him. It was always amazing, but she had grown used to the way Derek felt and tasted before. It was the only way she’d ever known him. The ‘new’ element was a turn-on. It was like flipping backwards through a calendar, going back in time and claiming who he was back then as her person, too. Her tongue touched the roof of his mouth and his teeth. “I could tell by the way you played Pac-Man,” she murmured softly. “I was like, damn… I need that man inside me.” She smiled and rocked her hips in a teasing rhythm, a gesture that started out for him but resulted in a tiny, airy moan from her own throat. “I’m kinda gettin’ that vibe now. Do you want to?” Maddy tugged up his shirttail and put her hand inside. It went straight to the center of Derek’s chest.
Even if he hadn’t before, the way she moved over him, the friction strategically applied, would have definitely sealed the deal. Everything she did was so effortlessly sexy. Derek was completely enamored with her. “I really do,” he told her, aware of the rise and fall of his chest beneath her hand. His hands met behind her back to unhook her bra. When that was done, his left hand traveled downward, over her hip, then trailing up her inner thigh.
Oh thank god, she thought. Maddy stretched her arms overhead to take off her sweater. Her hair came down in a straight, blunt-edged wave. Now that the clasp was undone, the bra naturally slid off her shoulders until she sat topless on his lap. There was a necklace resting on her collarbone, which had been hiding before. It was a green rose attached to a delicate gold chain by its stem.
She was blessed with reactive nipples, and even the idea of Derek touching her was driving her nuts. Maddy wanted to grab his hands and put them on her chest, or bring herself into contact with his mouth, but there were more important things, like how his shirt was getting in the way of looking at him. “I want to see you.” She encouraged it up over his stomach and waited for Derek to either raise his arms or pull it over his head.
He obliged, pulling the t-shirt up and letting it drop carelessly to the floor. His gaze swept over Maddy, trying to take in every detail at once. Derek’s hands roamed over every bare inch of skin that he could touch with no particular plan in mind. They trailed up her stomach, over her rib cage, before cupping her breasts. “Still too many clothes,” he remarked, watching her face intently as he restlessly pushed his hips up to meet hers. The contact was warm and teasing, and all Derek could think about was the swift removal of the cloth barriers between them.
Each time his hips rose off the cushion, Maddy grabbed his shoulders or the frame of the couch and used the leverage to press downward, an insistent grind that felt incredible, all these little sparks of warmth and electricity and an ache building between her thighs. She loved the way sex felt with Derek, like it was completely open and positive. She loved the way he looked at her. She arched her back for his fingers and whispered, “Just a sec,” to cling to the feeling for a few seconds longer. There was something really good about forcing herself to wait.
She blinked heavily and looked at Derek’s naked shoulders and chest. He was so warm. If she kissed him longer and a little harder, she thought, maybe his lips would get that swollen look. Maddy leaned forward and sucked on his bottom lip. “Okay, yeah,” she said breathlessly after a minute. She stood up and undid the back zipper of her cigarette pants. She watched Derek as she worked her pants and underwear over her hips and legs.
A low, quiet moan escaped his lips when Maddy pressed against him, his hands automatically falling to her hips, an aching sort of longing reaching a crescendo. When she leaned toward him, his fingers skirted up her bare back before he buried them in her blonde hair, his lower lip still tingling even after she had pulled away. Derek sat up and watched her undress before he stood up, too. His fingers undid the button and zipper of his jeans, climbing out of them, only losing balance briefly in his haste as he pulled them off. He straightened up and looked at her appraisingly for a moment. “You should sit…here,” Derek told her with a grin, guiding Maddy to the edge of the couch by her shoulders.
Once she was seated, he knelt down before her and gently edged her legs apart, his eyes lifting to meet hers as his mouth latched onto the innermost part of her upper thigh. At the same time, his fingers crept upward until they reached their intended destination. Watching her face closely, Derek slowly slid two fingers inside while his thumb began to rub against her in circles, lightly at first before increasing the pressure.
“Oh my god.” She was left to kind-of helplessly watch. Well, no, there wasn’t anything helpless about leaning back on one palm while she thrust herself to the edge of the couch and spread her legs for him, but honestly, she couldn’t imagine doing anything else. Maddy vaguely remembered telling her roommate she’d conduct her business in the bedroom, but oh well. Things happened, right? They could get a slipcover. She also vaguely remembered the hole in her front door, but there was absolutely no way she was leaving this spot.
She writhed against his hand. “I should be doing this to you.” She’d give it thirty more seconds... Sixty, tops. Her right hand was restless. It explored his back and arm. It trailed down over where Derek’s wrist separated her thighs. After a while, Maddy nudged the coffee table away with her bare foot to create some floorspace. It teetered on two legs and then tipped over. Unexpected, but that worked, too. “Do you want me on top?”
His mouth traveled upward, too, alternating between kissing and using his teeth on the soft skin of her inner thigh. He couldn’t help but grin at her reaction, his free hand guiding one of her legs over his shoulder. Derek heard the table flip over but was far too invested to turn around and look. “Yeah,” he told her, “but I want to do this first.” He leaned forward and replaced his thumb with his tongue.
“Oh come on!” she said, but it was a happy sound, an admission of defeat. Maddy stopped trying to talk and began panting and gasping for air instead. Her fingers ran into the short strands of his hair. They scratched and tugged as she curved her spine at just the right angle to offer herself to his tongue. Which was a thing, she realized, not simply wanting to feel pleasure, or wanting Derek to be the one who gave it to her, but thinking, ‘Here I am, I’m with you, and this is for you.’
“Derek, I’m not just saying this because of your tongue,” she moaned, “But I’m like… crazy about you.” Maddy was kind of envious; she could use something to occupy her mouth. She gently pulled on the sides of his head. “My turn.”
Somewhat reluctantly, though with a smile on his face, Derek lifted his head. He placed his hands, palms down against the couch next to her hips, and pressed one last against her thigh before standing up. “The feeling is more than mutual,” he told her. “I can’t stop thinking about you. Like who is this girl who’s so beautiful, sexy, funny, and sends breakdancers to perform in front of my work?” Derek shook his head in apparent disbelief.
It was then that he really took in their surroundings. The flipped over coffee table, the couch out in the open, the always-present possibility of a roommate walking in. “Should we take this to your bedroom?”
“Oh sure now you notice,” she breathed. Maddy straightened, found herself eye-to-waist with Derek, and her eyebrows jumped. Wow. She supposed walking in on that would be a sight to behold. “Finefinefine.” She got up, moved behind Derek, and propelled him toward her bedroom by the hips. Only once did she allow herself to swat his ass as they crossed the threshold to her dark bedroom. She pushed the door shut and immediately turned her back to it.
“Now how do we get the mood back?” Maddy tapped a fingertip against her lips as they inched closer to her bed. “Hm.” She dropped to her knees in front of him. “Maybe…? Something like this?” A soft puff of breath stirred the air and then she ran her lips along him. Maddy didn’t take him into her mouth, yet, but she did flick her tongue to see if he was in the mood for it.
“Sorry, I got distracted,” Derek grinned as she steered him toward her room, glancing at her over his shoulder. Now if Maddy’s roommate came home, she would just find the displaced coffee table and two sets of hastily discarded clothing. Nothing unusual there. It took him a moment to adjust to the darkness once she had shut the door, which was another novel experience that only served to remind him of his temporary humanity. Up close, though, he could see her kneel before him, and when Derek felt the warmth of her breath and her lips, a shiver ran through him.
A noise of pleasure issued from his lips when she flicked her tongue. His fingers slid through her hair as he watched her, mesmerized. “Something like that,” he repeated, his voice low.
His voice gave her goosebumps. Maddy’s knees made soft sounds in the carpet as she inched closer. She took him into her mouth and hands, with one palm high between his thighs and the fingers of her other hand wrapping near her lips. She wanted it to seem like she was everywhere. Quickly she cast her eyes upward. There were shadows; a small light on a shelf only provided enough illumination to see his face and torso in outline, so she relied on taste and sound to tell her what was happening inside Derek. He was perfect. Sweet and funny and quirky and resourceful. Being with him made her feel weightless; Maddy wanted him to feel that way now. She made a sound as she moved to let him know she liked it.
The fingers currently buried in her hair curled as he looked down to meet her eyes, the sight of her and the way her mouth felt around him making him sway slightly. Derek’s other hand slid over her bare shoulder, up her arm. His head tilted back as his breathing quickened and hitched, cradling the back of her head. God, she was amazing. “Fuck, Maddy,” he half-whispered, his eyes slipping closed. All he could think about was how good it felt, being with her. How lucky he was. Everything else lost focus.
After a few moments of this, Derek’s hand moved beneath her chin, his thumb gliding over her cheek. “I want to be inside you,” he told her.
On her list of the sexiest things to hear, that was top five. Maddy got to her feet. She licked and kissed her way up his stomach and chest. He was ten inches taller than her, so when she wrapped her arms around Derek’s waist, she could easily fit her mouth into the warm place under his jaw. It was strange, but as she sucked delicately on his throat, Maddy could swear for a second that she actually heard his heartbeat. His skin smelled and tasted a little different, but it was nice, a variation of an already familiar Derek.
He lifted up his chin and closed his eyes, the light pressure from her mouth making his pulse race. Derek focused on that sensation for a moment. Maddy was completely magnetic to him, in the sense that it felt like a Herculean effort to keep his hands off of her. He loved touching her, whether it was sexual or not. She made his heart feel full in the best way. He buried his face in her hair, his hands sweeping down over her back, over her hips, before cupping and squeezing her ass and pulling her against him.
“Lie down.” She gave him a suggestive nudge. She went around to the foot of her bed and crawled onto the mattress to wait for him. Maddy always felt a certain confidence around sex; she’d realized young that her body type wasn’t what “society” considered ideal, and figured sex was one of those activities that only benefitted from waltzing into the situation like she owned it. It turned out confidence was hot. Tonight she felt it more than usual.
As he watched her move over to the bed, he was grinning. “Oh…I like when you tell me what to do,” Derek told her before following suit, climbing onto the mattress and turning over onto his back. There was definitely an anticipatory glint to the way he looked at her now.
Maddy smiled. “Really…?” She straddled his waist and tucked her hair behind her left ear. “Be careful. I could get used to that.” She sat tall above him. Her fingernails traced a winding pattern from his collarbone, over his nipples, and into his navel before taking hold of him. She guided him between her legs.
“Hold me here,” she said. Maddy put his hand back on her ass. She wiggled into the right position and let out a soft sound when she took him inside her. It was too much to process at once: relief, need, happiness. “Ohmygod… Derek.” She clutched his chest and squeezed as she started to move and found a good pace, at least for her, to bring all those nerve endings back to life.
Derek watched Maddy with rapt attention as she climbed on top of him. He let her steer his hand, and when she guided him inside, his breath caught in his throat. His free hand roamed aimlessly, up her thigh, over her hip, before settling on her breast. Hearing the way she said his name was such a turn-on, if it were possible to be any more turned on than he was at that moment. He lifted his hips automatically, his hands squeezing. There was something different that he couldn’t quite identify, not in a bad way but a certain ineffable shift. It was difficult to put too much thought into it, though, when she was riding him like that. He moved his fingers down between her legs where they began to rub slow but firm circles against her.
Still gliding against him, Maddy curved her back when he stroked her, then fell forward and placed a thumb over Derek’s mouth. She pushed it inside his lips until she felt the edge of his teeth. After a while she began to move faster. Her palm moved to brace against the mattress. Maddy couldn’t get enough of him and there seemed to be no limit to her endurance except for the race towards an orgasm, which couldn’t be far off. Faintly she registered the sound of her bed frame moving with them, and her sharp, quick breathing. She could feel her pleasure plateauing but it didn’t break, which was amazing but also indescribably frustrating. “Roll over,” she begged. She kissed him and flipped onto her back, waiting.
He let his hands fall to his sides and took a breath before sitting up, mostly because he could, because the novelty hadn’t entirely worn off yet. Derek turned over and hovered between her legs, leaning down to kiss her zealously as one hand snaked between them. He moaned against Maddy’s mouth as he entered her again. Derek pulled away from the kiss and adjusted to get better leverage, settling into a rhythm as he grabbed her hands and pushed them up against the bed, on either side of her head.
Maddy's lips parted and her head tipped back, but no sound came out. It was impossible to describe how hot that simple maneuver felt. She searched the ceiling, but she couldn’t really see it, so she closed her eyes and concentrated on the way she felt: flushed, heart pounding, lovesick in a way that made her feel woozy, with waves of sweet heat coming from Derek’s body as he moved in and out of her. Maddy squeezed his fingers. Her bare feet dug into the mattress as she shifted the angle of her pelvis. “There,” she whispered. The blonde raised her nose to Derek’s chin. “Don’t change anything…Just…” Her body tensed and she held still. When she finally shivered, Maddy tugged her hands out of Derek’s grip and grabbed his ass to pull him as close as possible.
Pressed up close against her, his mouth found the side of her neck, kissing at first, then grazing his teeth over her skin. As a vampire, the thought of biting Maddy had never entered his head, but he had always been aware of her pulse pounding away there. Now there was nothing, just softness and warmth which was heightened by his breath against the curve between her jaw and collarbone. So if Derek lingered there for longer than he usually would have, it was as a visitor in a foreign land. His fingers curled into the sheets as he felt her tense around him, his hips rocking against her slowing in pace as he came. For a few moments, he remained like that, still and catching his breath before rolling over and falling into place next to her. “We’ll definitely have to do that a few more times,” he told her, grinning lazily. “You know, for science.”
** End Adult Content **
Too spent to move at first, Maddy was soon motivated by the lack of body heat. Derek had been a warm blanket. She rolled up to his side and claimed her space. Her chin rested on his pectoral muscle. “For science,” she repeated. “Of course. Because no one’s ever studied sex between a human man and woman before.” Maddy kept a fleece blanket at the foot of her bed. She grabbed the edge of it with her toes and dragged it higher until she could reach and pull the soft material over them. “It’s definitely not because we like sex! Or have feelings.” Her fingers made a creepy-crawly creature up over her boyfriend’s body.
He happily draped an arm over her and tilted his chin to give the top of Maddy’s head a kiss. Her fingers tickled, and he squirmed a little as they crept over his skin, leaving a trail of goosebumps in their wake. “Well, I want to remember how it felt, you know, when I’m a vampire again,” Derek explained. “Not that I think I’ll forget. I’ve decided to take your advice and treat it like a vacation.” He stroked her upper arm lightly with his hand. “But just so we’re clear, I’m not afraid to admit I have feelings for you.” His smile grew as he pulled her closer. “I have a lot of them, and they’re all good.”
“I know.” Maddy smiled. “Me, too. I’ll tell you about them sometime when we’re not distracted by your pulse. Oh, but hey, do I need to one-up the breakdancing crew? I can learn the ukulele and put on a prairie dress, and just like, belt out a song at your favorite coffeehouse if that’s what you’re into. What are you definitely not into?” She kissed his chest and looked up at him with mischief in her eyes. “I’m only asking so I won’tdo it…”
Derek grinned, lifting his head up slightly so he could meet Maddy’s eye. “That’s very ‘manic pixie dream girl’,” he told her, running his fingers along her arm, tracing a lazy, aimless pattern over her skin. “It’s a tightrope walk. First you’re serenading me with the world’s most adorkable instrument, and next thing you know you’re zipping around town on like…a Razor scooter decorated with those plastic pinwheel things,” he joked.
What was he not into? Derek had to think about that one. “Umm…I’m not crazy about mimes. I don’t like those overly specific t-shirts that they try to sell you on Facebook, although I suppose I should respect their hustle. Oh, and when adults use baby-talk on each other. It creeps me out. What about you?” He smiled. “What should I avoid?”
She laughed. “Oh that’s definitely gross. Um.” Maddy rubbed her lips together and considered her biggest turn-offs. “Turtlenecks. Mock turtlenecks. Gold chains in combination with turtlenecks. Jorts. Leather sandals. Slides. Asking waiters questions about straight-forward menu items. Greeting cards with too many words. Doing that dance where couples press their cheeks together, join two of their hands, and take up way too much floor space. Kenny G.”
“Got it. Delete the Kenny G makeout playlist,” Derek nodded. He was currently picturing a person wearing a turtleneck and gold chains paired with jorts and Birkenstocks, and had to repress a full-body shudder at the vivid mental image. Sometimes his mind really went to dark places. “But honestly, I’m not really worried about you doing anything that I’m not into,” he told her. “I enjoy all of what you’re working with.” Derek gestured vaguely at her form with his free hand.
“Yeah, well. Me, too, whether you’re drinking Coke or the red stuff. By the way, I’m really into it when you talk dirty.” Maddy leaned up and kissed him sweetly on the mouth. “Okay. Do you need to rest? ‘Cause I feel like I could run a marathon. Also I’m starving, and I should call my landlord about the doorknob. Maybe he can look at the fridge handle while he’s here. I broke that, too. I just stuck it back on with some Krazy Glue.”
The blonde sat up and scooted carefully to the end of the mattress. She snatched an oversized t-shirt from her dressing table and pulled it on as she trotted down the hallway.
“Wait, I’m starving, too.” Derek stood up from the bed, remembering that his clothes were currently sitting in a pile in Maddy’s living room. He dashed from the bedroom to the other room, opting to throw on his boxers and t-shirt for now. “I want to eat, like, everything,” he proclaimed once he was partially dressed. He eyed the broken doorknob, took in the information about the fridge handle and her sudden burst of energy. Derek knelt down and searched his pockets for his phone and opened up his text messages. He scanned through the ones that had popped up since he had last checked them, but couldn’t find anything that would explain what was going on with Maddy.
“You’re not feeling a particular hankering for blood, are you?” Derek asked. “Or…maybe an urge to go out into the night and battle the forces of evil?” Okay, so he wasn’t entirely sure what went through a hunter’s head, but they were the first two things that came to mind when he thought about unnaturally increased strength.
She had stopped to grab her underwear and quickly shimmy them up her legs. Then she went to the kitchen. “Pass and pass.” Maddy pulled a stack of menus out of a drawer and spun them to Derek. She also passed a few bags of potato chips his way. “Besides, don’t you have to know the way of the fist for that? Or at least how to use weapons? The only thing I know how to do is pull hair. Watch, I’m helpless.” She grabbed a butter knife out of the dish rack and flung it at a paper-littered corkboard under the kitchen clock.
The tip of the knife was more dimpled than actually serrated, but it cut through the cork anyway and got stuck in the drywall. Maddy’s eyes widened.
Derek accepted the assortment of menus and began looking through them, half of his mind racing through the options available — everything sounded good — and the other half on Maddy. He set them down and popped open a bag of Lay’s as she grabbed the butter knife, and his hand paused in potato chip transit midway to his mouth when it hit the corkboard and lodged into the wall with a metallic twang. “Absolutely helpless,” he agreed with a nod before eating the chips. He wandered over to the wall and tried to jimmy the knife out. A few flakes of plaster came loose but it was pretty firmly entrenched. He turned to look at her pointedly.
Maddy held the corkboard in place and jerked the knife free. She examined the tip, as if it might be a trick knife. “Damn. I bet somewhere in Vegas, a hunter’s teleporting into a really compromising situation.” She dropped the knife in the sink and stole a potato chip bag. “It’s a good thing you’re not a vampire. We’d probably give each other the creeps.”
Another thought occurred to her. It would be bad – like, really bad – if anyone attacked Las Vegas at the moment. All the so-called ‘good guys’ were completely discombobulated. Well, there was no need to sour the mood with that observation, so she held up a menu for Derek and smiled.
“Let’s order Thai!”