D. Reynolds - Aden

She laughed nervously, feeling silly for reacting, but Aden only smiled. He pulled the covers out from underneath them, until they were both lying on the clean sheets of the bed, and then he settled back against the pillows and closed his eyes.

Between one breath and the next, she knew he was . . . gone. Not dead. Just no longer there.

Sid watched him for a long time. He was still breathing, although not as deeply, nor as often. She put her ear to his chest and heard his heart beating very slowly, but with a steady, strong rhythm.

Somewhere out there, the sun was shining, trapping their enemies in their holes. But she and Aden and the others were here. And they were safe, for one more day.

She believed that. She really did.

SID KICKED BACK on the leather couch in front of the TV, laptop in front of her, a bottle of cold water and an energy bar close at hand. One thing Aden hadn’t thought of, when telling her she should stay here for the day, was the food selection in the office. Human food, that was.

There was plenty of booze to be had. Apparently vampires drank like fish. Who knew?

There was also an entire shelf of bottled water in the big refrigerator which took up most of the floor space in the office’s tiny kitchen. The rest of the shelves were stacked with bags of blood, the kind you’d find in a blood bank. Sid wondered what their supply chain was. Dresner had told her that people volunteered at the nightclub-like blood houses, partying with vamps and letting them drink from the vein. But where’d the rest of this come from? She pictured a special room in every vampire-owned nightclub, with a staff of trained phlebotomists always ready, just waiting for donations. Cookies and orange juice available.

Sid chuckled. It was kind of funny, but also probably not far from the truth. Come to think of it, she wouldn’t have minded some of those cookies and orange juice right about now. She’d found a lone bag of stale chips that must have been left behind by someone months ago.

Thank God for her backpack and its supply of energy bars, but by the time sunset rolled around, she’d be making a beeline to the nearest restaurant and some real food.

In the meantime, she was making do. She’d showered and changed, feeling every strained muscle, every bit of deliciously tender flesh. There was a unique soreness to a woman’s body after sex, muscles used, secret places rubbed and invaded. Sid wasn’t an innocent; she had prior experience of that soreness. But never like this. Sex with Aden was like nothing she’d ever known before, nothing she’d ever thought existed. And she could hardly wait to do it all over again.

She smiled to herself, wishing she could be there when Aden woke, imagining his eyes opening, his broad chest expanding as his lungs drew their first deep breath of the night. And then he’d roll over and wrap her in his big arms, tucking her beneath his body, one thigh slipping between hers, the weight of his cock against her thigh…

She sucked in a deep breath of her own. She felt herself growing wet, her pussy aching as she remembered the feel of Aden’s thick shaft sliding in and out.

“Jesus, Sid, get a grip,” she muttered and forced her attention back to her computer screen and the article she was writing about hidden slavery in America. That was a splash of cold water on any arousal she’d been feeling. This was the reason she was here. Meeting Aden had been an amazing bit of luck all around, but her purpose in getting inside the world of vampires had been to expose their illicit business practices.

Had been being the operative words there. She’d had every intention of rousing the peasants with their torches and pitchforks, of dragging Klemens into the light and letting him burn. But now it was Aden she’d be exposing, and that wasn’t going to happen. Whatever sins he might be guilty of, selling women into slavery definitely wasn’t one of them. He’d been ruthless the other night in killing every one of the slavers, but when it came to the slaves themselves, he’d shown tremendous care. Knowing his background, it made sense to her, but not everyone would have come out of his horrific experience with compassion for others. Studies had shown over and over again that some of the worst abusers had been abused themselves. It spoke to Aden’s strength of character that he chose to protect the weak instead.

But Sid’s story still needed to be told. Americans needed to know what was going on under their noses. Maybe she could play down the vampire angle. The fact that the slave ring had been controlled by vampires wasn’t that important in the overall scheme of things. There had been plenty of humans down the food chain, too.

Her cell phone rang, and she glanced over. It was her oldest brother again. He’d been calling ever since the weekend, wanting to know what was up with her, why she’d left not just the party but the whole town so suddenly. She wondered what he’d say if she told him the truth, that she was shacked up with a vampire, and not just any vampire, but the next Lord of the Midwest. He’d probably send the men with their white jackets after her.

Sid touched the side of her neck. It was tender, but the wounds were almost gone. If she hadn’t been so pale, there’d probably be nothing left to see, no evidence of a vampire’s bite at all.

Her phone was still ringing. Two more rings, and it would go to voice mail. She should really answer this time. If her brother Jamie didn’t hear her voice soon, he’d get someone to knock on her condo door. And when no one answered the door, he’d get the super involved. Jamie took his responsibilities as the oldest child very seriously. Particularly when it came to his baby sister.

She exhaled a long-suffering sigh and took the call.

“Hey, Jamie.”

“About damn time,” he shouted. “You disappear from the party and then don’t even bother to answer the phone?”

“I’m sorry. Didn’t you get my e-mail?”

“Seriously, Sid? I’ve been calling for two days.”

“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “You know how I get when I’m finishing a story.”

He grunted wordlessly, but said, “So the slave story’s almost done?”

“Almost,” she agreed.

“You’ll be coming back home then?”

That had been Sid’s plan all along. Her move to Chicago was supposed to be temporary. A few months to write a story about drugs and violence, then back home to the suburbs. But the drug story had become a slavery story, and then Janey had died, and the slavery story had become a crusade to shut the whole ugly thing down. And now it was almost two years since she’d left her parents’ safe and cozy suburb for the wilds of the big city.

If Jamie had asked her that same question two weeks ago, she’d have told him, yes ¸ that she was leaving Chicago and coming home soon. Her condo lease was up in a month, and she’d have been more than ready to get out of the big city and back to the quiet comfort of her parents’ suburb. There’d been nothing keeping her here.

But now that she’d met Aden, the idea of leaving Chicago made her chest hurt, because it meant leaving him . And she didn’t know if she could do that.

“I don’t know,” she answered Jamie’s question honestly.

“Mom misses you, you know. So does Dad, but Mom especially.”

“I know, and I’m sorry. But . . . I haven’t decided yet.”

“Hmm. I hear Will’s getting married,” he ventured carefully, as if testing the waters.

“That’s not the reason I’m staying in Chicago, Jamie,” she told him patiently. “Will and I haven’t been a couple for a long time.”

“Just thought I’d check. I’d hate to break the guy’s bones, but you know I would if he hurt you.”