“My hips have their own agenda, so I can’t make any promises—my hips don’t lie.”
“Alright, Jae. God…” He laughs, leading me to step to my right with him. I match his movement, keeping up with the slow beat as he leads me to the left now.
I have rhythm. I’m no Fred Astaire, but I can keep up with a beat. I’m following him well—side-together-side tap to the right again, then the same steps to the left. He leads me back to the right now, but then lifts my arm to guide me into a turn as we shift back to the left. I wasn’t expecting that, so my footing gets a little clumsy. The person on the sofa watching us on their TV could have done it better.
“You should have warned me!” I smile up at him when we’re doing the basic step again.
“You were doing so well, I thought I’d challenge you.”
When he does the move a second time, I’m expecting it, so I nail it. He grins, impressed.
“Very good. But you’re stepping too high—almost on your toes. Ground yourself more into the floor with the balls of your feet. That’s where your hip movement should stem from. The pressure of your feet on the ground—like this.” He shifts his hands down so that his palms are resting on my hips. For a moment, I don’t know what to do with my hands. I can’t remember watching a video like this.
“Shoulders,” he says simply. I lift my arms and relax my palms against his square shoulders. “Watch,” he instructs. I look down at the languid, easy sway of his hips, how he alternates their movement based on the pressure he’s applying to each foot. I watch a few rounds, and it looks like hip-hip-hip tap instead of side-together-side tap.
Soon, he’s guiding my hips with his palms to do the same and I mimic him. I try to use the pressure from the balls of my feet like he’s told me to. Thank God this is a slow song. This is more complicated than I thought.
When the melody fades, he brings me close by sliding his hands around to the small of my back. I slip my arms around his neck, and now our bodies are pressed together. He’s still gently rocking his hips to the quiet rhythm. The warmth of him against me is setting off a fire in my belly and chest. It doesn’t get any better when he moves one hand down to cup the center of my arse.
Twenty-Eight
Jae
Junichi leans his face down and I lift my nose into him, nestling and breathing him in.
“You did much better than I thought,” he says. Gosh. I want to do this again, but naked next time. Dancing bachata naked isn’t considered sex, is it? How far can we go before it’s sex? I need some firm guidelines.
“I told you,” I whisper, brushing my lips against his. My mind is getting fuzzy and my body overheated. He kisses me, and I moan because he feels so good and solid. He always does.
Junichi pulls up from the feathery kiss, slowly lifts his palm to his mouth and bites himself. I smile, self-deprecating. “Am I looking peaked?” He’s told me to ask him when I want to feed, but I haven’t really gotten accustomed to voicing it. Also, I don’t know when I need to. It’s a different feeling from my typical human hunger.
To start, there’s a dry tickle in the back of my throat, and it just gets worse and worse—which is why I mistook it for the flu. I can ignore it, but I don’t know how long I should ignore it. How long is too long before I end up immobile, scabby and in the fetal position? I feel like I should test this out in a safe environment to understand my new limits.
He pulls his fanged mouth from his palm. “You’re a little gray,” he says, distracted. “You don’t feel the urge to feed yet? Like you innately want something?”
I take hold of his palm and bring it closer to my mouth. Once the blood is available, I’m not so shy about lapping it up anymore. “Well, I always want you. Now just much more so.”
After licking the pooled blood in his palm, I bring the edge of his hand to my mouth and suck. I close my eyes. He tastes wonderful and soothes the dry ache in my throat.
Doing this… It’s starting to feel a little less mental and a little more wildly intimate. Forbidden. Like he’s giving me this very private thing from his body that he wouldn’t normally share.
Junichi sighs heavily over my head, the warmth of it gently fluttering my hair. “You’re a brilliant doctor with sincere motive and ideas, you’re funny as hell, gorgeous, you can cook your ass off and now you’re dancing bachata with me… Where did you come from? What am I supposed to do with you?”
I can feel the holes closing up against his flesh. Sad. I give his skin a quick lick to make sure it’s clean. I’m examining it when I say, “I can think of loads of things you can do with me, actually.” When he lists it out like that, I sound quite impressive, don’t I?
Playfully, I lift my gaze and blink, but his face is serious, so I frown. “What’s wrong?”
“You make me nervous, Jae.”
“Why? You keep saying that. What am I doing exactly—”
“You know I don’t do this with ranked vampires. I’ve told you this.”
He has. Multiple times, in very frustrated rants usually having to do with his purebred source—among others. “I’m not a proper vampire yet, Jun. See, no fangs.” I awkwardly open my mouth to try and lighten the suddenly dour mood. It doesn’t work.
“But you will be,” he says. “Any day now. And I’m feeding you. I’ve already fed from you, and if we make love and you’ve turned, we could bond. Do you understand how serious this is?”
I shake my head. “Not exactly. Is that all it takes to bond? There’s so much mystery surrounding vampire bonds. Humans don’t know exactly what it requires.”
He takes my hand and leads me over to his sunflower-colored sofa. We both sit down. “The short answer is yes,” Junichi says. “Mutual feeding and sex are the basic components for creating a vampiric bond. But there are other, more complex factors that dictate how quickly it happens or the quality of the bond—how strong it will be.”
“Such as?” I ask. “What are these factors?”
“The biggest thing we’ve recently learned is compatibility. Haruka’s family has a research manual about vampiric bonds called Lore and Lust. It highlights all the factors associated with vampire intimacy and bonding.”
Christ. An entire research journal on vampire bonds. I wonder if he’ll let me read it when I start visiting him this coming Sunday…
“If a ranked vampire couple is highly compatible, they bond faster,” Junichi continues. “Haruka says he’s learned that the best-quality bonds form within one to three tries. But it’s rare. It normally takes vampires somewhere between five and ten tries before a bond forms, and we now know that those bonds are weak. Forced. They’re low-quality bonds.”
I sit for a few moments in silence, letting the abundance of information knock around in my brain. “Alright… how does a couple know how compatible they are?”
Junichi exhales a heavy sigh and sits back against the couch. “Talk to Haruka about it when you visit him. He says it’s something you feel—a certain pull. He thinks trust is a major factor.”
I nod. I will definitely ask him, but now I want examples. “So, how long did it take Haruka and Nino to bond?”
“First try.”
“And that’s rare?”
“Insanely.”
“So in a sense, they’re perfectly compatible?” I ask.
“Yes. ‘Choosing a mate is not absolute.’ That’s what we’ve always said in our culture—that there is no singular vampire who is ‘perfect’ for you. But this new information tells us that there are vampires so well suited for your nature, and yours for theirs, that the bond instantly and easily clicks.”
“First try…” I mumble, considering. I think about Haruka and Nino and how obviously balanced they are. How soft and considerate they are with each other. How the loving warmth between them feels like the glow of the sun. It touches me and makes me smile just being in their presence.
I think back to what Haruka told me the first time we had tea together. That everything between him and Nino felt natural. That they communicated and openly accepted the pull they felt in their instincts. The magnetism. I’m sure that’s a huge part of it. They didn’t fight it. They didn’t let their baggage, hang-ups and assumptions get in the way. They fully trusted each other.
I look over at Jun, deciding to get back to the fundamentals. “What does it mean to bond, Jun?”
“It means you’re beholden,” he says. “You’re chained to a singular vampire forever. Breaking the chain has dire consequences. You can only feed and have intimacy with that particular vampire for the rest of your life, and your bloodline is shared. Deeply entwined and dependent.”
The fact that his definition is laced with pessimism isn’t lost on me. It was not an unbiased explanation. I want to ask Haruka the same question on Sunday. Maybe Sora next time I’m at work, too. Just to get as many takes on it as possible before I develop my own perspective.
Already, though, if I take what he’s said and remove the bias, it sounds quite nice. Feed from and make love to a person you’re perfectly compatible with forever? Yes, please. Absolutely.
What I wouldn’t give to have that. To never go on a first date again, or deal with the awkward learning curve of a new sex partner (only to reach the end of the curve and find that you aren’t even compatible—the sex is just dreadful). To always have someone to share moments, laughs and experiences with. To never be discarded, or paranoid about being abandoned or alone again.
