*Selene*
I continue to think about him.
Julian Cross. The boy who gazed at me. Who touched me. Who didn't flinch or run when the darkness within me overflowed.
It's been days since I've seen him. I've talked myself a thousand times over that it was nothing—some human who happened to look at me too long, an accident in a city that survives on the weird. I've made worse mistakes. But none of them ever felt like this.
That night, I stayed awake too long, in the dark, in bed, hearing the city hum. There is a type of silence that descends on me when I am awake—a type of something that clings to me like a second skin, as cold and restrictive as the walls I have built over the years.
The hunger doesn't fade. It never does. But it feels… different now. Sharper, more desperate, like it's been coaxed awake. I've ignored it for years, fed it only enough to stay quiet. But now?
It wants more.
I don't know what's worse, the hunger itself, or the need to find him again and again. It's not his blood—it's something else. Something more. The connection between us is old, like a thread through the ages, pulling at me until I can't breathe.
I force my feet to move the following night, trudging through my regular shift at **Velvet Veins**, as if nothing's amiss. As if I haven't been feeling like I'm walking on thin ice. As if I haven't been dwelling on his words for the last two days.
"You're cold."
It's a simple comment, but it torments me like a curse.
This evening's clientele is thicker than normal, full of the normal cross-section of drifters, vampires, and the occasional lost human. The jazz hangs in the air like a lazy mist, the distant thump of bass guitars and muted trumpet accompaniments between me and the world outside. I lean back, pouring drinks, keeping my expression neutral. It's easy. It's safe.
And then, I hear it.
A voice I all too well know that tightens my chest.
Julian.
I don't turn right away. I remind myself I won't. That I've learned my lesson. That it's best for both of us if I just pretend he doesn't exist.
But I can't resist.
I look.
He's standing at the far end of the bar, leaning back against the counter, his hands jammed deep in the pockets of his jacket. The way he's looking at me. it's changed. There's intensity now. A quiet understanding in his eyes, like he can look past the surface. His lips press up into a smile when he sees me looking at him, but it's not teasing. It's not flirtatious.
It's something else. Something I don't know how to tell you.
The hunger reasserts itself with a vengeance.
I gulp, but I don't look away.
Neither of us breathes for a long time. We're stopped in time. Then he makes his way toward me, moving slow and deliberate, navigating the crowd with that same confident finesse. His eyes never wavering from mine, and even though his regard presses heavy upon me, I am unable to tear my own away.
"Selene," he adds as he lands at the bar, his personal low point, just for me.
I blink, trying to catch up. "What do you mean by here?"
He smiles again. It's small. A teensy bit crooked. "You think I'd let you slip away that easily?"
I don't know what to say to that. His words dangle in front of me, an implicit promise.
I push my eyes away from him, getting myself a glass and filling it with whiskey. The booze burns in my throat, but it doesn't warm me. Nothing ever does. "I don't know what you want, Julian. But you have to leave."
His smile fails, but not by much. "You're still trying to push me away.".
"Because I have to," I snap, biting harder than I mean to. The words are out before I can bite them back, and I can feel the heat rising in my cheeks. "You don't know what you're getting yourself into. This isn't a game. You shouldn't be here."
He doesn't blink. Doesn't step back.
"I know precisely what I'm doing," he says quietly. "And I don't care."
His words weigh on my chest. A good kind of heavy. A dangerous kind of heavy.
I don't trust myself with him. No longer. Not when I am dancing on the edge of something that can destroy everything I have fought so hard to build. My walls. My distance. My control.
It's all falling away.
"I'm not one of them," he goes on, his voice so soft.
"What do you mean?" I ask, my heart racing. I know what he's saying, but I need him to say it. I need to hear it.
"I'm not like the others," he repeats, his eyes firm and steady. "I don't want anything from you. I just. I want to know you."
I laugh, although it isn't humorous. "You don't know me, Julian. You don't know anything about me."
But even as I speak, I realize it's a falsehood. He sees me. He sees what I go so far to keep hidden. The vampire side of me that isn't merely a vampire. The side of me that wants to be something greater than that. The side of me that wants *him*.
"Then instruct me," he breathes.
I move away, my breathing slightly faster than before. Hunger beats against my skin, more difficult to resist. "You have to leave."
But he doesn't. He moves in closer, close enough to make my heart beat faster. I can smell him now, the rain and something earthy, something untamed. The warmth of his skin still lingering in the air between us, and I want to touch it. To lay my chilled hands against his skin and feel warm there.
"You're afraid of me," he tells me, as if it's the most obvious thing in the world.
I shake my head, my hands shaking as I set the glass down. "I'm not afraid of you. I'm afraid of myself. Of what I do when I get too close."
He doesn't say anything for a very long time. Long enough for me to think he's finally going to leave.
But then he says something that shatters me.
"You're cold," he whispers quietly, his voice hardly more than a whisper. "But I can feel you."
I glance up at him once more. His eyes are full of something more sinister now. Something darker.
"You don't know what you're doing," I whisper, my voice trembling.
But Julian will not listen. He stretches out slowly, his fingers tracing the top of my hand, just lightly enough so I do not have time to move back.
His hands are warm. Alive. And for a fleeting instant, I permit myself to believe that I can possibly ever feel like this again.
But I can't.
I jump back sharply, my heart racing. "You have to go," I repeat, my voice breaking as the fullness of all that lies between us crushes me.
But Julian doesn't go. He doesn't shift an inch.
"You can't push me away forever," he says quietly, watching me like I'm the most fragile thing in the world.
I don't know if that's a promise or a threat. But it doesn't matter. Not anymore. I've already lost.