"So that's it? You're making the decision for me?" I turned to face him.

"I have to, Ara. I've been watching, waiting, scanning your thoughts to find some hint of promise for us. But you don't, anywhere in your thoughts, want to be a vampire. And yet, you keep making me wait for your answer. And stupidly, I keep waiting."

I had nothing to say. He was right. Life was just too important. I'd seen it in action; the beauty, the magic it had to offer. And I feared, if I gave that up for immortality, I'd never forgive myself, or worse, never forgive David. "Just give me two weeks more. For forever, please? Just let me have the last two weeks."

"Two more weeks?" He stepped back. "While you spend those days with another man-one you happen to love?"

My head hung in shame. "Please don't hate me for loving him, David. I loved him for such a long time before I ever even knew you existed."

"I do know that." He exhaled, stepping into me. "I just...I suspected it. I'm actually angrier at myself, Ara-for not listening to my own gut-again."

"What would you have done if you'd asked me and I'd told you I loved him?" I rolled my face up to look at him. "Would you have left?"

"That's the stupid thing about all of this." He sighed, casting his gaze to the heavens.

"What's stupid?"

"That, even if you had admitted your feelings for Mike-" he touched my cheek and smiled, "-there's no way I'd have left you."

"Then don't leave yet." Hope filled me. "Give me the nights-for two more weeks. Please?"

"You don't even need to ask. You know I will. How can I not savour those last few nights?"

I melted against him again. "Thank you, David."

After a moment, he turned my face so my blue eyes met his shimmering green windows. "I just need to hear you say it, though-from your own lips."

"You mean...that I'm not coming with you?"

He nodded.

"I haven't made my mind up yet."

"Please stop playing these games, Ara-Rose. Tell me the truth."

"That is the truth, David. My mind makes up its mi-well, my mind makes decisions all the time, doesn't mean I agree with them."

"Stop it." He drew back a little further. "Ara, just say it. Just tell me you're not coming with me."

"No. Because that's not what I've decided on." I folded my arms.

David turned away from me, extending his arm to grasp a tree branch. "You will eventually have to say it, Ara. Either way, a decision has to be made. Wholeheartedly or not."

"Okay, then...ask me on the last day of our two weeks-that way I can be sure you'll stick around."

"The night of the Masquerade?"

"Yeah. It's perfect." I carefully touched his elbow until he turned his face to me. "You can ask me on the last dance."

"The last dance?" He dropped his hand from the branch, his brow staying up in an arch of mockery. "On the last stroke of midnight?"

I nodded, smiling. "Perfectly corny."

He grabbed me gently by the arm and pulled until my chest fell against his. "I'm sorry I yelled at you."

"That wasn't really yelling, David."

"No matter. I shouldn't speak to you that way, despite how I feel."

"I yell at you all the time."

He laughed. "But you're harmless. When you yell, it's merely amusing."

"Thanks. Glad to know you take me so seriously."

"Only as serious as you take me."

"Hey." I slapped his chest softly.

He laughed. "So, I guess that means you don't take me very seriously."

"Not really." I smirked, then remembered the gift I had in my pocket.

"Gift?"

"Stay out of my head, vampire!"

"Make me."

I ignored that and reached into my pocket, keeping my hand there, unsure if I should do this. "It's a little corny, but-"

"I like corny."

"I know." I smiled warmly. "I figured the old guy in you might like it."

David's lips quirked up on one side, his eyes lighting with curiosity. "You're getting good at keeping your mind clear when you want to hide something from me."

"I know." I grinned and pulled out a small white square of cloth. "You know in movies, how the fair maiden would sometimes give her knight a handkerchief?"

"Well-" David swept the beads of water through his hair, "-it wasn't a custom that started in movies, but, yes?"

"Um...well, since you have this strong set of beliefs about staying with me at night, I figured you could at least take a part of me home with you." I pressed the cloth into David's palm. "It has my scent on it."

He sniffed it. "So that's why you were sleeping with this under your pillow the last few nights?"

"Yeah. You saw that?"

"Yes. I thought you might have had a cold or were...crying."

I pouted, reaching back into my pocket. "No, I've actually had this diabolical plan going all week."

"Plan?"

"I...it isn't just my scent I want you to have."

"Okay?" His brows pinched with confusion; my shoulders lifted as I clamped my index finger onto the pin in my pocket, then drew my hand out. "Ara!"

"This is my perfume," I said quickly, before he could get mad, then dropped a dollop of blood onto the hanky. David's fingers tightened around mine for a moment. "It's the best way I could think of to give you a part of myself."

"You silly, sweet girl." He shook his head, then kissed mine. "Thank you."

Ouch. "I must've pricked it pretty deep." I squeezed the base of my finger. "It's still bleeding."

"Don't squeeze it-you'll make it worse." He pocketed the hanky and took my hand, pausing for only a moment of hesitation, then slid my fingertip into his mouth, closing his lips tightly around it. His smooth, tepid tongue pushed my nail up to the roof of his mouth, sliding slowly down the length of my finger; he closed his eyes, his shoulders lifting with each calm breath. I wasn't afraid. I wasn't worried he might lose control. There was no urgency to his touch; just a deep longing that I could feel emanating from his skin, coming off him in waves.

He opened his eyes as he slid my finger past his lips, dropping a gentle kiss there. "Ara, you taste amazing-like a creamy dessert wine. Sweet and yet so powerfully intoxicating." His eyes changed colour around his words, just like they did in the storage closet at school; the green became darker, encircling the growing pupil, almost entirely consuming the whites of his eyes. "I can't keep doing this."

I stared up at him, blinking each time his warm breath touched my lashes. "Doing what?"

"Telling myself not to touch you, not to...to want you-to drink from you."

"Oh God, David, don't you know how badly I want that, too?"

"Yes. And that's what makes it so much harder for me to refuse you."

My eyelids fluttered involuntarily. "I don't want you to refuse me."

He tried an accusatory glare, but the look washed away quickly as he ran his tongue over his lips one last time and the history of my blood clearly fell against it. "Fine."

"Fine what?"

The vampire surfaced within his eyes; he cupped the side of my neck, his body inches from mine, his breath suddenly weighted, fast. "I'm going to drink from you. But not with your clothes on."

I looked down at my jeans, then back up at the vampire. "Huh?"

"Vampires like skin; we need skin. If we do this with clothes on-" he looked away for a second, "-when I get carried away, I might rip them off you. I don't wish to explain to your father why I'm bringing you home naked."

"Oh." I laughed, but a sudden sinking feeling shot through my arms, like a hot blast of toxic, adrenaline-inducing drugs.

"It's okay." He placed a steadying hand over my heart. "I won't do anything to hurt you. You have my word."

"I know. It's just-" I disentangled my fingers from their ball-grip. "It's just that no one's ever seen me...naked before."

"Are you uncomfortable?"

I nodded.

"Why?"

"I'm...I'm afraid...that you might be...disappointed."

I tensed, waiting for him to laugh, but he only slid the backs of his fingertips along my cheekbone and stared deeply into my eyes, reaching down to take my wrist with his other hand. "What if I were to undress, and suddenly you decided I was not as...hot as you thought?"

"What?" I smiled. "Impossible. You're totally hot, and besides, as if I'd care. I love you."

He smiled down at me. "Precisely."

"Point taken." I frowned at myself. "Naked then?"

"Yes." He released my wrist and fingered the base of my tank top. "Naked."

My shoulders rounded, hunching slightly as he lifted it, revealing the strip of white skin above my jeans, then my belly button and my ribs. I stiffened all over, realising I hadn't planned my undergarments to suit this kind of...misbehaviour.

"Don't worry," he said with a laugh. "You won't be wearing them for much longer anyway."

And so many pictures of all the things we would do ran through my mind; I knew David could see each and every one of them.

I lifted my arms above my head, and a breath of a smile swept across my lips as David dropped my top to the wet grass and stepped back, shaking his head.

"Ara, my love." That look warmed his entire face. "You are incredibly perfect."

I quickly covered my purple and pink candy-striped bra. "Even in a bra from the same boutique as Bozo the Clown?"

David's burst of laughter caught me off guard, making me smile. He reached out, took each of my hands, and pulled them away from my ribs. "This-" he nodded to my bra, "-is just another thing that makes you so damn sweet and cute. You're seventeen. I didn't expect black lace."

"But, I look like a flamboyant zebra."

"You look beautiful."

"Well, I feel naked."

"Well, you're not-yet." His eyes slowly drifted to my jeans. "May I?"

"Mm-hm." I nodded, holding my breath.

In one yank of my button-fly jeans, the denim parted, revealing my pink underwear. I drove my thumbs into the waist and shimmied them down my hips, feeling the air cool my skin where the rain made it soggy under my jeans. David watched, his eyes falling past my underwear to the apex of my thighs, down my skinny white legs and to my knees, his lips splitting into a grin when I carelessly stumbled and tripped, kicking my ankles free with about as much finesse as a drunkard.

As I stood expectantly in front of him, more naked than I'd ever been with anyone, the whirling winds circled the clearing, sweeping my hips, my arms, my belly, touching all the places I knew David was dreaming about. And for the first time in my life, I felt beautiful before his eyes.

The patters of rain stopped completely then and the beads of water glistening in David's hair and over his lashes looked almost out of place. His golden skin showed through his white t-shirt, made almost see-through by the rain, hugging the curvy bulk of his chest and arms. He spread the collar and slipped it past his head, peeling it away, all sticky and soggy, from his skin, then dropped it to the grass beside my clothes. I smiled at the pile; he smiled, too.

The sun wandered in for a peek at this innocent step toward danger, making the water on David's skin sparkle. He looked as though he was starring in the wrong storybook.

"What's funny?" he asked.

"I like the sun on your skin."

He angled his arm outward and studied it, running a hand down the droplets, his eyes flashing to another thought for a second.