Vampire 01 - Daughter of Darkness

was to think that something that brought her somuch pleasure, made her feel so much like the woman she was meant to be, could at the same time destroy a significant part of her, steal away her most precious years, those years before she had to be sensible and responsible. Surely, a part of life was meant to be carefree. The laughter was different then. Even the air she breathed seemed different. Mornings and nights were certainly different. She felt immortal, capable of doing anything, going anywhere. All of that was at risk.
    And it wasn’t simply solved by taking a birth-control pill or having any other protection. They weren’t perfect, and besides, even with that, a girl was giving up what Ava had called “the mystery of you.” Even if it was cool and defiant to be intimate with any boy or man a girl was with, at the end of the day, she made something special into something ordinary. In her rush to be her own woman, she might have given away the one thing that made her so.
    I had spent many hours thinking about all of this and especially listening to other girls talk about it in school. Most thought I wasn’t paying any attention to them, that I didn’t care what they had to say, but I very much did. Where else would I learn about it? My older sister had a different agenda, a different goal and objective for sex, and although that was going to be mine as well, I was, after all, the daughter who asked too many questions, thought about too many things. Ava didn’t care one iota what other girls thought or felt about themselves and sex. She had made that clear to me many times. But I did. Was that another thing that made me different, dangerously different?
    All of this raced through my mind as Buddy’s kisses became more passionate, his breathing hotter and faster, and my own heart began pounding. I heard his tender expressions of love, his promises and admiration for me. The sound of his voice and all that he was saying did embellish the excitement raging inside me. Yes, I wanted him to touch me, to turn up the heat inside me, to drive me to the point when I would demand more and more from him, causing him to have that sweet and passionate desperation that made him whimper with desire.
    Sex, I discovered, could also fill you with agony, an agony that intensified until you surrendered to it. Although I wasn’t quite there, I could feel that he was. I could hear it in his now more desperate-sounding pleas for me to accept him, to be more compliant, more willing.
    He began to undress me.
    “You’re so beautiful,” he said. “So beautiful you bring tears of joy into my eyes.”
    When he began to undress himself, Ava’s furious warnings began to echo in my head:
You’ll be of no use to Daddy. He’ll hate you. You won’t be part of our family anymore.
    I couldn’t help but think of Daddy’s loving caresses, his soft kisses. Buddy thought my moans were moans of pleasure, but they were moans of fear and sorrow. And then, just as he was lowering his head to kiss my stomach and move down even lower, I looked past him and thought I saw Mrs. Fennel’s face in the living-room window. She was glaring at me with those fiery eyes. I screamed and pushed him away.
    “What’s wrong?” he asked as I rushed to dress.
    “I can’t do this, not now.”
    He looked devastated. “I didn’t mean… I couldn’t help myself, but I really love you, Lorelei. Thoughts of you have taken over my brain. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I hear other people talking, but I don’t hear their words or make any sense of them, or anything for that matter. It’s as if you’ve possessed me, only I’m not complaining. I love that I’m possessed by you.”
    “It’s all happening a little too fast,” I said. “Don’t be angry.”
    “Oh, I can’t ever be angry at you.”
    “Don’t say that so fast, either,” I told him. I continued to dress.
    “Are you upset with me? I just thought… I mean, since you agreed to meet here, that…”
    “No, it’s not your fault. I guess I’m just too nervous about what’s happened. I did want to be with you, Buddy. I do. Maybe I’ll be able to meet you again tomorrow,” I offered. “We’ll see.”
    “Isn’t there any way that I can get your father to feel better about your being with me, so I can take you out on a real date?”
    “Maybe later. Let me think about it,” I said, hoping that would satisfy him.
    He looked at his watch. “You still have a little time, don’t