Before you read this please keep in mind that this is my first installment and it does change from the 'teenage girl falls in love with a perfect vampire' I am not sure if I like this begening because it changes so much from here and StellaThomas will know what I am talking about! I really need this heavily edited and critiqued because I love this one and my little baby Nathan and want it to be the best it can be. This is my take on vampire not quite romance so thanks every one! So with out further ado Dark Ivory;
I opened the door as quietly as I could. My mom may as well have been dead when she was asleep, but my dad would be up if I had so much as dropped a playing card in front of his door. I managed to shut the old door with out is squeaking, a miracle.
We had moved in three days ago. We moved right in the middle of no where, Harpswell Maine. There were some pretty thick woods behind our house and it was amazing I had waited this long to sneak out. If I was moving into the middle of nowhere, I was gonna get to know it.
Fall had just rounded the corner in this neck of the woods, I had only seen a real fall once when I went to spend Thanksgiving with my grandmother in Maryland, and that was enough to convince me that I didn’t want to go back. Because of the cool weather my checked hoody was pulled tight around my thin frame.
I looked up, trees. Pine and oak, taller than any I had seen before. They actually were sort of beautiful, as much as I hated to admit it. I walked a little more leaves crunched under my black plaid DC shoes and branches slapped my ripped up black skinny leg jeans. A gust of crisp air blew past me and I shivered again, tugging my sweatshirt even tighter.
Another gust sent a few dry leaves into my much larger than normal ashy colored eyes and a few sticks yanked on my long insane auburn curls. Tugged them out slowly with my tiny hands, matching the rest of my just barely five feet body.
I walked farther in to the woods, intrigued at the lack of suburban houses that you may find in a new development in Florida. Just crimson and gold leaves and a few flowers still holding on though their stems and leaves were brittle and frost coated. The crack of twigs made me jump, I turned around and a small breeze whooshed past my face. But no one was behind me. Again came the sound of cracking twigs.
“I know you’re there, might as well just come out.” My voice was filled with more courage than I actually felt. I stood still, not moving. It was most likely just an animal and I was scaring it. Yes, that was the only sensible explanation. Who would be in the woods at one in the morning? I turned around again, scrunching up my nose, a habit of mine. My heart was hammering in my chest, and I allowed myself a little nervous giggle. Of course no one was out here. I repeated the phrase over and over in my mind. Then I saw him.
He was dead sexy. Well, no, you could not call some one that looked like him sexy. He was handsome. Eighteen hundreds handsome. His hair was nearly blue black and a blood and dirt were smeared through it. His skin the color of snow and his lips redder than I had ever seen in my life. I allowed my eyes to travel down his torn coat and pants slowly, looking as if they were slightly rotting and belonged back in the eighteenth century.
I sucked in my breath and took a step backwards as a growl ripped out from between his teeth. But his beauty and primitive nature enthralled me.
“Who are you?” I asked softly and quietly, like I was talking to a child not a man. A man for that fact, that looked at least ten years older than I.
All he did was whimper and back away on all fours, his fingers digging into the ground. I stepped closer to him, moving slowly, like how you move when you are approaching an animal. But that is what this man, this angelic man , seemed to be.
“I wont hurt you, heck, I don’t think I could if I wanted to.”
“You couldn’t.” came the quiet reply in a deep, rich voice.
“What?” I asked excited I had extracted a few words from his somber mouth. But he simply shivered and shuffled away again. He was backed against a tree now. Again I moved forward like the idiot girl in every horror movie. Now he stood up slowly his muscles coiled, ready to leap off into the night at any moment. I stepped up to him until I could feel his ragged breath on my face.
“You’re taller than I expected.” I murmured deciding that a quiet voice was the best approach. But he was tall. He must have been six feet at least, and every inch of him was pressing against the tree and he was holding his breath now.
“What are you, and what should I call you?” I asked this though I had a hunch. I wasn’t an idiot, I had read Dracula! The white skin, fangs. I wouldn’t have believed it if I wasn’t the one it was happening to.
“Nathan.” The word was like a song in itself but passed through his lips like a breath.
“I like that. I’m Christine.” I said staring at his eyes. They were amazingly blue, but not the piercing black or gold kind everyone talks about in books, a soft, cool color. It was then I realized, he was still holding his breath.
“You don’t have to be scared of me.” He seemed to relax a bit at my statement.
“Will you tell?” He asked his eyes and voice thick with worry. The way the question was phrased he sounded like a little boy that had done some thing he wasn’t allowed to do.
“No, I wont tell anyone.” Now his muscles un-coiled and he let out a long breath, like snow on my face.
He reached out and touched my cheek with his hand, letting his fingers trail along my cheekbone and explore my lips. The other hand ran through my thick crazy curls. Then the hand left my hair and laid over my heart.
“Amazing.” He breathed.
“I don’t know about that. .” I mumbled blushing and lowering my head. His other snowy-white hand cupped my chin and tilted it up and in the rush of the moment I stood up on my tiptoes and ran my fingers down his cheeks, then fingering a wisp of hair that I could have sword was silk. At first a smile began to twist at his mouth, then he pulled away, his eyes wide and body slipping back down on the ground.
“I’m sorry I shouldn’t have done that.” I gasped not wanting him to slip back into his shell so easily. Nathan shivered, his eyes wide and slightly misty.
“Not one for talking much are you?” I asked a smile pulling on the corners of my mouth. He shook his matted black hair and drew his legs up to his chest.
And so we sat, and I felt myself slowly falling asleep. The last words I heard Nathan whisper were:
“Beautiful.” And I fell asleep with a smile on my face, my head resting on his pale shoulder. I woke up early in the morning, six judging by how the forest around me was just turning gray. I sat up strait and took a few breaths, waking my self up completely.
Looking around my heart dropped about eight stories. No Nathan. He was gone, not a footprint or a broken twig this time. Vanished. I pushed myself up off the ground, now covered with a thin shimmering layer of frost. My neck was stiff from leaning on a rock hard shoulder most of the night and my arms must have has stick patterns imprinted on them.
I ran a thin finger through my hair, shaking out all the leaves, dirt, and other nature junk.
I was able to make it back to the house just as my father was stumbling out of the room. He pulled up his pajama pants and looked at me, still too bleary eyed to notice that I had gotten in clothes so early. He just grunted and nodded in my general direction.
“Good morning dad.” I grumbled in a sing song voice. Good lord how hard was it to actually say some thing audible in the morning. I know some people don’t wake up as completely as I do but, still.
My well to do father, after all, painted the perfect picture of a ‘young old guy’. He was an even six feet, thick early graying hair that fell loosely in his eyes, that is until he jelled it back before work. His eyes were big and gray ( that’s where I got mine, but unfortunately I also got my mothers, which are larger. Combined, they equal freakishly huge) and he had a slightly potato like nose with a solid, lean build. I guess he kinda looked like Richard Gere, a much less attractive Richard Gere.
I snorted again at the encounter ( I tend to brood over things that tick me off) and walked into the hallway and into my bathroom. I could keep my clothes on. After all I had just put them on last night and the smelled like woods and dirt. Not like body odor or any thing. My hair, was in knots and looked like a nest at the base of my neck. Spraying it a couple of times with some spray on conditioner and a few hundred thousand brush strokes later the insanity, gravity-defying mop atop my head looked presentable. I shoved a tube of clear grapefruit scented lip-gloss in my pocket and was set to go.
