As she led him across the hall to her bedroom, Nimdok spared a cursory glance at the closed guest room door. Miri was still inside, and he sensed no distress or discontent from her. He still made sure to turn the lock on the bedroom door once it shut behind them, not wanting to risk traumatizing the child.
Elise was all over him the moment they were inside, yearning for closeness, her kisses greedy. He slid the black jacket off her shoulders and undid the back of her gray dress, tugging it frantically away from her body, stroking each area of newly exposed skin as he went.
The discarded clothing fell in a heap on the floor, joined soon by her bra and underwear. He was already on top of her in the bed when he realized he was still fully clothed. Smirking and shaking his head at himself—it really
had been a while since he’d done anything like this—he promptly shifted his clothes away...
***
Some time later, Nimdok watched Elise in the semi-darkness. With her long dark hair spread across the pillow and her slender white limbs tangled up in the sheets, she looked like she belonged in a painting in an art museum.
His fingers ghosted over her neck and shoulder, trailing down her arm. The mark he’d made on her throat was nearly gone, but he still had scratches from her nails running down his back which he had yet to heal.
It was obvious from the look on his face that something was bothering him, but he was reluctant to speak. She’d been good to him. Very good. No disappointments or reasons to fear. Only pleasant surprises. Which was why he felt obligated to tell her the truth, to get the one sour note out of the way so the rest of the symphony would be unmarred.
“Elise,” he began.
“I know it’s a strange time to be bringing this up, but… I’m not the same person I was the last time I visited you.”
To her, this would probably sound confusing. Elise knew that Nimdok was really a dead man, that his real name was Arimanes, and that he was a shapeshifter impersonating the deceased. She’d seen all that in his memories.
But now the dead man’s spirit had claimed him for the sake of Miri, who was endangered by the actions of the fraud impersonating her father. He had become the mask. The effect served to humanize him, for better or worse. In the case of his growing relationship with Elise, it looked like things were turning out for the better.
Arimanes had felt some attraction to her that day in her study, but he had been alarmed and repulsed by what he saw in her past. Nimdok didn’t care about who she had been and what she had done a thousand or so years ago. He’d seen worse from his vantage point in the Nether, where time had no meaning, and he understood that only the present mattered when it came to Elise.
Taking her hand, he pressed her palm against his chest.
“If you look deep enough, you can feel the difference.”
What Elise would uncover upon searching was a kind of seam where the two spirits had been forced together, yet each remained a separate entity. Much of what she liked about him, his shyness and attentiveness, had come from Nimdok. But her fascination with him was because of Arimanes’ shifting, sly nature. The two operated as one, but one side tended to manifest more than the other depending on what the situation called for. In this case, Nimdok had presided, and he was the one who had fallen hard for her.
Before he could say more, he sensed Miri leaving the guest room and wandering down the hall.
“I better take care of this,” he said. He was on his feet a second later, clothing himself once more and moving to the locked bedroom door. Carefully he opened it and poked his head out.
“Are you looking for me?”
“Yeah,” Miri replied, bounding over. Nimdok was careful to position himself so that he blocked her view of Elise.
“I gotta go to the bathroom. And I’m hungry.”
He tilted his head.
“Well, go to the bathroom first.”
“I can’t find it. Where is it?”
His brow furrowed. Dixon Manor was certainly a large house, but it was hardly a maze. For a young child, perhaps it seemed bigger and more intimidating.
“Wait here a minute, Dr. Dixon will show you where it is.”
“Okay.” The girl stood with her feet together in the hallway as he closed the door, turning to Elise.
"I'm assuming you heard all that," he said, struggling not to laugh. He bent down to pick up her clothes and laid them on the bed, not sure if she'd put them back on or change into something else.
Elise Ike
Jacen Nimdok
was unique in so many different ways, it made Elise want to be with him more, to spend each free moment with the ancient man. Hopefully today's 'actions' would cement such hope and needless to say the vampire was not disappointing.
