I met Alistair in a 24-hour supermarket, at about 2:00 AM in the produce department. He was holding a Granny Smith apple, smelling it, but his eyes were on me. He kept watching me and I did my best to ignore him but honestly, he was fucking gorgeous, like a wolf, or better yet, a panther, with his gleaming black hair and eyes as dark as onyx. He smelled like the earth of the forest, mossy and rich with the faintest hint of decay. His skin seemed cold and almost translucent. Everywhere I went in the deserted store, he was there, baring his teeth at me in what was supposed to be a grin.
Alistair commandeered my shopping cart and headed towards the checkout. When the goth looking cashier ogled him, I inexplicably wanted to jump over the conveyor belt and choke her but a placating glance and wink from him held me back.
"You'll have me all to yourself soon enough," he crooned, although his lips never moved.
He tossed some bills at the cashier and we left without waiting for change. I didn't question the fact that he walked unerringly to my car, I didn't have the will to question anything. When he stretched his hand out for my keys, I mutely turned them over and obediently took my place in the passenger seat.
Alistair started the car, revving the four-cylinder engine a couple of times then turned to me, reaching out to skim a long, sharp, pointed nail along my jaw and down my neck, pressing it lightly into the hollow of my throat.
"You're truly not scared of me," he observed, and his actual voice was like the ocean, beautiful, deep and endless.
"Why should I be?" I asked, leaning into his touch, making it dig in more profoundly.
He smiled and turned his attention back to driving.
"I can't wait to show you."
I can't recall where Alistair's house is. All I remember is one of those bland, nondescript neighborhoods that are like a maze of cookie-cutter structures. It was also the middle of the night and my imagination was too full of scenarios of what he had planned for me to notice much of anything else.
Spartan is too nice a word for what the interior of his house looked like. And it was definitely a house rather than a home. There was barely any furniture on the main floor and everything was dark and covered in thick layers of dust but we only just passed through there long enough for Alistair to deposit his apples on the kitchen counter. He grabbed my upper arm in a bruising grip and pushed me ahead of him up the stairs and down the hallway past a couple of open doors, a gloomy bathroom and bedrooms with nothing but bare mattresses occupying them.
His bedroom looked only slightly more inhabited. His untidy bed was huge and covered with dull black sheets.
"Good for concealing stains," he'd said, his voice laced with humor. Before I could even reply, he'd stripped me of my clothes, his razor sharp nails slicing through the fabric, and shoved me down on my back onto the bed. He crawled over me like the wild predator he'd reminded me of earlier and leaned down to speak in my ear.
"Scared yet?"
I smiled and shivered as Alistair's head dipped lower, his cool lips a hair's breadth away from my skin. His long nailed hands were almost talon-like in their appearance, his touch surprisingly gentle for the strength that I knew he possessed, unnatural, superhuman strength.
"You know I'm not. I... I want you," I choked, as a moan cut off my words, my face flushing crimson at the admission.