Vampire plays matchmaker

The first thing I felt was warmth—a soft, unfamiliar weight against my side, the brush of skin on skin that stirred me from a sleep deeper than any I’d known. My eyes fluttered open, the morning light filtering through the curtains of a room that wasn’t mine. The sheets were tangled around me, silk clinging to my thighs, and then I saw her—Lila. She lay beside me, her auburn hair spilling across the pillow like a cascade of fire, her lips parted in a gentle breath. Her arm was draped over my waist, her body curved toward mine, and for a moment, I couldn’t breathe.

I didn’t remember how I’d gotten here. The flight to LA, Liam’s silvered eyes, the hotel—they flickered in my mind, hazy and disjointed, like a film reel missing frames. But Lila was real, solid, her warmth seeping into me, grounding me. My gaze traced her—the slope of her shoulder, the curve of her hip beneath the sheet, the faint flush on her cheeks. She was beautiful, achingly so, and a rush of heat flooded me, unbidden and confusing.

Her eyes opened then, hazel and soft, catching the light as they met mine. A slow smile curved her lips, sleepy and knowing, and my heart stuttered. “Morning,” she murmured, her voice husky, a sound that sent a shiver down my spine. She stretched, the sheet slipping to reveal the smooth expanse of her collarbone, and I swallowed, my mouth dry.

“Morning,” I echoed, my voice barely a whisper. “I… what happened?” My mind groped for answers, but there was only a blank space, a velvet void where the night should have been.

Lila propped herself on an elbow, her hair tumbling over one shoulder, and her smile widened. “Something magical,” she said, her fingers brushing my arm, a touch so light it was almost a tease. “Don’t you feel it?” And I did—a hum beneath my skin, a pull that wasn’t just memory but something alive, pulsing between us. My breath caught as she leaned closer, her lips hovering near mine, and then she kissed me—soft, lingering, a spark that ignited a fire I hadn’t known was there.

We didn’t question it, not then. The night was a mystery, but the morning was ours. We stayed in that bed, laughing over room service coffee, her fingers tracing lazy patterns on my wrist as we talked—about flights and cities, about the way the sky looked at thirty thousand feet. There was no Liam in our story, not that we could recall; he’d faded like a shadow at dawn, leaving only this—this connection, this heat that bloomed between us.

Days turned to weeks, and our lives wove together. She’d meet me at the airport after my flights, her smile a beacon in the terminal crowd, and I’d find myself rushing to her, my suitcase rattling behind me. We’d steal nights in hotel rooms across the world—Paris, Tokyo, Rome—her hands on me, my lips on hers, a dance we’d perfected without knowing how it began. She was sharp and bold, a contrast to my quiet steadiness, and yet we fit, two pieces of a puzzle I hadn’t known I was solving.

One night, in a suite overlooking the Seine, she pulled me close, her body pressed to mine, her breath warm against my neck. “I think we were meant for this,” she whispered, her fingers threading through mine. I felt it too—a certainty, a thread tying us back to that first blurred night. My skin tingled where she touched me, an echo of something deeper, and I wondered, fleetingly, if there’d been more to it—something lost in the fog. But then she kissed me, deep and slow, and the thought dissolved, swallowed by the taste of her, the feel of her, the life we were building.

We never spoke of Liam, never remembered the bites, the suite, the way he’d claimed us. But sometimes, in the quiet, I’d catch a glint in her eyes, a shadow in mine reflected in the mirror, and a faint ache would stir—a pull I couldn’t name. It didn’t matter. We had each other, a love born from a night we couldn’t recall, blossoming into something real, something ours. And that was enough.