“I’m too used to all the scheming nonsense you like to come up with, babes.” Nora chuckled, making a strangled sound as her laughter mixed with tears.
“You say that now, but may I remind you I knew that you would go crazy over that Fletcher kid from the very first time you two met?”
“You do it all the time.”
“Called that. Calling this. If you get lost forever, Nora, I swear…”
Nora stopped packing and moved towards Elise, a shirt still in one hand as she reached to grab her hand and pull her up. Effortlessly forcing the other woman into an embrace that she only tried to resist briefly.
“I will kill you,” Elise half-laughed, half-growled as her arms tightened around Nora.
“I believe you,” Nora laughed.
Chapter 24
Marcel hadn’t been himself, it was clear to everyone. Hard as he tried to go back to normal, he soon realized it was something that he couldn’t simply shake off.
It wasn’t just about losing both Ben and Nora in a matter of days – though that played an important part in his blues, for sure. The real problem, the one he wasn’t telling anyone about, was that while his connection to Ben had been severed, there was a part of his kindred spirit – thoughts, mannerisms, ideals, preferences – that had remained in Marcel’s head. And it wasn’t that it could overpower him. It couldn’t. Marcel had always had an advantage over Ben in age, power and experience. The problem was that Marcel would never get closure. He would not only have Ben’s memories to deal with. He would have Ben’s echo whispering in his ear for what he could only assume to be the rest of his life.
Forever suddenly felt like a very long time.
Ben would never be replaced. In the same way that Antoni and Elise could not and would not ever be replaced, Nora was one of a kind. He had studied each of them, followed each of them around and observed every detail before he was sure they could be part of the clan. Antoni was fiercely loyal and, while his temperament gave most people the wrong idea, he was kind. And he loved his people. Elise had a habit of seeming petty and spoiled, but Marcel knew she had a habit of surprising others and herself with a tendency to see deeply into situations; to understand them. It was this that he had found so appealing when he’d first run into the confident but terminally ill version of herself. For some reason, there was never a question in her mind about what was best for her and hers.
Marcel envied that about her. Especially these days, when everything felt so damn confusing.
And then there was Nora. Nora who had, in no time at all, managed to make herself indispensable with her smarts and her strength and her opinionated ways. She had never been afraid to speak her mind and it had been that passionate, fearless nature that had stolen Marcel’s attention from the very beginning. It was an important part of the process that Nora and Fletcher had completely skipped: Aching and waiting for the prospects was what made the final embrace so delicious. They were prepared mentally and physically and then, after years of watching and waiting and training, it finally happened. It was the sweetest fucking experience, and Marcel remembered each ache distinctly. He remembered exactly how delicious it had been to finally get her. To finally taste Nora. To share their first night looking through the same vampiric eyes.
Difficult as it was to be without Nora, Marcel held onto the thought of her. To the memory of her teeth on his skin as he began to tease her with two fingers pressed against the damp fabric of her panties. Her moans urging him on. Her dress torn and pushed up past her ribs. He remembered that sharp gasp, as if she’d needed it to breathe. To fill her lungs. He remembered just how wet she got and how difficult it was to torture her, fingering her slowly when all he wanted was to fuck her raw against the leather of the couch. To make her come so hard she’d be close to ripping his head off in ecstasy.
And she had.
He’d taken his sweet time, and then used another finger to drive her crazy. And god, she’d get so fucking slick. So swollen with want. So fucking hot with that warm human blood still coursing through her veins after a hunt. He had never been as strong as when he brushed her hand away, robbing himself of the relief of her hand on his erection just for the benefit of watching her writhe and moan as the smack of his hand became louder and louder. Once she had climaxed a couple of times, when her pussy was at its most sensitive, he began teasing her with his cock.
It was torture for him, too. The way she moaned as he pressed himself against her, grinding slowly, like he had any actual patience left in him. Like it was nothing to feel her hot and ready as he pressed the length of his erection up against her hard enough to make her moan again. Her pleading, god. Her pleading would be with him always. He remembered how, no matter how proud she was in every other aspect of life, there was always a point where she just wanted him. When she whimpered, and whined and reached out to pull him closer. There was nothing he could do to resist her once she said those words.
Please.
He could almost hear her.
Fuck me now!
It was agony, but it was better than letting thoughts of Ben take over. Better than letting himself think of the boy that became a ruthless killer. Better than understanding, feeling, the endless thirst that had made that human violence grow so strong it overpowered everything else. It was also better than dealing with the responsibility of bringing life back to a calm normal when the town was still terrified of what all those fires and deaths might add up to.
Things weren’t normal. Things were so far from normal that Lena and Octavia had both chosen to stick around, making Marcel even more uncomfortable. Surely they could see through his anxieties. While they might not have been able to tell exactly what it was that bothered him they knew that it was something, and it made both keep a watchful eye on him. An eye that made him feel more and more nervous every day.
“Marcel?”
Hearing his name startled him, and then he heard loud knocking.
“Yes,” he called out a little too hastily. “Come in.”
Elise peeked in first, like she was half expecting to find him doing something she wasn’t supposed to see.
“What is it, Elise?”
“Didn’t you hear me knocking? I thought maybe you weren’t around. I was out there for a while.”
“I’m sorry.” His smile was tired and looked forced. “I must have been caught up in my own thoughts.”
Elise slipped into the room, looking at him suspiciously. She began to say something before deciding against it.
“What is it?”
“It’s time.”
“Is everyone there?”
Elise nodded, slipping her hands into her back pockets.
“I’ll be right there.”
Ben had always wanted to fuck Elise, and Marcel could feel it in the tightness of his trousers as she left the room. He kept his back to her which was, no doubt, disconcerting to his childe.
Chapter 25
“Don’t stop…”
Fletcher smiled. He didn’t plan to.
After a night of hunting, he was ready to put all that warm-blooded energy to good use between her thighs. He turned his face, kissing her ankle, her heel digging into his shoulder as his hips crashed into her and stopped, his dick deep inside her. Her body shook so violently with her orgasm that he could feel it with every deliberate thrust.
“Tell me you want me,” he panted, pushing her leg down with him as he leant down for a kiss that only pressed him deeper into her.
Nora moaned, her nails leaving bloody trails on his shoulders as she nodded her head repeatedly. Her mouth stayed open and dry as she fought furiously to fill her lungs with air she didn’t need. It felt like inhaling red hot razorblades.
“Tell me…” Fletcher insisted, slowly leaning back and pulling out of her. His eyes fixed on her face, watching her bite into her lower lip and nod again.
“I do…” Nora moaned helplessly, reaching up to force him back on top of and deep inside her once again.
>
“Do what?” Fletcher asked, pulling out of her and slipping onto his knees on the bed. A hand grabbing hold of her ankle as the other moved smoothly down her other leg.
“Fletch…” She heaved, her hips angling upwards in a wordless plea as she tried to come up with a coherent response while still shaking violently.
“You do what, Nora?”
“I want you,” Nora whined, reaching down to rub her middle and index fingers against her clit. “Fuck me.”
Once again, Fletcher smiled. His athletic nature had only been magnified by his new vampiric abilities. It all made him so confident and smug that it was difficult for Nora to resist him, and they often ended tangled like this. Their nights began and ended with Fletcher’s insatiable hunger for her. Sometimes, their nights were even interrupted because the younger vampire just didn’t see the reason they should ever wait when they had everything to their advantage.
It was moments like this that left Nora a shaky mess, her high-pitched moans and whimpers leaving her lips before she could even process just how loud he could make her scream.
“I want you,” she moaned again, pushing two fingers into herself and beginning to move her hand slowly, moaning again. “I want you.”
Fletcher gripped her wrist aggressively, making her stop and guiding her fingers up to his lips.
“Please, Fletch,” she whimpered, spreading her knees and thrusting her pelvis up as he grabbed a hold of both her legs.
He pushed her knees together and maneuvered her legs until she was on her stomach, her ass suddenly exposed for him to smack hard enough to fill the room and leave the skin burning red. It was so goddamn satisfying he did it again as he pulled her back up against him, then once again as he pushed his face between her cheeks and began eating her out. His grip on her left bruises as she tried to squirm away from him, smacking her hard each time.
She was screaming by the time he got back behind her, her ass up in the air as she pushed her face into her arms, folded on the pillow.
“Please, Fletch.”
He rubbed two fingers against her, his chest ready to explode. His dick was so hard he needed to pace himself to make sure all that glorious build-up wouldn’t be wasted in the name of eagerness.
“Fletch…”
She was ready to beg again when he pressed the tip of his cock into her, feeling her tense around him as he began to move forward.
She cried out as he smacked her again, the sound of her naked skin against his palm enough to distract him from how badly he wanted to just stop tormenting them both. To fuck her hard and fast until they were both spent.
He loved the way she looked at him. How her eyes lost focus and her head rolled to one side and the other, but her eyes always found him. Her lids were heavy with pleasure, her focus brief but determined in every short bout. She struggled to look back at him over her shoulder now, as he grabbed ahold of her arms and began moving faster. Harder. He applied the last shreds of self-control to slow down now and then, pushing her legs apart or pulling them together or fucking her so hard down into the mattress every moan and groan became muffled against the pillows on their bed.
It was in this way that they started to fade into a different kind of life. Away from rules that were necessary for a group, but seemed pointless when it was just the two of them.
Some things were, of course, non-negotiable. They still went out hunting only when it was completely necessary and when they did, they only took a taste and let the venom take over. It wasn’t until Fletcher experienced it, until he saw his victims fall for him right before forgetting he ever existed, that he understood what Nora had been so freaked out about when he managed to remember who she was. He was relieved to know that he would never have to experience that. That he had already found that person, and that from now on, he just needed to make sure that no one saw him take what he needed to survive.
They tried not to talk about how much they missed bits and pieces of their former life. How much Nora missed the clan and how Fletcher wanted to go back and finish his time at school sometimes. How much he missed Jason and the team and living with a bunch of boys his age. He loved this new life he was beginning with Nora, but sometimes it was difficult not to consider all the things he’d given up. Not to think about his friends and his family and feel badly about having left them all to believe they would never see him again. That he was just one more victim of whatever had ripped through their town.
Instead of feeling guilty, instead of talking about it, they fucked. Sometimes it was fast and desperate, leaving them so spent they had very little interest in talking about the life they’d left behind. At other, times it was slow and deliberate and they just didn’t want to ruin that blissed-out buzz of theirs with reality. By the time they both collapsed, sweaty and tired they hadn’t the energy to talk. And so what if they were using sex to avoid their problems? Their new existence left them with so much free time that maybe it was best to leave things that way.
Chapter 26
The little group sat somberly in the library, dim lights illuminating their faces only slightly.
“I can’t believe I am hearing this.”
“Don’t take it personally, Antoni.”
“How the hell is that not personal, Lena? You are talking about stripping my sire of his power.”
“Temporarily.”
“Like that’s any better.”
“It is,” Octavia interrupted calmly from her seat. “We don’t want to take Marcel’s power from him. We just want to find out what is going on with him. Then, if we decide that he is no longer capable of making decisions for the whole clan, we’ll appoint someone else and Marcel can stop worrying. You may be surprised, Antoni, but we do reach a point where we no longer want to decide what is best for so many.”
“Has Marcel ever expressed any interest in stepping down? Because it seems to me that you are asking us to turn against our leader, however temporarily you want to say it will be. You want us to plot against him and betray his trust in us.”
“Yeah,” Elise spoke for the first time since their little secret meeting began. “I don’t like how that sounds either.”
“We understand your reluctance,” Lena said, her voice back down to its natural serene quality. “This clan would be nothing without your maker and he has already lost so much in so little time. But we have reason to believe that Ben’s death affected him more than we thought it would, and it wouldn’t be right of us to leave everyone in the hands of someone who might now be a wild card.”
“We could be wrong,” said Octavia.
“And if we are, we will apologize profusely. But he would understand that sometimes we must protect the clan, even if it means that we have to protect it from him.”
Antoni huffed.
“We know you are not happy with this decision, Antoni, but we need to know if we have made a mistake bringing you into this room and trusting you with what we believe will be best for the clan.”
“Does Nora know?”
“No,” Lena shook her head, turning to Elise, “And we have decided it’s best for it to stay that way. Nora has her own problems to deal with, and bringing her into this will only make it impossible for her to live out there. She can’t come back. Not with Fletcher. And we know that she won’t return without him. So please, do not contact her. Fletcher needs to finish his training and understand the dangers of reaching out to his old friends before either of them can come back. Don’t make it any harder on them.”
Elise sighed and sat down, her head bent in defeat because, for a moment, she’d thought she would at least get to bring her sister back home if they were going to have to turn against their maker. She knew that the reason they weren’t allowed to reach out to Nora was that she would never stand for any of this. She would never allow anyone to turn against Marcel. Instead, she would talk to him. Lena was right about one thing: Marcel would always do what was best for the clan.
“Can’t we just talk to him?”<
br />
“It’s not that simple, Antoni.”
“You would let Nora speak to him if she was here.”
“But Nora is not here, and we all know that her being gone is part of the problem. You can act like we’re being heartless all you want, but can you honestly say that Marcel hasn’t been acting strangely lately?”
“The guy just lost people who were important to him.”
“This is not a mutiny, Antoni.”
“You can call it what you want. But we have to hide this meeting from him and then what? Even if we thought this was anything but completely insane, Elise and I could never take on Marcel.”
“You don’t have to take on Marcel, Antoni. Don’t be silly. We don’t want anyone else to get hurt. We’ll merely inform him that we have decided to temporarily suspend his duties as leader of this clan and that he must submit himself for observation so that we can determine if he’s still capable of fulfilling his role.”
Kindred Souls: Entire Series Books 1 - 5 Page 11
