by Aja James
Her guests brushed off the theatrics, if they ever observed any, as mere hallucinations brought on by the pungent potions Circe concocted and invited only the bravest (or stupidest) partygoers to imbibe.
No one knew the truth about her, not even the male child she always kept close by her side. A dark-haired, pale-eyed, skinny thing she simply called “Boy.” No one knew whether he was her son or merely a servant.
The boy himself never knew.
For, the one time he’d gathered enough courage to ask her about his parentage, she’d pinned him with an unnerving, quelling stare. She’d never deigned to answer him.
The only certainty he knew about himself was that he was different.
Not just different in terms of being foreign, though he was.
His narrow, blade-like nose, high cheek bones and piercing blue eyes that tilted ever so slightly at the corners did not conform to typical Roman features.
The humans who served the Mistress whispered that he was either Veneti or Germanic in origin, perhaps bought at a slave auction for her amusement.
He was not just different in terms of being nonhuman, though he was that too.
His vampire fangs had revealed themselves before he was old enough to hold onto his memories. He was a carnivore and preferred his meat extremely raw.
The Mistress portioned a bowl of blood-wine for him every night. And once a week he was allowed to drink directly from the vein of a human servant under the Mistress’s careful scrutiny.
At first, he wondered whether she was afraid he’d harm the human in a frenzied feeding. But then he realized that humans were all dispensable cattle to the Mistress. She had amassed a staggering fortune and could afford to buy more slaves, hire more servants, if he ever drained one too dry.
She was watching him for another reason, but he never knew why.
Even the other vampires in her small horde treated him differently.
If he ever ventured too near any of them, they hissed at him to keep his distance, as if his very existence offended them.
Thus, the boy deduced with absolute certainty that he wasn’t quite…normal.
He just didn’t know what it was specifically about himself that was so different from others.
He lived with the Mistress and her servants and slaves in the heavily fortified citadel, venturing outside only at night, and only with escort. He had chores to do like the humans who toiled under her protection (or captivity, depending on how you looked at it).
But he also took lessons with expensive Greek tutors that she paid for, and he was the only other person to sit beside her at meals.
Even the other vampires were not invited to her table.
Most of the time, she ignored him, eating in silence until the nightly festivities began, upon which time he was excused from her presence and was free to wander the citadel but not venture beyond its enclosure. Not without guards.
To protect him, or to protect others from him, the boy couldn’t guess.
Sometimes, she spoke to him.
But only to ask him the same questions over and over again.
“Where did you go tonight?”
“What did you see?”
“What did you do?”
“How do you feel?”
She only asked him these questions when he ventured outside the citadel on a full moon.
In his ninth year, the boy stumbled upon Mistress Circe’s secret.
And he beheld, firsthand, her terrible powers.
He’d been released after his lessons and chores to do whatever it was children of his age did.
The Mistress never took any interest, and the boy had never made friends.
There were no children in the citadel, and the ones who lived in the nearby villages kept human hours. In other words, they were fast asleep in their beds when he rose to start his night.
The adults in the citadel ignored him at best, chased him away at worst, for he was so very different from them.
There was something about him that rubbed others the wrong way, even though he always ducked his head to show submission and used impeccable manners no matter whether his interaction was with a slave, a servant or a vampire.
So, the boy tried to befriend the animals that lived in the citadel, though most of them shied away from him too.
The sheep, pigs and chickens always panicked and fled when he drew near.
The horses backed away nervously, some rearing in fright. He’d almost gotten stomped into the ground once when he was a toddler, having wandered too close to an open stall.
The hunting dogs growled and barked and bared their fangs, acting as if they’d tear him to pieces if they hadn’t been chained.
Only the cats, the fickle mousers that the Mistress allowed to earn their keep, tolerated his presence, but only just.
They still hissed at him and raised their hackles when he walked by, but if he was patient enough and brought some food, they would eventually settle down and even occasionally eat from his hand.
He was following a stray, orange-striped kitten who’d separated itself from its litter that night, bounding with curiosity down long corridors lit with low-burning torches, skittering on its tiny claws around darkened corners, leading the boy on a merry chase.
“Wait!” he called out in a half-worried, half-laughing whisper, delighted with the rare opportunity to play.
“Slow down! You’ll be sorry if you can’t find your way back to your mama when you get hungry later!”
The kitten kept running, heedless of any danger, moving ridiculously fast, a blur of fur ball careening in the halls.
The boy hardly noticed the unexplored passageways and winding stone steps that he chased the kitten down. Barely recalled that he had to squeeze through a tight trap door that led from the dank belly of the citadel to a long, winding, unpaved tunnel.
It was only when he reached the end of the tunnel, where a larger opening was carved into the surrounding stone, that the boy paused for breath and took his bearings.
He was at the entrance of some sort of cave.
A shaft of moonlight speared through a small opening from high up above, so far above him, it exceeded the height of several olive trees. And the opening looked no bigger than a silver denarius from his lowly position on the ground. Everything else was blanketed in an inky darkness.
Except for two orbs of blue fire that glinted from the blackest corner of the cave.
The boy froze in his steps and stared back unblinkingly, too terrified to move.
The kitten, however, had no qualms whatsoever, skipping playfully ever closer to the owner of the blazing twin orbs.
The boy wanted to dash forth and scoop up the kitten before it danced directly into the jaws of death. Or whatever it was that glared malevolently from the darkness.
But he was prevented from action by a rumbling growl, so deep and dangerous it shook the very ground.
The boy fancied he saw pebbles jumping in fright.
“Come back here,” he whispered furiously when the kitten pounced on a pebble and batted it like a ball back and forth between its paws, leaping happily after it when it bounced and rolled deeper into the darkest corner of the cavern.
The boy inched forward, torn between the need to protect his new (and only) friend, and the urge to make a mad dash out of this monstrous pit.
When the boy edged close enough to be partially illuminated by the beam of moonlight, the growling abruptly subsided.
The boy stilled like a statue, staring with saucer-eyes at the twin orbs that mesmerized him.
The enlarged black pupils within the icy blue orbs receded into pinpoints as the boy continued to stare. Long white whiskers caught fragments of light, along with matching tufts on top of the creature’s head.
Ears.
The boy could barely make them out, unconsciously edging closer.
He could see large, triangular ears pointed in his direction, flicking slightly as he shuffled his feet.
<
br /> Before he knew it, the boy was within ten feet of the creature that crouched silently in the darkness.
“A white tiger,” he breathed in awe, never having seen one in the fur before, only in the fantastical drawings foreign traders sometimes sold in the marketplace.
But the tigers in the pictures had always been orange. Never white. This tiger must be very rare indeed.
Perhaps it was even magical.
The kitten had ventured directly beneath the enormous head of the tiger, prancing in a zig zag pattern between thick iron bars.
The tiger indulgently accepted the kitten’s company. It even made a soft chuffing sound in greeting, and the boy had the sense that this wasn’t the first time the kitten had escaped down here for a visit.
It should have relieved the boy to know that the gigantic tiger was locked within some sort of cage, but all he felt was a soul-deep sadness.
Such a magnificent animal should never be caged. It seemed like the worst sort of wrong.
When the boy drew even closer, taking a better look, he saw that the tiger wore a complex harness of iron chains that ran from the wide, spiked collar around its neck to shackles on each of its front paws. The boy could only assume that its back paws were secured as well.
Tied up this way, the animal wouldn’t be able to run or leap. As it was, it seemed barely able to lie down in a comfortable position, its legs cramped awkwardly close to its body.
“I’m sorry,” the boy unthinkingly murmured, reaching out a hand toward the bars of the cage.
The bars were too narrow for the tiger to extend any part of itself outside, but it did butt its head gently against the bars, rubbing its nose tentatively across the boy’s outstretched fingers.
It even unfurled its tongue and licked him.
“Ow,” the boy said as his hand got scraped by the sandpaper tongue, but he was smiling, his expression at odds with his small complaint.
Maybe, just maybe, he’d made another friend tonight.
Until the tiger’s ears suddenly flattened against its head, and it opened its great jaws to reveal canines thicker than the boy’s wrists—
And released a deafening, earth-shaking roar.
*** *** *** ***
He was almost completely healed.
The woman, Ariel Kyles, tilted her head slightly to regard the large, naked male still slumbering deeply in her bed.
She must remember that her name was Ariel Kyles, though the words seemed foreign even in her own mind. If anyone ever called her such, she wasn’t sure she’d immediately answer.
She felt like she should be called something else.
She felt like he had called her something else.
Though that couldn’t be true, for a part of her was relatively certain he’d never had occasion to address her directly. They’d only “met” three nights ago, after all.
In the middle of a shooting range, where they were designated target practice.
But a significant swathe of her memories told a different story. She felt like she’d known him forever.
She tilted her head the other way, as if trying to puzzle out what she was looking at.
A naked humanoid male.
A vampire, based on everything she knew about Maximus Justus Copernicus.
It’d taken her years to track down just his first name, while she was deep under cover infiltrating the networks that involved some of his bloodsucker associates.
She also knew that he was something other as well.
A fact only she and one other person knew.
Maximus himself probably didn’t even know. Not consciously, in any case.
His Gift of anticipating his enemy’s moves two or three steps in advance didn’t come from his vampire side. It was merely the tip of the iceberg for what he was capable of.
All the power and aggression and savagery he kept carefully leashed within him. Never once, in the millennia of his existence, revealing his true self.
But none of those things interested her in the moment. What she fixated on instead was not “vampire” or “other” but naked and male.
Her memories were not the most reliable right now, it was true, but she couldn’t recall the last time she’d ever beheld such overwhelming masculine beauty.
Even more confusing, she seemed to recall that she’d thought him ugly in the recent past. She distinctly remember her reaction of distaste when he’d walked toward her, fresh from a shower.
But beneath the distaste there was also a deep, abiding affection, a sweet joy that burst like a juicy plum within her whenever she gazed upon him.
She moved lithely from her seat at the foot of the bed to crawl over his delectable, naked, male body—Maximus’s body—until she’d caged his torso between her four limbs, crouched above him on her hands and knees.
“Strange,” she murmured softly, careful not to disturb his sleep, “you don’t remind me of a naked mole-rat any more. You look…”
She searched her mind for the right words and licked her lips slowly, as if she was about to savor a scrumptious treat.
“You look extremely edible.”
She bent down to bury her nose in the crook of his neck and inhaled deeply. A loud purr vibrated throughout her entire body.
“Extremely fuckable.”
Ooohh. She liked that word.
She didn’t recall the last time a word like that had passed through her mind.
“Fuck,” she tested it some more on her tongue, scraping her lower lip with her upper teeth as she pushed the syllable out of her mouth.
She lowered herself carefully onto his torso as he lay flat on his back with his arms at his sides, his face turned in profile.
“Humanoids like to do this regularly, don’t they?” she continued with her one-sided conversation, talking out loud to sort through her jumbled thoughts.
“Animals rut. Humans fuck. Why does the act seem so much more appealing when I use a different word to describe it?”
Vaguely, she conjured up memories of brief encounters she’d had with the males of her species. In the public bathroom, the back of a bar, the front seat of an SUV, a darkened corner in a deserted alley.
Never in a bed. Never lasting beyond a few minutes, averaging less than sixty seconds most of the time, just long enough for her and the faceless dick she hooked up with to get off.
Hmm. Those flybys might be better categorized as rutting rather than fucking.
As she looked down at Maximus, she suspected that fucking would be much more involved if it were done with him.
She peered curiously at his features.
Strangely, she felt like she’d seen his face countless times, but it was as if she were also looking upon him for the very first time.
For example, she’d never noticed the elegant sweeps of his brows before. How thick and luxurious his lashes were. The fragile skin around his eyes, now shut but not relaxed, his eyeballs rolling restlessly beneath their lids as if he were dreaming disturbing dreams.
She’d never paid attention to the generous width of his mouth, bracketed by faint lines even while at rest. Emphasized by prickly dark stubbles over his upper lip and directly beneath the middle of his lower lip, as well as along his sharply defined jawline.
She leaned closer and licked his mouth with her tongue, then swirled it back in her own mouth to ascertain his flavor.
He tasted different somehow.
She had vivid memories of doing this to him countless times before—licking his face, his neck, his hands.
His skin had tasted rather bland before, and the texture of his hairless skin was something she’d had to get used to.
But now, with her human tongue, she tasted something else entirely.
His flavor was bold and spicy, tantalizing and inviting. The texture of his soft lips made her want to keep on licking him.
As if he heard her unspoken desire, his lips parted slightly on a long exhale, blowing warm, moist air onto her face.
; She shivered as her muscles rolled with anticipation beneath her skin.
He made her feel…things…in this human body. Made her want to do things to him.
Ariel Kyles.
Her name was Ariel Kyles.
They were strangers, and yet they were not.
Where she was empty inside before, she was now filled with a ravenous beast who hungered insatiably for Maximus.
Her mind might be confused, still sorting itself out, but her instincts were sure.
She knew this male.
She wanted this male.
Taking advantage of his slumber and being thorough, she carefully catalogued more of him with her human eyes.
The strong, long column of his throat. The notch between the wide spread of his collar bones. The thick muscles that padded his chest, dusted lightly with fine, dark hairs, warm and satiny. The flat disks of his nipples, and the deep groove that bisected his middle.
She followed the seam of his torso with an inquisitive finger, down between the ridges of his abdomen, clearly delineated even as he slept, to his shallow navel.
She moved down his body as she continued her exploration, flicking her tongue into his belly button and delighting in the unconscious quiver of his steely muscles in response.
His large, long-fingered hands were loose beside his hips. She splayed one open with her own and pressed her hand to his, palm to palm.
Her hand was dwarfed by his much larger one, the tips of her straightened fingers meeting just his middle knuckles, even though his fingers were not stretched like hers but curled in repose.
She entwined their fingers together and studied them for long moments, turning their hands this way and that.
Hands were such ingenious things. They held, they gripped, they caressed, they felt.
Her fingertips were extremely sensitive. She wanted to touch them everywhere on his body.
He was so very beautiful and tempting to her human eyes.
Still holding his hand, she meandered lower to examine his groin at close range, staring so intently she became cross-eyed.
This was the part of him that intrigued her the most. The part that declared him unequivocally, proudly, magnificently male.
And he was so very, very naked.
She’d seen it many times before, but never like this.
