I would take those words to my grave before I uttered them aloud.
Xellos cleared his throat, making me painfully aware of our audience.
“Well, don’t you all make a lively bunch,” Xellos chuckled, unperturbed. Tam had taken a place on the white sofa with his arms spread out along the back of it, his face calculating and unreadable.
“How soon can we do this?” I repeated, already tired of dealing with them.
“Three days. There are supplies I need to get, but I should have it together by then—if you want to go through with it, that is,” he said. I nodded once, ignoring the heavy feeling weighing down my chest.
“You’re still breathing. Those are good enough odds for me.”
I did not look to Aaron’s eyes as I walked by him on my way back to the room, afraid of what I might find there if I did.
Chapter 107
With every day that passed, I lost a little bit more of my mind. My sanity. The hours blended together into a meaningless void that pulled me in and refused to let go.
They hadn’t come. No one had.
No one but Victor.
He came and went as he pleased. Bringing gifts of lovely young girls that tasted like heaven.
I was going to burn in hell.
I deserved to burn in hell. The things I’d done. The actions I barely held myself back from doing. I swallowed hard on the stale air, breathing in little more than dust and the scent of sweet red wine. At least that’s what I preferred to call it.
Blood was such a nasty term, with moral implications.
And there was no room for such implications when you lived in a darkness where the only thing to be afraid of—was yourself.
Footsteps echoed down the hall with a steady purpose. As sure as they were silent, at least to the others. I seemed to be more sensitive to these things. Noise. Sight. Touch. They said that’s natural. It’s normal. I tried not to think about it as the wooden door swung open.
Victor.
And my meal.
Meal. My heart would have thumped in my chest at this. Under normal circumstances, I would have cringed. But there was nothing normal about dying, and then undying.
Nothing normal about drinking this girl’s blood.
I was an abomination. A thing. Something that shouldn’t be alive in any capacity.
I…was a Vampire.
My hands fisted in the material of my t-shirt in a vain attempt to show more control. To be better than I was. I gripped the fragile cotton and tried not to think about how long I’d been wearing this same shirt. How long had I been in here?
It was impossible to tell without windows, but I had a decent idea. I spent every second of the day counting time while it drifted by unbroken, apart from these visits.
“I’ve brought you dinner,” Victor said, not quite cheerful, but with as much happiness as one could have in a place like this. Where even the shadows cowered in fear at what went down within these walls.
I nodded to him, going still as the girl walked forward on her own.
They dressed her like a doll in a light blue dress. Cupped sleeves stopped short of her shoulders and cut across the girl’s clavicle, leaving her pretty porcelain neck bared to us monsters. She had rosy red cheeks and a mane full of chocolate curls that would have once made me jealous.
She was absolutely stunning, and just a child.
But it seemed that they had a taste for beautiful things here.
The girl reached out to me with a tentative hand, running her feather soft fingers over my cheek. I inhaled sharply, out of habit more than anything, but it was a habit that backfired.
My mouth watered at her scent. So sweet, but natural. Her blood was like a fresh plucked strawberry, just ripe with juice. Dripping with vitality. Completely and utterly alive.
I leaned into her touch, unable to control myself again.
My world faded to red the moment my teeth cut her skin.
I gripped her wrist with a bone crushing strength that I battled to control. They brought me these lovely, sweet children as a reminder. As training. They were so much more breakable than grown creatures, and all the more succulent.
Her legs began to tremble as she swayed before me, but curse me, I wanted more of these precious few moments where the dry scratchiness in my throat subsided and I felt alive. I fastened my teeth in more, trying to draw it out and make it last.
To make myself last, just long enough for them to come for me.
I told myself that three times before her eyelids fluttered closed and her body sank against me. My teeth unlatched, my lips peeling themselves away from her skin while I shifted to hold her weight. Victor snapped his fingers once and someone came forward to take her back to wherever they kept human children, like her, that they dressed up and used to train the newly transitioned.
Where the children came from, I did not know, but I did not ask either.
“That was better. You didn’t break anything this time,” he told me. “Your master will be pleased.”
That was code for my master won’t kill me. Not yet, anyways.
I chose not to respond and opted for keeping my eyes averted. He liked it when I was submissive. He was…kinder—if there was such a thing. More tolerable. Less caustic. But always callous.
“M-must I work w-with children?” I stammered, keeping my eyes downcast.
“Until you have proven yourself,” Victor replied. Fancy Oxfords stepped into my vision, stopping directly in front of me. The black stood stark against the gleaming, polished white marble, drawing my attention to the droplets of blood painting the floor.
“How do I prove myself?” I asked.
It was hardly more than a breath, whispered softly into the dank air that weighed heavier on my chest with every moment I sat here. Fingertips grazed my cheek, smooth as the satin sheets I sat upon. They trailed over my jaw, securing my chin. He lifted my face to his, a silent command.
I raised my eyes obediently. Every thought. Every feeling. Every essence of me locked away, so deep that even they will not see. They will not know.
“You wish to prove yourself to your master?” he asked softly. My lips parted as I gazed into his eyes. A blue so dark they were almost black and heated with something I needed him to feel.
“Yes.”
The smile he gave me would have stopped my heart, had it beat. The most beautiful man I had ever met, and he served the monster that did this to me.
I couldn’t decide if it was karma or cruel, that his unwavering loyalty to this creature behind the curtain would be what earned me a smile. He had to believe it though. Believe that I wanted this.
“My dear, I thought you would never ask.” He lowered himself to his knees before me, taking my face in his hands. “I knew you were different. Your master is going to be so very pleased, my beautiful flower. So very pleased.” The strength in his hands was unlike anything I’d ever felt, but I did not tremble. She would not want that.
I smiled back at him, small and unassuming. Timid, but hopeful.
Cunning, although he never saw it.
If I was ever going to have a chance of surviving here, this was it. My one opportunity to change the cards dealt.
They will come, the small voice whispered inside of me.
It was quieter with every day that passed.
Chapter 108
I woke with an inaudible gasp, trembling in my own cold sweat. My limbs jerked restlessly as my mind came back to the body it was trapped in. Thin sheets tangled around me, sliding over my sensitive skin with an uncomfortable softness that sent me into sensory overload. I clenched my fists around the fabric, heaving in copious amounts of oxygen, attempting to calm my rapid beating heart and the demon that stirred just below the surface.
“I didn’t mean to wake you.”
Without thinking, I turned my head to the voice that drew my attention. Aaron stood in the doorway of the bathroom. Firelight licked across his bare chest where condensation outlined e
very ridge and curvature that was him. In the dim light, his dark brown hair looked black and his onyx eyes were depthless. Gold flicked through them, like shooting stars against a moonless sky.
“You didn’t wake me,” I said softly. My head was in pieces and my ordinarily cold shoulder couldn’t be found. I was too out of sorts for my liking. Too vulnerable to let myself occupy the same space as him and pretend that warmth didn’t stir in my chest. That embers weren’t beating against my iron heart, desperately trying to catch fire. All for this man.
“You look nervous,” he said. His bare feet were silent against the hardwood floors as he slowly started towards me. I kicked the sheets away and swung my legs over the edge of the massive bed. It seemed that even when my head wasn’t working, my instincts were.
“I’m not,” I snapped. My feet touched the floor and I moved to stand on shaky legs, but Aaron moved faster. In the blink of an eye, he went from five feet away to right before me. His toes were only a hairsbreadth from mine, and my quaking limbs caused my chest to brush against his.
“Then why are you shaking?” he asked. His right hand shot forward and looped around my waist, pulling my shuddering body flush against his.
I glared daggers up at him but didn’t give him the satisfaction of replying. My nightmares had a lot more to do with my body’s reaction than his presence, but saying so would only open myself up to a whole new line of questioning, and the scent of smoke and savagery was already getting to me.
“Get off me.” I shoved at him with both hands, but he didn’t give. It was like slapping concrete. He was sturdier. Stronger. Because Aaron actually had the power to withstand me.
“Tell me what has you trembling with…” He paused. His nostrils flared as he inhaled deeply. The gold flecks in his eyes compounded together in an explosion of fireworks, turning them nearly yellow. “Fear and…desire.”
Damn him. Those words brushed against my skin like a drug straight to my system.
“It’s none of your business.” I shoved him again and he held me tighter. His fingers wrapped around my hip, flexing against the thin t-shirt that kept my skin safe and protected from the likes of him.
From situations like this happening.
I should have worn a parka.
“You’re my business,” he whispered in the hollow of my ear. I shivered under his touch and it had nothing to do with my weak muscles.
“Spoken like a true asshole that thinks it’s okay to impersonate people,” I whispered back with bite. He chuckled darkly against my skin, his lips brushing against me. I went hot, then cold, as my body couldn’t decide whether to succumb to sensation or cramp so tightly I had a heart attack.
“Spoken like someone that cares about you. I’m not an idiot. I know what you desire. What I don’t know…is why you’re afraid.” I froze in his arms, struck by the arrogance so similar to another man I let hold me close before I had the good sense to push him away.
For all I know, they were one and the same.
“You must be mistaken. I don’t feel fear.” I pushed just enough impassiveness into my tone that I came across as the cold-hearted demon I was. Or at least that I had been.
“You’re mistaken if you think I buy that. I don’t need the bond to know you’re lying. I’ve spent a year watching you, waiting for you.” I sucked in a sharp breath and the air between my teeth hissed as I turned my face to his.
“I wouldn’t hold your breath. You’re waiting for something that’s never going to happen. The bond isn’t complete, and I have no intention of going through the claiming,” I whispered. My breath fanned his face as I saw those dark eyes that I so loved to hate. It was easy for me to dislike him when he looked so like the demons that tortured me in flesh and mind. He let out the softest of growls as his eyes bled gold. Those combusting fireworks let up so much that there was not a shred of black when he looked at me, and it was this look, these eyes, that I had a much harder time with.
He was no longer reminiscent of a demon, but the most beautiful creature I had ever seen. Brimming with power I had yet to discover inside him. Sensual, yet savage. Bloodthirsty as I.
When he was like this, he was the one and only creature that could stare at me without an ounce of fear, and I hated him for it.
“You make a lot of empty threats regarding a bond you choose to know nothing about. The madness is already eating at you, and I’m the only one that can stop it. I don’t need to hold my breath, little signasti. You will come to me, and we will complete it. Of that I am absolutely sure.” Wind and smoke invaded my senses, drowning me in his scent. The heady combination of that scent and soap paired lovingly with the heat of the fire and warmth of his hands. My shaking legs went utterly still, pressed between him and the edge of a very large bed.
“You make a lot of promises for a man that knows nothing about me,” I replied. If only my voice was half as steady as my legs.
Aaron gripped me tighter, but it wasn’t painful, as he took a haggard breath.
“I watched you with another man for a year. I tried to leave you be, to give you time, and if he could have made you happy”—his voice trailed off into heavy silence, cutting me more than I cared to admit—“I would have let you go. I would have found a way.” His eyes flicked to my mouth and those embers in my chest began to grow.
“Is that why you impersonated him and never told me? Or why you strung my sister along for months?” I said harshly. It was angry and spiteful and gave him all the ammunition he needed to know that I cared.
I blinked once as the realization hit me. I cared. Sure, it was a dark and twisted way of it, but deep down, some part of me chafed against him dating my sister and it always had. It chafed because I cared about a man because of a bond I did not want. A bond I could only assume was the basis for everything between us, and the reason my body and soul betrayed my so very apathetic mind.
The reason I couldn’t truly hate him, despite what he’d done.
“You can be pissed about me being Lucas, but don’t throw Alexandra in my face, Selena. I dated her because it was the only way I felt I could be close to you. Your very soul sought me out, but you chose to be blind and pin it on Lucas. You chose to deny not only yourself, but me as well.” His words were angry, furious really, and they ignited those embers into a fire that heated even iron and it had the potential to consume me.
“Get your hands off me, or else—”
“Or else what?” he asked, his face only inches from mine. I hadn’t realized how close we were until it was too late. “Or else you’ll continue to snap at me as a means of deflecting the truth? Or else you’ll push me away because it’s easier than admitting that you’re attracted to me? Or, even better, you’ll keep lying to yourself and choosing to see me as evil—because you can’t stomach that I give a damn about you and chose to put you before everything in my life—despite knowing that you may never care enough to even look at me as a person because you fear me?”
My mouth went dry as my lips parted.
He thinks…he thinks I’m afraid of him?
If it were anyone else, I would laugh at such an obscene statement, but…it was Aaron. His heart beat as slow and steady as mine did. After a year together, I hadn’t noticed until now that our hearts beat in sync. Forever locked in a dance of life and blood.
“You think I’m afraid of you?” I asked, my lips looming even closer to his.
“Yes, but not in the way you think,” he replied softly.
“Oh?”
“You fear me because you know I’m the only one that will ever truly understand you.”
I never told him that. Never even hinted at it…yet somehow, he was seeing what I myself was only just coming to realize. One of the many reasons, but perhaps the most important, for why I needed to stay away from him.
I realized it when I saw him fight to the death for nothing to gain but pure savage release.
We were so alike in the ways that no one else saw that it didn’t just scar
e me, it terrified me, because this man had a power that no other before him held.
He had the ability to change me.
Time froze as the silence slipped around us. Pressure built inside me. Climbing. Clawing. Higher and higher.
And the one thing that I clung to throughout the years…snapped.
My control broke for that moment suspended between time, as I—not him—leaned forward and closed the space between us.
My lips touched his and there was nothing soft about the scorching heat that flooded me. I kissed him with a feral need that I didn’t understand but surrendered to anyway. My hands slid up his chest, my nails trailing over his bare skin as I went. Not hard enough to scratch, but enough to trigger a groan. I wrapped my arms around his neck, slipping my fingers through his still wet locks of hair.
Aaron broke the kiss abruptly, but his lips continued to pepper me with sensations as he trailed them along my jaw. He stopped at the hollow of my ear and whispered, “You have no idea what you do to me.”
I opened my mouth to refute that when he nipped sharply at my earlobe. Desire clenched in my abdomen as the bite acted as a line straight to the heat between my legs.
A moan slipped out as I dug my fingers into his hair, pulling him closer. He breathed hard and heavy against the sensitive skin just below my ear. The feeling rattled me further and I didn’t snap at him when he hoisted me onto the bed, placing himself between the part of my legs.
He released the tight hold he had on my waist to instead run his hands along my body. I arched into him, going against everything I believed in as I got caught up in the scent of wind and smoke. At least that’s what I told myself when his fingers slipped beneath my shirt.
The shudders that racked my body were different than the muscle exhaustion that my nightmares caused. This kind of trembling was unlike anything I had ever known. Maybe it was because I never let anyone touch me. Maybe my skin really was too sensitive. Or maybe, Aaron had the power to elicit such a strong reaction because I was exhausted to the bone from fighting him.
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