“You didn’t know… did you?” she asked softly.
With a huff, he dropped his hands into his lap. “That she was completely in love with me? Of course not. God, I… I felt it. So deeply—Did you know? Before she confessed just now, I mean.”
“Yes,” she said plainly and when he just stared at her to elaborate, she sighed. “There were partial thoughts I heard the night we met downtown. I had guessed but didn’t know for sure until we showed up to save her from Pollux.”
“Christ,” he hissed. “How could she have fallen for me?”
“Yes,” Ash said with a soft but sly smile. “I took her for a better judge of character.”
Tristan only stared. He appreciated Ash trying to cheer him up but the role of instigator was not her personality at all.
She sighed softly and came to the bed, sitting on the edge close to him. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
He shook his head. “Me too. Jesus, Ash. What that fucker did to her, it only happened because she’s my friend, because she loves me. And I’m—I can never take that back. I can never give Gillian back her innocence. And I’m so damn sorry she got hurt because of me. I’m sorry she fell in love with someone like me.”
“Hey,” Ash said, prodding him on the shoulder to make him look at her. It was such an odd word for her to use that he jolted upright. He had to force himself to meet her eyes though. It hurt. He could feel so much of Ash now that he’d drank down a vampire’s blood. She hummed with presence and authority. He was hers and now he knew it to his soul. He was hers in mind and body and would never belong to anyone else. He meant it when he told Gillian he wanted to marry Ash. She was the only good in his world. His star in the night. His Master. His everything.
And the thought didn’t scare either of them.
“Trust me, I understand how she could love you.”
Tristan snorted a surprised laugh. “Yeah… well, I still don’t get what either of you see in me. Should I think less of you for loving me?” He was only half joking. He really didn’t get what anyone saw in him. He was sour and had a bad mouth. He spoke and acted without thinking and had a bad habit of making everything worse on himself and those around him.
Ash grabbed his face, making him look at her. “Do you remember what I said to you in Greece?”
He lifted a shoulder in a half-assed shrug. “You said a lot of stuff in Greece.”
“I had learned all I could learn of you from school records, health reports, news articles of your adoptive parents… police reports, all long before you ever stepped foot into Japan.”
He straightened. “You vetted me.”
She nodded. “The very first day you stepped on Japan soil I was there following you. I watched you every single night for nearly two months. I fell in love with you long before I had spoken a single word to you. Following you, seeing you live, it just solidified what I had already felt.”
“God,” Tristan groused, a little fidgety as he swept the hair back out of his eyes. “How? I was a complete wreck. You watched me struggle through the worst part of my life. You read my record, fuck, you saw everything in my head that you hadn’t read. How could you fall for the pathetic, self-destructive dick I was? I didn’t even like me. Not sure I like me even now…”
“You were young. And that was without a doubt the worst thing to happen to you in all your life. There was no way you could have been prepared to handle such an immense emotional toll. You had such a happy, fulfilling life before, you were not equipped to handle a loss like that.”
He lowered his head, shutting his eyes. She was right. He had the best life, a life without ever having to suffer through hardships like the loss of loved ones. That’s what made losing those he loved above all so damn hard. She was right, he was young and the ordeal had aged him terribly. Forced him to grow up.
“Pain…,” she said, her voice breaking, “it destroys.” She straightened. “It is up to you whether you let it destroy all of your good or not. Even at your worst, I saw the good in you and your will to not let that part of you die. Yes, you were a complete mess of emotions, but you never gave up on yourself despite your turmoil and fury. You still don’t give up.”
Fuck, it still hurt like a knife to heart every time he thought about what he had, would never have again. The hell he went through when he wasn’t strong enough to cope. But having Ash now, yeah, she soothed so many hurts, eased the pain and made waking up every day something he didn’t lament anymore. She was his reason to go on.
“Ash,” he said, “I, I don’t know why but I’ve been waking up a lot lately hearing your voice talking to me.”
“Oh? Do you remember the words?”
“Y—yeah.” He licked his lips nervously. “I think… I think you said them to me in Greece. On Crete.” He looked her in the eye. “I thought we’d have more time. I don’t actually remember hearing you say it but I know you did.”
“I did,” she said softly. “When you were dying.”
“Why? What did you mean?”
She smiled sadly, looking away. “Just that I had lived so long—suffered for decades and that after finally finding you, I was about to lose you? How cruel is fate to do such a thing? I was sure she wouldn’t take you from me so soon. I needed your death not to be real, despite feeling you dying in my arms.”
He gathered her into his arms and hugged her tightly, giving her a kiss to the side of her head. “I know you heard me before when I was talking to G, but I want to make this real.”
He released her and went to his knee on the floor before her. “Marry me.” She opened her mouth to answer and he quickly added, “For real, I mean. We’re married on paper, yeah, for pretent but I want it to be more than a cover story. I want to be your husband in every way… I want everyone to know how much I love you. And I want anyone who thinks to come after either one of us that we won’t ever be alone. We’re a team. Forever.”
She was smiling so big, it looked like it hurt. “Yes, of course. I want that too. Very much.” She flung herself at him and he caught her as he stood upright and flung them onto the bed, pinning her under him.
“I love you so much,” she said between kisses, clinging to him. “And I think it’s time.”
“Time we’re married?” He chuckled between kisses to her neck. “We’ve only been with each other for six months.”
“No. For you to have my blood.”
He stopped sucking at her neck and lifted his head, looking her in the eye.
“You managed to drink from a Master within the timeframe but you should drink my blood too, your true Master’s blood. You will be the strongest Uruwashi yet.”
He gave her a slow grin. “I’m the only Uruwashi.”
She nodded, smiling. “Yes, that alone is a mark of greatness. But you will be a god in the history of Uruwashi. Two Master’s blood in you, one being the vampire who bit you.” She shook her head. “And half pythia too.”
He wasn’t sure he liked the title of “God” but it didn’t matter because he wanted her blood, whatever the consequence. He was so ready to taste her.
Ash was the one who came up with the idea to strip first, though neither of them was wearing much to start with—only two articles of clothing a piece. Having not fed recently, Ash was cold and when Tristan’s heat met the length of hers and he shivered hard. Ash moaned in appreciation. Hot and cold didn’t affect her the way it did a human but she still felt it and all vampire had an innate craving for warmth.
He buried his face into the hollow of Ash’s neck. She sighed and wrapped her herself around him, arms and legs, trapping him to her. Tristan groaned and kissed delicately over the pulse on her neck, just below her ear. She whispered his name and dug her fingers into his wild, thick bed hair. He opened his mouth across her neck, sucked her flesh into his mouth, bit down.
“Yes,” she gasped, her hips jutting up against his.
He moaned, pushing against her but not into her. “Jesus, Ash. I haven’t even touched you
yet and you’re wet…”
She chuckled, rubbing against him. “As a vampire, this is a constant state for me.”
He lifted his head and gave her an eyebrow arch. “You can’t be serious.”
“You’ve experienced it yourself. You’ve awoken in rather painful states lately, haven’t you?”
He laughed. “Yeah. I wondered about that.”
“Get used to it. I think now that you’re fully primered, you will find the reaction… worse.”
He grinned. “Or not so bad, with you around all the time.”
She burst into laughter, clutching him. “Cad. No shut up and kiss me, bite me and make love to me.”
“Oh fuck yes…” He dove into her neck again, opening his mouth in biting. “Dammit,” he hissed coming up for air again.
“What’s the matter?” she all but whimpered, looking at him in confusion and desperation. “Don’t stop.”
He smiled at the urgency of her tone. “I don’t want to hurt you.” Truth was, his teeth ached to tear into her flesh the way he had Pollux’s. He’d never hurt her like that.
She let out a short breath as her face filled with a look that said, “But of course.” She patted him with the hand that was holding his hip. “Up.”
He grinned. “Pretty sure we established that I already am.”
She laughed, a soft, carefree, throaty laugh that was full of lust. It was the most natural laugh he’d ever heard from her and he loved her even more for it. She got up from the bed once he let her, and stalked towards the bath, waggling a finger at Tristan to follow.
Silent, he followed her into the en-suite and stopped to watch at she hopped up on the sink countertop. It had to be fucking freezing, her naked ass on the stone like that. Somewhere along the way she’d gotten ahold of a knife and he wondered where between the bed and bath it had been hiding. Ash only offered him a knowing smile in answer to the question she no doubt heard.
She took in a deep breath, staring at the knife. She swallowed hard and Tristan realized she was having a harder time with all this than she was letting on. Now that he knew what he was looking for, yeah, he could feel her anxiety.
“I…” Her voice quavered and Tristan used a finger under her chin to lift her face to look him in the eye. “I don’t want to mess this up again.”
Oh god. Nastasia. He hadn’t even thought of that.
He shook his head. “Impossible.” I’m not her.
She looked at him a long time before sighing. “Of course, you’re right.”
“Of course,” he answered cheekily but in a near whisper.
She pressed the tip of the knife against her wrist and lifted an eyebrow in question. He swallowed thickly and shook his head. He grabbed her hand and lifted it until the knife tip was over the vein on her throat.
Tristan was panting, a mixture of excitement and ingrained human impulse to not harm.
“It’s okay,” Ash said, her voice gentle but her eyes full of elation.
Tristan kept his hand on hers but let her guide the cut. He felt the give of her flesh and then his nostrils flared at the scent of fresh vampire blood. A low rumbled boiled up from deep in his chest and Ash gasped, tossing the knife aside to clatter in the sink basin. She reached out for him, grabbing fistfuls of his hair and pulling him to her even as he was leaning in.
By the time he was close enough to touch his lips to her flesh, the blood had run down her neck to her breast. He started there, closing his mouth over her left nipple, making her gasp and him moan as the spice of vampire blood lit up his taste buds.
Ash wrapped him up in her arms and legs as he licked a slow line up, tracing the blood with his tongue. “There’s much to show you,” she whispered. “So much of me to share but I don’t wish to overwhelm you. Know what I hold back now will not always be so. I wish to show you everything. The good and the bad. But in small measures, my love…”
Tristan was nodding, only half hearing and definitely not understanding. All that mattered in that moment was the blood coating his tongue. He needed more, wanted to fill his belly, his whole body with her blood. When he reached the puncture on her neck, he locked his mouth against her neck, and let out a long, strangled moan. He could barely contain himself as he swallowed down his first full mouthful of her blood.
“Yes,” Ash agreed on a moan and tightened her legs around him, grabbing his ass in her hands.
Tristan sucked for more blood and broke away from her neck with a frustrated cry when he realized that the wound had healed already.
Ash soothed him as she found the knife and cut a larger tear for him. She’d barely moved the knife away when he locked onto her neck. She gasped as the force of his enthusiasm nearly dumped her ass into the second sink. Then he pulled hard from her neck, taking down her blood and she moaned, long and low. She reached between them and grabbed ahold of him before scooting forward and pushing Tristan into her.
Oh my god, he moaned as they fit flush together, every inch of their bodies touching that they could manage.
Then Ash bit him.
He damn near passed out from the surge of sensations, pain and pleasure, and a little bit of everything in between. Elation, absolution.
Oh. Fuck.
That’s the idea. That from Ash, so loud she might as well have yelled it and fuck, he wanted to answer with something snarky in return but she thrust against him, reminding him they were connected by more than their mouths on necks, sucking the blood from each other.
He was just getting ready to thrust in return but the images hit him and he froze. He saw Ash’s twin, Evangeline and an old woman that Ash had strong familial feeling for, but wasn’t actual family. Ophelia, her name was Ophelia. And there was Lilith as a child, identical to how she looked when Tristan first met her.
There were other faces, many faces from before and after Ash’s vampiric death. Their images flashed by so fast he shouldn’t have actually seen them but every single one was now engrained in his memory. But there was only one now, a singular focus. A baby. Ash’s—Asta’s baby.
Nastasia.
Ash felt so lucky to have even found a man to love her in a town that feared her entire family—the witches. And then to find out she was with child and her beloved husband, gone away to war, hadn’t even known she was carrying his child. As with everything in her life, happiness came with a measure of pain.
Malik.
There was a growl in the room, in the real world away from the dark hollow where Ash shared her memories. It was Tristan, and Ash echoed with her own angry growl. She had loved him once. Trusted him. That made his betrayal all more heartbreaking. She felt a fool for letting him win her over so thoroughly. But what didn’t kill her only made her stronger. And angrier.
Tristan tightened his hold on Ash as she scrambled to hold onto him as if she were falling.
Ash believed Malik when he said that her child died an unfortunate but natural death the night Ash was transformed into a vampire. She believed him for eighteen years because she had to. She couldn’t let herself doubt the man she depended on much so for affection and guidance in her new dark world.
At the time it seemed like fate, but she understood completely the true dynamics of her relationship with the Master vampire, Malik. He played a long game, biding his time for nearly two decades before delivering the punch line in the joke of her life. Nastasia was not only not dead as he had told her, but he had made sure that Ash found her again, that they bonded and that Ash herself made the girl a vampire before taking it all away in a roar of triumph.
And to top the crown on the mastery of his grand debauchery, Nastasia fell for his machinations too. She blamed Ash for abandoning her as an infant, for finding her again and making her care, love the woman who birthed her only to kill her and give her over to that cruel man.
For decades Nastasia languished away in a cell near Ash. The two were always at odds, Ash desperate to convince Nastasia of her naïve truths and Nastasia too bent on hate to hear it
. Even the benevolent and revered Lilith could not convince the young vampire of Ash’s innocence.
Ash couldn’t say when it happened, hadn’t noticed the slow crawl of time in her cell, in her misery, but it seemed as if one night she awoke to find a whole new personality in the woman she called daughter. Nastasia was no longer a prisoner, locked and tortured. No, she had free reign and often hurt the others Malik kept for game. Malik had a reason when he hurt, a lesson to be taught or higher purpose, a means to an end. But Nastasia hurt because she liked to inflict pain.
Malik’s cruelty was never born of evil. It was all he knew. Nastasia knew better and did it anyway. Did things to Ash no daughter should ever consider doing their mother.
Ash sobbed and Tristan pulled her tighter against him, holding onto her with all his might. He was crying silent tears too, her emotions overwhelming him. For the first time he truly understood Ash. Without this, without tasting her very life on his tongue, seeing her history, feeling her scars, he never could have understood her before. But now it all made sense. Ash made sense.
Whatever things Tristan didn’t agree with that she’d done, whatever reactions Ash had or things she chose to hide, he couldn’t blame her anymore. He saw every piece of her, naked and exposed and how everything she ever did made sense to her even if it weren’t the choice he’d made. And now it all made sense to him. He was still of his own mind but everything about Ash was so clear now.
Love you so very much… Ash whispered to him.
Tristan groaned and struggled not to break contact but already he was slipping away from her. The wound on her neck was closing again and taking their intimate link with it. Ash pulled away from his neck first.
Breaking the seal on her neck, he pulled away with a breathless gasp, slowly lifting his face as he licked her blood from his teeth. When he finally met her eyes, despite the tears, she looked at peace. God, had he ever seen that look on her face before? Such complete and utter peace. For as surely as he finally understood what made Asta, Ash, she knew that he did. She saw him just as naked and vulnerable as he’d seen her.
Primal Burdens: (The Uruwashi Series #5) Page 30
