by Kitty Thomas
Blood Mate
Kitty Thomas
Digital Edition
Copyright 2014 © Kitty Thomas
All rights reserved.
Digital Edition License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or shared. If you did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Respecting the hard work of this author makes new books possible.
Publisher’s Note:
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Disclaimer
This is a work of fiction, and the author does not endorse or condone any of this book’s content in a real world setting. This work is intended for an emotionally mature, adult audience.
About Blood Mate
...A Dark Fairy Tale
Nicole has been happily married to big shot attorney, Dominic Rose for ten years, but soon after their anniversary he grows cold—as if she doesn’t exist. Meanwhile, another man has been pursuing her far too intently for comfort.
August Corinth is a six-hundred-year-old vampire, cursed to kill and suffer the pain of his victims each night until he can find the one woman who can resist his thrall, his blood mate. Once he’s found her, there are no lines he won’t cross to claim the promised salvation even if it means taking away everything and everyone she loves.
Chapter One
August Corinth jolted from a dead sleep, gripping the cross around his neck, still rattled that neither the silver nor the holy symbol burned him. The cross was simple, without ornamentation—a hunting lure. Humans saw symbols of faith, and they trusted. He’d long thought God would sweep in and smite him for daring to wear it. But so far… nothing.
His pulse beat against his throat, a dull, steady strumming that wouldn’t stop no matter what he did. Fire, sunlight, electrocution, stakes, knives, holy water, garlic—nothing worked. He’d even tried decapitation, but the damned blade had broken, refusing to cut far enough through his neck to finish the deed. He was flesh and bone, yet something magic ran through his veins that made death an impossibility.
The moon shone through the leaded window. It was too bright for a vampire waking out of a dead sleep, but closing his eyes would make the images of the nightmare come back. He’d dreamed of being turned and abandoned by his mad sire. The elder vampire had laughed in victory as he set himself on fire. That hideous face behind those flames still burned in August’s memory.
He unfolded his limbs, stretched, and stood in front of the mirror, searching for a man instead of a monster. As days stretched into weeks, months, years, centuries, he saw less of himself reflected back. He saw coldness and evil. But despite that, underneath it all was the guilt, the terror, the pain. And those he lured? Those he enthralled? They followed him, blissfully trusting the peaceful energy and lies he fed into their minds.
Whatever brief relief feeding might bring, it created new suffering as the body count rose ever higher. And unlike a normal predator, the vampire experienced the pain and fear of each victim down to the depths of his soul as he took their lives one by one. But it had to be done.
The only hope was an old wives’ tale laid out in the gilded book his sire had left him—a book straight from the gods who had made the first of his kind. Vampires were a sadistic experiment, their existence meant to entertain gods who had long grown bored with their own immortality.
In the book, there was a way out that didn’t involve passing the curse. If a vampire could find a woman he couldn’t enthrall who would sacrifice herself to him as his blood mate, he could feed from her and be satisfied without killing. She would become immortal to satisfy his urges throughout eternity. But it was a myth—another way to torment those who’d fallen under the curse of the capricious old gods. In his six hundred and twenty-three years of life, August had never encountered a single woman he couldn’t mentally control.
He ran his fingers over the spine of the book, resisting the urge to read the fairy tale that helped him sleep. The hunger had awakened, gnawing at him, clawing at him from the inside like a demon that could never be exorcised. He wrapped himself in a robe and made his way through the house, stopping at the door to the cellar.
His hand hovered over the doorknob. He could smell them, could hear them down there whispering amongst themselves, planning unlikely escapes. He took a long shuddering breath, then turned the knob and began his descent down the creaking stairs. He heard the humans—like vermin—scurrying into shadows, their breath slowing to become ever quieter even as their hearts raced like thundering applause.
In the cellar were seven cages. One for each day of the week. It was always the worst for the seventh victim after the build-up and terror at witnessing the others who came before. But the seventh was always the sweetest, the most fulfilling, even as it ripped out August’s soul, throwing his humanity down a dark abyss.
There were four left. He brought them food each day, and they each had a toilet and a sink and a shower and a cot.
He opted not to do the evil villain soliloquy, nor did he indulge in painting himself a victim for others to pity. Instead, he dragged a woman from one of the cages. The smell of blood broke through the dank air as she scraped fingers, grabbing the jagged ground for purchase to keep him from pulling her out.
August closed his eyes against her begging screams and sank his fangs into her throat, draining the life from her as she thrashed against him. There was momentary pleasure in the act of feeding. It was a bright, sweet point of light in his existence. It was the briefest touch of heaven, of perfection, and it lasted until the blood ran out.
The body dropped to the ground with a thud, and he dropped right behind her, picking her up and cradling her. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” His sobs were muffled against her shirt, but she was no longer with him to hear his broken pleas for forgiveness.
“August?”
The voice was small, but she had seen this show for several nights now. Fear rolled out of his prisoner like fog coming in off a lake, but she remained stoic, brave.
“What is it?” He both couldn’t stand for her to talk to him, and needed her to. Why he kept her alive, he didn’t know. He went down the line in order, but he’d skipped her cage two nights ago. She tugged at him.
“Talk to me,” she said.
He moved the corpse from his arms—arranging her on the ground in a less macabre pose—and crawled over to the woman who’d beckoned him. The remaining victims moved to the back of their cages, one stifling sobs and trying to remain invisible, the other—a man—rocking back and forth, screaming about the devil and Jesus returning to make it all right.
When August got to the cage, the woman reached through the bars to take his hand. He didn’t know her name. He didn’t know any of their names. He couldn’t let himself know. It would only make things harder.
Her skin was soft and warm.
“I’m sorry you’re suffering.” She was a rare jewel to end up in one of his cages. She saw him, through the monster, into the cruelty of what had been done to him.
He wished the lie about mates was true. He could have kept her for a thousand years, more, but he could easily enthrall her. It made a part of him want to kill her now for the unfairness of a false hope.
He scooted closer to the cage.
“W-when you do it, does it have to hurt?”
August squeezed his eyes shut. “Yes.” How could he explain to her the need to feed, the pleasure of it, the pointlessness of enthralling her beforehand or the impossibility of stopping once he’d started? It would sound l
ike justification from a monster, and she’d be right.
“Why?”
“It’s how the curse was formed. It’s how it has to be.”
With his free hand, he stroked her hair, surprised when she leaned into him instead of cringing away. If he killed this one, if he made her suffer, he’d never recover from it. Her bravery and compassion in the face of her situation was more than he deserved or could take.
He wanted to keep her. But what would he do with her? He couldn’t take her as a lover, it would trigger the feeding instinct. Sex always made the hunger worse and the killing more brutal. She wasn’t safe here.
He managed to pull his hand out of her silken hair and released himself from her grasp to take the key from his pocket. He unlocked the cage and stepped inside. She crumpled against him, trembling, her bravery leaving now that she thought it was her turn.
His hand lingered on her cheek. “Look into my eyes.”
Her stark gaze rose to his.
“If I asked you to stay with me, if I wanted you to be my mate, if I spared you, would you stay as long as I asked?”
“Y-yes.”
He peeked into her mind and let out a curse that made her shake more. If he couldn’t enthrall her, he’d be free. He’d hoped she would say yes but be lying, or that she’d say no or cry or give any indication that the thought horrified her, but despite all her fear, she wanted to help him. She was a powerless angel, there to save him but unable to complete the task for which she’d been sent. It may have been a survival strategy, but she was willing, and that’s what would have counted if he hadn’t been able to enthrall her. If the story in the book was true. He’d seen no evidence that it was.
He took control of her mind. “You will leave this place and find your way home. Forget me and everything you saw here. You will not have nightmares or fears or lingering dread. It will be as if none of it ever happened.”
Peace slipped over her features, and in a daze, she moved up the stairs and out of the cellar.
As soon as she was gone, the two remaining humans rushed their cages. “Please, I’m sorry for your suffering. Let me out!”
“Please let us go.”
The woman said, “I-I’ll stay with you. I-I’ll do whatever you want. Please.”
August’s face darkened. They hadn’t cared about his suffering five minutes ago. “No more mercy. I’d have to hunt again, and neither of you is worth that much added exertion.”
He left the cellar, slamming the door on their begging and shutting them out to go back to his warm bed upstairs.
***
“Stop it, Dominic!” Nicole choked out between laughter.
“I can’t stop it, Mrs. Rose. It’s the tenth anniversary, the tickle anniversary. I’m afraid, I’m obligated by law to tickle you until you puke.”
She managed to kick him away and get to his side of the king-sized bed. She grabbed his watch off the night table and held it high in the air.
“Nicole… now that’s not playing fair. The firm gave me that.”
“All’s fair in tickle survival. I’ll smash it.”
“You wouldn’t.”
One delicate eyebrow rose. “Try me.”
Dominic sighed and held his hands up in mock surrender. “Okay, I give up.”
“That’s good because my other defense idea was a pillow fort.” She fell back onto the pillows, her gaze following her husband as he got out of the bed, all tan and sleek muscle. He smiled down at her, revealing the dimple she loved.
Dominic Rose was a big shot attorney, but he didn’t fit the stereotypes. There wasn’t a thing sleazy about him. He was kind, honest, funny. She pinched herself, still unsure after ten years that this could be real.
Dominic was the prize at the end of the dating rainbow—the reward for putting up with all the douche-y assholes she’d somehow managed to find herself in bed with before him. Even better? Unlike far too many men, he didn’t judge her for a single one of the conquests on her list. She hadn’t had to lie about her number to appease his ego. And he hadn’t done that asinine man math where you take a woman’s number and multiply it by some arcane amount known only by the boy’s club because she must be a big whore no matter what she says.
Men loved to play with sluts, but when it came time to commit they wanted to think they’d gotten there first. But Dominic was all about the equal opportunity. All he cared about was that he had her now.
Nicole crossed to the dresser and began to brush the tangles out of her long, golden hair. She wished she could say she was some fairy-tale princess who naturally had such fabulous color, but it came from a bottle.
“What if someone from the firm sees us at dinner tonight?”
They’d both called in sick to spend the day together in bed, hoping no one would know it was their anniversary, which they’d declared a secret holiday.
“They’re working late. They’ll be pouring over depositions. It’s your people we’d have to worry about.”
“The flower shop? Oh, please. You think any of them can afford to go out to Au Soleil? On a weeknight, no less? They aren’t rolling in it like you, baby.”
“Good point.” He rushed her, tossing her back on the bed again to smother her with more kisses.
“Dominic, it’s mid-afternoon, I need a shower. Not again.” She fake-smacked at his groping hands, giggling as she squirmed away.
He rolled her over and smacked her bottom much harder than their playful antics would suggest. She knew from the sting alone that he’d left a print.
“Fine. Get that cute ass in the shower, then, and don’t let the butterflies get you!”
“You’re confusing me with Uncle Chuck. I don’t have flying insect delusions, thank you.” She almost regretted telling him that story now. It was just a joke to Dominic, but the idea that a blood relative could have such vivid delusions had played as a low background drumbeat signaling some future doom.
“Want company? I could protect you from them.”
She laughed, and the drumbeat receded. “You’re impossible.”
“Impossibly wonderful,” he said with his cheesy toothpaste commercial smile. He smiled like that to drive her insane.
“Stop, I’ll die laughing. Literally.”
He allowed her to retreat into the bathroom, but she wasn’t surprised when he joined her a few minutes later. She needed to get the lock on that door fixed. She suspected Dominic had broken it on purpose despite his innocent protests to the contrary. He wouldn’t want a door locked to him where she might be waiting naked on the other side. Opportunities like that were for taking advantage of in his book.
She leaned against the shower wall and sighed as his large hands roamed over her body with the soap. She wanted to melt into those strong, warm hands. As long as his hands were on her, nothing else could ever touch her. He was warmth, protection, pleasure that drove away all bad thoughts and fears. His hands slid over her breasts and down between her legs to rub the spot she was sure couldn’t handle any more pleasure today.
“How is this going to work for getting me clean?” she asked, trying to sound firm, but the words spilled out in a whimper.
“How does dry cleaning work? It’s a mystery of life. Just accept that it does.”
She rolled her eyes but didn’t protest as his fingers dipped inside her. She’d thought he’d wrung every ounce of pleasure from her, but Dominic was skilled at much more than law.
He stopped before she reached completion and bent her forward. His mouth brushed the side of her ear. “Put your hands on the shower floor and spread your legs wide for me.”
She wanted to protest, claiming fatigue. They’d fucked so many times in the past six hours she thought she might die from it.
“Nicole… now,” he practically growled.
She reached behind her to run her still soap-slick hands over his erection. How he was still going was anybody’s guess. She wondered if he’d taken an herbal or medical enhancement. When she didn’t move quic
kly enough, Dominic put her into the position he wanted her in and impaled her with one quick thrust.
He was large and thick, and that first thrust always left her gasping and with a twinge in her stomach that felt like a free fall. It did something to her that kept her from ever resenting his demands on her body. She braced her hands against the shower floor, half-grateful he wasn’t going to make her come again.
“That’s it, sweetheart. Just take it,” he rumbled.
His breathing came harder, and he finished fast as the water pounded down cooler on them. When he pulled out of her, she crumpled to the shower floor and leaned against the rounded corner.
Dominic shut the water off and came back with a bathrobe. He wrapped the terrycloth around her and helped her out.
“My poor baby,” he said, as he kissed the hollow of her throat. “Did I break you this time?”
Nicole smiled weakly up at him. “I’m spent. This has to be the last time today.”
“No promises.” He swatted her bottom through the robe, then went to his side of the double sinks and ran a comb through his hair. “Why don’t you run to the coffee shop and get us our usual?”
She jumped at the opportunity for a reprieve. It was the only way she’d go five minutes unmolested. Her husband was in fine form today.
***
The coffee shop was small and intimate and local. They made Cuban coffee—an espresso blend that was strong but not too bitter. It was all Dominic would drink when he worked into the night, and he’d brought Nicole along for the ride of his addiction.
She’d never been able to go for drinking it black like her husband and always ended up with a frothy, cold drink that more resembled a milkshake than coffee. When he’d tried to convert her to real coffee, her response had been, “You can take my frappés from my cold dead hands.”
Dominic had decided against killing her in favor of allowing her this one vice.
