by Kitty Thomas
She dropped onto the bed. “I was at the hospital. They said I’d been there for months. You were a delusion.”
“Again? Nicolette, you’ve never been crazy. Do you understand that you can’t be delusional and have a mind too strong for a vampire to control? It’s completely illogical.”
“Do you understand that vampires aren’t real, and it’s perfectly logical to assume that if I’m seeing one and living with one that it would be normal to question that reality and my sanity?”
“I understand you’ve experienced a lot of intense things in the past few months. Over time life will normalize and you’ll know this is real. I’m sorry you had a dream that frightened you so much and called everything into question. I won’t give you my blood when I’m upset like that again.” He started to leave.
“August, wait.”
“Yes?”
Nicole went to him and allowed him to embrace her. She wasn’t sure now that she was supposedly awake that she wanted this to be her life, but she knew she didn’t want her life to be padded rooms and drugs and no control.
“Why don’t you come downstairs and eat something?”
She didn’t protest as he led her to the kitchen.
“There isn’t much. Just some frozen dinners.”
“Anything is fine.”
He took a box from the freezer and popped it into the microwave then sat across from her, worry in his eyes.
She ran her fingers over the wood grain of the table. It was no more or less real than the table in the institution that she’d… dreamed? So how did she know which table was the real table?
August leaned forward and pressed his wrist to her forehead as if he were checking for a fever. “Your skin is a bit clammy. I’m concerned.”
“Well, I can’t die, right?”
“So then I shouldn’t worry if you experience any discomfort in life? Since you’re immortal, my concern is unwelcome?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
The microwave dinged, saving her from trying to figure out what she did mean or how to express it. He slid the carton to her and retrieved a fork from the drawer.
“I need you lucid. Dominic will rise soon. You’ll have to feed him.”
Nicole hadn’t realized it would be so quick or maybe she’d slept longer than she thought. Who knew how long vampire-blood induced sleep lasted? She wasn’t sure she was ready to see her husband in his new state yet. She wasn’t sure how she felt about him rising at all.
“He’s not going to be like me. We’ll know immediately if he can feed from you. If he can, he won’t have to kill.” Genuine fear shone from the vampire’s eyes—maybe fear he’d cursed Dominic to the fate he’d carried for centuries.
“If he has to kill, I will never… ” Her voice wavered.
“I know. I won’t forgive myself, either.”
Nicole went back to the Salisbury steak, green beans, and mashed potatoes. It tasted like cardboard, like every other frozen meal in existence. The mashed potatoes were particularly revolting. They were covered in a tangy brown gravy that masked the potatoes. But nothing could mask the gravy. It was two kinds of horrible fighting to disguise the other and both failing miserably.
The vampire’s nostrils flared and his eyes glowed. His head turned quickly toward the kitchen door.
“August?”
He held up a hand. “Shhh.” He stared in the direction of the hallway as if he saw… or heard something. “Your husband is awake. Go feed him.” He withdrew a key from his pocket and pressed it into her hand.
“I… but… by myself?”
“Well, I certainly don’t wish to watch.”
“Why not? You made him watch.”
August growled. “Don’t test me right now, Nicolette.”
Chapter Fifteen
When Nicolette had left the room, August took the fork from the putrid food and stabbed it into the table, driving the prongs deep into the wood. From the moment he’d taken her out of the hospital, it had been one stupid choice after another. The anger toward Dominic was irrational. Of course her husband couldn’t believe her. August’s vampiric command made it impossible. The alternative was to think she was ill. The same with her parents.
And yet, though they’d been involved in locking his mate up, he hadn’t had a need to punish them. Dominic fell into another category entirely. He was supposed to watch out for her, protect her in August’s absence. It was his job. Even if he couldn’t protect her from the vampire, he wasn’t supposed to make anything else worse.
Taking her out of the hospital had been a simple matter, but irrational anger flooded him whenever someone else caused her pain.
August closed his eyes and remembered in crisp detail the activities at her house with Dominic. It hadn’t just been the anger. He’d thought about this—the prospect of sharing her out in the open. However many times he had to wipe her husband’s memory to keep him from going off and telling someone or having a nervous breakdown, it would allow Nicolette to stop feeling as if she were cheating. Even with the blood link, she saw the human as her mate, and August as the interloper.
No matter how hard August fought to make things as easy as possible on her, he’d never been able to let go of the guilt for what he was doing. It didn’t matter how much he needed her. It didn’t matter how badly he’d wanted to stop killing. It didn’t obligate her to him. And yet he’d painted it that way as if she owed him her blood and body for the rest of time just so he could control his vampire needs. He’d guilted her and cornered her and done whatever was necessary to bring them to this place, and now he was trying to fix it. But each choice somehow made it all that much worse.
August made his way down the hall and opened the door to the cellar as quietly as possible. He slipped off his shoes and kept to the shadows, creeping down the stairs, his footfalls silent. He didn’t want to watch this, but he couldn’t not watch it. He had to know how the rest of their existence together would be.
“I need you to drink,” Nicolette said. She’d unlocked the cage and was inside with him.
Dominic turned away in revulsion and growled, his fangs bared, eyes glowing. “Get the hell away from me, Nicole, I’ll hurt you!”
“You won’t. It’s okay. You need to feed. You have to.”
“How can you stand to look at me like this? I’m hideous.”
Though there was no mirror in the cage, Dominic had no doubt seen his hands and arms and gotten a decent enough idea about his face. It was the monstrous, rotting that came over them without blood. If feeding from Nicolette healed him, August would have his answer about whether or not the new vampire would have to kill.
“It’s how unfed vampires look. You’ll look like yourself again after you’ve had blood. And as long as you feed regularly, you’ll be normal.”
Dominic growled and turned back to her. “He’s fed from you looking like this, hasn’t he? That monster fucking put his mouth on you looking like he belonged in a leper colony.”
“Once. It was after I ran away. He hadn’t fed for a few days because he didn’t want to kill people.”
“So he’s a moral vampire. I see it now. I was confused when he was going down on you in front of me.”
“Please don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what?”
“The jealousy. I can hear it in your voice. I didn’t want this. I… he kept me here… until… ”
Dominic shook his head. “Stop, Nicole. You don’t have to explain. I know what he did. He passed memories to me when he made me into this. I don’t blame you. What other choice was there? He would have done anything to keep you alive and anything to make things bad enough so you’d give him what he wanted. You had no chance against someone that old and strong. Neither of us did. The fact that you lasted so long… I’m just hungry. Don’t pay attention to anything I say.”
She eased closer and knelt on the ground beside him, pulling her hair back. “That’s why you have to feed. You’ll feel better a
fter you’ve fed. You know you can’t kill me.”
“No, but it will hurt you.”
August smelled her fear and knew she remembered the first time he’d drank from her, the agonizing pain she’d endured, how terrified she’d been that it might never stop. Even if this worked, she wasn’t Dominic’s in the way she was August’s. The mystical link might offer her husband a feeding option, but it wouldn’t stop the pain. It was yet another thing the vampire hadn’t bothered to think through while he was trying to undo Dominic’s murder before it was complete.
“M-maybe it won’t.”
“It will. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“You’ll suffer until you feed, and if you don’t bite me, you’ll have to kill people. Would you rather kill people?”
He scooted away from her until he’d backed himself into a corner. “You have to leave now.”
“Not until you’ve fed. Please, Dominic… if you still love me… ”
He growled. “You know I love you. If I didn’t fucking love you, I would have already devoured you whole.”
She bit down hard into her wrist. August’s nostrils flared as the scent of his mate’s blood coated the air. He had to grip the wall to keep himself from going to her. The effect on Dominic was even more potent—being newly risen.
Dominic pounced on her and held her down against the cold cellar floor. The moment August felt her pain and heard her scream, he left his hiding place and ripped Dominic off her.
The new vampire smirked, the blood dripping down his now-perfect chin. He would feel sorry for hurting Nicolette soon, but the sensations of the first feeding were so exciting and intoxicating that the high lasted longer.
Dominic had become a more perfect version of himself, as if vampirism had retouched him, smoothing fine lines, evening skin tone, chiseling muscles just a little more, making lips fuller, jaw more squared, eyes lighter and more hypnotic—even when they weren’t glowing.
He wiped the blood off his mouth and looked at it in horror. “Oh my God. I’m going to be sick.”
It was a lot for a new vampire to take in. Seeing the woman he’d previously seen as his wife now as his dinner.
“No, you won’t,” August said. “Vampires don’t get sick.”
Dominic glared at him. “I could kill you right now.”
“Yes, but could you kill Nicolette? You know we’re linked.”
He’d felt something shift when he’d passed the vampirism to Dominic. There was a faint tear in the fabric of his immortality.
Nicolette moved out from behind August. It took all his self control not to restrain her. The question wasn’t if Nicolette would wish to continue feeding her husband. She would. No matter how much he hurt her when he did it, she wouldn’t allow him to become a murderer. The real question was… how would August allow it? How would he listen to his mate’s screams every night, knowing it was his fault she was in so much pain?
In the end, surely both vampires would veto this feeding pattern.
Dominic took a step back from his wife, but she took another step closer and embraced him. “I-I’ll get used to it. This is what we have to do.”
“No. This will not happen again.”
“So you want to kill people? We’re talking about a few minutes of pain a day. You don’t have to drink for long if you do it every day. I’ll be fine. I’ll build a tolerance to it. This will all be fine.”
August watched them as the kernel of an idea formed. “I want to try something.”
The two looked up at him as if he were an unwanted guest at a party or someone who had killed their puppy.
“Why should we care about anything you want? This is all your fault,” Nicolette said.
August growled. “Would you have preferred to lose him? For him to age and die and be gone? There is no scenario in which you can’t cast me as the villain, but I may have a solution. What if we feed on you together? The pleasure of my bite may cancel the pain from Dominic’s.”
***
Heat rose in Nicole’s face as she imagined two hungry vampires feeding on her at once, every night for the rest of eternity. After being fed on by August, she’d become unable to separate the feeding act from the sex act.
“Nicole?”
She forced her gaze from Dominic’s pants to his face. “What?”
“Do you want to try that? If it doesn’t hurt you, I’d be willing to feed from you.”
Wasn’t that what she wanted? Not to have a serial killer for a husband? Though, in her mind she’d already started to imagine him killing bad people. He could clean up the planet of evil. It would be a public service. The world would be a better place. It would be safe for children to play unsupervised and for women to walk down dark alleys. Though she had a feeling that it wouldn’t be worth the cost of how it would change her husband or the guilt he’d have to live with as a result.
“O-okay.”
“Excellent,” August said, “Why don’t we take this upstairs where we’ll all be more comfortable? We don’t have to do this down here.”
“I’d like to take a shower first. I feel weird from the change,” Dominic said.
“Certainly. Nicolette, why don’t you go up to your bedroom and wait for us.”
She would be lying if she said she hadn’t, in some dark corner of her mind, fantasized about a similar scenario to this. She averted her eyes from the two of them and climbed the stairs out of the cellar. They moved with such quiet grace she wasn’t sure if they were behind her or if they were still down there talking about vampire stuff. She didn’t dare look behind her to find out.
In her room, Nicole made herself busy transferring all the gifts August had given her to the closet, so the three of them would have room and also so as not to rub it all in her husband’s face. She dug through the bags for the makeup he’d given her.
Rice paper to take off the shine and a swipe of lip gloss. There. Natural and not like she was trying too hard.
She went to the bathroom to freshen up. She undressed and slipped on a nightgown that hung on a peg. When she came back out, both men… both vampires sat in chairs facing each other at the end of the bedroom. It was still hard to remember Dominic was a vampire. The two stared at each other as if telepathically debating territories.
When the door closed behind her, they both looked up, their expressions going from tense property negotiation to blood lust in a blink. Dominic rose first, but August reached the bed first.
“Nicolette, come here.”
She glanced at Dominic as if asking permission, all the while hoping August didn’t notice it. The elder vampire needed to feel like he was in charge. The situation was too delicate. The balance of power would have to remain just so or else the two of them would fight over her like roosters in a hen house. Never mind that she couldn’t deny one and wouldn’t deny the other.
Dominic’s nod was so slight, she wasn’t sure if she imagined it, but she heard the impatient sigh coming from the bed, so she went to August.
“We’ve decided that tonight I will take your throat and Dominic will take the vein between your thighs.”
She didn’t reply because there was nothing she could say that wouldn’t sound completely stupid. Dominic had matured a hundred years since his turning, though he appeared ten years younger. She wondered what vampiric secrets he was privy to. How many of August’s memories did he have? How deep did their connection run? And had the two vampires been communicating telepathically?
They’d conspired to hunt her, to consume her. They would each know what she did with the other. It would all be laid bare. No secrets.
August took off his shirt and pulled her against his chest. The skin-to-skin contact inexplicably soothed her.
He gripped her throat, and her body went tense like a violin string. He stroked her skin with his other hand. She looked helplessly at Dominic, wondering if he’d have that angry glare he’d had when he’d been human and under August’s control, but all she saw was lust pee
ring out from yellow eyes and fangs pressing out of his flesh, itching to be inside hers.
A chill raced down her spine as Dominic growled and shoved the gown halfway up her waist, exposing her pale thighs.
“Spread your legs,” he said.
She did as she was told, her heart lurching into her throat, pounding at a feverish pace.
August struck first. His bite was a calculated strike, his hand never leaving her throat. As if his possession of her must be displayed more starkly with Dominic present.
The usual pleasure and need came over her, feelings she’d sought to mask from her husband before, feelings that made it hard not to succumb to August’s desires.
Her muscles seized, waiting for the strike of Dominic’s bite—the pain still too fresh to relax. To her surprise, instead of fangs, it was a tongue between her legs. She bucked and moved against his mouth as he languidly stroked her.
At the moment of her release, his fangs were in her thigh. And then both vampires drank. Dominic’s bite muted the pleasure of August’s—which was disappointing—but August stopped the pain from Dominic. Instead of being the most pleasurable experience, or the most painful, it became… comfortable, something she could sink into like a fluffy pillow.
Nicole drifted, floating between them as they fed. Time stopped moving and then it moved forever. An eternal now. It wouldn’t matter how much they drank, her body would re-knit itself, rushing to meet the demand with supply. The blood would replenish as if none had ever been taken.
She squirmed as Dominic pulled out of her and ran his tongue over the puncture marks he’d left in her thigh, speeding the healing that would happen on its own within a few seconds anyway. A moment later, August did the same.
Then Dominic did something unexpected. He pricked his finger with a fang like August did when he wanted to give her a little blood. August tensed and growled. Dominic growled back. She wondered if they were exchanging an actual language.
The wound on his finger healed, but the growls continued for several minutes until Nicole was afraid for her safety being between the two of them.
