by Lund, S. E.
The guard blinks. “She’s safe. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“Now go. Tell any other guards that Eve’s safe. Tell them she went with Michel and she’ll be gone for a while.”
The guard struggles but manages to stand, straightening his jacket and adjusting the headset. He turns around and goes back in the other direction towards my parent’s cottage.
“Thank you,” I say to Julien when he turns back to me.
He just stares at me, his gaze moving over my face.
“What am I going to do with you now?” he says quietly. “I’m not letting you out of my sight ever again.”
I shake my head.
“No,” I say, moving away from him. “Don’t you be like Michel. I don’t need two of you trying to treat me like I’m some kind of possession.”
“You are,” he says, his voice choked. “You were meant for me. I claimed you first.”
I frown and turn away, remembering another entry from my journal that it was Julien who bit me first.
“Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds? You sound like a spoiled child.”
“I was spoiled. I had you and then Michel took you away from me. Then, he led me to believe you were dead,” and even now, his voice breaks. “Eve, I didn’t know if I could go on when I thought you were dead...”
“But you did go on.”
“No I didn’t,” he says and his voice is almost a whisper. “I went back to the monastery. I quit fighting. I couldn’t imagine what I’d be fighting for anymore.”
“Stop it,” I say. “That's ridiculous. You’re a knight. You’re a soldier. You told me it’s what you do, fight. Kill enemies. Besides, we were barely even together.”
He’s silent for a moment.
“You don’t believe in love at first sight?”
Yes, I do. Or at least I thought I did. But my love at first sight wasn't for Julien. It was for Michel. That much I do know from my journal.
"You had a strange way of showing it."
"I didn't want to love you,” he says. “I couldn’t help it."
I dig my nails into my palms and don’t respond.
“Eve, I thought my enemies won,” he says. “And I stopped caring anymore. But now…” We just stand there in an awkward silence. Finally, he speaks and his voice is barely above a whisper. “Are you,” he says. “Are you with him again?”
“Not anymore,” I say. “I found my journal and read everything. Until then, I had no memories of anything after my mother died. I didn’t even know vampires existed. Michel and I met again. Then I learned the truth – that it was Michel who killed my mother. I left him.”
"You left him? He let you go?” He shakes his head, disbelief on his face. "Soren compelled him to kill your mother, Eve," he says. "He wouldn't have done it himself."
"It doesn't matter. He killed my mother, Julien! He lied to me,” I say, tears in my eyes. “All this time. He lied to me all along and so did you. You never told me the truth either.”
“What good would it do to tell you?” he says, an edge in his voice. “You’d only obsess about it, plan some way to get revenge, and get yourself killed in the process. That’s exactly what you did, once you found out that Soren was responsible," he says and waves to the beach, "All this is because of your vendetta against him. We were both right not to tell you the truth.”
“The truth is always preferable to lies.”
“You think so?” he says, his voice suddenly hard. “You’ve barely been alive. You know nothing about existence. Believe me, sometimes a lie makes existence bearable. Like I lied to myself about you. That if we'd met first, you would have loved me instead of Michel. Believe me, that lie kept me alive during very dark times.”
I deliberately shut those words out of my mind.
“I’ve lived too many lies, Julien,” I say, glancing away from his too-blue eyes. “I only want the truth from now on. All of it. Only the truth.”
He just stands there, staring at me.
“OK, I’ll tell you the truth,” he says, his voice hard. “It’s either me or Michel for you. There’s no one else you can be with, so choose. If you choose neither of us, by default, you choose Soren. He’ll deploy you like a weapon with no regard for you as a human. He’ll pass you around his lieutenants like a cheap bottle of wine.”
My body tenses at that.
“He won’t love you like I do,” he says finally, his voice soft. “Or Michel.”
“You and Michel keep saying you love me, but it means nothing to me. Nothing.” I turn away, hating that I have no memories of my life.
“You wanted the truth, Eve. No more lies.” He takes my arm and releases a calming endorphin that saps my ability to resist him physically. He turns me back around and holds my shoulders, bending down so his face is just inches from mine.
“I love you. I wish I didn’t. I hate loving you. I thought I’d given up on love centuries ago, but it’s so hard to live forever without it. I can’t do it anymore.”
Then he pulls me along the beach, going back in the direction he came from.
“What are you doing?”
He doesn’t answer, just keeps walking, my hand in his, our fingers threaded together.
“I followed Michel here on a whim one weekend,” he says, laughing ruefully. “Just to see where he was going and I find he’s bought this cottage on the ocean. What’s he doing here, I wondered. I staked it out. Didn’t see anything but him and Vasily staying here, so I thought maybe he bought it for Vasily because he was hurt in the bombing. I come out here today to check on things because I was starting to miss Michel and who the fuck do I find but you, wandering the beach, security detail trailing you like the fucking queen. Jesus Christ.”
We climb up the dunes to the road and his car, which is parked down a tree-lined side road. He opens the door for me and I climb in, my mind resisting but my body betraying me, as usual. He fastens my seatbelt like the chivalrous knight he once was, except of course, that he’s taking me against my will.
I can’t even speak. I just sit there as he gets in the driver's seat and takes out his cell. He speaks into it briefly, relaying two words.
“I’m coming.”
"My parents…" I say.
"I'll call them later."
We drive off and I watch out the car window as the landscape passes us by on the road back to Boston.
We drive to a suburb and to a stately mansion in a grove of trees. The house is old, with huge windows looking out over a large green space of manicured lawns and shrubs, a fountain in the center. There’s heavy security and a guard at a gate admits us, nodding as Julien rolls down his window. We round the circular driveway to the huge double doors where another guard stands.
“I thought you lived at the monastery.”
“I have several properties.”
The guard opens my door and Julien comes around and takes my hand. I can’t resist him, because the endorphins he’s released in me are still too strong. We enter the house, and I stand in the huge foyer with a cathedral ceiling and a large winding staircase up to a second floor. The floors are marble, as are the walls, and the furnishings ornate and antique. It looks like it's been transported from some grand home in eighteenth-century Florence or Paris.
“This doesn’t seem at all like you,” I say. “Not from what I read in my journal.”
“You don’t know me," he says, his brow furrowed.
He speaks with someone who looks like a servant or butler and then he comes to me, taking my hand. He pulls me up the staircase to the second floor and into a huge reception room, past an ornate grand piano and several instruments – a cello, violin, and bass. We walk through the reception room, through a hallway and then into a bedroom with a magnificent bed all draped in sheer white curtains. He closes the door and his wings unfurl as he leans against it, his arms slipping around my waist, pulling me against his body.
“Don’t,” I say in protest but my heart is racing just fr
om his touch and his intensity.
He shakes his head.
“I’m not arguing with you anymore,” he says and his voice is breathless. “I’m listening to your body from now on, not your words or your mind. You want only the truth? I'll tell you the whole truth. All of it. But I want only the truth from you, Eve. You lie all the time, to yourself, to me. Your body doesn’t lie. It’s the only truth that matters now.”
He kisses me, his mouth soft on my lips, holding them there as he threads his fingers in my hair.
“Please,” I say again when he pulls back. I'm barely able to speak. “Don’t.” But my body has already warmed from his touch.
“Shh,” he says, pressing a finger against my lips. “No more lies between us, Eve.”
He kisses me again, this time his kiss is more intense. Despite my mind telling me this shouldn’t happen, my body responds to him when his tongue touches mine. He makes a sound deep in his throat.
My heart responds to the blatant desire in his face, to the need in his eyes, a thrill of lust shocking through my body. As we kiss, he opens himself to me and I experience everything from our shared past through him, how he first saw me when I was a child in the darkened hallway in our house, how he felt that night at the diner when we first met, how he followed me to the crime scene, to everything afterwards when he and I were together in Boston, then the moment he saw me on the beach, the image of me standing there making him fall to his knees, overcome, covering his eyes. His memories and his emotions speak more loudly than any words ever could and in that moment, I know he loved me – he loves me.
He pulls me against him so close, I can feel his erection pressing into my belly. And there’s nothing I can do to resist him. So I don’t.
I don’t even try.
When he feels me give in, he pulls back from the kiss and exhales heavily, his forehead against mine. He drops his arms and stands there not touching me, just looking in my eyes.
Then, he offers his hand to me and I look at it and I know what he's doing. He's giving me a chance to choose. I hesitate. There's no doubt that I'm aroused by his touch. I know he loves me from our shared memories. He needs me in an almost desperate way.
I take his hand.
He exhales heavily and for a moment just squeezes my hand in his. He pulls me over to the bed, sitting on it, his wings folding up. He guides me between his thighs and embraces me, his arms around me, his lips pressing against my neck.
We remain like this for long moments. His tongue is wet against my throat where Michel bit me – where he bit me so long ago – and it sends another shock of lust through me so that I can’t help but gasp.
He lies back, pulling me on top of him so that I’m resting on my elbows, my face above his. He brushes my hair back, tucking it behind my ear and I stare into his eyes. He’s so beautiful, I can barely stand it.
Then I lean down and kiss him, his mouth opening against mine, his arms squeezing me more tightly, his emotions surging through me as we connect again, and whatever my mind thinks about what I’m doing, my body doesn’t care any longer. I don’t care any longer. I only know that this feels as if it could finally fill the void in my body, in my heart, that’s been there for the past two months since I woke up.
Perhaps my entire life.
He rolls over on top of me, and undresses me, taking off each piece of my clothing, deliberately, until I lie naked beneath him. Slowly, he kisses every part of me, starting with my hands and wrists, my elbows and my neck before moving to my shoulders and down to my breasts. He lingers over my belly, kissing it and my hips before moving lower, spreading my thighs gently, running his lips down my leg from my foot to my calf and then my inner thigh, before repeating it on my other leg.
By the time he reaches my sex, I’m dizzy with lust, my flesh aching, throbbing and I groan when his tongue touches me. He slips fingers inside of me, stroking me, and I come right away, the pleasure so intense, the sweetness spreading down my legs and deep in my belly, my body convulsing around his fingers. Before I can even come down from the orgasm, he’s inside of me, filling me completely, kissing me as he's thrusting fast and hard. His connection with me increases and I feel his pleasure, feel the delicious sensation of him sliding so slick and snug inside of my body as another orgasm slowly builds.
Then he bites my neck, the pain is brief and bright, and I come again, all my senses overwhelmed and it's just too much to bear.
CHAPTER SIX
"To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead."
Bertrand Russell
I wake in the night, my body starting to feel the effects of my blood addiction. Julien isn’t with me and I get up and tiptoe to the bathroom, where I find a large towel, using it to cover my nakedness.
I go out into the main reception room and he’s standing at the window, naked, talking into his cell. He hears me, of course, and turns, the phone at his ear. He waves to me and I join him. He pulls me against his body with one hand and continues to speak softly into the phone for a few moments.
“Tell him those are my terms. If he doesn’t accept, I'm gone for good and so is she.”
I frown. What plans is he making for me?
“I won’t hear any counter offer. That’s final.” He ends the call, tapping the screen and turns to me. “Why are you awake? You should be sleeping.”
“Who were you talking to,” I say, unable to read him.
He puts the phone down on the windowsill and brushes the hair off my cheek.
“Vasquez. I told him you were coming back to work for the SCU and I was going to be your partner.”
“You did?” I say, surprised that he’s actually going to let me work again. "How can that be? You were implicated in the River Man killings."
"Since O’Neil’s death, there's been a shake-up in the SCU. Files were lost. My case in particular. You and I will work together. This is what we were meant to do, you and I.” He bends down and kisses me briefly. “I know you won’t rest until you follow your mother’s path. Michel won’t give you what you want, Eve, but I will. I’ll give you everything you want. Everything.”
“That’s what he said as well,” I say. “I don’t know what I want anymore.”
He smiles briefly. “Yes you do. You just don’t want to admit it. Listen to your body and your heart. Don’t listen to that moralizing superego that haunts you, telling you that you must atone for wrongs you never did. For bad things for which you had no responsibility.”
I try to ignore his words because that sounds too much like what Michel said.
“I need your blood,” I say plainly, rubbing my hands over his bare chest.
“How do you want me?” he says and I can hear the instant transformation in his voice at the very thought of it. I search him out with my mind and he’s immediately choking with lust at the prospect of me drinking his blood, being on a blood high so we can fuck and our pleasure will be even more intense. His body has already responded, his flesh stiffening. My body responds in an instant as well and I’m shocked at the intensity of it.
I close my eyes and lean against him.
“Where do you want me to feed?” I say, barely able to speak, I'm so overwhelmed with desire.
“No, this is all about you,” he says, pulling the towel off me, his hands stroking down my back to my buttocks as he pulls me against him.
But I catch a hint of what he wants – a brief vision as he’s imagined it and he wants me on his lap, with him inside of me. He wants me drinking from his neck and that image is now what I want as well.
He pulls me over to the couch against the wall and sits down, his erection thick and already wet with fluid. I straddle him, and he holds his erection up for me, but I rub myself against him, wanting to feel the slick wetness, the silky feel of the head stroke me first. I press against him shamelessly, my eyes closed, as I enjoy the desire building inside of me, the ache growing more intense. I deny the need to feel him inside me as long
as I can.
He’s just looking at me, his face filled with lust as I wantonly rub myself against his erection. He loves it. He loves this – seeing me using his body to pleasure myself. Finally, I want him inside of me and deny myself no longer. I sit on him, gasping as he fills me up so well, the pressure so intense, so sweet.
“Now,” he says, and uses the corner of his fingernail to open a thin seam on his neck below his ear, just beside the Lorraine Cross tattoo that looks more like a brand than ink. I kiss it first, wondering what it means, and then press my mouth over the wound, sucking at it, nursing, the blood trickling into my mouth, the effect immediate.
My body trembles with pleasure as the endorphins hit my brain and I can’t imagine a more intense experience than this – him inside me, me feeling his desire on top of mine, our minds connecting, the effect of his blood magnifying everything ten-fold.
It’s almost too much to bear.
Almost.
But I can bear it because it's washing away the pain and grief over learning that Michel killed my mother. I will bear it because this is what I need to forget him. I shut off my mind and let my body lead me where it wants me to go – where my heart wants to be.
Then Julien bites me, the pain sharp and short and we wallow in pleasure too intense to describe.
The next morning, I wake and he’s naked on his stomach beside me, a pillow over his head. I'm surprised to see him there and that he wants to sleep with me. He always left before.
“What’s going on in that too-busy mind of yours, Eve?” he says, his voice muffled under the pillow. “You think too much.”
I smile. “How can I not think with you lying there naked like that?”
He pulls the pillow off his head and rolls on to his side, reaching to run his fingers over my cheek, aiming for my dimple.
“God, all I want to do is fuck you,” he says. “It’s really distracting.”
My gaze travels down his body to his erection. “That’s just a morning thing,” I say and grin. “Even I know that. You get one of those,” I say and point to it, “and you look around for a way to get rid of it. If it wasn’t me, it’d be someone – or something else.”
