Awakened (A Fairy Tales Novel)

by Melanie Walker

  " Bri!" Ash yelled her voice shrill and completely shocked by what she just saw. Winter and Belle beside her, mouths gaping in absolute shock.

  "What?" she asked and looked over her shoulder brushing tiny flecks of burning ember from her clothes. "I said I would free her, which I have and she could go wherever... like she did."

  And with that Bri walked away, not batting an eye over her decision.

  *

  Chapter Thirty

  Bri and the girls left shortly after she had demolished Sarah and none of them said a word. Bri wasn’t sure if it was out of fear for what they saw, or from pride for what they saw. She didn’t care either way because Sarah deserved it.

  She couldn’t understand why it all suddenly made sense but she knew after seeing Sarah drift away in ashes that this was only the beginning of a very long and tasking road for both Belle and Beast.

  One she knew Beast would not take for granted. This wasn’t about saving his ass; it was completely about having Belle back again.

  Bri never understood the importance, the power, of all consuming love before tonight. But as of now she felt it. She was being drawn to Fangs by the power of what she just experienced, realizing in that moment that she had been wrong.

  Her responsibilities to the Dark would never be more important than Fangs.

  It was something she needed him to know.

  It was why she was driving all over the city looking for him. After the claim between them was broken, she could find him about as easily as a needle in a haystack. So against all odds she was Sherlock Holmes-ing it tonight.

  She finally found him, after searching his Crypt and then his Condo, at the Spoke, his favorite bar that catered to the ‘ not a human’ variety.

  She walked in and was immediately bombarded with a chest full of stale tobacco smoke, the stench of decades of spilled beer on the floor and of course the over powering emotions one would only find in a bar. There was equal amounts anger and sadness, mixed with a whole lot of need for sex creating an emotion cocktail that would have had Cane salivating.

  With no choice but to shield herself immensely she scoped the figures in the bar looking for only one, finding him at a booth surrounded by a Vampires from his Posse and human women.

  She tried to remind herself that she let him go, she walked away from him and she couldn’t expect him to go on mourning a love that he thought was only one sided. It didn’t mean that she had to like it though.

  The closer she got to the table the easier it was to see the trifecta of sex that surrounded Fangs. On his lap sat a beautiful blonde with a bounty of breasts to rival Dolly and a gorgeous brunette who seemed, immediately, a better catch. Fangs beneath them both, touching them while he licked salt from the blondes neck before slamming a shot of Patron... and sucking the lime from between the brunettes teeth. The happy giggles coming from the women said they were ready and so completely willing when he gave the word.

  When he looked up and saw Briar standing there... the look of shock and awe he gave spoke volumes on being busted. "Can I help you?" He asked, his eyes guarded as he watched, waiting for a reaction.

  Everything she had been feeling, the love the longing the excitement of coming to him after weeks of waiting for the truth to seek her out and slap her in the face... it evaporated the instant he asked her that, his voice cold.

  "No..." she spoke softly the word dying out in the din of the bar but she knew he heard her. "No I don’t think you can."

  She spun and walked from the bar. She felt foolish getting her hopes up assuming he would be astonished and happy to see her, that he would welcome her back with arms open. He said he would God dammit!

  She fumbled with the key to her Audi, her hands shaking when she heard fast footsteps behind her. She opened the door and climbed in but when she tried closing it, she saw that pale fingers were gripping the handle stopping her from closing him out. "Let. Go. Fangs!" She demanded and yanked on the door again, foolishly thinking it would close. Duh, Sire Vampire dumbass. That door aint closing till he wants it to!

  "No, I don’t think I will." His voice, still angry, held the note of so many things that had her melting at he Bring it. "Tell me why your here."

  "Obviously I came to see you Fangs. I didn’t think you would be so busy though." She looked up at him. "Now let my door go."

  "And why exactly did you come to see me?" He asked his voice now playful. He knew exactly why she was there.

  "So many reasons really."

  "Like?"

  "Like..." she paused and let out a sigh before banging her forehead on the steering wheel. Why did men have to be so damn annoying? Why was it that when they wanted you like you knew they did, they had to make you gravel? "To talk I guess...with you..."

  He dropped his hand from the door and stepped between it and the inside squatting before her. "Talk about what?" His voice was back to that devilish charming manner that had her needy most of the time.

  "Something you said once." She spoke soft, her voice low but still loud enough for him to hear it loud and clear.

  "And what did I say?"

  "Something about me figuring out where we could fit, where I belong..."

  "Aaah." He said and stood.

  "I guess I figured it out."

  And like a ghost in the wind Bri started the car and ripped her tires racing from the parking lot.

  *

  "Jesus Christ that woman pisses me off to no God damned end!" Fangs roared as he walked back inside the bar and to his table where he threw a hundred dollar bill down and grabbed his jacket.

  "What are you talking about?" Knight asked from the inside of the booth.

  "Princess fucking Briar! Still fucking asleep that one! God dammit I can’t stand demons!" With that he said nothing else and stormed out of the bar and raced back to the place it all began.

  *

  Bri slammed her door when she got inside of her house. Ready to spit nails at going to confess her undying love. Only to find Vampire Charming with a plethora of sex on his lap.

  "You have a lot of nerve coming to me and then storming off." Fangs voice made Bri jump about ten feet when he spoke from behind her. His anger had its own heartbeat and it was like whiskey to a drunk the way it fired her up.

  "I have a lot of nerve?" She asked her own voice seething as she turned to face him. "I’m not the one who asked for me to figure it out, to find you when I realized..." the words fell off because she could not say them to a man who less than three months ago plead his undying love before sauntering off in the twilight to find the next warm body.

  "And what… you think any of that changed?" He sliced his hand through the air as he yelled.

  "Well seeing Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle double D's on your lap made it abundantly clear."

  "When will you learn that I need to eat? I have told you this a thousand times!" He roared.

  "Well color me shocked Fangs. I didn’t get the memo in the Dark that Vampires now survive on a strict Tequila shots diet!" She roared back.

  "If I color you anything Bri it’s stupid!"

  Then he growled at her, actually fucking growled at her.

  "I hate you!" She snapped.

  "I hate you back!"

  She lifted her hand as if she would smack him and stopped, stepping back.

  "Want to hit me? Think it will make what you saw tonight any different. Go ahead and hit me then."

  She did the most amazing bitch slap that a girl could ask for.

  "Feel better?" He asked rubbing his face where the force of the hit left a perfect pink handprint across his cheek.

  She felt the tears stinging her eyes but turned away from him. "It’s not just tonight Fangs. It’s every night from the minute you walked out that door." She cried and pointed to her front door. "I hear the stories of the need to feed as you call it."

  "So what you keep tabs on me now?" She couldn’t see so much as hear that he spoke through gritted teeth.

  She spun, tear
s streaming be damned. "You think that just because you left that I stopped loving you? That the claim you placed on me made it impossible doesn’t even factor because I would have died a little without it. The way you care so little about hurting the one you claim to love astonishes me because I would have never done that to you!"

  "You honestly think that I have been out gallivanting in freedom, free to fuck as I wish?"

  "I know you have!"

  "You know nothing!"

  They were silent when Fangs spoke. "I haven’t been with anyone Bri, not since the moment we met."

  "What?" He couldn’t possibly mean…like ever?

  "So bloody faithful to you that I damn near broke my own hand." He shook his head and Bri couldn’t help the flood of arousal at how graphic Fangs seemed to always be. "Damn near killed myself avoiding feeding the first few weeks while waiting for you to come to me. When you didn’t..." He looked away. "I had no choice but to find another and even then it was simply feeding and nothing else."

  "Then why be so cold to me tonight when I did come to you?" She placed her hand on his shoulder when he jerked free of her touch.

  "Why would I be so foolish to trust you?"

  "Because I came to you."

  "Something you have done time and time again, to leave soon after."

  She thought again of Belle and Beast. "You don’t get it Fangs. I witnessed a miracle tonight. I realized that I was blessed with the same miracle and squandered it."

  He drew his brows together in question.

  "Belle came back to us tonight."

  The look of shock was not a surprise. "What?...How?"

  She told him the story, told him about the promise that Beast made to Belle. "He asked her if she truly believed she could ever love anyone more than him and she knew immediately that she never could and struck the deal."

  Fangs sat on the couch and bowed his head in his hands, his fingers digging into his hair. "The question was never about love Bri. There was never a loss of love between us."

  The ‘it was you running scared’ that went unsaid.

  "I also didn’t have my life in my possession Fangs. How could I offer you forever when I belonged to another?"

  "You never belonged to him Bri." His black velvet eyes were smoldering when he looked at her. "The minute I kissed you, you became mine. I would have died to make you see that."

  "I know." She moaned, knowing that those words had been her reason to go it alone, but they too were her reason to get him back.

  "I don’t know how to let you back in."

  She fell to her knees before him grabbing his hands. "Please Fangs." She cried and forced him to look at her.

  "But I don’t know how to keep you out..." He whispered and pulled his hands free from hers and cupped her neck pulling her to his mouth.

  *

  His kiss was brutal, they way he nipped at her lips and sucked her bottom lip, his fingers knotting in her hair as he tried to get her closer still. She ate at his lips in the same desperate manner not only wanting him but needing him to take her, own her.

  She dug her fingers into the lapel on his jacket and fell back to the floor taking him with her. As his body fell over hers she could feel his need in her blood, but also the massive erection as he pressed against her.

  "I’ve tried to walk away from you... tried to make you walk away... but you never listen." He spoke his lips falling to hers, peppering them with kisses in between words.

  "You’re all that I want Fangs."

  He gripped the hem of her shirt and pulled it up over her stomach, growling when her flesh was revealed before licking her from navel to neck. Scooping her denim covered ass in his hands he lifted her against him as his hips rocked forward, mimicking his intentions.

  He had successfully pulled her shirt free, and she had freed him of his as well before he gently cupped the underside of her breast and brushed a thumb across the hardened nipple and smiling as Bri cried out in pure need.

  "I drive myself crazy most nights thinking about you, how it sounds exactly like that when I touch you just the right way." He slipped his finger over the top of her bra and let the pads of his fingers tantalize her into a molten flame.

  "I thought of you too, every night seeing your black eyes stare me down like prey before you would take me." She hissed when he shredded the center clasp to her bra and bared her flesh to his hungry gaze. "Thinking of how a simple touch from me and I had you wound like a ravenous beast."

  He used both hands and cupped her breasts, his thumbs tugging and scraping along her pebbled nipples before taking them one by one into his mouth. Bri couldn’t breathe with the way he attacked her with such passion and need. The emotions were taking a back seat for the first time in weeks because it was all too much. She had missed his mouth and his hands and the way that he could make her forget the world with a simple kiss.

  He sucked on her flesh while grinding against her, forcing her to cry out for more. "I couldn’t sleep some days when the pressure in my balls damn near exploded at remembering how tight and hot you are." He groaned as he slipped his hands beneath the waste of her jeans forgoing her button entirely. Finding her hot and wet and just how he needed her he let out an erotic growl and slipped a finger inside unable to help himself. "It was killing me Bri."

  Bri was on the verge of release the instant his mouth met hers, but when his fingers found her center and attacked with a single minded assault she broke apart, writhing beneath him as he worked a second digit in. "Jesus I can feel you coming." He moaned and brought his mouth back to hers.

  As her body exploded from the inside out, his tongue dancing with hers to every thrust his fingers made, she reached out for the link they shared in the claim hoping to feel him against all of her senses. Had she not opened herself up to him in that instant she would have never felt the anger and pain that he was giving off.

  His anger was for her and he let her have it in the only way he could. She hated herself in that instant more than ever before, knowing the doubt she had planted in their relationship, the pain she had caused him... it was ten times worse than he had ever let on, but it was his anger that seared her, made her come harder. His anger was all that drove him now, anger and need and Bri was the only outlet.

  "Tell me Fangs..." She cried as she came down from a euphoric high and drifted on fingers of pure madness. Perhaps it was that she lived by anger and vengeance but whatever the reason his fury made her even hotter, made him more desirable if it that was even possible.

  "Tell you what Pretty girl?" He asked and slipped his tongue along the shell of her breast as he pulled his hand free of her and the denim confines.

  "Everything, I want it all; The monster and the man that I made you. Tell me everything."

  The hand that he had used on her seconds before he brought to his mouth licking the two fingers that had brought her such pleasure. "The taste of you...was all I craved."

  He rocked back on his heels and started yanking at the button on her jeans before the sound of her zipper being pulled down was the loudest sound in the room. He tugged her jeans free once he looped his thumbs in the straps to her thong tossing them both to the side. Corking his fingers he ran his knuckles through the very slit of her again, retching a cry from her lips as she watched him with pure sexual intent.

  "I craved you, the thickness of you in my mouth." She reached for the belt on his faded jeans but his hand stilled her movements.

  "This is all for me Bri. I have waited what felt like ages to look at you this way again!" His voice was like gravel, his words a demand. He ran his hand palm down, along the center of her body starting at her collar bone and ending at the crease of her thigh. Every inch he traveled she arched to meet his touch.

  "Of all the women I have ever touched, the satin feel of your skin was the memory I woke every night aching to." He palmed her knees and spread her further so he could look upon the secret places of the only woman he had ever loved. Bri blushed as he revealed
the very core of her to his gaze.

  "Do I make you nervous?" He asked as he scooted his body closer so her legs would splay over his thighs, her bottom lifted from the ground at the angle he had her displayed.

  "No, I love that you want to look at me." She moaned as his hands began roaming her body again.

  "Then why be shy and blush as I watch you?" For the first time that night his tone was almost reverent as he brushed the hair from her shoulder and dropped his body over hers so he could nuzzle her neck, swiping his tongue over the very essence of what he craved most.