Something touched his ankle and then grabbed it. Jack let out a surprised grunt and spun around, kicking his legs more carefully in case it had been the woman. It was nearly impossible to see down into the water with only the faint illumination of the stars and moon overhead. He took a breath and submerged himself, keeping his eyes open despite the stinging of the salt.
She was right there, waiting for him, her face less than a foot away from Jack’s stomach. She was not panicking, like he’d expected her to be, and she seemed almost too comfortable in the water. Jack reached out to take her by the shoulder, but the girl kicked her legs and circled around behind him before he could make contact, swimming with grace and a distinct lack of effort.
He came up for air and almost immediately felt arms wrap around his shoulders. He felt a pair of very soft and very naked breasts press into his back.
“What…?” Jack frowned, feeling confused and more than a little intrigued. “What are you doing out here?”
The girl laughed again, and this time, Jack recognized an inhuman quality to the sound, as beautiful as it was. It was light and airy, like the chiming of a bell, but full of excitement and exuberance. Jack tried to turn around to get a better look at the girl, but she pulled away from him, diving underwater again. He felt her pass between his legs and then back around his waist.
She resurfaced with the moon at her back, rising up until the entirety of her upper body was above the water. She was naked, as Jack had thought, and she also wasn’t human. Her skin had a rich, ocean blue hue to it, and her hair was a faded azure in color.
And her breasts… For a moment, Jack felt like a teenager gawking at a busty woman. They weren’t huge, but they were perky and perfectly formed, with dark blue nipples and a delicious buoyancy to them.
“What are you?” called Jack.
Instead of answering, the girl kicked her legs, moving forward through the water almost like how Jack could glide through the air using his levitation. She looked young in appearance, maybe in her late teens, though the fact that she was clearly some kind of supernatural creature made him suspect she was probably far older.
She looked at him with a childish expression on her face and started humming. Jack’s muscles were starting to burn from treading water, but he still managed to reach a hand out in an attempt to touch her. It was as much to confirm that she was really there, as for, well, other reasons.
The girl drew back at the last second, and then dove back underwater. Jack felt her swimming around him in a spiral before surfacing again in front of him. She threw her arms around his neck, and wrapped her legs around his waist.
Then he was kissing her. It would have been hard to manage while treading water, if not for the fact that the blue-skinned girl seemed to be holding him up, suspending herself firmly in place and him along with her. She kissed him deeply, gyrating against him and mashing her perfect, naked breasts against his chest. Jack’s body reacted to her touch in mere seconds, and he suddenly felt very glad that he’d decided to strip out of his clothing.
He had just enough awareness of what was happening to know that he was probably dealing with supernatural forces that could backfire on him at any time. He steeled his will and tried to pull away from the girl, shaking his head. She let out a tiny whimpering noise, continuing to grind her crotch against the lump in his boxers.
“Sorry,” said Jack. “I’m not sure what you are, but—”
She pressed her lips against his, cutting him off. The temptation was too much. Jack gripped her thigh with one hand and started to reposition her. He felt her slip her tongue into his mouth, and then he felt something follow immediately in its wake.
Water flooded into Jack’s mouth and throat, cold, clean, and shocking in the way it immediately cut off his breath. He twisted and felt the girl’s body shift form, becoming a flowing stream of water. It was like a waterfall in the shape of a woman and pressed toward Jack’s mouth and nose, trying to flow inside of him.
He exhaled with as much force as his lungs could muster, simultaneously casting Shadow Levitation to lift himself clear of the water. The girl splashed down as he rose up, reforming into her human shape. She let out that sweet, innocent laugh again, and launched herself a few feet out of the water and into the air, somersaulting near where Jack was levitating.
She returned to the water in a perfect dive, her naked body disappearing into the ocean. Jack waited for a couple of seconds, but the ocean was still. He used his levitation to move to where the water was shallow enough for him to stand and walked the rest of the way back to the beach.
CHAPTER 3
Jack was still damp when he arrived at the gate leading to his grandfather’s old estate. He punched the electronic code in with tired fingers, scanning his eyes across the yard on the other side. The moonlight gave the cherry trees a skeletal quality, their branches swaying like outstretched arms in the wind.
He had hired people to paint and renovate the mansion itself after the drive-by incident the month before last, but it still conjured up the same conflicting emotions within him. It was his home, but it wasn’t. It welcomed him, but in a way that felt hollow and full of old, echoing secrets.
He had a lot on his mind, and he was too tired to juggle it all at once. Jack kicked off his waterlogged sneakers and shrugged out of his leather duster as soon as he was through the door. The foyer was quiet, and the only illumination came from one of the table lamps inside the lounge.
“Ryoko?” Jack half whispered, and half called. “Is that you?”
He walked into the lounge, and immediately saw that it wasn’t.
“She’s already retired to bed for the night,” said Mira. “But I’m still awake.”
Not too long ago, running into Mira in the middle of the night would have meant that a fight was about to break out, despite the fact that they’d never truly been enemies. She was an attractive woman, easily on the higher end of drop-dead gorgeous, with long blonde hair, large breasts that she relished showing off, and hips with just the right amount of curve. She had the appearance of a woman in her early thirties but could probably pass as one a decade younger, which was to say nothing of what her true age was.
Tonight, Mira wore a pink nightgown that was a few sizes too small for her—one of Ryoko’s nightgowns, borrowed to help fill out her own wardrobe or just for fun. She sat on the couch with her legs crossed in a manner that left the bottom hem of the fabric on the verge of sliding up and revealing a flash of what was underneath.
“What are you still doing up?” asked Jack. He slowly walked into the lounge, dropping into a seat on the couch that kept a safe distance between them.
“It’s a Friday night,” said Mira. “I didn’t want to let it go to waste. But there’s so little of interest for me to explore within this cozy little town.”
Mira had adapted surprisingly well to the newest transition she’d been presented with. She was human again after god only knows how many decades of being a powerful Aquinian vampire. She’d been a blood mage, capable of taking what she wanted at any time, in any place, and now she was just normal.
Losing her vampiric abilities had essentially meant losing everything, closing the chapter on one life to begin another. Even just getting her back to Lestaron Island had been a chore for Jack. She’d turned human again during their three-way battle with Volandar and Pierce, and the normal airports in Romania were understandably hesitant to let a woman with no passport or identification of any sort board an international flight.
They’d ended up renting a private plane, which was basically how they’d flown out there, except that time, Mira had dodged the fee by enthralling the plane’s crew. Again, Jack had been left feeling a deep gratefulness toward his grandfather for leaving him a sizable inheritance.
“There’s not much to do in the mansion, either,” said Jack. “Other than Netflix. I guess video games, too, now that we’ve got the consoles set up.”
Mira laughed and shook her head. She l
ooked over at him, letting her eyes settle on his. They were crystalline blue, without the tiny flecks of red that had once made them look so distinctive and unique.
Even after they’d made it back to the island, it wasn’t as though Mira had many choices about what to do next. More than half a century earlier, when she’d first been turned into a vampire, she’d run away from her old life.
That had resulted in her being reported as a missing person and eventually declared legally dead. Unless she created a new identity for herself, Mira would never be able to open a bank account, pay taxes, or even work a normal job.
This was not to say that she was totally helpless. She’d almost immediately begun mingling with the locals during her stay at the mansion.
Jack had told everyone that she was his new gardener, and people had asked very few questions beyond that. Well, some of the men in town had had questions about her, but those were of a different sort.
At the very least, Mira still had a roof over her head, guaranteed meals, and the freedom to continue pursuing what she truly wanted. Jack was the only one who could give her that.
“Your clothing is damp,” said Mira. “How did that happen? It wasn’t raining outside.”
“It was… a strange night.” Jack chewed his lip, considering how much to tell her. He hadn’t mentioned his plan to sneak into the cemetery to either Mira or Ryoko in advance. Now that he’d discovered the body and the mystery that went along with it, he felt justified. He didn’t like knowing that his father might have been a murderer, let alone having to explain it to others.
“Do tell,” said Mira. She slid a little closer to him on the couch, flashing a coy smile. It was hard for Jack to look at her in that too-small nightgown and think about anything other than how easy it would be to rip it off her. She had a wonderful smell, like bubblegum ice-cream, but infinitely more nuanced.
“I ran into a girl at the beach,” said Jack. “Well, not really a girl, I guess. Some kind of supernatural entity. Blue skin, light blue hair. Uh… nice features.”
“You say she was on the beach?” asked Mira.
Jack nodded.
“It sounds like a water nymph.” Mira pursed her lips and folded her arms over her breasts. “Did anything else happen?”
“I went for a swim, as you can probably tell,” said Jack.
Mira blinked. The expression on her face was one that managed to simultaneously look concerned for his health and unable to believe his stupidity.
“You went swimming… with a water nymph?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “Is that bad?”
Mira nodded slowly.
“Let me put it this way,” she said. “It’s tantamount to going for a sprint through the jungle with a panther. Or frolicking in the sand with a nest of scorpions.”
“Fair enough,” said Jack. “She did try to attack me at one point. She tried to force water into my lungs. It was only for an instant, but still long enough to be a little terrifying.”
Mira let out a slow, musing sigh.
“It does not bode well for this tiny island to have such a powerful supernatural entity lurking around its shores,” she said.
“Powerful?” asked Jack. “She looked like a teenage girl and acted like, well, more like a cat or a playful dolphin than a person.”
“Appearances can be deceiving, as I’m sure you know by now,” said Mira. “Even a young water nymph has a strong enough affinity with the ocean’s essence to create rogue waves, storms, and even tsunamis, if she so decides.”
Jack whistled.
“Alright,” he said. “Well, I guess we’re going to the beach tomorrow, then. It’s not like we can just leave this be.”
He started to stand up from the couch. Mira slid into him before he could.
“Tomorrow, we’ll go to the beach,” she said, in a breathy voice. “But tonight…”
She let her hand run over the crotch of Jack’s jeans. It was torture of the most insidious variety.
“We’ve done this dance before, Mira,” said Jack. “Almost every night this week. The answer is still no.”
“Is it, though?” she whispered. “It doesn’t feel like no.”
She gave the rapidly hardening bulge in his pants a small squeeze. Jack took her hand and moved it off his crotch.
“There’s so much I can do for you, my sweet Jack,” she cooed. “Some of it you’ve experienced before. Some of it you have not. I know you want me, and I’ll be yours for the taking, once you’ve given me the Embrace.”
Since the very first night she’d been turned back into a normal human, Mira had been trying to trade sex for Jack’s vampiric Embrace, the term used for the ritual that one vampire performed to create another. She’d given him the Embrace once, against his will. It was almost poetic for him to deny it to her now.
“It isn’t happening, Mira,” said Jack.
“Why not?” she asked. “What difference does it make to you whether I’m a vampire or a human?”
She lifted up one of her legs and draped it over his. Jack reached out to move it off him, but she grabbed his hand before he could and pulled it to one of her very large and very soft breasts. His heart was pounding in his chest, and it felt like it was pumping all of his blood down to a singular, stiffening place.
“I’ve seen the things you’ve done as a vampire,” said Jack. “You’ve killed people. Enthralled innocents. I’m not going to make you into a monster.”
“Those same accusations apply both ways,” whispered Mira. “You’ve killed before, and enthralled women for your own benefit.”
“And if I had the choice, I would choose to go back to being human,” he said.
He spoke the words with more certainty than he actually felt. He wasn’t sure if he even had the option, now. Mira had given him a significant portion of her essence when she’d performed the Sacrificial Gift on him. Jack doubted whether her death would return his humanity to him as it once would have.
“You might not have that choice to make,” whispered Mira. “But you have this one.”
She unzipped his jeans. Jack flinched at the raw pleasure of her hand as it began to explore, touching and teasing.
“Just give me the Embrace,” said Mira. “I’ll let you have me. You can have me for long as you want. As many times as you want, wherever and whenever. I’ll be yours, my sweet.”
He knew that she would hold to her word. She’d probably enjoy it as much as he would, if not more. He’d already come close to giving in several times since returning to the mansion. Jack was committed to Ryoko emotionally, but she’d been very clear about the fact that she didn’t mind him straying too much as long as he always came back to her.
“You’re playing a dangerous game.” Jack took a breath, regaining his balance a little. “If you keep teasing me like this, I might just decide to take you.”
“I would welcome it,” said Mira, drawing near enough to put their lips within millimeters of touching. “For you are a man of honor. I suspect you’d do the honorable thing, in the aftermath.”
She let her blue eyes meet his and kissed him. It was a hungry, aggressive kiss. Jack flipped her down underneath him on the couch. She was totally naked underneath the nightgown. All it would take was for him to pull his boxers loose and thrust forward. Mira was already moving underneath him, urging him on.
Jack cleared his throat, and took a deep, calming breath.
“Nice try,” he said.
Mira grabbed him by the shirt scruff and pulled him in for another kiss, biting his lip slightly as he pulled back. Jack forced himself to sit up on the couch and fix his jeans.
“Every man has a breaking point,” Mira whispered, into his ear. “You’ll reach yours eventually.”
“Maybe,” said Jack. “But not tonight.”
CHAPTER 4
Jack didn’t head upstairs immediately. He spent a few minutes in the kitchen in front of the open fridge, as much to browse the available food as to cool himsel
f down. Then, he headed for the servant’s chambers.
The door to Ryoko’s room was closed. Jack knocked gently before opening it. The room was dark and she was lying in bed, but Jack heard her make a cute, tired noise and rustle up from her place within the sheets.
“Mr. Masterson?” whispered Ryoko.
“Nope,” he said. “No Mr. Masterson here. Just Jack.”
Ryoko had struggled to get over her habit of calling him “sir” or “Mr. Masterson” by default. It had been endearing when she’d just been his maid, but their relationship had evolved into something deeper and more complicated. She was his lover, his girlfriend, and also the only person Jack allowed himself to feed off of now that Katie had left the island.
“Jack,” she repeated. “Sorry. I’m tired.”
She turned on the small light on her night table, wiping the sleep from her eyes. Ryoko’s long black hair was messy and bedraggled, which gave her a distinctly girlish appearance. Of course, she was just a girl, a year and a half younger than Jack.
Ryoko was undeniably beautiful, with the type of pale features and petite build that brought to mind a porcelain doll. The comparison was fitting, especially as Jack considered how frail and remote she’d seemed over the past few days. She pulled the sheet up to her chest as she smiled at him, and he could see the slightest indent of her perky nipples against the sheer fabric.
“How are you feeling?” asked Jack.
“Sleepy,” she said. “Fine. Really, you don’t have to worry about me.”
“I don’t,” said Jack. “But I do.”
He sat down on the bed next to her and set his hand on her leg. For the first day or two after arriving back on Lestaron Island after his battle against Volandar and the Valerian vampires, Jack had barely left the mansion. Or, to be more accurate, he had barely left his bed. Ryoko had let him feed off her and satisfy the other urges that came along with it. Over and over again.
It had been the kind of reunion that only young couples in the early stages of their relationship are ever lucky enough to experience. Ryoko had given herself to him fully, and Jack had enjoyed every second of it. It had been a wonderful couple of days, but it hadn’t lasted.
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