Gilded Destiny (Vesper)

by Nola Sarina

  Levi turned to grin at Festus and swore at his brother, instead. “Are you kidding me, Festus?”

  The girl was slumped in his arms, unconscious and unbitten, drugged by venom. Festus shrugged. “What?”

  “Come on! Just eat her and be done with it.”

  Festus laughed. “Only you are stupid enough to deny your natural needs as a man, Levi. The more you let it build up, the more likely you are to snap, and that’s exactly what landed Nycholas in his situation: denial of satisfaction.” He lifted the girl into a more intimate hold, though she was nothing close to alert enough to embrace Festus back.

  “Fuck you, Festus, you’re a goddamn pervert. That’s food, not a toy.”

  Festus brushed the girl’s dark hair back from her unresponsive face. “Quit ejaculating your morals all over me, Levi.”

  “Clearly, I’m not the one ejaculating here. I’ll see you at home.” Levi broke into a jog back down the road out of town, into the thick of the mountains and the solitude of running through the wilderness, finding the shadows as easily as breathing in his own skin.

  A part of him wondered if Festus was right, and denying his urges for the sake of morality put him in a more compromised position, where he was likely to snap and break the rules as Nycholas had done. But the bigger part of him didn’t care: what Festus did with his meals was wrong on every ethical level Levi could conceive of, and he’d rather pay the price to Levitiqas for mutiny than bargain his soul to the fates for a few moments of satisfaction and the guilt that followed such an act of depravity.

  It’s denial, isolation, and perfection, for me, he thought as the nighttime world romanced his aged mind away from worry once again. And a hefty helping of pain, torture, and amnesia on the side.

  Better than dying, Levi supposed.

  Don’t Look.

  It was dark. Nycholas had blankets and pillows strapped tightly across every window to block out the sunlight. When my eyelids finally fluttered open, I couldn’t tell the time; I only saw the light shade of Nycholas’ cool skin beneath my cheek. We were strewn across a bed, the enormous Vesper beneath me stretched corner-to-corner across the mattress on his back.

  Did I lay on him all day? I lifted my cheek. Crap, drool! I wiped his chest with a corner of the sheet that draped across us, and the cool air washed across my calves as the blanket slid up from my ankles with my movement.

  I stilled. I wasn’t wearing pants.

  He took my jeans off. My heartbeat pounded in my ears. Had he drugged me again? I licked my lips and detected no hint of his bitter fruit poison cocktail, and I shook my head as I stared at his face, soft with sleep and peaceful. I shifted up to get a better look at him, thrilled to feel that my panties were still securely in place where they belonged.

  As I shifted, I felt the flannel material of Nycholas’ sweatpants against my bare legs. He was still wearing his pants; I was not. I didn’t know whether to be angry or thankful… skinny jeans weren’t the most comfortable of pajamas. Relief took over my panic, but that familiar warring of danger and arousal started between my thighs again, as I lay half-naked in a bed with a freaking man-eating immortal.

  He took my jeans off. A grin crept across my lips as I stretched up higher to peer closely at the veins of his temples, which throbbed with a subtle slither of his heartbeat… pure black, like his eyes. My gaze wandered down to his neck, where a crescent half-moon scar marred his perfect complexion across his throat, directly over his jugular vein. I tried to see the other side of the scar, but I imagined it was all the way back along his spine, and my own pulse kicked up a notch as I grasped the size of a jaw required to do that sort of damage.

  I dared to inch closer and breathed deeply at the spot just behind his earlobe… God, such intoxicating steel… the aroma I drew off his skin, his hair, the base of his neck slid through my body in a familiar way, and I wanted to taste him.

  Would he wake up? I didn’t know. I counted the seconds between his breaths and found him only inhaling every twenty seconds or so, and his heartbeat was slower as I leaned my ear back to his chest. A deep sleeper. Good. Maybe he didn’t notice my drool.

  I pressed my ear down and listened to his heart for a while, his breathing so hypnotically slow that I might have dozed again but couldn’t be sure.

  I was the last request of an immortal killer on death row, sentenced by an immortal master whom I could only guess was far more terrifying than Nycholas. Nycholas was going to die in three nights, and all he wanted before he died, was someone to touch and taste.

  Someone like me. Specifically, me.

  My heart picked up in a sprint again and my eyelids fluttered open. Could I do it? He practically wanted me as a sex slave for a weekend, and sex was the only thing he wanted from me. Not a long-term relationship… he’d be dead before that could happen… and he promised my safety.

  I’d asked him what he would do if I said no, and he had dodged the question. Did that mean he’d kill me and eat me? Drug me and have his way with me for three days, half-coherent?

  I wanted to slap myself for how fucking hot that sounded in my thoughts. Crossing the line! Sleeping with an immortal who swallowed my friend whole was enough moral boundaries broken for one week.

  That, and if I was going to tell Nycholas to fuck me when he woke, I wanted him to really fuck me, and I wanted to experience every vivid second of it. Of course my answer was yes.

  As the darkness of what I could only assume to still be blocked-out daytime drew on, my thoughts racing madly along with my heartbeat and Nycholas still as the grave beneath my cheek, my fear was overtaken by my wanting. Lust burned in my heart, shoving away the terror of the reality of Nycholas’ existence and the things he’d done, and compassion overruled the conflict I felt at being a dying wish. If I was a dying wish, at least it was to this creature, this insanely muscled man with powder-soft skin wrapped over his steel, sculpted frame, who smelled like metal and nighttime and inhaled the scent of my colorful arms when I fell asleep standing up.

  My own attention-deficit Vesper. I suppressed a giggle, but a bit of it slipped out, and Nycholas finally stirred.

  He turned his head to peer down at me, and I was blown away by how fucking flawless he looked even when just rousing from a slumber so deep it mirrored death.

  “You’re not sleeping,” he said.

  I shook my head and propped my chin beneath my uninjured hand on his chest. “No. I’m admiring you.”

  Nycholas’ eyes narrowed as one side of his mouth turned up in a faint crooked smile. “I’m much more impressive alert and ripping trains into pieces with my hands to hurl at my furious master, than when sleeping.”

  I lifted my eyebrows. “You can do that?”

  “And many, many other things.”

  The sex-deal was on, so his charm was, too. I liked his confidence and the hint of boast in his voice.

  I scooted up so half of my torso rested atop his and my face was less than an inch from his. His breath washed icily across my lips and I licked them to enhance the chill, and my tongue caught his attention. “I want to ask you something.”

  Nycholas nodded at me to continue, but he stared at my lips, not at my eyes.

  I swallowed and licked them again before I spoke. “If our mouths meet while open, I’ll sleep.”

  He stilled, and if I hadn’t counted the time between his breaths for so long earlier, I wouldn’t have noticed how his respiration kicked up a gear as he glanced up at my eyes, and back down to my lips. “Yes.”

  “But if I kiss you… and you keep your lips closed… I’m not in any danger?”

  Nycholas frowned. “I don’t know how to kiss.”

  Wow! Straight face! No laughing! “You haven’t kissed before?”

  Nycholas shook his head.

  “You’ve never had sex before.”

  He stiffened and tried to pull away from me, but I grabbed his smooth chin with my hands – the splint clinking lightly on his hard cheek. “It’s okay!” I soothe
d.

  “No, it’s not… true. It’s not what you think.”

  I searched his eyes for an answer, but only found greater confusion there than before, more questions, his fear mingled with mine between us as our hearts pressed together, only shielded by meager ribs and skin.

  Nycholas swallowed hard. “No running away. You promised.”

  I stroked his cheeks. “Yes, I promised.”

  “No matter how bad it is… how bad I am.”

  I nodded and wished he’d just fucking tell me already, since my nerves skyrocketed through the roof with every moment that passed.

  Nycholas wrapped his hands around my wrists – to keep me from being capable of escaping. That battle between my legs heightened again and I ached with the urge to flee, to protect myself… and to glue myself to Nycholas and never let him out from between my legs.

  “I’ve had… sex… before.” He mouthed the word as though it were wrong of him to say. “Just not… the way I should have. Not right, I did things wrong.”

  I didn’t answer for a moment, and though he didn’t tighten his grip on my wrists, I knew I couldn’t get away if I tried.

  “You… did things to someone without asking?”

  Nycholas growled and looked away, and a moment later glared at me with determination, warning, and fear. “I asked. And she said yes, as you’ve said yes. But… I was weaker, then. Stupider.”

  “Weaker how?” The suspense was killing me. What had he done? Why was he afraid to tell me this?

  Nycholas released my broken hand and pressed his thumb and forefinger to his cheekbones beneath his eyes. “The pockets here.”

  He had a damn cold? “Your sinuses.” I toyed with the idea of telling him he couldn’t have any Nyquil until he was naked.

  “Yes, those. To store my poison. But when I… when someone else said yes, before, the pockets were too full. I knew I shouldn’t do it, but I bit her when we were…” Nycholas took a deep breath and blew it out, and then grumbled an apology that he blasted my face with ice-cold wind from his lips.

  “You killed her.” My voice sounded far away, as though the words were said by someone else, not by me, not by the woman with no pants on in bed with a killer who made me so horny I couldn’t fucking think.

  “No.” Nycholas shook his head roughly, and it was the most agitated motion I’d seen him make. “No, no. I didn’t kill her. I bit her, I drained her, and I poisoned her. I had too much, but I didn’t know that. My master never told me that was how it’s done. How more of us are made.”

  The puzzle pieces clicked together one by one in my brain as I stared at Nycholas, who stared back at me, his own fear as thick as mine and tangible in the atmosphere of the room. He bit the woman he slept with, and he had too much poison, so she didn’t crumple and die… she became a Vesper.

  Oh.

  Nycholas let go of my other wrist and his hand came down on the back of my head – again, just that touch too hard, that little bit that slammed through my core because he wanted me so much he could barely restrain himself, even at the expense of my safety. I continued to stroke the silk of his jawline with my thumbs.

  “It was the first of my crimes to my master’s rule,” Nycholas whispered. “He beheaded her, my woman, my Maid.”

  “Maid?” Like, French maid?

  “Women like us. Female Vespers. We men are called Gents.”

  Oh. I nodded and smiled sheepishly, embarrassed that I’d interrupted with such a stupid question.

  Nycholas continued. “I hated him for killing her, but for many years, I feared breaking the rules again. And then five years ago, he caught me in my second crime.” He clenched his mouth shut tight and I watched the space in front of his ears, the soft place of joining of his massive, unhingeable jaws, vibrate as he ground his teeth. “He threatened too much. I killed two of my brothers in that fight… I ran away… and now, I will die for my crimes.”

  “What was your other crime? Five-ish years ago?”

  Nycholas shook his head. “It wouldn’t do for you to know.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Despite what he wouldn’t tell me, what he did tell me rocked my heart. I ached for him. His master killed the woman he accidentally turned into a Vesper when he got carried away during sex. Nycholas wanted to know the kind touch of a woman again, the healing of his pain for a love lost so long ago, and he wanted it from me. He picked me.

  And I picked him. The danger of him losing control… of biting me… it wasn’t enough to quell the lust low in my belly, burning as I squirmed beneath his glare.

  So I closed that final inch of space between us and wrapped my lips around his lower lip, tasting him, tugging lightly, respecting the reservation of his tightly-closed mouth and the danger he posed to me. I kissed him, though he couldn’t safely kiss me back, over and over again.

  When I pulled away to gauge his reaction, to see if he liked it… there was a hunger brewing in Nycholas’ eyes that I didn’t expect.

  He slowly sat up, bringing me with him, and reached beneath my armpits to lift me into his lap. I slipped my legs on either side of his waist, and… oh, yes, that’s what I thought it was… his arousal pressed against me through the scant barrier of his flannel and my panties.

  I wrapped my arms around his thick neck, the cords of his hair rough against my forearms, and then Nycholas’ hands grabbed onto my back and he spun me down to the mattress, rested his weight against my pelvis, and oh, it felt so unbelievably cold and good.

  His mouth found my throat, and I thought it must have been instinct that led him there, because he inhaled sharply and then growled against me, pressing harder between my legs. His lips pinched my skin as he kissed me, and he stroked his fangs upward along my skin – not biting, just sliding the cool ivory of the rounded fronts against my flesh. It was as though he wanted to sink his teeth into me and taste me, but he didn’t do it… he just licked me and washed that ice-cold breath down my neck with every heave of his enormous chest over me. I shivered and reached down to shed the last bits of our clothing, and as his hands pinned me down by the hips, I was his.

  His pleasure was stunning, and not just for his size – he moved with the pace of a man who knew the stakes, who knew what was at risk… slow, his hands possessive but only on the still-okay edge of pain, and whatever remained of my fear of Nycholas was replaced with the blazing burn of desire and need. I cried out as he filled my body and soul, and he moved with precision, his eyes focused on my mouth as I gasped and trembled with his touch.

  Like feather-tipped razor blades, so sharp and lethal, so soft and comforting, familiar and soothing and hurting and Oh…

  And when I was spent, lost in an oblivion of his immortal body and the touch of his iron perfection, he lowered his chest down, gripped me by the shoulders and pressed harder with each fluid motion of his hips, meeting the back of me with a steel rod wrapped in the thinnest of silk, the pain increasing, the pleasure fighting against it, lust dancing with danger, as he worked himself deeper into me. As his thrusts peaked, so did my shrieks, the pain winning out over lust, and Nycholas’ eyes bored into mine, his jaw unhinged, a satisfied snarl ripping forth from between his fangs. He hovered above me, enormous, menacing, his mouth dripping neon poison, as he growled and fucked me harder, faster. He threw his head back to with his last, final grind of his solid hips between my aching thighs, and the sight of a demon – an immortal, a creature so unsurpassed I’d never dared to imagine him – unraveled by ecstasy, was enough to press back the pain. I slid my palms up his chest and stroked the bulging, black veined skin of his muscled neck. I panted, hurting, burning with greedy satisfaction, and thrilled beyond any thrill I’d felt in my life.

  Nycholas lowered his head to my chest, still covered by my shirt, and kissed the hollow of the base of my throat. I hummed and stroked his temples, the intricate veins there, and then he rolled with me to our sides and held me fast. I closed my eyes, exhilarated, spent, and energized all at once by our union.


  I fucked a Vesper. Hell yeah, I did. I shivered in the aftermath, partly from pleasure, and partly probably from shock.

  When his breathing slowed, Nycholas stroked his thumbs over my eyelids, brushing away tears I hadn’t noticed.

  “I hurt you,” he said, his voice taking on that quizzical, worry-free tone I adored, though I shook like a leaf in the wind against his embrace.

  I nodded. “It’s okay. You didn’t do anything that I didn’t want you to do.”

  He shook his head slowly. “I frightened you, too.”

  I giggled at that, wiping away the residue of my tears. “You have frightened me since I first set eyes upon you, Nycholas. It was okay then… and it’s okay now.”

  His fingertip found my chin and he pulled me up to meet his eyes. “May I have you more?”

  “Now?” God, I didn’t know… I felt like I’d been hit by a truck. A sexy, deadly truck. Between my legs.

  Nycholas’ grin showed up again, excitement in his eyes. “After I feed you, of course.”

  I watched his eyes. Was he serious? He wanted me again after he fed me…

  “Okay.” What else could I say? I wanted him, too.

  Nycholas rolled away from me and sat. He reached off the side of the bed and passed me my jeans, and then crossed the room and threw a blanket off a large window, letting some moonlight into the little place as he tugged on his flannel pants and secured them loosely with the drawstring. “You should wear things that are easier for me to take off,” he said.

  I blushed so hot I almost asked him if I could have his hands to cool down my face, but instead, I just dressed in quiet, taking note of all the sudden aches and pains in my body.

  I wasn’t sure if the throbbing in my shoulders was from his hands gripping me to the mattress when he was inside me, or if it was from falling all over a muddy hill and a rocky shore. My hips felt loose and weak, and I wondered if it was from the massive size of his body between my legs, or if they were simply still fatigued from such a trek and two blackouts.