A wave of sadness washed over me at the fact that I wasn’t pregnant. It wasn’t because I wanted to have a baby right now, but not being pregnant meant that Draven and I weren’t soulmates. I didn’t know what I expected from our relationship because it had just started, but I wasn’t used to dating someone I didn’t think I could potentially have a future with.
“Whatever happens, know that I’ll always love you,” I whispered. I knew he could hear me with his super hearing, but Draven didn’t say anything back, and that was okay. After learning about Mary, I understood why he wasn’t taking the next step. Knowing that he cared for me and wanted to keep me safe was enough since there was a timeframe on our relationship. It sucked, but that was what I got for being in a relationship with a vampire. But it didn’t stop me from loving him because you can’t control who you fall in love with.
“Is there anything else you found out tonight?” I asked, needing to fill the void of silence.
“Yeah.” He paused for a moment and then walked to where he kept the whiskey. After pouring a few fingers and downing it, Draven said, “Donovan said that Renzo has ties with the Russian Mafia.”
“O—kay?” I didn’t understanding what that meant or why he would have a problem with it. Russia was far away and a completely different country.
“Athan lives there.”
“Oh. Right.”
“And he has never said anything about Renzo having ties with the Russian Mafia.”
“Maybe he doesn’t know? Russia’s a big country. Isn’t it the biggest country?” I walked toward him. “I think it’s possible, especially if he’s not in the same area. I wouldn’t be worried until you talk to him. As far as I know, Athan has been nothing but a good friend to you. Don’t be mad at him for something you don’t know for sure.”
Draven nodded slowly. “You’re right. Tonight has been information overload.”
“It has. Are you going to call Athan to come back so you two can talk?”
He thought for a moment and grinned. “No. You promised me I’d get laid tonight, so he’s giving us time alone.”
I laughed. “That I did, and it will be nice to not have him on the other side of the wall.”
“I need to feed again.” He started to walk into the kitchen, but I stopped him.
“Wait.” I didn’t know how much time we had left together or what would happen tomorrow night, so I said what I thought I’d never utter in my entire life. “I want you to feed from me.”
He paused and turned around. “You do?”
I shrugged. “This night has been an emotional rollercoaster, and there’s no telling what tomorrow will bring. I want to experience everything with you.”
“Calla—”
“I understand, Draven. We can’t be together forever. I get it. Just let me have this.”
We stared at each other. “Are you sure?” he asked again.
I took a deep breath. “Draven, I like you. I really do. So much that I love you. I get that we aren’t meant to be together, and that fucking sucks, but given everything, I just want to be with you. I’m not ready to start dating someone else. I’m swamped at work, and our schedules work together. Let’s just—have fun.”
I meant everything I was saying to him. While the hopeless romantic in me wanted Draven and me to be soulmates and live together forever, I knew that wasn’t possible given we weren’t true loves and I didn’t want to become a vampire. I wanted what we had now, and just because there was some underlying vampire rule about when they could conceive a baby, I wasn’t going to let that keep me from being with the one I loved. Even if it was temporary.
“It hurts,” Draven finally stated, referring to him feeding from me.
“It does?”
“That’s where compulsion usually plays a huge part.”
“How long does it hurt for?”
“It’s the initial sting of my fangs, but then once my venom mixes with your blood, you’ll feel pleasure.”
“Okay,” I whispered. “I can handle that.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” I smiled.
In an instant, he moved to me, picked me up and dashed to his bedroom. Before I realized it, my blouse went flying, and then he laid me on the mattress. As he towered over me, I tried to calm my racing heart. Draven was going to feed from me—drink from me so we could have sex. When we had sex in Seattle or on our road trip, he always went into the bathroom.
He stripped off his sweater, threw it onto the floor and then leaned down fusing our mouths together. He left me breathless as he broke free and asked, “Are you ready?”
I swallowed and nodded.
“Do you want me to count down or just do it?”
“Just—”
Before I could utter any more words, his mouth was on me, and his sharp fangs pierced my skin. I hissed as they sunk into my flesh. It felt as though two knives were being jabbed into my neck. But then, just like Draven had said, the pain turned into pleasure as a wave of heat washed over me, and my panties dampened between my legs.
As he sucked, I reached for the button of his jeans. He moaned against my neck but didn’t remove his mouth from my flesh. I reached into the waistband of his boxers and pulled his growing erection free. Gripping his cock tightly, I squeezed it slightly as I pumped up and down over the length. He sucked as I gave his shaft long, slow strokes, feeling it pulsate as his penis became engorged.
Draven licked me and then finally pulled away from my open neck and slid down my body, taking my jeans and panties with him in one swift movement.
“Fuck you smell like heaven.”
I smiled, staring up at the high beamed ceiling. The moment his mouth went between my legs, I moaned. He drank from me, sucking my arousal like he’d sucked my neck—minus the teeth and blood. His tongue worked my clit over and over and then I came. My knees clenched his dark brown head between my legs as I rode the wave of pleasure.
When it subsided, Draven pulled back. “That’s one, sweets. Time for two.”
He stood and discarded his remaining clothes before returning back to me and spreading my legs wide. I looked down at him finally and noticed my blood was smeared on his chin. Instantly I wondered if it was pouring from my veins.
“Is … Is blood still coming from my neck?”
“No, sweetheart. I licked the wound closed.”
“Oh.”
Draven hovered over me and brought his lips to mine. He guided himself into me, not removing our mouths, even when I gasped from the fullness of him as he stretched me. He pumped into me vigorously, going deep inside with each thrust. My head swarmed with pleasure, and I wasn’t sure if it was still the effects of being fed on or from the way his cock worked me, rubbing all of the right spots.
“Grab your tits, sweets.”
I did without hesitation, kneading the globes and pinching my sensitive nipples as my body rocked with the force of his thrusts. Draven groaned, pumping and causing the bed to sound as though it was moving against the wood floor. Before I realized what was happening, he stood, dragged my feet until my ass was on the edge of the bed and then he sank into me again.
My breathing became rapid as I moaned uncontrollably, and the warm sensation of another orgasm started to build in my core. Draven pumped into me, holding my legs open as far as they would go and then he groaned just as I whimpered and came.
I was still coming down from the high when he said, “Two.”
It didn’t register what he was referring to until he flipped me over onto my stomach. As I lay flat on my belly, he sank into me from behind and said into my ear, “I’ll make three come fast.”
With my head turned to the side, I saw Draven reach above me, hold onto the edge of the mattress and then he drove into me hard and fast. My pussy was sensitive as he worked me.
“Fuck,”
he roared, going deeper.
Sweat coated my skin, and I didn’t think it would be possible to come again, but before I knew it, the spasm coursed through me and I fell over the edge into bliss once again.
This time, Draven didn’t say anything as he leaned up and positioned me on all fours without leaving my body. He started to pump again, and I clenched the sheets. The bed began to squeak, and Draven started to growl.
“You’ll come again.” It was an order that I wasn’t sure I’d meet. Never had I had more than one orgasm during sex until we started having sex and that wasn’t all at once. There were minutes in between each one. But now, as he moved me all around, and pumped into me hard, I wasn’t sure I could.
“I—” I started to protest, but he cut me off.
His grip tightened on my hips. “Calla, you were made for me. Every fucking inch of you. Every curve, every dimple, every smooth line.” My body started to shake as Draven ran his hand along my spine as he paused his thrusts briefly. He started again. “The way your pussy squeezes my cock each time I drive into you is a feeling I crave more and more, and I don’t want to stop.”
“Then don’t,” I whimpered.
And he didn’t until I screamed out again for the fourth time.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Fuck.
Calla was in love with me.
I didn’t know what to do. I knew that I cared for her and like I’d told her, I would never let anything happen to her. But there was no way I could fall in love with a human. What I needed to do was settle things with Renzo and hopefully strike a deal with him to leave her alone and for this all to be done. Though, to do that, I needed to break things off with her before her feelings deepened, even if I felt as though she was made for me. I couldn’t deny how I craved her, but I also knew the right thing to do to save her life and my un-beating heart.
After Calla fell asleep, I went to wait for Athan. We needed to talk, and I wasn’t sure how the conversation was going to go. He was my best friend—my ally—my brother, but there was still the issue with Renzo and his ties to Russia. Maybe Calla was right. Maybe Athan had no idea. Renzo was good at hiding who he was and what and who he controlled. That was how only Capone and the others of the Chicago Outfits got busted with the feds, and how word never got out that a vampire controlled Chicago. I wasn’t naïve enough to think there weren’t any vampires in Russia. I just didn’t know if Athan was keeping something from me—or multiple things.
A little before eight in the morning, Athan walked in through the kitchen. I was sitting at the island, looking at files on my computer of the nightly updates for my patients at the hospital, whiskey bottle in front of me.
“And how was your night?” he asked just as the automatic shades started to descend on every window, indicating it was almost daybreak. This time of year, the sun rose around eight thirty in the morning and set around six in the evening. The hours we could be out were starting to shorten.
I looked up from the monitor of my laptop and straight into his dark eyes, knowing I needed to hide my inner thoughts so he couldn’t read my mind. “Shit went down.”
“What do you mean shit went down?” He grabbed the bottle and an empty glass from behind him in the cabinet. He wasn’t picky which glass he drank from as long as the contents tasted the same.
“The vamp that attacked Miles showed up.”
“What?” he roared and slammed the bottle back on the island a little too hard.
“Keep your voice down,” I hissed. “Calla’s sleeping.”
“It’s eight in the fucking morning. Doesn’t she have work?”
I grinned. “She’ll be late.”
Athan chuckled, knowing I’d exhausted her. “Okay, then what the hell happened with the vamp? Where is he?” he asked, lowering his voice back to normal.
“Tell me about the Russian Mafia.”
He balked and then blinked slowly. I heard him say in his thoughts, “The Russian Mafia?”
“Yes,” I confirmed. “The Russian Mafia.”
“I know nothing about the Russian Mafia except that it exists.”
“Everyone knows that it exists,” I snapped. “Don’t fucking play games with me.”
Athan crossed his arms over his chest. “Maybe you should just ask me what you really want to ask instead of insinuating that I know more than I do.”
I stared at him for a beat, both of us keeping our thoughts hidden. “Renzo has ties to the Russian Mafia. You live—”
“He what?” he growled, cutting me off.
“Don’t play dumb with me, Athan.”
“I’m not fucking playing dumb with you, Draven,” he hissed my name. “I know nothing about Renzo or the coven being in Russia.”
“How is that possible? You own a nightclub there.”
He picked up the whiskey bottle again and poured it into the glass a quarter of the way full and then downed the contents. “Because you know, just like you, that I keep a low profile. The club is under one of my aliases. I don’t go around looking for trouble.”
“So it’s a coincidence that the place you chose to put down roots after all this time is the same place Renzo has had ties with since 2015?”
“Yes,” he agreed as though it were true and not him playing games with me. Just like I had, Athan had moved town to town every ten years. We started off in the same place when we left the coven, but over the years, we’ve chosen different places. When I was in Seattle, he was in Canada. Now that I’m in Alaska, he’s in Russia—he moved there in 2010. And while I became a doctor, he worked security for nightclubs and was the playboy of vampires. Now he owns a nightclub and it just so happens to be in a country I never knew Renzo had ties with. I hadn’t thought to question why he chose Russia to settle down until now.
“Don’t you think that if I knew he was in Russia, I would have told you?”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “Honestly, I don’t know what to believe. Everything seems to be burning down around me, and this was one more thing I didn’t know about.”
“I didn’t know either, but I’ll find out if you ever let me go back home.” He smirked.
“Yeah, about that. The vamp said Renzo sent him.”
“Really? Why? What could Renzo want with a human that was in his fifties?”
“First, did you know we can get a human woman pregnant?”
“No, we can’t,” he stated.
It was my turn to smirk. “Yes, we can.”
“I’m pretty sure that I’ve been with more woman than you have and I’ve never gotten one pregnant. We don’t come.”
“I know we don’t, but somehow it’s possible.”
“What do you mean it’s possible?”
“Renzo did it.”
“What?” He furrowed his brows. “How?”
“Remember the picture of Calla’s great-grandmother earlier?”
“Yeah.”
“She was pregnant in that picture with his baby.” At least I thought so since Calla said that her grandmother was born a few months later.
He stared at me, and I heard him trying to figure out the timeline of events in his head. “The vamp told you all this?”
I nodded and took a sip of my whiskey before explaining everything from the time Calla and I drove up to when I told Donovan to keep an eye out until I could figure out what to do. I wanted to know the moment he sensed anyone from the coven or Renzo in the area.
“We’re fucked,” Athan stated when I was done.
I finished my whiskey and then closed my laptop. “Maybe, maybe not. Donovan said that we’re still talked about in the coven because no one has had the balls to leave except us. That tells me that not everyone is happy being under Renzo’s control—just like we weren’t.”
“What are you saying?” He crossed his arms on the island top and leaned forwar
d.
“I’m going to go there and tell him I want back in. Then I can keep him away from here.”
Athan chuckled sarcastically. “You think that Renzo will let you walk back in after eighty-six years? He’ll never go for it, and he’ll kill you on the spot.”
“I don’t have anything else to try, and I can’t let him come to Burn Falls.”
“You know this is a suicide mission, right?”
“It’s all I have.”
He nodded slowly. “Just like I told you when we left Chicago, ‘I can’t let my best pal make tracks all by his lonesome.’”
I knew no matter what that I was going to end up dead. Either Renzo was going to do it himself, or my best friend was going to stab me in the back because he wasn’t telling me how stupid this plan was.
And it was stupid.
If I couldn’t persuade Renzo to leave Calla alone, consider taking my life for hers, she was as good as dead. I had to try, though. Renzo would gain more from me rejoining the coven because I was an older vampire now, which meant that I was stronger and knew the ins and outs of our world.
“Great. We’ll leave after my shift.” I stood.
“Wait, what?”
“It’s been almost two months. You know as well as I do that Renzo doesn’t like to wait.”
“Maybe he’ll send another vamp and not himself?”
“I can’t take the chance.”
“What are you going to tell Calla?”
“I don’t know.”
I left Athan and went to my room, having every intention of waking Sleeping Beauty. This was going to be the last time I’d ever lay eyes on her because it was better to walk away now and hope I could pursue Renzo to forget about Burn Falls. The problem was, I wouldn’t be able to tell her face to face because she’d change my mind. I knew it.
Because I loved her.
It hit me as I stared at her—I was in love with her. I’d do anything she asked of me. I could deny it all I wanted, but as I looked down on Calla while she slept, I knew without a doubt that I was in love with her—in love with a human. I thought about her all the time, and it wasn’t only because I wanted to keep her safe.
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