by Scott, Talyn
Inside, the vampire stiffened. Then peeked over her head and smiled cruelly in his direction.
“Hey,” Blythe mumbled, “what’s wrong?”
“Sweetheart, go back to sleep.”
Sweetheart. My. Ass. Well, Sixten can’t say that he saw this coming. He’d left her in hopes she would mate with a human if she didn’t return to him. Yet she had bedded another of his kind. But there was no way Blythe was this vampire’s Bride, since he wasn’t challenging Sixten for encroaching upon his territory. So…he… was just…fucking her – using her the way their kind did until they found their lifelong Brides. That just made Sixten hiss again. And he didn’t think it was his cat form doing so, but his Species chiming in, since no other vampire should be nailing her lush little body.
The vampire bared his fangs, so Sixten formed into his true self. He placed his hand on the glass, pushing in, and his rival stopped playing and hissed his territorial warning.
Blythe’s smoky voice interrupted their match, “Ryan, you’re waking me up.”
Oh, so it was Ryan the asshole. The one Sixten could never shake when they were together. Ryan had the nerve to kiss her throat before he used compulsion to lull her back to sleep. After that, while maintaining eye contact with Sixten, he sank his fangs in her throat and swallowed slowly. A second ticked by, and then Ryan’s eyes fluttered as if he’d entered the sole portal to sexual ecstasy. A stupid move reminding Sixten castration was such an easy and necessary thing to do.
He let a mental directive fly the asshole’s way, ‘You fucker, come fight me.’
Ryan responded with a middle-finger salute, before wrapping his massive body around Blythe’s sweet curves, nuzzling his bite, and closing his eyes. All the while, he deliberately allowed a stream of blood to drizzle down his chin. “The fucking nerve,” Sixten hissed another challenge, low and deadly.
“You’d better come down from there.”
“Back off, Kash.” Great, he’d been caught – a shifting pervert on the loose. “I’m not in the mood.”
“You’re in some kind of mood.” The vampire released a throaty laugh. “I can see your wood from all the way down here.”
“Well it’s not for you, so go away.”
Kash grew serious. “Physically, you may be able to cross Ryan’s territory, but you’re still breaking our laws. Don’t make me take you in, Six. It would piss me off more than you know.”
“Are you shitting me?”
“Nope. So don’t lose control.” He casually held a metal box in his palm, tossing it up and down.
Sixten narrowed his eyes. “Seriously, Kash, you think that would work on me? I’ve been hit with a stavz so many times I enjoy the pain.” That was a total lie. A gruesome mockery of the human’s Tasers, stavzs were the weapon of choice to bring down a Species Breed or Undead any day of the week. Though the effects were only temporary, with a single touch, the weapon imploded all the body’s organs except the brain and heart. After a few days of painful regeneration, you were good to go as long as you weren’t condemned to prison. So, yeah, Sixten had better things to do.
Kash asked, “You remember Centennial Park?”
“Do I look senile?”
“Mist over and let’s have a chat.”
Sixten took one last look at Blythe before misting. He couldn’t really see her clearly, since she was cocooned in sheets, though one tantalizing leg hung out over the bed. The curve of her calf flowed sweetly, narrowing to a dainty ankle attached to the sexiest foot he’d ever seen. He zoned in on a high instep that he’d like to nibble on only after he threw that luscious leg over his shoulder and put his tongue to seriously good use.
Their distant memories burned brightly, frame after frame played across his mind. A time when Blythe was just eighteen and foolish enough to play where she didn’t belong - under a vampire’s ravenous body on Captiva Island:
“How can you look at me that way?” Blythe was breathless. A usual occurrence when she lingered in his arms a bit too long.
“What way, moja láska?”
“Like you see into my soul,” she trembled. He didn’t. Strong, safe, and sure, he was all that and more for her, because she was of-the-charts beautiful inside and out. In fact, she was much too beautiful for him to pass up. A blessing for most but a curse for her, since she was a scared little virgin and his usual selfishness got the best of him. He saw what others did…what others wanted. Everyone wanted Blythe and so did Sixten. She was a tasty morsel he refused to pass up.
He tried to fool himself into thinking he wasn’t in love, convince himself that she was a passing phase. But every cell in his body screamed ‘liar’. And he knew he was a goner. He loved her. Would always love her. And he decided he would follow her out when she died. He’d ask for death because he knew he couldn’t live without her for one day.
He settled himself atop a luscious body, which inspired indecent thoughts and promises of wicked, wicked sex. “What sweet angel lies beneath me?” Lowering his face to hers, he began a slow lick on her bottom lip, gliding back and forth. Teasing, testing, and interrupting her sane thoughts as he replaced them with his hotly carnal ones. “What sweet angel will open for me?”
Obediently, she wrapped her arms around his neck and drew his tongue inside her open mouth. He chuckled, his laughter vibrating against her chest. Skin so warm, her body heat flowed through his sweat-dampened shirt, contrasting with the cool sea mist that was so unusual for this time of year. “Again, I ask,” he spoke just above a whisper, nibbling her tender lobe and sucking on her earring. “What sweet angel will open for me?”
“Oh,” she gasped as her muscles went on lockdown.
“Oh?” His tongue stroked her jugular, while his fangs waited patiently. “Is there some type of confusion?”
“That?”
“Romantic, nighttime picnic on the beach, you lying underneath me,” he breathed, trailing his tongue on the underside of her jaw. With his pelvis to hers, he thrust gently, pushing his hardened length where any female would crave its presence. “Is there any question in your mind as to what I want?”
“Not really, I’m just…new to this.”
“Don’t tell me you want a ring first,” he said, easing her bra strap over her shoulder and following his fingers with the scrape of his eager teeth.
“I’m dizzy, and I can’t think when you do this to me. And, well, I thought we were going to eat.”
“We are, and I’ll teach you to eat. The food will come later when we’re no more than famished.”
“Six”- she placed her delicate hands on his chest - “I think I love you more than you love me.”
There she went again with her amorous entreaties. The ones that tightened his chest and chipped away at her soul, though she didn’t understand that part. Of course, he hadn’t discouraged them like he should have. He was a selfish vampire that wouldn’t let a human have her as he should. And every vow, every loving supplication she gave him, a distinct immortal in the immortal world, caused her to lose pieces of inner herself. Ones she could never have back. Ones he kept for eternity. He asked, “If I promised to love you for the rest of my life, would you trust me?”
“I guess… I already do trust you,” Blythe moaned. His hands had gotten busier, distracting her body therefore clouding her judgment. Obviously on the verge of her first real climax, her head thrashed on the woolen blanket, teasing him with her black, silken strands. Sixten enclosed his free hand around her nape, steadying her as she rode out his fingers. Clenching, grasping, releasing, clenching, grasping, releasing, her eyes flew open wide before she sucked in the cool salty air between clenched teeth. Melting over his hand, thrusting her hips up for more, she became desperate, begging, “God, Six, end this torture.”
“No ends,” he promised, digging his knuckles into her soft stomach as he unzipped his pants, “only beginnings.”
Well, that last promise wasn’t exactly a lie, Sixten reminded himself. It was the first of many beginnings for Blythe: her first
love, her first orgasm… her first time. The list was endless. Her first engagement, her first bridal shower, and her first humiliating break up that didn’t go unnoticed on a tiny island named Captiva.
Begrudgingly, he misted to Centennial Park. A battered playground littered the riverside, and Kash was straddling a shaky swing. “The next kid that sits in that thing is going ass down in the sand.”
“Does that mean you’re not gonna push me, stud?”
“Yeah, right off the North Bridge.”
“I know you hate me right now.”
“For pulling out your weapon of choice? Nah, but don’t get too comfortable around me, I may change my mind later.”
“Like you did with the female?” Kash stood up and yanked the swing down, finishing off a faulty link that awaited its next tiny victim.
Sixten studied the residual pile of chains. “You’ve finally turned into a do-gooder.”
“Don’t tell anyone.” Kash faced the river. A breeze lifted off the horizon, bending his crisp bronze hair. He closed his eyes, inhaling deeply before asking the obvious, “You didn’t know she was back?”
“Was it all the hissing that gave me away?”
Kash hiked a shoulder. “That and I’ve never seen anyone’s fangs push past their chin before. For a moment there, I thought you were shifting into a Siberian tiger, but that shit was just you being you, right?”
“I guess so.”
“To think, all these years, you had your best friends believing you couldn’t shift except to shadow, and I find you begging for Tender Vittles at Blythe’s window.”
“Harmless little cat, really.” Sixten tensed. Jealousy said it didn’t want Kash even saying her name aloud. And when he got his hands on the vampire sliding between her sheets…. Nasty. Fucking. Ryan. She deserved much better than that.
“Your ability to shift into such a small creature leads me to believe you can shift into a much larger and scarier one.” Kash met Sixten with his lavender eyes, the moonlight nearly turning them to silver.
Wasn’t it a shame all his earlier preoccupations unleashed the forbidden? Sixten didn’t pay enough attention and was tailed by a Vojak, which forced him out of the proverbial shifting closet. That wasn’t a good thing, since a trained shifter was considered a dangerous predator, and even his truest friends would stay away if they knew of his endless abilities. Better yet, try to frame him for ugly deeds never done and lock him up. “I’m not really into chick-chats, but let me ask you. If you knew what I could do, would it have changed things between us? Would we have become friends in the first place?”
The silence stretched thickly, swallowing them both until Kash broke it. “It would have changed things back then, but not now. I’ll keep it quiet. But I can’t have your back with this. If the others catch you like I did…” He curled his massive hands around Sixten’s shoulders. “If Maestru finds out, he will use this as leverage to bring you back in. Although I still don’t understand why you left us in the first place, I respect your wishes to stay away.”
“You couldn’t understand unless you were split in two. I have two monsters within me. And falling in love was crazy stupid.” He rubbed his stomach. “Have you ever loved, Kash?”
“No. You know I’ve never met my Bride.” A Species Breed Vampire fell in love the instant that he encountered his Bride, if he was lucky enough to meet her in the first place. Some never did.
Sixten stepped back and kicked a deflated ball in the direction of the water. “You do realize I can’t have one, right?”
“Yeah, but is that good or bad?” Kash pursed his lips. “Destiny can be harsh.”
“There’s no good or bad, since it’s bad either way. I can’t shake her, Kash. Instead of it getting easier, with every year that passes, it gets rougher. And now that I’m this close again…”
“She doesn’t know what you are,” Kash summed it up. “You never told her.”
“Blythe can’t be my Bride, and she isn’t immortal.” He shrugged and said begrudgingly, “It’s forbidden.”
“Right,” Kash laughed roughly, “because you always play by the rules.”
“When it came to risking her, yeah, I usually played by our rules.”
“In vampire terms, forbidden is the vaguest word of all. Interpretations vary.”
Another long silence.
“You were gonna die after she did, huh? So much in love that you’d watch her fade with age. She’d wonder why you stayed your gorgeous self, though. Unless you were constantly enthralling her, but that would take a lot of energy and blood.” He blinked a few times when Six stayed quiet. “You can age yourself…with your shifting abilities. Can’t you?”
“I can’t truly age myself.”
“You can hide your true physicality though, right? Behind wrinkles, swollen joints, and liver spots, you would have given all appearances of aging. She would’ve never been the wiser.”
Silence.
“Man, Six, you do have it bad for her. But why kill yourself over a broken heart? I understand since you’re mixed, you can’t turn her Undead. But I’m pure. Why didn’t you ever ask me to change her?”
“I only agree with the making of Undead when one is already dead or dying. My Dad is fantastic, but transforming Blythe’s living flesh into something potentially unstable would be the vilest thing I’ve ever done.”
“I can’t agree with that.” He checked an incoming call and then pocketed his phone. “What about your brother? Any who have encountered him say he exudes alien power. As far as intel knows, he’s a pure blood placing somewhere near the top of the Habaline power structure. Maybe a process the shifters use can bring Blythe over to immortality. Then you could live your life the way it was fated, eternally.” Kash gave him a hard stare. “Rave shared nothing with you about your other half, did he?”
“You just saw what he shared with me. He taught me how to shift and fight with deadly precision. That’s pretty much it. I refused to join his people, and we broke apart.”
“Still,” Kash said, “he’s family. At least to vampires, family is everything.”
Sixten shook his head, knowing they both skated the lines of friendship with this discussion. Out of duty to the race, Kash’s true allegiance was to the Vojaks. “Family isn’t important to Rave, and why should it be? He had no example set before him, but luckily, I had my old man. An Undead my mother cuckolded that didn’t resent raising a bastard.”
Kash shoved his fists in his leather duster. “Put that on a Christmas card.”
“It’s probably been done to death already.” He looked at the stars while he was trying to figure out the best way to ask, so he chose the direct approach. “Anyway, tell me what you know or I’ll get it out of you one way or another.”
“Okay.” Kash grabbed both his shoulders, maybe to settle him down or to keep him from beating him senseless after hearing what came next. “I’ve watched Blythe from a distance, listened in on chatter when I could.” He took in a deep breath. “Her brother brought her to the states five or six months ago. Supposedly, he’s sick with cancer and wanted to come back home to recoup or die. I haven’t a clue which.” He threw up a hand as if he didn’t care one way or the other. “In any case, Maestru checked out the situation…I guess out of respect for you.”
Sixten’s bark of laughter surprised them both. “Sorry, go on.”
“He’s suspicious that she has inherent, immortal genetics. I don’t want to get your hopes up, but she might not be totally human.”
All at once, a thousand disturbing thoughts pummeled Sixten’s head. “Say that again.”
Kash stepped back a few feet and cleared his throat. “Maybe…the barest of immortal blood…he can’t place her scent.”“No. You’re wrong.” He blinked a few times. “Although I never fed from her, I would know if she were anything other than human.” Even Sixten heard the waver in his voice.
“Level with me, Six. In all your days, have you ever discovered a human with mixed blood f
rom something other than Habaline or Were descent?”
“No. I can’t say that I have.” He knew Habalines because he was one, and the Were mixed-bloods were easy to sniff out. All vampires could smell their nasty stench miles away. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Kash answered sardonically, “maybe it’s because you look like you wanna tear out my esophagus with your fangs…but I won’t take it personally. Kill the messenger and all that, right?”
“Right,” he shot back, “I’m gonna kill you for giving me information that Maestru would have withheld until my dying breath.”
“Well, you shouldn’t get so pissed off if you don’t like my intel. Take all that hostility and do something about it if you want her back. Damn you,” he snarled, throwing his head back and inhaling deeply, “my Species is coming out to meet your challenge.”
Baring his fangs was a clear challenge, though Sixten didn’t realize he was doing it at the time. He watched Kash’s cheekbones sharpen as his irises lit up. His friend’s muscles rippled with the insane supremacy only possessed by a Vampyr Vojak. A fight really sounded good about now, but Sixten didn’t have the time. “I have to go back to her, man. Head yourself off, and I will do the same.” He retracted his fangs and threw his hands out in mock surrender.
“It’s so good seeing you boys get along.” Maestru misted in. He was ancient, but he didn’t look any older than Kash and Sixten. For all appearances, vampires were frozen in time, around the age of twenty-eight or so - thirty max. “We are family in our own way, yes?”
“That depends on you,” Sixten susurrated. “I have to ask. What exactly are you doing with Blythe?”
“Your arrogance is getting the better of you, Six.” Maestru’s eyes glittered. “Don’t forget who you’re talking to.”
“Then let me amend my question.” He stepped forward until they were nose-to-nose. Maestru sought out Blythe for one reason alone. “Where do you get off using my female to get to me?”
“Six,” Maestru said much too easily, “the last I checked, she wasn’t yours.”
