by Kaia Bennett
Just as I knew they would, the blond vampire’s eyes widened at my surname, and enticed me to continue the cut that opened at the corner of his eye. He winced, but continued the momentum until I’d drawn a perfect teardrop and sliced off the pale skin capping my artistry. Salt and blood filled the meaty divot. The truth sank in deeper still. Vaughn realized all this time he’d been rolling with vampire royalty. The vampire royalty to be exact. The first vampire family of North America.
“I thought you were just… old. Figured you collected some cash over the years, got some decent properties to hole up in from time to time—ah f-fuck!” Vaughn winced as I carved another teardrop, making stinging cuts that would buzz with annoying pain like a fly caught between blinds and a pane of glass. “You’re worse than true born. You’re an Oldman.”
I rolled my eyes.
The sadist with no self-control thought me worse than him.
The fucking nerve, man.
“Well go on, rail at my betrayal. I’m a liar after all, just like you.” I swallowed the Liam-shaped lump in my throat. “Tell me what a horrible leader I was. Tell me I got Liam killed because of some witch pussy. Or, are you scared?”
I could hear Vaughn’s heart pound like a kick drum in his chest, but to his credit he gritted his teeth and said, “Fuck true borns and fuck you Oldman cunts. You might as well kill me now, because I don’t bow. Not even to royalty, dude. I’m not gonna give you the satisfaction. You know what you did. You know why Liam’s dead. Meanwhile, the bitch is probably upstairs—”
I laughed at that, a belly laugh that betrayed how proud the response made me. Vaughn didn’t give a shit about titles or money. Never had, and if he never did, then maybe there would be use for him when freedom came crashing down and responsibility took her place. The turned had their uses.
“She’s dead.”
Again, his eyes widened. I stood and stretched, circled my neck, and rolled my shoulders. The weight that had settled there didn’t disappear. The hunger in my gut scratched restlessly, but I ignored the gnawing ache.
“I know I lied to you, even if it was a lie of omission. I know my kind and your kind come with baggage. But, you need to decide if you’re my brother or not. Things are about to change for me. I could use people by my side I can trust.”
“You mean you need turned manservants to do your bidding. My maker told me just what my kind are for when it comes to yours.”
I shook my head. “You pissed me off, but I’m not your maker. And you’re not just turned to me. You’re... family. You and Liam were family.”
Vaughn stared at me with enough eloquence in his gaze to negate his indignant words. Pain, sadness, anger. Loss. But, beneath all of that, our bond shone in his eyes. We’d both bled over the loss of Liam. We’d both been done in by the witch. I asked much of him, maybe, after everything that’d happened between us. But, I’d meet with the man who invented the art of asking for too much soon enough, so I didn’t have much pity for Vaughn.
“We’d have to start fresh. No lies. Just loyalty. I’ll give you some time to think about it.”
Vaughn turned a furtive glance toward the dead bodies in the corner. His food had started to go cold, and soon the bodies would empty. I could almost hear his silent scream not to leave him in there while the corpses saturated the air with piss and shit and the sickening perfume of decay. No longer blood, just meat. Just dead things rotting until they left a taste in the ether.
He tried to crawl toward me but I stomped toward the stairs, shutting the door behind me.
When the door closed, I changed the code quickly, and waited just long enough to hear Vaughn’s groan as he tried the old the numbers. I laughed for a minute, then unlocked the door.
“Leaving a vampire in a room full of empty bowels and decayed human is just cruel, huh? You think you suffered enough?”
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Maybe. Guess that depends on if I volunteer to call a true born my brother.”
I stepped aside and let him climb the stairs, wondering what he’d choose.
I dreamed. Something I don’t usually do. I knew right away this was a dream, because Evie sat beside me, at the edge of the lake I’d drowned her in. She could only be alive in a dream, but I felt her in a way that made me believe she’d found her way out of death. I had to remind myself of the truth, because the ache of the illusion seemed more real.
“You’re dead.”
“No.” She didn’t look at me. Instead, she lay in the green grass and stared up at the broad blue sky. She writhed and stretched, closed her eyes, and moaned. “I cheated death for you. I came back for you.”
When she opened her rapturous eyes to take in the view above, I laid down and stared up with her. The sky shone with our reflections, like the surface of a pool turned mirror. Far, far above us, and yet close enough to touch, I watched our reflections with wariness, as if any moment the mirror would crash on top of our prone bodies.
She wore the clothes I’d killed her in days before. Before Cai left with a cryptic reminder to be ready for my new witch-related job. Before Vaughn had healed and tried to hunt with me.
Before I realized I couldn’t feed.
My bite and my hands killed her, and I realized too late, she must’ve cast some spell on me. Maybe her ghost rattled inside my bones like they were her cage.
I turned onto my side and touched her bare stomach.
So soft. So warm. I felt hunger again.
“I want to taste you. I haven’t been able to hunt. I can’t fuck. All I do is think about you and starve.”
Far away and yet, so close, the mirror descended like a guillotine, falling with alarming speed.
She still wouldn’t look at me. Evie smiled, her grin growing wider as I unbuttoned her jeans. Sharp fangs scraped her plush bottom lip. I had to touch her, I had to feel the wet heat of her opening against my fingertips before the mirror crushed us both.
“I told you I’d see you in Hell.” She groaned as I slid my hand inside. “I told you.”
I rolled over, settling on top of her, and in the way of dreams, plunged deep inside her body without removing our clothes, just as the mirror shattered against my back. The reflective sky impaled us with a million shards of agonizing and bloody life.
Reborn. I knew in an instant that the jagged edges of consciousness were stuck within us, connecting us with the glass that spiked through both our hearts. I’d felt this invasion once before, on a motel bed when Evie topped me and showed me the predator she truly was.
We shared one scream, one death, one climax, and one heartbeat. I shuddered against her, naked, with acid surging through my veins like a forest fire. My own venom, our joined spirits.
“You’re alive.” I whispered, because even in a dream I couldn’t believe. Even buried inside her, even as I surged forward and came again and again, I couldn’t bring myself to believe.
“Yes.” She smiled but tears streamed into her ears, down into her hair. “I cheated death for you. I came back for you.”
Endless tears fell, sprang out around her like a blue sky, like a mirror.
Like a lake.
“I told you, you’d never be free of me, Jesse.”
We sank into blue sky, into churning waters. A lake. An ocean, a river. The water changed, but we didn’t. We fell, joined at the hips, bodies surging against each other like flint on steel. Light sparked where I touched her skin, where she scraped my flesh with her fangs, where my tongue licked hers.
“Come for me, baby.” She hissed in my ear as I bit into her throat. She pulled my head up, our hips starting a fire as we fucked harder. She stared into my eyes. I saw the trap she’d sprung, too late.
“Come find me, you sonofabitch. I want to watch you die.”
She shoved her fangs deep into my throat and sucked long, hard, the way I did whenever I felt ravenous, needing to feed my body in one massive gulp of life. I tried to claw her off of me, tried to swim to the surface, but she spiraled until she topp
ed me, her body pressing me into the deep. She wrapped her legs around me, her arms, her cunt. She seared me from the inside out, drawing my venom from my mouth with a kiss that sucked life and breath from me. I knew I was dying, but I didn’t care. She fucked me, I fucked her, and we fell.
Come for me, baby. Come with me. Cheat death with me.
We tumbled into the bottomless void, but I didn’t feel the cold or care about the dark. The fire of her kiss singed my tongue. Her heart kicked my chest, not with fear, but with outrage. My gut growled and ravenous, soul-crushing hunger swept through me like wildfire.
I’m starving. Starving. Starving. I need to feed. I need you, Evie.
This time you come to me, vampire. This time you come when I call.
Her growl vibrated against my lips. My gut paused its protest long enough to register the upward tug of the corners of her lips. Somewhere deep inside, I shuddered at the scything slice of that smile.
“Catch you on the flip side, Jesse.”
I jolted to consciousness, covered in sweat, and aching all over. I swallowed a lump of disgust as soon as my mind conjured the first image of food. Violent, stomach churning disgust for something I needed so badly my body hurt.
For the first time in my life, nausea wracked me at the thought of feeding. Only the taste of pancakes on my tongue when Evie broke her little spell in the diner could compare. I rolled onto my side and took a deep breath, felt ill, and took several shallow ones instead. The taste coating my tongue correlated with the stench whenever humans vomited. Below the ball of ice twisting my gut into a pretzel, stood my cock, at full attention. I lifted the sheets a bit and stared at this sign of hunger, at the iridescent line of fluid streaking from the bruised head to the sheet. Pre-come. Endless beads of pre-come, because I couldn’t come even when I jerked off.
When I ran my tongue over my teeth I felt nothing. My fangs still inverted.
Confusion at the contradictory signs rattled me and I shuddered again. The involuntary movement made me think of Evie, her teeth chattering as our bodies sank deeper into cold water, her shudders as I held her under the churning surface.
I peeled back the covers. The blast of cold air against the blistering heat of my erection made me wince. I wrapped my hand around the head and squeezed, doubled over with the friction and the pain. I stumbled to my feet, stared out at the gray light of morning, and thought about how I’d have buried myself balls deep in Evie—if only she’d been here.
I thought about the dream. How real she’d felt. Real. Alive.
You need me alive….
“Alive.” Before I wrapped my head around the details of my still-forming plan, I stormed down the hall to Vaughn’s room and threw open the door.
Vaughn kneeled over an auburn-haired girl with her legs spread wide, his hand wrapped around her throat. He didn’t stop fucking her even when he noticed me staring, bound to the spot with a sickening thread of jealousy.
“You ready to eat?” He asked breathlessly, still driving his cock into his morning meal. “She’s just getting warmed up. We can do her here or in the basement now that it’s clean—”
“She’s alive!” I shuddered at the smell of the girl’s cunt creaming on Vaughn’s relentless thrusts.
“Yeah, dude, obviously. I’m fucking her.”
“Evie.”
Vaughn stopped thrusting and released the girl’s throat.
“What the fuck are you talking about? You killed her.”
The girl under him gasped in a deep breath and screamed, which dissolved into sobs when Vaughn slapped her. He leaned over her face and said, “Shut up. I’m talking.” He dragged his tongue across her tears and smacked his lips.
My stomach churned. I licked dry lips and collapsed against the doorjamb, weak as a newborn.
“Jesse? Jesse!”
With one bound, Vaughn’s sweaty, naked body hovered above me. He smelled of all the things I couldn’t do. I couldn’t bleed my prey when my fangs wouldn’t come out. If I fucked the girl whimpering on the bed all day and night, I still wouldn’t be able to come.
“She’s alive, Vaughn. She’s the reason I can’t feed. Something. Something happened at the lake I….”
“You’re talking crazy. She got under your skin, I know, but all you need is one good meal. I’ll force it down your throat if I have to, and me and the girl will take care of this.”
He grabbed my cock, a look of pure sympathy on his face as he jerked my shaft.
Arousal stabbed me in the gut, but instead of release, pain sank deep into my shaft and squeezed my balls in a vice. I smacked his hand away and grabbed him by the back of the neck so he wouldn’t get the girl to suck me off.
“I gave her my venom, Vaughn.”
The thud of Vaughn’s knees hitting the floor told me he understood.
“You can’t turn a witch, right? That’s impossible.”
“So is me being unable to feed or come. But the impossible happened. I turned her. Now I need you to help me find her, so I can kill the bitch before she kills me.”
Coming Soon!
When Dying Is Done
(Shivers and Sins Volume 3)
Other Books By Kaia Bennett
SHIVERS AND SINS SERIES
Die By the Drop (Volume 1)
Doing It To Death (Volume 2)
LOOSE ENDS SERIES
#1 Crush (Book 1)
Closer (Book 2)
Mind Over Matter (Book 3)
Sunday (standalone)
The Fifth Day (novella)
About the Author
Kaia Bennett is a New Jersey native, U.S. Army veteran, and martial artist who holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Rowan University and is working on her Master of Fine Arts at Fairleigh Dickinson University. When she’s not geeking out over music, movies, astrology, tattoos, or art, she can be found in front of her laptop, reminding herself not to bite her nails while she agonizes over a turn of phrase.
Kaia is a lover of all genres, a voracious reader, and a great believer that the journey is just as important as the destination. She’s an erotic author who aims to write stories with diversity, depth, realism, and viscerally hot encounters, revealing the taboo and tender sides of her characters and readers alike.
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Kaia can be reached at
@KaiaBennett
kaia.bennett
kaiabennett.com
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