by J. E.
Yet as she ate it she couldn’t help but note some sound of amusement from behind her, and when she turned she saw Berro laughing and grinning like a fool as he shut the door and left her to her own devices in the closed room.
She made a face and pushed it away, not wanting to know what had tickled him so. Jackass.
She looked around for somewhere to hide it, for she knew that Zarach would see it as a slight. That she hadn’t accepted his gracious gift of tainted porridge.
With plenty of time to spare she had no issue finding a seemingly discarded ice bucket behind a pile of cushions, in which she discarded the porridge into and closed up.
Zarach, it seemed, was in no rush to get to her. She found herself lingering in the opulent party room all by herself for at least an hour or two. The tedium of being treated so shabbily grated on her nerves.
In her youth, when she was still being trained, this was how she was treated. Locked up and discarded like a meaningless nuisance, lower than a bug. Lower than anything. It had been horrible, and it had made her so hungry for men. For their company, for their affection. She devoted herself to her craft, and became something that should never be discarded again.
Yet Zarach’s ego was large enough to suffocate her. She couldn’t even get comfortable for the fear that she’d leave a crease on her body that he wouldn’t care for. Any little thing could set him off, but pacing only amplified her thoughts and embarrassment.
She never should have offered to do this for Loren. To get it into his head that she would so easily kill his cousin and make him rich.
No, she corrected herself. She should have run. The moment her wallet was dry, she should have found another city to disappear into. Weren’t these the types of relationships she was trying to get away from? Fuck, she thought she was doing so much better simply because they were mortal men, but they could be worse even than demons.
When at last she heard the sound of the master of the manor approaching, his distinctive boots thudding against the floor. She knew to prepare before the door swung open, revealing the tall, pale tyrant.
She smiled, and it was genuine, for he interrupted her morose thoughts. Immediately she kneeled in front of the couch, facing him with her head down. Her black hair curled around her shoulders and the white fabric strained against her chest.
Zarach paused, and though she could only see the shine of his polished leather boots, she could tell he wore a fine suit. “Obedient as always,” he mused in his husky voice, striding towards her slowly with that same calm, collected manner that had first enticed her .
“You look in better condition than most of my guests after their first night,” he remarked, reaching out and letting his fingers move through her glossy black hair. “I trust your accommodations were comfortable then?” and she could detect the faint trace of dark humour in his question.
She didn’t speak. Instead she nodded, and there was some tease of desire that ran through her body. How, how she wanted this.
But she wanted it for real. The things she would do, the things she could make a man want... It made her hunger, but it wasn’t for him. She could never trust him enough to actually supplicate herself to him. Her pleading would be for his pleasure, not her own, and it was so much sweeter when those strong emotions were shared.
Zarach’s long, slender fingers curled into her hair and tugged back, forcing her face to angle up as he gazed down at her. He made her meet his crimson stare. “It’s a big day for you,” he said in a soft whisper. “You’ve earned some rewards. My favour,” his lips curving into a wry little impetuous smile. “Something beyond jewels and baubles even.”
She could smell the cologne off him, the rich scent that covered up something else. Something dark. The coppery aroma of blood.
She pushed her repulsion aside and smiled, her white teeth gleaming between her dark pink lips. She felt like a small animal, begging for her Master’s approval. It was so familiar and foreign all at once. There was no bond between them, no respect. She was just some bitch, and there was no pleasing him.
With his cruelly tight hold on her hair he pulled her up to her feet, forcing her to move her agile, toned legs to keep up with the unforgiving tug. “How about you show me a little dance?” he rasped with a gleam in his eyes as he let go of her hair and moved back towards the couch. “Show me your appreciation for the gift I’m going to give.”
He reclined upon the opulent sofa, arms to the sides, stretching his long, lanky body out upon the rich cushions. Zarach would have been so sublime a man, had he not gotten so full of himself. So recklessly cruel to those who wished to aid him.
She didn’t want to know what his present was. She wanted to prolong the moment, and she straightened her hair. There was no music, but that didn’t matter. She recalled a beat in her head and began to move her body in remembered, seductive motions.
The art of exotic dancing was something she took quite seriously, and was one of her most notorious skills. She knew angles that her body looked best in, and each small movement was practiced. Precise. Her hips swayed and circled, her hands displayed and drew attention to her body. The outfit he’d provided her left so little to the imagination, but she kept it on.
Her fingers teased along the cloth seams, calling her nipples to attention before delving her fingers beneath her skirt. She was already wet, she noted with some annoyance. Dancing for a man that terrified her, that treated her like a possession, and still she couldn’t calm her body from its arousal.
Was she really such a broken woman that terror was a lubricant for her?
She licked her lips as she brought her breasts to his face, and all the while, she was so careful of not drawing attention to her neck. She avoided certain moves, certain teases, just to try to keep the focus on her feminine gifts more than what she knew he wanted.
A creature out of nightmares before her. Something she’d heard of, but never before encountered. Though the pale skin and eyes seemed to match up to the tales.
Yet as she taunted and teased in her well—honed manner, he reached out and put an arm around her, yanking her to him onto his lap. Her buxom breasts struck his face for a moment, and he kept her pinned to his groin, where she could feel the swell of his manhood below.
“Very nice,” he husked to her, licking his lips with his face so near to hers. So near to her neck.
Her throat constricted, and she forced herself to swallow against the dryness. “Thank you,” she said, her voice sounding so small. She shifted, bringing her knees onto the sofa on either side of him. It gave her a bit of height, and she squirmed against that hardness.
That was something she understood. Even then, it was something she craved. A deep blush went through her body and she wondered if she’d always be a slave to her lust.
His two powerful hands went down to her shapely rear, clutched her round ass cheeks and groped them tight and hard. Zarach leaned in and licked along her jaw back towards her neck as he fondled her luscious flesh.
He was so cruel and cold, but her sultry maneuvers, her skillful dance, it had all managed to bring the base man inside him out. “I think I’ll claim you all for myself,” he hissed to her, and she felt him nip along her cheek, moving towards her ear.
She hated how her heart leapt and a smile warped her lips. She was proud of herself, of getting special treatment from this fickle monster. Her hands stroked along the back of his shoulders, pulling herself into him. “Yes,” she whispered to his ear and she ground against him with such need and heated desire.
She couldn’t help herself. She needed this.
Squeezing her cheeks, he bit her earlobe, tugged it with his teeth then lifted her. With a swift motion he pushed her over onto her back atop the plush sofa beneath him. He forced himself betwixt her legs and ground against her sex as he fondled her form. Harshly into her ear he said, “You seem too good to be true, but perhaps you’re all that.”
She was trained for men like him; men who had power, who had
influence, who had dark desires and needed a willing slave. It was something that made her unique, but it was also a great source of conflict. Even as she feared him, as she was manipulated in his strong arms, she felt a need throbbing beneath that small skirt. It flipped away from her thighs as he lay her back and she was so wantonly exposed, her arousal already thick in the air.
Could they just start over? Without the deception?
Did she even want that? She knew, rationally, she didn’t. But for that moment, when he touched her and praised her, all else was drowned out with her moan.
There was just the contact, his hand moving up her body to grasp a breast through her thin strip of a top, to squeeze that supple mound so mercilessly. It was then that she noticed it; it was nearly a miracle she did. Her head just happened to be tilted just right towards the balcony entrance, the gentle motion of the drapes drawing her eye as something dark slipped into the room.
Her attention was brought back to the man atop her though when Zarach’s mouth went to her neck. Her vulnerable neck. His parted lips poised there at her smooth flesh before he... bit.
She expected something else. When he bit it was like any other man’s bite in the heat of the moment. He suckled and kissed and nibbled, but she felt no fangs. No piercing of her flesh. Barely even a twinge of pain, certainly not the stuff of vampire legends.
She moaned.
Maybe it was the safety and security she felt, though it wasn’t quite that either. In fact, that made her less likely to moan, because her body grew hot with shame knowing Jaral had heard. It was purely primal, that bit of pain something she needed as much as pleasure. She couldn’t help the fact that her back arched her breasts further into his rough hands, or that her hips refused to stop grinding him.
This was who she was. Who she really was.
Zarach went at her madly, with a lust she’d longed for the day prior. Her responses absorbing him in her body, drowning out the world about them. She played her part so well, but the speed with which things went from there startled even her.
A dagger sank into Zarach’s back, but instantly the pale man struck out in defense, forcing Jaral to step away. She watched as the stabbed man got off her so quick, made all the more impressive by the fact that he staggered and gushed blood.
Anjasa knew how to fight and defend herself, but the fast rate at which the two men acted stunned her.
More blows were traded. The dark killer’s arms struck out. Zarach deflected. Deflected again. Blocked. The next struck home, and a second dagger sprouted from Zarach’s chest.
The pale monster spat forth a spout of blood, eyes wide as he muttered in shock. “S ... Sire?”
“No longer,” came the deep retort in that foreign accent. And in another explosion of moves that seemed to defy possibility, the dark Jaral struck out with a kick which Zarach, even in his twice stabbed condition, blocked and pushed away. But the one two strikes of his hands could not be guarded against, and Zarach’s face was knocked back. The hilt of the dagger then struck, plunging it further into his chest still.
Anjasa was almost afraid to blink, afraid that she might somehow miss something important as she struggled to move away from the blood and fighting. She was almost nude and had nothing to defend herself with. What could she do, even if she did?
The way they moved...
It was like a macabre dance, playing out so quickly before her disbelieving eyes.
The number of blows Zarach took but kept standing, the movement of both of them so fast, beyond the abilities of any mortal.
The bloodied and battered almost noble struck back, and in a desperate motion he shoved the assaulting Jaral away so that he crashed through the mirror wall and into a room on the other side.
“Why’d you turn on me?!” Zarach shouted with a spray of blood. “You said you’d make me a Full Blood!” he shouted, as he moved not towards the stunned Jaral but the door, yanking it open.
As soon as it was opened, however, he was greeted by the visage of the dark titan, a hand striking out and hitting the pale Zarach in the throat with a loud crunch of his larynx. “You would only be an eternal nuisance, Zarach,” he intoned. Jaral’s movements were unhindered, as fast as ever, while the battered Zarach was slowed. Unable to resist any further as another blow hit the dagger and pushed it so hard Anjasa saw several inches of its blade pierce through his back.
She could do nothing but watch in horror. She wanted to flee, but she couldn’t turn away. Her arousal finally started to dissipate though there was still an inappropriate throb at the testosterone in the air, and she tried to make herself small on the couch.
Cowering.
What had she been reduced to?
As Jaral knocked Zarach back to the balcony door, she heard the metal groan and bend at the impact. Their strength and speed were so startling. How could such thick metal be bent and twisted like that?
The pale noble’s mouth opened, and he tried to speak, but instead of words, only blood sprayed out. Jaral stepped up to him, pushed his face into the metal bars, and took hold of the dagger again. The gory sound of him breaking through ribs and ending the twisted life of Zarach was chilling. Once he was done, the dark man released the body, and let the lifeless form of the man she’d just been passionately making out with fall to the floor.
It was as if time returned to normal then. That hyper speed reality of their combat at an end as she watched Jaral turn fluidly towards her, his dark gaze upon her as she lay there, cowering.
More shame. It was becoming a familiar feeling lately, and she stood up to try to be free of it. Her breath was quick, and when she tried to speak, it sounded off. “You made him?”
“No,” he responded, and she noticed his chest wasn’t heaving. He didn’t even seem to be breathing as he stood before her so tall and mighty. “I was making him into something greater. It is a process that takes time. But he disappointed me.” The only shift in his demeanor was the flaring of his nostrils, the glint in his eyes as he watched her. “He would only have been a liability—a dangerous liability—if I finished his transformation.”
“I wouldn’t argue with that.” Or him, at that moment. She tried to stop the trembling of her hands by hugging her ribcage. “So that’s it? He’s not going to come back or something?” Truthfully, her knowledge of demons and dragons and incubi were far better than these... vampires.
Jaral came towards her, though his movements were so fluid and agile it almost startled her in her heightened state. “He was no true vampire,” he said, his hand coming up to her cheek, cupping it lightly, letting her have a close look at his sandy brown arm, the specks of blood upon it. “Not yet. He had great power, but it was fleeting... required much sustenance to maintain.” His thumb stroked over the smooth flesh of her cheek towards her nose. “He is finished. For good.”
Her brows furrowed and her lips turned down.
She knew she wasn’t as strong as some. Yes, she was crafty. Yes, she was stealthy and could be cruel as she needed to be at times. She’d fought and fucked with beasts far stronger than her, but they didn’t look so human. So inconspicuous.
It unsettled her until she felt his flesh against hers, and found her tremors calmed. “Well... thanks,” she murmured, and her fingertips went to her neck where Zarach had bit.
“He didn’t even have fangs yet,” he assured her as she felt her unblemished neck. No piercing of her flesh made. Though as Jaral touched upon her skin, her attention was drawn to just how abnormally cool his touch was. The lack of heat in his flesh which she’d noticed before but dismissed in the cool of the basement. “He had to cut his victims with a blade, or tear into them like a wild man, which he was too disgusted by to do.”
Anjasa laughed a bit scornfully, “I just figured it always felt that...” she stopped herself. Good. It felt good. All of it felt good with him this evening, and she lamented the loss for a fleeting moment.
“Has she been able to keep down food?”
“So
far,” he said, stepping to her and raising his second arm to put it upon her hip as his other fingers knit through her hair. “You did well,” he murred in his deep, dark voice. “He and I were bound by blood,” he stated. “Because of that, he would have sensed my coming had you not been so... enrapturing.”
She hadn’t done anything differently than she would have any other night. If he’d asked her to dance for him the night before, she would have done just as good of a job. That was what she did. What she was a natural at. Everything else was just... everything else.
Her eyes fluttered shut, and she knew she should feel fear. Even if he did protect her, even if he did save her, they never did it out of the goodness of their hearts.
“So what now?” she breathed.
He released her hair and retracted his hand. What he did then stunned her, though she wasn’t entirely sure how, for all he did was simply pull down the facemask and unveil himself.
Anjasa had lived long, many lives by the reckoning of humans. She’d seen and been with countless stunning males. The Sylvarin lands were full of gorgeous elven men, after all, but Jaral? His was a male beauty that was ethereal in a whole other way.
The rest of his face matched his eyes. Pronounced cheek bones and jaw, smooth unblemished skin. A neatly sculpted beard. He looked like he was only a fresh young man by the standards of humans, but she knew that couldn’t be true. Not when she stared at those luscious, full lips of his, so well—shaped, outlined by the black of his beard and marked by the protrusion of two fangs.
“Now we move forward from here,” he said to her simply, his dark voice so much more enticing without the light muffle of his mask. Though through it all, the beauty, the charm, the vigor, she still sensed that aura of dread that accompanied his true nature.
She swallowed, forcing her eyes to look away, because she felt that warmth begin to fill her once more and she inhaled sharply. It took her several long seconds to finally formulate words again, and even then her body showed what she was most trying to hide.
