by Poppet
“I hoped he would, but we never really got that far,” I whimper, shock claiming me and coming on strong.
His hand tightens on my neck, hauling me flush back against his hard body, the leather bindings magically unravelled, releasing me back into the warden's malicious hold.
“I used to think women wanted love and romance. Phoebe crushed that misconception with a sniper's ease.” He sounds angry when he says it, his grip tensing a little too tight, just enough to cause a modicum of discomfort.
“Who's Phoebe?” I choke against the strangulation.
“Fuck you smell incredible when you are panicked.” His voice is closer, immediate, demanding and malevolent, “You make me want to fuck you until your spine dislocates.”
I can't swallow and my vision is beginning to swim with pins of pain. Why does his violence enthrall me? Just the purred threat he uttered makes me wanton even while I'm recovering from agony.
He eases up, rolling me like a toy to press hot lips against my throbbing sex. “He wants Phoebe, Zena. He always has and he always will. Zaria found that out the hard way.”
“Who is Zaria?” None of this is making any sense, and now his mouth is kissing me better and it's twisting me into devastated cords.
“His girlfriend. She saw you kissing him earlier and has already walked out of his life. You fucked him up tonight you wicked woman, but I'm delighted I could accommodate your dark desires and deepest fantasy.”
His hands are gentle, every stroke a healing caress, his lips sublime in the way they erase the marks of his crimes. It's delicate and just as primitive. How captivating it is to have a man curdle your blood and then soothe it back into relaxation, balming damage with comfort and tenderness.
“What didn't you tell me about turning me? How will I know when you turn me?” I say; my voice swallowed into the drowsiness of my world.
“It's already done, but you only get to own your power on full moon. The little condition will become evident soon enough.”
Then he halts all conversation by raping my mouth so fully, and in such a way with his fangs embedded in my bottom lip, that I can't withdraw. I'm left whimpering with the onset of overloading madness when he aims his need into me again.
He is selfish and punishing. The stupid part buried in my brain salivates with more desire at the challenge he poses, the mystery I have to unwrap and shred slowly until I discover his weakness.
At least I know he can't fuck me to death because I'm already immortal.
Holy smoke! I'm immortal.
Like the angels, whispers into my head with the caress of a lover being tender and kind.
He's a contradiction of unfettered temptation.
And I think I'm addicted.
The condition. How mysterious. I love the enigma of this riddle, of this vampyre man.
Jowendrhan sure is a nice surprise.
You have no idea... I have to be cruel to be kind.
When he bites into my leg I collapse and writhe over clean scented cotton, my soul is extracted with his ownership in the moment. The nirvana is so complete, so absolute, I lose focus and escape into the crescent ambiance of his internal light.
Ambrosia bubbles my blood and overrides the pain, rocking me so his odious essence codes my blood with his bittersweet stain.
My heart rate slows down and the shadows feel warm and inviting. I never want him to stop biting – it strangles the world and offers me up as a sacrifice to endless delight.
Every stroke, touch, kiss, are poultices eradicating mental and physical pain, all my discomfort is fading like a rainbow before heat.
I am asphyxiating in every way, but one.
We don't bite necks, Zena. Consider it my first gift to you. The first of many.
Fingers slide up the well of muscle coated in our purged depravation, scissoring and sinking higher.
I've given you more gifts, can you guess what they are?
The thumb pressing my lust button detonates, igniting my blood with the gunpowder of his skin and the volatile flame of his touch.
Paradise, I answer, spiraling back into the hellfire of his eyes and commanding potency.
Chapter 12
Zaria:
Drowsy and cuddled with piles of soft bedding, I inhale again. My heart rate picks up with the strong aroma of Zauran and his unique scent.
Recollection squeezes my veins, chopping my breath and compelling me to open my eyes.
Staring at locked curtains overlapped against the sun, skimming my gaze over the deep pile of the onyx carpet, I lean back, expecting to connect with the man who crept into my chest to stamp his lips on each chamber of my heart.
Rolling, looking around, it's disappointing to discover I'm alone.
What time is it?
It feels early. Sitting up, pushing my hair off my face where it threads like a dreamcatcher, my skin crawls with the brisk cool air. Just being here surrounded with his environment and thrilling presence makes my nipples tense and readiness slip heat into my loins.
I want to find him, hug him, kiss him and hold him tight, to thank him for reminding me why life is such an exciting adventure.
Sliding out of bed, I can't locate my clothes. They're pretty much scattered throughout his home if I recall. I could go downstairs naked, but after the traffic I witnessed last night I'm not willing to risk that kind of exposure.
Twisting my hair into a wreathe, I knot it to get it out of my way. It's the plus of having such long hair, I don't need a band to tie it up.
Indecision grips me as I ponder my predicament. Surely he won’t mind if I hijack one of his shirts?
Wiping my face with vigorous friction, sending awareness into my eyes and cheeks – chasing away sleep, I walk to the closet and open it to extract a long sleeved tee, or a jumper, something.
Masculinity hits me. It’s immediately invigorating.
Dragging my gaze over edge to edge black and deep foreboding gray, the neatness and darkness grips me as if in hypnotism.
I’m stunned still, inhaling leather, denim… him. I'm instantly giddy with the assault.
Stepping carefully closer, I tentatively touch the first of many black leather jackets, lifting the sleeve and inhaling rain and raw wild recklessness.
The cologne he wears lingers on the leather and the cocktail is indelibly potent. It's the omniscience of strong, powerful, sexy, supernatural; indomitable protection and knowledge.
The man who smells like this is immovable, threatening, gentle and tender. Just his scent is an omen, a warning, a lusty and heady drug. Closing my eyes, my heart rate spiking uncontrollably now, it makes me yearn for him something fierce.
I’m surrounded with him. It’s like standing on an island; a little slippery rock in the center of the sea; with his wild ocean swirling and roiling its spellbinding motion and spray at me.
It parches my mouth and scores passion clear through my body. Shaking, my legs unsteady now, I touch the next item, and the next, staining my pores with Zauran’s smell, wrapping his incense into my skin and dousing myself with the natural aftershave of his neuri power.
Sinking, my knees fold, and I end up sitting on my legs, my strength dissipated with my insides wobbling in jellylike anticipation.
I have it so bad for this boy. Just his smell strips me to my soul. I’m craving him.
The clothes hanging like parishioners in front of me, remind me of his deep dark mysterious eyes that reflect facets of light like a sunstone. They drape his wide shoulders in an extension of his persona. Most of his denim jeans are faded from their original deadly black to shades of dove and graphite. The biker t-shirts are all so thundercloud and black they are like oil fountaining over cracked desert, staining his white closet with ink.
He’s that volatile and fueling. He’s that dangerous and that needed.
He is this dark and durable – and heartwarming. Comforting, familiar, reassuring and steadfast. Leather and denim weather well, they have wide shoulders to carry the w
eight of their lifespan, like the man they adorn.
It’s easy to see he prefers his motorbike to the car by looking in here. I feel like I’m violating his secrets and plundering his privacy.
Overwhelmed, turned inside out and ON, I snatch a t-shirt and hold it over my face, inhaling deeply, cradling it in my neck and fisting desperate need into the material. I'm needing his arms and chest and smile to bury my face in, not the weak salve of cotton saturated in his aura.
Decision spurs me and I hastily pull it on, standing and leaning heavily on the doors when I close them again, absently pressing a harsh pressure into my groin to dull the throbbing ache now lodged there.
He's enormous, his t-shirt reaches below my knees and to my forearms with ease. Needing a kiss, and coffee, I take the stairs to the kitchen, surprised when it's empty except for the coffee pot steaming exotic temptation into the room.
Maybe he's in the lounge, or den? Or bathroom?
Heading that way, I'm eager, my skin sending frisky tentacles to coil into my depths, readying me for whatever this morning brings. Him!
Turning the corner into the lounge I almost collide with the man walking out of it.
Stalled in shock, my heart hammering, I trace my gaze at eye level up over gray clad abs, over the crest of his chest, up to a thick tanned neck with veins lining it like bondage cords, up to a smooth chin depressed with a dark dimple, finally shutting off my breath with the tilted angle of my neck to stare into azure eyes.
Looking down at me dark blond hair falls forward, all of it stopping dead with his jaw, forcing him to thread fingers through it to hold it out of his eyes.
“Hello there,” purrs at me like a deep bass buzz of a rock concert.
It's friendly, cheerful, welcoming.
I have no clue who you are but I'm glad to see you don't all come stock standard as intense.
“Hel-lo,” I choke, coughing when my voice strangles and a burr sticks in my throat from the effort. Dropping my head with a shaft of dizziness, I inhale, swallow, and try again. Taking a step back so I don't have to cramp my spine to look at him, I nod, “Hello.”
“I'm Aisyx. Who are you?”
A big hand is thrust at me which I'm obviously supposed to shake.
“Zaria,” I say, placing my hand in his and watching it vanish when fingers close around it.
Holee toledo. Is it just me or do men only come in super-sized these days?
“Zaria,” he repeats, smiling wide and locking my hand in his grasp, not letting go.
Back off buddy, I have a black belt in feng shui.
As if hearing me he releases my hand and steps back, giving me room. A naughty smile tugs the left side of his mouth and he looks beyond me as if trying to hide the laughter sparkling his eyes.
“Where's Zauran?” I ask, looking past him.
“He had an emergency. He asked me to watch out for his girl until he gets back.”
Oh?
Aiming my focus back at him, I desperately want my clothes. I feel naked and vulnerable.
“Why you?” Why do I need someone to watch my back?
How can he leave me with a complete stranger.
Surveying the gargantuan man swiping his hair back again and sitting down to bring himself to almost my height standing, he smiles.
His eyes are blue. His hair is blond. He's not neuri.
What are you?
Folding my arms to hide my pert nipples, I wonder where to start looking for my underwear and jeans.
He seems uncomfortable and stands again, towering over me and blotting out everything beyond his shoulders from my view.
“I'm the best man for the task,” he nods, flopping straight hair forward and giving me a quick wink. It's a reassuring gesture rather than a creep getting his rocks off gesture. “Zaria, I'm half neuri and half vampyre. The only one on earth.”
He indicates his body with both hands in a sweeping downward movement, “I'm this big because of it.”
Must suck to be you.
Instead, I smile at him, pulling my congeniality kicking and screaming out of the basement of my defenses. “Wow. So who do you date?”
“Vampyre. There are no female neuri, females are not born, ever. And as the last decent female vampyre has fallen into evil's clutches I'm destined to be single and horny with my left hand for company - for eternity.”
He seems pissed off with the idea and angles piercing eyes through me as if resenting me.
“I'm sorry.” I don't know what else to say.
He gives me a generic smile, lengthening his fangs and giving me a truly wicked look, “Yes, it sucks to be me. You'd know of course, having jumped from the frying pan into the fire.”
“What do you mean?”
I hug my arms tighter, intimidated now.
“You left a vampyre who could melt the flesh off your bones with his bite, for a neuri. Neuri mate for life, Zaria. Life in our terms is forever. Immortal.”
Immortal is said in such a way that it feels like a bullet. It's the moment you realize you've been shot and there's no going back to the way you were. The decision's been made and I know I've willingly stepped into the firing line. I didn't face the firing squad even though this crowd are beginning to feel like an army to my mind. It's a niggling sense of knowing.
No, all I did was set myself up royally to take a bullet, now only time will tell if it kills me, scars me, or passes clean through with the impact of a miracle.
Tilting my head so I can stare back at him without getting dizzy, I say, “And you? Do you mate like a vampyre or a neuri?”
“It doesn't matter, does it? I'm so large only vampyre can handle me – and there are none left.”
“That's where you'd be wrong,” exhales smugly from the doorway behind us, stripping my calm and eliciting a squeal.
Hingeing to face the doorway, I step instinctively back, halted by the hulk behind me.
Sveta rakes his gaze over me, slouching heavily against the arch of the threshold, finally meeting my eyes to whisper in a threatening tone, “You smell incredible this morning.”
His volcanic-black eyes gild with amber and I'm unnerved by the twitch of his jaw muscle.
“She's hot for Zauran, not you,” rumbles from behind me.
I'm suddenly grateful for the back-up Zauran supplied me with.
Sveta's eyes slowly return to impenetrable black and he engages his stare with the man at my back, “So you can smell it too?”
Then he closes his eyes and inhales so deeply his neck tenses, forcing his Adam's apple into relief and pumping the veins out as if he's straining with a heavy weight.
Exhaling with exaggeration Sveta reopens his eyes and locks them on me, “Zaria, I think you're finally going to come in handy.”
“What's that supposed to mean?” Clutching my hands tighter over my arms, I'm tense. God I wish I was wearing jeans.
“Your friend, Jowendrhan, turned a female last night. She's home, alone, and her heart beats as slow as theirs. One beat every five minutes means she's joined the ranks of vampyre. He's repopulating the world with silver eyed spawn, starting with a mate he had no right to claim.”
“No right?” I say. He has every right.
Sveta cocks his head, cascading his untidy hair the shade of burnt whiskey to catch the tendrils of sunlight filtering into the lounge. He looks like he just burst into flame.
Most of the time his hair looks chestnut with resin highlights, but in golden sunshine it strokes those highlights into an inferno of copper and gold.
This man exudes danger with a generous dose of sleaze.
“Zaria, there are three of you. They are three brothers, we are three brothers. Serbian women belong to Serbian men. He doesn't belong on my land, and now he's taken the one I chose for myself.”
What?
Frowning, my stomach clenching and unclenching in nervousness, I don't like what I'm hearing.
Serbian women belong to Serbian men... seriously? How freaking mediev
al is this misogynistic creep!
“I remind you Zaria...” he says as he steps into the room, pulling himself up to his full impressive height. “We can hear your every thought. Unlike a vampyre I don't have to kiss you to share your head. I don't have to bite you to feel the tension in your body or experience the lust licking your lips and permeating the room with your body's perfume.”
Oh god.
Stopping in front of me his eyes swirl with furnace orange highlights again, “You want to defend your friend Jowendrhan. The very friend who almost prevented Phoebe from turning Seithe into a mortal. He's selfish and narcissistic. He's on an ego-trip, one he needs to come down from. He has no plan to stop at Zena. He's planning a harem of female vampyre.”
He's on an ego trip... You need to look in the mirror, pal.
“H-ow do you know?” I say instead.
This doesn't sound like Jowendrhan at all. Who's Zena?
He smiles, and it's cruel. “Zena is Božena. She got between you and Darise, and now she's coming down from her night in Jo's bed.”
I need to call Phoebe!
Urgency bitch slaps me into wide awake and on high alert.
Ignoring the shady character blocking my way out of the lounge, I turn to Aisyx, stopping short with my words hitched in my throat at the glowing ferocity in his eyes.
Oh GOD! Zena's now vampyre. The only one. His desperation is taking control of his calm, his restraint.
His hands are huge fists at his sides and he looks tense enough to unleash immeasurable pain.
I need Zauran. But he won't come when I call telepathically.
Panicked, I do the only thing my mind can grab onto.
JOWENDRHAN!
Inside a second I feel his presence, arms clamp me to his chest, and then I'm vanished from Zauran's home, finding the white tiles immediately under my feet ice cold.
Chapter 13
Zaria and Jowendrhan:
Before I can say a word, Jowendrhan has my hair locked in his hand to expose my neck.
