Eternal Bondage

by Vita Anne Hoffman

  He shuttered his eyes, as if to hide something, some emotion. “But surely you cannot be leaving?” He braced his arms on either side of the door, barring the way, daring me to pass him, anticipating that I would try.

  "I don't mean to be ungrateful,” I kept a bland expression, “but I was about to leave."

  He eased his stance within the doorway to gesture with his right hand towards the romantic table-for-two. His burnished gold signet ring glittered at me, drugged me, ensnared me. “I insist you share a meal with me."

  It was difficult to clear my mind. I blinked rapidly to shake off his spell. His tactics riled me, so I got sassy. “Don't you mean be the meal?"

  He openly laughed at me. “My darling Miss Soulsmith, you are not the main course.” Contrary to his disarming reassurances, his bright blue eyes once again traced a possessive trail down the sequined dress. Assessingly, he focused on certain aspects of my physiology, chiefly my neck, breasts, and groin. He returned his gaze to mine. “But ... you could be the desert?” There was a hopeful note to his voice.

  "Constantine.... “I sighed in exhaustion, closed my eyes, and renewed my will to fight him. This struggle was so hard, because he was everything a woman could want. Tall, dark, and handsome. Intelligent, sexy, and wealthy. So what if he also happened to be a vampire? Everybody has flaws. I, myself, had a catalogue of them. For starters, I was commitment phobic. Hence my romantic history was short and bitter, including only two unsatisfactory failed relationships. And just why couldn't I commit? Blame an absentee father, a man who had lived up to my mother's sole but oft-repeated description of him as King of the Gypsies. He had gotten her pregnant and left before I was born, abandoning us both to relative poverty, surviving on the love and generosity of my grandmother.

  Admittedly, I was far from perfect. I was a wounded, isolated loner. But I was still a human, a mortal being. Constantine was not. How could I accept such an eternally frightening flaw?

  Fortified, I opened my eyes. He now stood beside me, having crossed the distance in a fraction of a second. Using vampire powers of any kind, whether pedestrian or grand, at this particular moment only hurt his case. It served to remind me that, with him, I could never totally be sure of my own true emotions. Part of me believed that he could not influence me deeply, not way down at my core. But what if I was wrong? What if that was what he wanted me to think? What if that was what he MADE me think? Such second-guessing would soon drive me crazy. So, I decided to beard the lion in his den.

  "I need to thank you for last night.” I looked straight into his icy-blue eyes. It was bravado of the worst sort, a foolhardy dare, saying, gimme your best shot. Test me. Snare me, if you can.

  And he did something that surprised me. He hooded his gaze, as if wary, or, afraid, I might discover a secret there.

  "Thank me? Why?"

  "For not taking advantage of me. I was pretty.... “I scowled. “Make that totally out of it. Everything about last night feels blurred, out-of-focus, but I mostly remember being scared shitless. I felt safe. Here. With you."

  "I would not violate you in such circumstances.” However, his double entendre was tactile and solid, and it slid silkily against my skin, eliciting an electric thrill in me because it clearly meant that he would violate me in other circumstances. It was a deliberate diversion and meant to do much more than begin some seductive maneuvers. His gaze pulled at mine and with that tug of power a strangeness occupied my brain. He seemed to be trying to distract me while he rearranged or, perhaps, outright destroyed my memories of last night's events. He tried to preoccupy me with sexual need while he rummaged through my thoughts like so much bric-a-brac. His attempt failed. Miserably.

  In fact, vivid snippets, the very ones he was trying to conceal, replayed in my mind. Of Sylvana crawling towards me, Key offering up the basket of snakes, Zellden completely melting down in face of a bloodbath of his own making. And, then, all at once, I collided with the one he was trying to shuffle completely out of my reach! I mentally grabbed for it with speed reminiscent of Constantine's own vampire kind.

  I again heard, I re-lived, the hateful mocking echo of Donata's departing words to me. “If you manage to survive, ask Constantine why he wants you so badly. Ask what it means for him to control a Soulsmith.” Every muscle in my body clenched. Her question was one I had avoided asking my-esteem-impaired-self for a good long while. Principally, what could tall, dark, and handsome want with me? If it were just sex, he would have moved on to much easier conquests by now. So, what, exactly, DID he want from me? I had never trusted him less than I did in that instant.

  I glared at him. It took a great effort to get the words, the question, past the lump in my throat. “What is it you want from me, Constantine? Why this pursuit? I'm nothing special.” I refused to shed the tears, of grief, of hurt, of suspicion, that threatened to drown me, but my eyes were surprisingly misty.

  His hand, the right one with its large gold signet ring, reached out to try and brush my cheek. I flinched away, not allowing him to touch me.

  "Answer me, damn it! What did Donata mean?"

  "She meant nothing more than to turn you against me. And, indeed, she has accomplished her aim well."

  "No!” I ran a shaking hand through my thick, mussed hair. Strange, unaccountable things had been happening around me lately. I could not ignore them any longer. Desperation tinged my next verbal barrage. “What is it about me that you want, that you need? Why is it that after having been bitten by snakes I'm perfectly fine? I should be dead, Constantine!"

  Anguish coursed across his face like storm clouds blotting the beauty of the sun. “Don't say such a thing."

  "Start explaining. Why can you enter my dreams, not simply because you're a progenitor? Why does the presence of vampires sometimes give me a physical buzz? Why did Key say that I could read him? What's with the super speed healing? Tell me.” Here came the clincher. My jaw raised, jutted belligerently. “I know you used me last night to open that locked door. Somehow you drew the power from me. Didn't you?"

  Suddenly he looked arrogant and cold and unfeeling. The perfection of his mouth twisted with a sneer. One brow rose in a haughty arch. And, of a sudden, in a rush of frustration and anger, I dared to beat an answer out of him! I used both fists to pound him in the chest. Again and again. He stayed immobile, and yet I knew I was hurting him, very little physically, but a great deal emotionally. He had to grab my wrists.

  "Stop it.” He jarred me with a single, rough shake. “Calm yourself."

  But I wouldn't. I thrashed powerfully against his hold. I was in danger of hurting myself, yet I still struggled. He cursed at his inability to contain me. Since we were close to the bed, he flung me onto it. Then, while I tried to catch my breath, he began to follow me, forcing me to scuttle back against the headboard. His progress was slow, deliberate, that of a purposeful predator.

  "Don't come any closer.” As for myself, scrunched against the intricately carved headboard, I had nowhere left to go. My teeth were bared. My arms were out-flung against the wall behind the head of the king-sized bed. I was backed into the proverbial corner.

  "Not even to get an answer to your questions?” His brilliant blue irises flashed. Motionless, he awaited a reply.

  "You can tell me from there."

  "And you won't run away?"

  "I won't.” At least, I would try not to.

  "Promise to accept what I tell you."

  "No.” My head swung negatively. “No promises."

  "Very well.” But he was unable to go on for a long time. The sun-shaped clock ticked loudly the precise passage of seconds, minutes, hours, a reminder that he was immortal. For him, time meant little.

  "Several centuries ago...."

  "How many?” I coldly interrupted him.

  "Over four centuries ago, on a trip through the Balkans, I learned of an old crone said to be cursed with foresight.” Constantine's head tilted, causing his icy blue eyes to flash with an odd brilliance. “I sough
t her out merely as entertainment. I paid her handsomely to tell me my future."

  "You didn't just use mind control? You know, force her.” I practically jeered at him.

  "She was too strong.” He grinned wolfishly back at me. “For once, I had to pay for a privilege."

  When I asked my next question, softly, hesitantly, his wolfish grin vanished. “What did she predict?"

  "That I was doomed to decades and decades of lonely existence.” Bitterness shrouded him. It was as if he sat in the present, looking back at himself, knowing that then, in the moment of the telling, he had laughed at her dire prophecy. Only, she had been right, and therefore she had had the last laugh on him. He remained frozen, gazing inward, needing to be roused from the past.

  "There had to be more to it than that."

  "Oh, there was.” He looked at me very sharply. Then, as he continued his revelation, an unpleasant smile tugged at his finely shaped lips. “Zemaralda Draconetti prophesized that should I survive all the trials of countless time then one day I should find a soul mate, a woman who could reshape my own perverse soul, someone for whom I would willingly make the ultimate sacrifice to protect."

  I snorted. “Sounds like a scam to me. Fortunetellers, the fake ones anyway, always predict a ‘someone’ in your future. You didn't believe her, did you?"

  "No. Not at first.” His expressive, sensual lips now curved into a sad smile. “Not until that same night when I happened upon a tasty monk, hastening towards a monastery. My spirits had been unaccountably high. I told him the words of the fortuneteller. Invited him to drink with me over my impending good fortune. And he, being French, offered up a toast, praying that, indeed, some soul mate, some soul smith could reforge my evil spirit. Just before I ... partook ... of him.” A quick flash of the tips of his fangs punctuated his black humor.

  "Soulsmith is just a family name. Like any other."

  "On the contrary, the Soulsmiths’ bear a powerful lineage. They are a force for good. The counterpart to evil. Protectors. Of mankind ... and, as such, imbued with uncanny abilities.” There was distaste in his voice. “Not exactly my ideal. But the notion was intriguing. A Soulsmith for a mate. That would make for a powerful combination, indeed. Yet, their kind, your kind,” his gaze flicked at me accusingly, “are not particularly compassionate to my kind. The Nocturnal Kindred never accosted any of the Soulsmith line. Over time, it became a taboo of sorts."

  He paused, still staring at me, a baleful glare that penetrated like an X-ray. I, yet pressed against the headboard of the gigantic bed, had to prompt him to continue, but it was also an attempt to redirect his disconcerting scrutiny. “So, what does any of that have to do with me? Other than coincidence.” But coincidence, my favorite motto went, was never coincidental. Not that I'd ever admit that out loud! “Exactly why did I get so lucky?"

  Constantine sighed in obvious disdain of our discussion. He gracefully resettled himself onto his side, reclining, keeping his distance, making himself comfortable. “I avoided your family line like the plague. After a time, their numbers dwindled. Goodness, it seems, does not thrive in this world. Out of curiosity, I began to send observers. Some of my clan followed the last branch of the Soulsmith family to America, around 1750. From Massachusetts, they immigrated onward to New York, and finally to West Virginia. And still their line, full of such beneficence and power, waned. Until, word was sent me nine years ago—at your grandmother's passing—that there was only a single directly descended Soulsmith left upon the face of this earth."

  I internally rejected the story he had spun, the inevitability of it. I would not believe it. I had to find ways to refute it. “But you only came here within the last four years? So you don't believe or you would have come much sooner.” I made one final waspish dig. “The lure of a Soulsmith, the last of the ancestral line, would have been too much to pass up, hum?"

  "Scoff if it eases you. But such denial doesn't change the truth.” He did not raise his voice, but it seemed as if he shouted. “You may have no conscious knowledge of your heritage, of your supernatural strengths, but they are there. And they, often, unconsciously manifest. As a Soulsmith, the LAST Soulsmith, bequeathed with all the previous generations abilities concentrated within you, or so I suspect, you are comparable to a capacitor for paranormal energy, accumulating, storing, directing, amplifying, sharing—indeed, creating it. And, to a greater or lesser degree, you can do the same for others. Consider if you should ever intentionally develop, then wield, your power. Consider your potential."

  My pain filled heart canted dangerously. How could I accept such a legacy, one that diminished my humanity? I couldn't believe him! I wouldn't! “If all that's true, then I can't believe that you didn't rush here years ago to claim...” I swallowed convulsively, “...me."

  "Admittedly, I resisted,” he drew out the pronunciation of that word as if now sorry that he had fought his destiny. He cast another sharp glance at me to judge my reaction. “But, eventually, the allure of the possibility was too strong. I wanted permanence, a home, some semblance of a family, and, perhaps, if Zemaralda Draconetti had been right, love of a sort, too."

  "Love.” I spat the sentiment back at him. “That's hysterical, just like the rest of your story.” But I was actually terrified that it was all true. “What you try to do to me isn't love. And, now, after hearing your crazy rantings, I'm not so sure that plain old sex is even what you want. You believe I'm some thing, a talisman, to possess.” I began to slide off the opposite side of the bed, as far from him as I could manage. The plum colored dress, with its shiny sequins, hiked up my thighs, drawing his hot gaze up the length of my legs. He rose up and edged closer, so I stopped.

  Constantine was not about to release me. “It might not sound romantic. But think about it ... I have waited over four hundred years to test a prophecy that I could not bring myself to hope for. Then, when there was only you, I had to come here.” He tensed, as if every fiber of his vampire body wanted to spring upon me, yet he kept the impulse in check. “We belong together. Whether or not the old woman was right, whether or not you believe, there is no denying the heat and fire that burns between us. I want you. I need you."

  "But I don't want you.” His head snapped backward like I had slapped him. “I don't need you. Granted, I am, as far as I know, the last of my family, the last Soulsmith, but there is no tradition of being sunshine-and-light, of being the purest of heart. We were just regular flesh-and-blood people.” But even while I spoke, I knew why there was no Soulsmith heritage. My mother had been killed in a traffic accident when I had barely turned fifteen. My grandmother, almost in her eighties at the time, had suffered strokes from that point on, finally passing away the year after I had left SCWV. There had been no one left to teach me, to instruct me, to guide or support me. No one to initiate me as a Soulsmith, a champion for good. Perhaps, even more likely, that knowledge had been long lost to my family by the ravages of time and tragedy. Death, violent and unexpected, had taken many of my people.

  "I can't handle any more of this. I am leaving the Constantinople. Now.” I spoke with exaggerated slowness, so that there was no room for misunderstanding. He had best stay out of my way. I carefully rolled off the mattress, close to the romantic dinner table, now all-for-naught.

  Constantine, however, stalked after me. His face was deceptively neutral, yet I read his seething emotions, a mixture of irritation, arrogance, and most of all fear. He couldn't risk letting me go. Not when I knew he could read my own equally strong emotions—mistrust and revulsion. I was supposed to fall at his feet because of some idiotic prophecy? He had better think again.

  I backed up another few steps and I bumped into the wine stand.

  Constantine was almost upon me. He halted within arms reach, finally asserting his real powers. He invaded my mind with frightening ease. He exuded longing, desire, a hunger for complete satiation of the body and the soul, to couple and join and bond and, yes, to fuck. All the blood rushed to my groin. I went weak kne
ed. I bit back a strangled sound, a moan of surrender.

  In one earth-shattering, mind-numbing instant, he possessed me. He bound me with his arms about my waist, his lips upon my mouth, his pelvis thrust hard against my own. His entire weight bent me backward, pinioned me to him. He arched me ever tighter against his erection, which he began to very suggestively rub against me. I throbbed for him. Frustrated whimpers escaped my throat.

  I tried to break free. Honest injun'! I pushed at the brick wall of his chest with less and less vigor. The sensual tide of his desire aroused me everywhere. My nipples jutted. My belly clenched. My breath stuttered. My pussy ached.

  Constantine's mouth roamed across my face, near my ear, into the hollow of my throat, sometimes kissing, sometimes licking, sometimes sucking. With the speed and dexterity of Houdini, one of Constantine's hands groped inside the low cut neck of my spangled dress. He briskly squeezed the tops of my breasts then dipped inside my bra for a few sizzling circular brushes against my nipple. His hips, insatiable and frantic, began to grind harder. But our clothing impeded his efforts to enter me. He dropped that talented hand which had been fondling my breast to paw at the hem of my short, shiny, sequined dress. Through my thin panties, he cupped my mound, wet and swollen. He ran his middle finger up and down my labia in simulation of the sex act he was about ready to perform. He tried to penetrate that thin layer of fabric and claim the center of my sex.

  Heat built up where his finger touched me, and not just from friction. It was his signet ring, throbbing and pulsing against me. It reminded me that this had become violation over seduction. I did want him, but only when it was MY conscious, willing choice. His needs, his arousal, dictated my responses. His wanting poured over me, soaked into me.