by Heather Linn
He was perfect. He didn’t look any older than I was and power was rippling off his flawless face. It never ceases to amaze me how quickly my body associates fear and sex. Every plan I had to be my normal fun loving insulting self went out the window when I looked at his eyes. They looked just like Akia’s, but there was nothing human in them, there was nothing but animal lust and I knew right then and there, if he was real he would devour me.
“There is something about you and I don’t know what it is yet. Something that if left unchecked, might be the thing that destroys everything I’ve worked so hard to build here on this miserable planet. I will kill you before I let that happen.” I wanted to look away. I wanted to say something back but I was at a loss.
“What is the matter pretty girl, cat got your tongue?” With that he chuckled and his lusty laugh caused my skin to throb with the promise of sex so near.
I tried to ignore the way my body craved his touch. I had to ignore my wants or I would give myself to darkness completely and all it might hold.
“But you can’t kill me can you?” That made him stop laughing and I knew that I had hit the nail on the head. “This is just a dream and you can’t kill me. That is why I am still standing.” He didn’t like me seeing the light at all. I had thrown him off guard, so good for me. “You must be so ashamed of your son, to know that he has feelings for a pretty little rodent.” His perfect face contorted in anger and I knew I had struck pay dirt. “You are ashamed aren’t you? Think about how bad it is going to make you look if it ever comes out.” I liked me best when I was a smart ass.
“You have no idea what you are, do you? None whatsoever.” There was a pause between us. I guess he thought I was going to tell him he was right, but there was no way in the universe I was going to acknowledge if he was or wasn’t. A few more seconds passed and then he said, “No Catalina, I can’t kill you, not now, not until I’ve had the time to figure out what this pull is that you have over my son and me.” Please tell me he hadn’t included himself!
Dreams could be so stupid sometimes. Yeah that was it. I was just having a dream. Akia’s father wouldn’t know I existed.
“See? There you go again, nothing to say. That’s good. I have never wanted women to talk much at all anyway. Lucky for my son, I fully intend to save him from you. I am going to mark you. And you are going to accept my mark. Do you understand me?” Was this guy serious? I was not attached to him or him to me and there was no way he was marking anything.
“I am not going to take anything from you, especially not your mark, so take your scare tactics and go dream somewhere else. You already made the mistake of telling me that you can’t harm me.” There, brave was good. I liked brave.
“I hate to admit it, but you are right. I know you though. I have dreamt about you. I hear your voice in my sleep. You call to me and I don’t know why. The one thing that I do know is that your death will be by my hands. For that reason I have to get you as far away from my son as I can.”
He sounded like he was making a promise. He wasn’t threatening me, he was simply letting me know that I was his prize to claim and he was going to collect one day soon. I was hoping that I wasn’t fated to become a trophy hanging on his wall. This was surely the strangest dream I’d ever had.
“And just what exactly are you going to do with me when you get your hands on me? Because I am pretty sure you would have problems keeping up with me.” I didn’t know why but I was flirting with him. There really must be something severely unhinged in my brain that makes me come on to dangerous men.
“I don’t think you should flirt and taunt someone that can snap you like a twig, little girl.” I was pissing him off good. If I’d been awake, I would have been more worried about why this monster didn’t do just that. I would have been even more concerned with the fact that he had admitted that he couldn’t kill me. What was behind that?
“You know princess, the things that I want do to you right now are making my head spin. The things that I want to do to you I promise you, if I did even the least perverse of them to you, you would never be right in the head again.” His voice was soaking with lust and power.
“Promises, promises big boy. What is it with the men in your bloodline? All such big talkers.” That voice hadn’t sounded at all like me. The second those words slipped from my lips, Trāves, Akia’s Father, looked at me with what I could only describe as pain in his dark hollow eyes.
“What did you just say to me?” I didn’t know him well enough to tell if his voice matched his eyes and I really truly hoped that I would never know him well enough to be sure.
“I didn’t say anything,” I lied. I knew I had, at least I thought I had, maybe it was a phrase that I had never uttered before, but I felt it slip through my lips.
I needed to wake up. I’d had just about enough of this dream. There was a trick that Doctor Walker had taught me way back when, when I was little and had a bad dream. He told me that if you said “one, two, three, wake up” out loud in any dream, you would wake up, and it never failed. I looked at Trāves, who was standing there studying me puzzled. When finally my eyes met his, he spoke again.
“That is what she always said to me. You even sounded like her. How is that even possible? She was dead before you were born.” Something clicked in his eyes and I didn’t want to know what that something was.
His look went from puzzled to fierce as I stood there watching waves of emotion course through him. Well now I knew how Akia could change moods at the drop of a hat; it was a family trait. Trāves walked toward me slowly, approaching me tentatively, almost as if he was afraid if he moved too fast, I would disappear, which was exactly what I wanted to do.
“One, two, three, wake up!” I shouted as loud as I could then I closed my eyes and waited.
When I was little, I always closed my eyes in the bad dreams and then, when I opened them I was safe in my bed. I counted to five with my eyes closed and then I gave a little sigh because I knew that I would be OK soon. Slowly I opened my eyes and took a peek.
“Shit” was all I could say before he started talking again.
“You even smell like her. Why do you smell like her?” I tried to back away. Trāves was standing so close to me that his breath was hot on my cheek.
Before I could step back he grabbed my wrist, pulling me against his rock hard body. I wasn’t sure who he thought I smelled like but his body had definitely reacted to it.
“Turn around now,” he ordered, almost crushing my wrist.
“I don’t think so. I wasn’t raised a fool. I am not going to turn my back to you.” I knew I had no choice but I wasn’t going to let him boss me easily. With a growl that I thought only an animal could make he picked me up, holding me against him so tightly that his erection was bruising my hip.
“Let me go now!” I screamed struggling to get free, even though I knew it was no use.
“Stop moving and this won’t hurt. Keep moving and I will snap your spine and you will be paralyzed for the rest of your life.”
I listened. He couldn’t kill me and I had to know who this she was that he was talking about. “Where the hell is it?” His fingers were tracing over my shoulder, feeling for something that his eyes couldn’t see. The tender, yet demanding caress of his fingertips on my shoulders was arousing me.
“For the last time,” I said, “I don’t know what in the hell you are talking about. Now put me down!” If the tone in someone’s voice had the power to kill I would have had to explain to Akia that his father had recently departed.
“You know, I don’t care how alluring a rodent you are, you are still a rodent and you will stop talking to me in that tone. I am the ruler of this world and others, and it is best that you remember that pretty girl.” I was really getting really tired of that phrase.
“Look, I am ready to wake up and I am going to leave now. One, two, three, wake up.” I knew I sounded crazy but I didn’t care. My childhood chant was no crazier than this nightmare.
“I don’t know why you keep counting, but you are trying my patience. Now where is the rose?” His tone was simultaneously cold and searching. His tone made me want to tell him everything he wanted to know, even though I had no idea what he was after. “You smell like Royalty,” he whispered. “If that’s true, you’ll have the mark of the black rose.”
“Mark of the what?” my voice sounded weak, as if coming from afar.
“I don’t have time for this Catalina. You are going to wake up soon and I have to know.” Wait, wake up soon? I really had been dreaming and he knew it the whole time?
Akia had come to me in a dream too. This had to be some sort of Vampire blood trick. If I got out of here alive I was going to have to ask Walker about it. I was so distracted by these thoughts that I didn’t see Trāves move until it was too late. In one fluid motion he had my wrist in his hand again. This time he twisted me around so that I was face to face with him. Before I knew what he was doing his own wrist went to his lips and he tore his flesh away, causing blood to flow freely on the floor. I was still trying to figure out his motive, why he did what he had done, when my wrist was forced to his lips; the pain was unbelievable when his fangs sunk in.
“No!" I screamed, but it did no good. He was drinking from me, pulling my life force right out through two perfect little punctures and there was nothing I could do to stop him. I was losing way too much blood way too fast and I was feeling weak in the knees. I didn’t even feel him take me to the ground. I didn’t realize he was cradling me in his arms like a lost child as he emptied me. I was floating off somewhere in the distance, somewhere in the warmth that only true Vampire saliva gives you and I didn’t even notice when he pulled his fangs out of me. I thought I was seeing things due to my pheromone induced stupor, but soon realized it was real enough when he put his wrist to his mouth and started drinking his own blood.
I didn’t snap back to reality until his mouth covered mine. His tongue forced my mouth open and he poured his blood in. His tongue rubbed against mine and the taste of blood flowing from his mouth to mine was intoxicating. I should have stopped him but the sexiness of his blood coursing into me made me crave him. I’d never tasted pure Vampire blood ever and it was like nothing I could explain. I felt so alive, more alive than I had ever felt even though I was just laying there helpless in his arms. It didn’t matter that he had drained me. It didn’t matter that I was still asleep and this was Akia’s father, all that mattered was the feel of his tongue against mine.
I was kissing him back, trying to lick every last drop of the magic mixture that spilled from his mouth to mine. When he pulled away I felt my want increase and I tried to bite his lower lip to keep him kissing me. The feeling of my teeth sinking into his lower lip was enough to make him moan. His moan sent shivers up and down my spine. I was truly vibrating with power.
“Mmm, slow down my beautiful NXY, you are not ready yet.” Wait. What did he just call me? That name was written on the inside of my ring, the ring Walker had given me.
“What did you call me?” I said. The growing strength in my voice sounded like music to my ears. I had never heard my voice sound so confident. When I looked at him my surprise was reflected back at me.
“You smell so much like her that I got confused.” I really needed to know who this she was, I wanted to ask him but before I could, he placed a powerful grip on my upper arm and yanked me to my feet. My thoughts scattered and I felt a searing pain that ran down my arm and made me forget all but what he was saying. “I just gave you the kiss of Royalty. If you are what I think you are, then the Rose will appear on your shoulder. Now turn around and let me see. Turn around now!” he ordered. But his words suddenly trailed away, fading so far into the background that I could barely make them out. He shouted out that he had to see quickly before I woke up. He called to me to come back; crying out hollowly that he needed to see the rose for himself in a voice that stung and echoed all around me.
Chapter Thirty-Five
When my eyes twitched open again my body hurt. At first I wasn’t sure if I was awake or if I was still trapped in that weird dream being terrorized by a man that I had never met, yet a man that I felt so intimately drawn to. I couldn’t move anything but my head and when I did I was rewarded with the sick feeling that only a concussion can bring. I tried to move my arms and legs and made no progress at all. I was petrified by the thought that I was paralyzed and then I felt the material binding my wrists. Confusion set in instantly. Was it possible that I had dreamt the entire thing? Had we even been to the Hunt yet? Everything I’d experienced or dreamt had seemed so real, there was no way that I could do it all over again if all had been a dream. I turned my head, and found out my neck was stiff and sore, and that told me something was really wrong. Even with my eyes closed I knew something was wrong. This place didn’t smell like a cave. A cave smells damp and musky but this place smelled warm and inviting and oh so familiar. It smelled like home and as soon as the thought of home filled my head, my eyes flew wide open and stayed open because I knew I was in trouble.
I knew this place better than I wanted to. I was in Akia’s bedroom. I hadn’t been dreaming. I really was at the Hunt. But if the last thing I remembered was being at the Hunt, then how did I get here? Panic was setting in. Had I lived? But that would be impossible. No one can live through a Hunt! And where was Jace? My panic increased before I could slow myself down. I used every bit of strength I had to pull against my bonds. I had to get free and find Jace. Hell I had to get free and find Darien too. They were both probably going crazy.
“Pull on them all you want Catalina. You aren’t going to get lose unless I say so, and I will be honest, I am having a really hard time deciding if that is what I am going to let happen or not.” His voice caused chills to spread through my body. The feeling was hypnotic. I turned my head to the other side of the room, in the direction his voice was coming from.
Akia was more beautiful and breathtaking than I remembered. His hair was a mass of golden waves that would make any female jealous. His eyes were glaring at me and his lips formed a fine line of anger. Still, despite how angry and deadly he looked, there was something about him that called to me. My lips caught fire and I couldn’t pull my eyes from his mouth. I remembered what it felt like to have his mouth pressed against mine and suddenly, that was all I could think about. Arrghh! I ordered myself to pull it together. He could very well decide to kill me and I had to stay sharp.
“I thought you were dead. I thought I would never see you again, and then you were there. Do you have any idea how horrible it was when I thought I lost you?” He was angry, really angry. Part of me was glad. I could deal with him hating me. However, I didn’t know what I would do if he started being kind. “How is it that I wasn’t important enough for you to tell me you were OK?” Now I heard hurt seeping into his voice, I couldn’t deal with more hurt feelings.
Wait! Was it possible that he still didn’t know I was human? He had to know I had been at the Hunt. How was it that he wasn’t disgusted and pissed about my being there and yet pissed about the fact that I had returned from the dead?
“Damn it Cat, say something! Do you know how many hours I’ve spent just trying to remember the sound of your voice? I would have given up everything just to hear you say my name one more time,” he said softly. “Please say my name Cat, let me hear my name come from your lips because that’s the only time my spoken name has ever held meaning.” He was begging me to acknowledge that he was still a part of my life. I was screwed.
“Akia.” His eyes closed in ecstasy as soon as his name flew from my lips.
They stayed closed for the longest time, like he was trying to memorize every fluctuation of sound, every wave and nuance, like maybe he thought if he opened his eyes I would dissolve and be gone. What had I done to him? I could hear my inner voice starting. I could hear that annoying little whisper that comes from inside. My inner voice, some call it instinct, was coming alive, growing and thriving, an
d reminding me that this monster once tried to rip out my throat, and my inner voice was right.
“You have to let me out of here Akia,” there, that was less shaky. Maybe, just maybe, he didn’t have the whole story. Maybe, not all of his dots were connected.
Maybe he thought I had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and hadn’t figured out yet that I was human. If I could just get him to let me go, I could go back into hiding and he would eventually forgot about me. I looked up at him and the second I did I knew that I could never put him through that kind of pain again. If I couldn’t let him think that I was dead, then where did that leave me? There was little I could do, I was screwed. I couldn’t see a way out.
“Always so quick to leave me kitten. Am I really that horrible?” I needed to be mean to him right now. I needed to piss him off so much that he would get sick of me and send me away. Yes, that might work. If he hated me he wouldn’t have to mourn me. If he hated me, he wouldn’t put the time into figuring out why I was at the Hunt to begin with.
“Why in the hell would I want to be here anyway? First of all, you about ripped my throat out, second, you have me tied to your bed like some prisoner.” There, that sounded justifiably horrible, right?
“You are tied to the bed because I wasn’t sure what was going to happen if you woke up and no one was here with you. I didn’t want you to wake up hungry and kill that pathetic excuse for a companion that you are traveling with these days. I think I liked the other moron better, and believe me Cat, that isn’t saying much.”
Jace! He must have been referring to Jace when said he was afraid I would kill my companion, so that must mean Jace was alive and somewhere close. OK, so far, so good.
“Secondly I was afraid if you woke up and I wasn’t here you would leave and I would never hear your voice again.” His voice went from jealous to fearful in two seconds flat.
