by Sotia Lazu
“Bad dream?” I asked.
He rolled to his side, and took me with him. “Yes. I’m sorry if I scared you. Wanted to feel you.” He caressed my stomach, and brought one of my legs over his hip.
“This doesn’t seem scared.” I pumped my hips against his erection once, and then tilted them so my lower body didn’t touch his.
“It was fucked up. I think everything we found out about Ádísa got to me. I dreamed she was trying to convince me you didn’t love me, and she was pretty damned persuasive. She tried to seduce me, and I was just sitting there, powerless. Even enjoying it. But it wasn’t me. I didn’t control it, Cherry. I’m sorry. You know you’re the only one I want.”
Relief washed over me that he didn’t lie. I held his chin and looked into his eyes. They were open and lucid. He knew it was me in bed with him. As things should be. I arched my neck, and rubbed my heel up the back of his thigh. Despite all my fears about what was happening, I needed to feel the closeness that bound us when we made love, and the man in front of me was the lover I trusted, not the madman trying to replace him. Ádísa’s memory might have turned him on, but I’d reap the benefits and enjoy the hell out of them.
And I would ignore how petty it was that part of me wanted to make love to Alex so I could one-up her.
“Love you,” he mumbled in my hair.
“I love you too.” Not like he could control his dreams, right?
I pulled him to me and lay back, so he was covering me once more. He propped himself up on one arm, and caressed my face with his free hand. “You’re so beautiful,” he said. “Perfect.”
His voice and gaze held such awe, I almost teared up. He was back. The man who’d made me overlook my decision to never fall from a human was in bed with me, planting butterfly kisses on my lips and eyes. He nuzzled my hair, and licked a trail down my neck. I’d gone to bed in a tank top and a pair of boy shorts, and it didn’t take long for Alex to find his way inside both. Before I knew it, my top was bunched around my waist, and my shorts were hanging from one ankle.
“Touch me.” Alex gently led my hand to his cock.
His long, hard shaft throbbed against my palm. I closed my fingers around it, unable to circle it all, and slid my palm up and down its length—squeezing on the upstroke, the way I knew he liked.
He groaned. Grinded against me. “Just like that.”
I kissed his jaw line, and pulled his earlobe between my teeth. Nibbled on it. “Tell me what you want,” I whispered.
“I want to taste you.”
I withdrew my hand and spread my legs wider.
“Not there,” he said. “I want your blood.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck and folded my legs over his hips, so the head of his cock nudged my entrance. “I thought you fed tonight.”
“Nothing tastes like you.” He pushed forward slowly, until only the tip was inside me. “Nothing measures up.”
His words meant more than I cared to admit. He didn’t prefer human blood to mine. He didn’t miss the warmth.
I hadn’t lost him.
I arched my body, trying to take in more of him.
“I need to taste you,” he said again.
I tossed my head back, clearing the hair from my neck, and bared my throat to him.
He needed no further invitation to sink inside me to the hilt, just as his fangs sliced into my neck. The euphoria of the double penetration was unsurpassable as always, and I gave into him, allowing him to mold my body to his, prolong my pleasure as he took his. I let him take me and take from me, while I fell off the edge again and again, until I could no longer control my limbs.
“Wow,” I murmured when he finally stopped moving inside me. I was so lightheaded, the words fell out in a jumble.
Lightheaded. From blood loss.
He was still pulling on my blood.
“Alex. Stop.” I couldn’t manage more than a whisper, but I knew he heard. He had to have heard.
Why wasn’t he stopping?
“Alex? Baby? You’re draining me.” This came out on a breath, and had no more impact than my previous words had.
I didn’t have the strength to even panic properly, let alone push him off me. How much had he drunk? I lay there, feeling my second life slip away just like my first had. Only this time, it was at the hands of someone who loved me.
I felt sorrow for Alex. By the time he realized he’d taken far too much, I’d be nothing but ash. That was what happened when we no longer had blood in our veins. The end result was the same as if we’d been staked or decapitated.
He’d be so shocked…
No!
Screw Alex’s shock. I loved him, but I wasn’t going to spend my last moments of existence lamenting his hurt at causing my ultimate demise. I tried to raise a hand and slap some sense into him, since he wasn’t listening, but my fingers barely rose from the sheets, before my arm flopped down numbly.
Fuck.
This was it. This was really it.
Alex’s weight lifted off me all at once, as though he flew upward. Which, I realized, he did. He flew in a short arc, before landing across the room with a hollow thud.
“Are you all right?” Constantine’s face took up my visual field. He looked worried. Why was he worried?
Right. I was half dead.
And completely naked.
Eh, I couldn’t let that bother me.
Constantine was more chivalrous than I gave him credit for. He pulled the covers on top of me even before popping open a vein in his wrist. “Here,” he said. “Drink.”
The classic cologne he preferred caressed my senses. Tobacco, wood, and leather, with dark, spicy undertones that kick-started my sensory memory. I scrunched my nose. “No. Can’t.” Drinking from another vampire was too intimate, and he and I weren’t at that place anymore, however familiar his scent. Hadn’t been in a long while. “We broke up.” My voice was no louder than before, but he apparently had no issues making out my words clearly.
And why was my brain glitching? Who cared if we weren’t together? The man was trying to save my life. “Never mind,” I more mouthed than said, before opening up for what he offered.
God, I’d forgotten how good his blood tasted. I don’t know if blood ages like wine, but his was richer, thicker, and more fragrant than Alex’s. Not that I spent much time thinking about it after the first few drops touched my tongue. I latched on to his self-inflicted bite, and sucked greedily. My eyes slid shut, as I felt strength return to my body with every gulp.
“Of course it’s Constantine. It’s always Constantine,” I heard Alex say. A growl vibrated in his chest.
I wanted to tell him he should be thanking my ex instead of being all grumpy about his intervention.
No, I wanted to kick his ass for making that intervention necessary. I was done feeling sorry for Alex and worrying he wasn’t all right. Done tiptoeing around his feelings. Whatever was happening to him, he had to be a man about it and come clean, not risk my damned life because he felt too embarrassed to own up to it.
I was, of course, too busy feeding to answer him as he deserved, so I kept scolding him in my head while I focused on the task at hand.
A door slammed shut, and I assumed Alex was having a hissy fit. Whatever. Once I was done here, I was totally giving him a piece of my mind. The guilt trip I’d been on since assisting his turning was now over, thank you very much, and our last stop was Reality Check.
The mattress dipped by my side, and I opened my eyes to Constantine half-lying next to me, propped up on the arm not acting as my feeding tube. He looked even paler than usual.
Shit. Now I was overindulging myself. I took one last, ladylike sip, and licked the wound closed. “Thank you.”
“Anytime.” Constantine smiled wanly. I could see this had gotten a lot out of him.
“I took too much, didn’t I?” I tested my limbs. They all seemed to be in working order again. At least I could bring up my knees and turn to my side, to better lo
ok at him.
“That’s not it.” He used one finger to tuck my hair behind my ear. My bangs fell back in place, as always. What had I been thinking, cutting bangs to shoot a porn flick—sorry, adult movie? At least by dying the day after my visit to the salon, I’ll have mostly well-styled hair for as long as I roam this earth.
And I was digressing again. Constantine narrowed his eyes at me. “You’re having an internal monologue, aren’t you? One of those weird ones.”
I shook my head. “I haven’t done that in years!”
Liar.
Shut up!
“Are you okay to get up?” I asked him, to get out of my own head. I didn’t want to kick him out. I just wanted to get to Alex, before he continued on his idiotic path of secretive self destruction.
“Right as rain.” Constantine started to get up, but I reached for his hand.
“If it’s not that I took too much, then what?”
“Nothing. It has been a while.”
I wanted to ask if he meant since he’d fed me or since we’d been in bed together. I kept my mouth shut.
He nodded curtly, as if agreeing with something only he’d heard. “I will be right outside. You get dressed, and we shall speak to Alex together.”
If ‘shall’ came to play, things were dire indeed. “I’ll be right out. And hey, now I can enter your dreams—or I guess I already could, since I had your blood before.” I don’t know what possessed me to say that. Did I want to let him know I knew? Was it just a half-assed attempt to alleviate some tension?
Whatever it was, it worked to reinstate Constantine’s usual posture. He rolled his shoulders, and stood in one slow, liquid motion. Watching me, he licked his lips and rolled down the sleeve he’d lifted for my sake. “Who says you ever left them?” he asked in the deep baritone he’d once used to whisper in my ear what he was about to do to me.
I still felt Alex inside me, but my whole body gravitated toward Constantine. It was the result of drinking his blood. No other explanation.
“On second thought”—he cleared his throat—“I will go find Alex, and wait for you upstairs. Don’t take forever.”
I barely had time to say okay, before he was out the door. I was still half naked, when he opened it again.
I had my back to it and was pulling up my jeans. “What did you forget?” I asked, turning around just in time to see him dump Alex’s prone form on the bed. “Oh, Constantine, what did you do?” Not that I could blame him for punching Alex’s lights out.
“Nothing!” He sounded incredulous. “This is how I found him, on the pullout. If I wanted to finish him off, I wouldn’t have brought him to you afterward. What am I? A bloody cat?” Constantine rarely lost his cool enough to curse, and his use of the British curse word would have cracked me up, if it weren’t for Alex. Lying on the bed. Apparently unconscious.
I could see nothing wrong with him. No wound. No blood, other than the smear of mine around his lips. “Did you try to wake him?”
“No, my first instinct was to shoulder his weight, and parade him around the house.”
His sarcasm felt familiar, safe, and allowed me to think of other, more important things. “Will he be all right?”
“You know how it is with us. If we’re not dust, it’s fixable.”
I nodded. “I have to go back in,” I said.
“Excuse me?”
“His dream. Before he…”
“Yes?” The single word brimmed with impatience.
“Before you stopped Alex, I followed him into his dream. Ádísa was there, and”—I huffed—“I think she was about to blow him.”
One corner of Constantine’s mouth tagged upward, and I actually saw his effort to rein in the smile threatening to blossom on his lips. “Not to speak ill of the dead, but she tended to do that to people a lot,” he finally said.
Yeah, it was so nice having his usual, cocky self around, instead of the kind, understanding one. Only not. “She was trying to get him to say he’d leave me for her. I think that’s what she wanted. There was something he had to do, and then he’d have it all, as she put it.”
Constantine’s eyes lost their playfulness, and his mouth hardened. “What did he say?”
“He kept repeating that I love him, but she was feeding into his jealousy of you.” I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, okay, it’s no secret he’s jealous of you. With no reason whatsoever, I might add.”
His smile was no longer suppressed. “Of course. Please, do go on.”
“Not much to say. I woke him up before things escalated between them, and he said he must’ve been affected by all the talking about Ádísa.”
“It is a possibility.”
Memories of the dream kept coming back to me. “But it was somehow more than that. It seemed like she could see me, when he couldn’t. I need to go back in, see if I can talk some sense to him there.”
“You just said he couldn’t see you.”
“Yes, but this time you’ll tell me how it’s done. The right way.”
Chapter Nineteen
Constantine paced the length of the room. Repeatedly. It was becoming annoying, and didn’t let me relax enough to sleep. Let alone how disconcerting it was seeing him stressed. The man was usually cool as a cucumber, both figuratively and literally.
“Remember to stay focused on Alex,” he said, coming to a stop at the foot of the bed.
I looked to where my fingers were interlaced with Alex’s, and then closed my eyes again. For all Alex and I had been through together, the touch felt unnatural. “I don’t get why this is necessary. You were miles away when you dream-bombed Ruby.”
“I was already ancient by then. I knew stuff.”
“Stuff. Eloquent. I see the company you’ve been keeping lately has rubbed off on you.” And possibly all over him.
“Will you focus? Remember—only you can control yourself. It may be his dream, but you can be active in it. It’s a matter of will.”
I closed my eyes. “You told me.” As I’d suspected, I was supposed to use the same trick I did for flying. Visualize what I wanted to achieve, and believe it was possible. The reason most vampires can’t fly is because they can’t believe they’re able to defy gravity by sheer force of will. I’m generally very selective with what I consider impossible. A certain threesome, for example.
“Cherry? Are you okay?”
“No, I’m not. I’m trying to sleep, and you won’t shut up.”
He grunted, and I briefly cracked open an eyelid to see him glaring down at me.
“Maybe you shouldn’t be here?” I said.
“Not an option. He might attack you again.”
“Yeah, ’cause he looks so scary, all unconscious like this.”
Constantine frowned. “Perhaps I should try to put you under.”
I almost sat up at that. “Like, with vampire mojo? You can actually mind-control vampires? Why didn’t you tell me? It would fall into the things-that-concern me category.”
“Hush. It has nothing to do with vampirism. I worked with a travelling magician once. He taught me the ways he used to reduce tension and hypnotize select members of his audience.”
Pop went my eyelids again. I had to see if he said all that with a straight face.
“Oh, will you sleep, already?” he asked.
“Show me.”
“I’d rather drain you again.” He ran his tongue over the tip of his elongated fang.
“Whatever.”
Neither or us talked after that. I tried hard to focus on Alex, but remembering all the good stuff wasn’t so easy this time. The badness was too pronounced and too recent for me to push aside.
I’m ashamed to admit it took a while before it dawned on me that the center of my focus didn’t necessarily have to be something positive. I had to zone in on Alex. The specific aspect of him that drew my thoughts was immaterial.
I remembered the way he crowded Constantine in the kitchen. The way he’d grabbed me earlier. How he didn’t see
m willing to pay heed to my objections, but kept pushing. Touching me.
How he’d been drinking from humans who looked like me.
How he’d almost drained me, after doing nothing to stop Ádísa from blowing him in his dream.
I felt my feet slide. Dead leaves beneath my bare soles.
The smell of rain—
I’m in again.
I’m not standing; I lie sprawled on a heap of leaves. They’re slimy with dew, but I can’t spare the time to be disgusted.
Two feet away stands Willoughby, arms crossed over his chest, his impeccably white shirt glinting in the moonlight.
“Finally,” he says. “I was almost certain you’d manage to fuck this up too.” His words are loud as a gunshot in the absolute quiet surrounding me.
I can move. This time I can move. I need to remind myself, before I manage to scramble backward. I look around. It’s the same clearing, but in the night it seems dreary. Even malicious. There’s still no sound reaching my ears. Not even the squelching of the leaves and dirt under my toes, as I propel my body farther from my maker.
My head hits something hard. A tree. I blink, and Willoughby is closer. Close enough for me to—
I kick out my right leg with all my force.
It doesn’t move.
I call on every dredge of inner strength I have. I know this is possible. I did it mere seconds ago. I can move. I can control my actions. I can kick Willoughby on the shin.
No, I can’t.
“What did you do?” I try to ask, but the words remain trapped inside me.
Relax. I need to relax. This is just a dream. If I can’t control it, I’ll wake up.
Willoughby throws back his head, and releases an uproarious laugh. “She actually thinks she will somehow survive this.”
I don’t know who he’s talking to.
Wait. I know who he’s talking to.
The queen bitch floats toward us, her stride more elegant than her muscled legs ever managed in life or unlife. “Let her hope. It will make her defeat all the more delicious.”
Alex materializes next to her, as though out of thin air. His body is first just a shimmer. A splotch of light in the dark. The splotch grows and solidifies. She’s holding his hand.
