Dark Redemption

by Aja James

  “I can’t see him well enough,” Chelsey answered.

  “That’s because you fogged up your glasses with lust, girlfriend,” another woman said. “Wipe the lenses and you’ll be fine.”

  Chelsey did as instructed and blinked through clear, thick lenses at Eli’s alabaster, naked chest.

  She whistled low and long.

  “Thank you, God, for putting this fine young thing on this earth.”

  Clara knew they were just teasing, the elderly ladies, perfectly harmless teasing, but she still felt strangely protective and possessive of Eli.

  Enough to say, “All right, girls, let’s focus on the task at hand, please. And let’s be respectful of our model by not objectifying him, okay? He’s…”

  Her eyes flicked briefly to Eli’s. He gazed back at her unblinkingly, emotionlessly.

  “He’s my friend.”

  Eli’s eyelashes quivered and swooped down to cast the green orbs in the shade, as if hiding the vulnerability within his cold, hard exterior.

  For the next hour, Clara sketched alongside her students. Once in a while, she left her easel to walk around the classroom, providing tips and comments on technique, words of encouragement and praise.

  But she spent more time at her own sketch than usual. She couldn’t help it. She wanted to capture Eli’s likeness on paper. It was almost a physical imperative.

  And as her hand moved over the paper, drawing out the details that would weave together to form his image, she felt as if she were actually touching his skin, his hair, his lips, his eyes.

  His heart. His soul.

  Everyone gathered around her sketch when the class was over, and she didn’t even notice. She kept drawing Eli as fast as she could. She left his eyes for last.

  As if he knew she wanted to look into his eyes, he raised his gaze to hers.

  For one, infinitesimally brief moment, he let her see his unguarded self, stripped of any mask or shutter.

  Clara gasped, the charcoal stick falling from her hand and onto the paper, leaving a small smear on the drawing.

  “That’s so beautiful,” one of the students whispered in awe.

  “Even more beautiful than the model himself,” another said.

  “But why did you make him so sad?”

  “Just looking at this drawing makes my heart hurt,” Ethel sniffled.

  And Clara’s trance was broken.

  She took a deep breath and faced her class.

  “Thank you for coming tonight, all. You did great. You’ve made a lot of progress. Next time, we’ll attempt a different form—”

  “Does he have a sister?” Gonzalo asked wistfully.

  Clara smiled. “I don’t think so, but I might be able to dig up an uncle or a great aunt.”

  A collective groan swept the group.

  “All right, my pupils,” Clara clapped her hands together. “Until next time. Practice your portrait sketches at home if you have the time. Remember to use the techniques we’ve been practicing.”

  She said goodbye to each and every student and finally locked up the studio.

  When she turned back around to put away the art supplies, Eli, fully dressed again, was standing before her sketch of him.

  “What do you think?” she asked shyly.

  She knew that she was a talented artist, but Eli’s opinion mattered so much to her that her usual self-confidence fluttered with uncertainty.

  “I don’t look like that,” he stated in a low voice.

  Clara frowned a little and looked closely at her sketch.

  “Like what?”

  The drawing was vividly real, a black and white life-sized portrait of Eli’s face. Bold, slashing black brows over deep-set, double-lidded, wolf-like, light-colored eyes. A blade of a nose that led down to a full, sensuous mouth. Sharp angles in his cheekbones, jawline and chin. A slight widow’s peak at his hairline with tiny, warrior-prince braids that fanned out from his temples.

  Clara was pleased that she’d captured the essence of him. She’d been fully inspired as she sketched.

  “I don’t cry.”

  “Cry?”

  And then Clara saw it.

  She didn’t get to finish filling in Eli’s eyes, but she’d captured the emotions he projected anyway through the shapes and shadows, the sweep of his lashes, the expression in the lines of his face. And when she’d dropped the charcoal, it had smeared a small mark directly onto the cheek of the Eli in her sketch, making it look like a tear, while the unfilled eyes looked like they were actually filled with water.

  With tears.

  Without warning, Eli swiped a hand across the sketch, ripping it from her pad.

  “No!”

  But Clara was too late. He’d torn the sketch in half down the middle, and then again.

  “Why?!” She cried, crouching down to the floor to gather the tattered pieces of her drawing.

  She raised hurt, bewildered eyes up at him.

  “I don’t cry,” he repeated emotionlessly.

  Without a backward glance, he strode away from her, passing like air through the locked doors of her studio and into the night.

  *** *** *** ***

  “You are so good with Kane,” Ava whispered, watching her vampire husband rock their ten-months-old to sleep.

  It was their ritual—she breastfed Kane before his bedtime at night, and Ryu took care of the sleep-inducing rocking, holding Kane bundled in fluffy blankets, cradled in his arms, while he paced around their spacious loft. It worked well because A, Kane wouldn’t get too attached to mommy’s breast, and B, daddy got his own special time to bond with his son.

  Ava couldn’t have imagined in her wildest dreams that she’d be such a natural mother and that Ryu would be such a doting father. She’d never thought about children before, though she’d always assumed that she’d have more than one if she were lucky.

  It depended on meeting the love of her life, however, and until she met Ryu, there hadn’t been any remotely likely candidates to fill that role.

  Ryu, despite his cool exterior, was a male who felt deeply and loved passionately. But given his history, he himself doubted whether he could handle fatherhood. Ava had faith that he’d be a wonderful father, but thought that he might take some time to get comfortable with the role. Instead, Ryu had taken to fatherhood like duck to water.

  He visibly melted every time he looked upon their son, which made Ava get all squishy with the feelies herself every time she saw the two loves of her life together.

  “He’s an easy baby,” Ryu whispered back, down-playing his own abilities, which was typical of him.

  Ava loved her son dearly, but she’d never call him easy.

  With her, he was a little emperor, loud and stubborn with his demands. He was an expert manipulator and could turn on the water works at the slightest provocation. She tried to be firm with him and not let him run amuck, but she never had the heart to put her foot down. Those big brown shimmering eyes and quivering chin always got her good.

  Only Ryu could calm his son with a soft word here, a stern look there. Kane was always a perfect angel with his father, which made Ava pea green with envy sometimes. Kane absolutely worshipped his papa, and the profound love, the depth of devotion, was exceedingly mutual.

  “It’s easy to be easy when he’s got the world’s best papa,” she said with a smile, coming over to stand by Kane’s crib as Ryu settled their son into his soft little nest, cocooned by his favorite blankets and surrounded by his lovies.

  “I do give him credit for sleeping well by himself,” Ava murmured, and wrapped her arm around her husband’s waist, “so that I can have you all to myself.”

  Ryu looked into her eyes and smiled his rare, shy smile, as if he still couldn’t believe his enormously good fortune to have so much love and happiness in his life.

  “What would you like to do with me, now that you have me all to yourself?” he teased in his deep, resonant baritone, which Ava imagined was what the ocean would sound
like if the ocean had a voice, when she’d first met him.

  “Oh, you know, the usual,” she replied casually, her hand wandering from his hip to squeeze his muscled ass.

  “A few dozen orgasms over the next hour or two while you drink your fill of my blood would be a good place to start.”

  “Hmm,” he hummed noncommittally as her other hand cupped his erection through his trousers and kneaded like a cat with her favorite toy.

  Whatever Ava wanted from him, Ava always got. So he spent the next couple of hours pleasuring his luscious human wife, taking endless pleasure in return.

  They always started the night this way after putting Kane to bed. Ava always fell asleep sated and blissed out in her husband’s arms.

  Ryu would wait for his wife to be deep in slumber before leaving to hunt for the night as the New England Dark Queen’s Assassin. His missions were more about gathering intel now, less about pursuing and eliminating deadly targets, for which he was grateful.

  One day, when Kane was old enough to ask what his father did for a living, he’d like to hold his head high while he answered.

  Sometimes, he’d stay with her through the night when there were no pressing assignments. They’d talk and cuddle and share the activities of their day and thoughts and plans for their future.

  Tonight was one of those nights.

  “Ma asked me before dinner the other night while you were at the Cove whether and when they could meet your folks,” Ava said, snuggled into the protective warmth of his body on her side.

  Involuntarily, Ryu tensed.

  Whenever they broached the subject of his past, his relations, he became an impenetrable fortress. Even though he’d already told Ava the general outline of his history, he left out many gruesome details. There was no need to ever share that ugliness with her.

  But he couldn’t avoid one fact she’d figured out herself, a fact he hadn’t been able to fully face or accept a year and a half after she’d shared it with him.

  He didn’t have any “folks”—except the male who’d sired him.

  Who’d almost killed him.

  Twice.

  Who’d killed his mother.

  Who was the right-hand of their nemesis, Anu Medusa.

  She held him closer and took him deeper inside of her, hooking a leg over his hip, as if she knew he’d try to pull away if he could.

  “I told my parents that I’d ask you about it. I said that you didn’t have many relatives, and that any you had would likely be in Japan.”

  He remained silent, but he did not try to pull away. She would only come after him if he did.

  “I know you don’t want to talk about it,” she went on quietly, “but I think we should. He’s your father, Ryu. He’s waited hundreds of years to see you again. I think…I think he actually helped me become what I am, so that I can be with you forever, so that I’m strong enough to be your Mate and provide the Nourishment you need.”

  “That serum could have killed you,” Ryu growled in retort. “He forced you to take it by punching a hole through my side and putting me at death’s door.”

  “He didn’t force me to do anything,” she said firmly. “I took the serum because I wanted to save you, and who knows, maybe if I didn’t take it, and you weren’t at death’s door, we would have been killed anyway. Maybe those were his orders. Maybe that was the only way.”

  “Orders from Medusa. He’s allied with the she-devil.”

  “But he didn’t kill us,” Ava insisted. “Whatever his alliances, he let us take Medusa’s precious research, let us liberate Inanna’s papa, and let us all go free.”

  “He couldn’t have stopped us.”

  “He could have,” Ava maintained. “I’ve thought about this long and hard. You were already incapacitated. Only Sosuke and I remained. And he was on their side.”

  “After I’d succeeded in absorbing the serum, he could have taken me away or locked me somewhere in one of Medusa’s facilities so they could analyze my DNA at length. He could have taken the General too. Neither of us could have fought him. He’d had plenty of time before Inanna and Gabriel arrived.”

  Ava took hold of Ryu’s face, forcing him to look into her eyes though he tried to avoid her.

  “I saw a great deal of pain in his eyes, Ryu,” she whispered, “Eyes that are so like yours. The shape of them exactly the same. I think he cares for you. I think he wants to make amends or at least know something of you.”

  Ryu tried to shake his head, and she held him even tighter in her embrace, as if she were trying to absorb his pain into herself.

  He never told her much about his boyhood, but she knew enough: he’d been raised in a whore house and abandoned at a Shinto shrine at a very young age, then trained to be a shadow assassin by the very Master who turned out to be his vampire sire.

  It boggled Ava’s mind. She couldn’t imagine how difficult Ryu’s past must have been for him. A past that still hurt him today in unguarded moments.

  Sometimes, she would catch him looking with such sadness and fierce protectiveness at Kane, as if he were seeing himself in his son, innocent and fragile, full of love and hope.

  Except in Ryu’s case, no one had protected or loved him. Not even the woman who’d birthed him.

  His body started to shiver in her embrace as if he were cold, and she knew that she’d pushed too far this night.

  She found his mouth with hers and distracted him with a soul-searing kiss. He let her distract him, clutching her hips while he surged deep and hard within her, his love-making vibrating with an aching urgency, a breath-held desperation, as if he were trying to lose himself in her body, forget all of the hurtful memories of his past.

  And while he dozed fitfully in her arms, Ava made plans.

  She knew she wouldn’t be able to heal all of Ryu’s wounds from his past, but her instincts told her that she needed to try to bridge this divide with Ryu’s sire.

  The tricky part was finding the elusive shadow.

  She knew just the person to help her.

  Chapter Nine

  Eli wandered aimlessly through Central Park, his long strides having taken him swiftly away from Hell’s Kitchen, though he had no intended destination in mind.

  He just had to get away.

  From Clara. From everything she represented.

  The life she tempted him with.

  She saw too much. Made him feel too much. He was dangerously close to coming apart at the seams.

  Even though he cursed his amnesia, a part of him was also infinitely relieved not to remember. A self-protective instinct, perhaps, that kept the demons from his past at bay.

  With absolute certainty, Eli knew that he had demons. Lots of them. And he feared that the worst of them might be himself.

  Third millennium BC. Capital City of Akkad. The Ivory Palace.

  Over the course of almost a year, the Princess Anunit solidified her Claim on her Consort.

  Publicly. Privately. She marked every inch of his body with her scent, her blood, her total possession. Taught him how to please her, seduced him with sweet words, needy touches and scorching kisses.

  The shadow warrior grew ever enamored of her, though he could not put his exact feelings into words. After all, he’d never felt this way before. No one had ever touched him like this before. Held him deeply inside her body while he slept dreamlessly in her warm, silky embrace.

  He only knew that he’d do anything for her. He’d readily die for her.

  Was this love?

  He’d heard of the emotion but never witnessed or understood it. He did understand loyalty, however, and now he also understood passion.

  Dependence. Devotion.

  So when the princess went out one night and brought back to the Palace the leader of the Pure Ones’ Resistance to Claim as her Blood Slave, the shadow warrior had been devastated.

  In front of all the Dark nobles across the land, she’d proclaimed her decision.

  Pure Blood Slaves were common
among the Dark noble houses; every Dark One of means had one or more as an infinite food source and pleasure toy. But a soon-to-be-Mated vampire female taking a Pure male for her Blood Slave was extremely uncommon, given the territoriality of Mated vampire males.

  When Anunit and the shadow warrior Mated, they would have only each other as Nourishment. He’d never been with another female, and after their Mating, he would be her only male.

  Or so he’d thought.

  But it was obvious from her possessive display in the Great Hall with the Pure warrior, Tal Telal, that she intended to take not only the male’s blood but his body as well.

  The shadow warrior had known this when he’d confronted her before her excursion that night.

  “I intend to make the leader of the Resistance my Blood Slave. I intend to use him as a blood whore ought to be used and revel in his degradation, the destruction of his proud spirit. We can never let these Pure rabble get above themselves. A lesson needs to be taught,” she’d told him as her handmaidens outfitted the princess in battle gear.

  “You would take him into your body?” he’d asked tonelessly, betraying none of the hurt and confusion inside.

  “Against his will, yes of course. That is the point. The physical aspect is not important. It is the power and purpose of the act.”

  She’d stroked his cheek as if to pacify him.

  “You know you are the only male who will ever satisfy my desires, my Enlil. What I do with the prisoner is merely a form of punishment and torture. Besides, he will not be the only male I take into my body besides you. You might as well get used to it now.”

  He’d flinched away from her at that, but she pursued him, taking firm hold of his chin in her hand.

  “Let us be clear, my beauty,” she’d hissed. “You are my possession. Since I chose you ten years ago, you have been mine. But I am not yours, do you understand?”

  He didn’t understand, but he could not look away from her mesmerizing gaze.

  “I will never be anyone’s but my own. How do you think my mother ruled over this empire for almost three millennia? The longest rule, ever, of any Dark Queen? She never fully Mated my father. Her life force was her own and not shared with anyone else. I will be the same. And I will be an even mightier ruler than she.”