by Laken Cane
I flinched at the tired anger in his voice. “I’m happy being with you,” I said. “You are all I care about.”
He caught my gaze through the reflective glass. “Executioners are coming to Red Valley, Trinity. They’re coming for the dragon.”
“Rhys,” I murmured, frowning. Then, I shrugged. “I’ll be safe here with you.”
He curled his fists, and I thought he might punch the mirror. Instead, he stared at the ceiling, and when he’d calmed, he turned to face me. “You’re stuck, Trinity. Something happened when I brought you back. I must fix this.”
Angry, I turned away from him and closed my eyes.
He placed a warm hand on my shoulder. “My love, my life. Whatever you believe, this is not who you wish to be.”
“I know what I need and I know what I want.”
“You do not.” He sighed. “And as your master, your maker, it is my responsibility to take care of you. To see that you get everything you need, even when you are unaware that you need anything.” He squeezed my shoulder. “When you are better, you will understand.”
I flipped around to face him. “Better? I’m not sick.”
He said nothing, just stared at me until I dropped my gaze. Satisfied, he leaned over and kissed my forehead.
A tiny flare of anger caused me to lift my hands and shove him away.
Not once since I’d returned had I touched him in anger.
But I was pissed. Disappointed. Devastated.
He crossed his arms. “Trinity.”
I couldn’t look at him. “What?”
“You are finished pouting.”
I glared at the ceiling.
“Trinity.”
“What?”
“Take the sheet from your body.” His voice was stern, and a little cold, but there was no anger.
I hesitated, still upset, still pouting, and I hesitated. Should I make a push to disobey him, if he were planning to toss me out of his house anyway?
A gleam of surprise lit his eyes. “You will obey me. Take the sheet from your body. Now.”
My entire body tight with anger, reluctance, and a deep, quick excitement, I grasped the sheet, pulled it off me, and flung it into the floor.
He smiled at my show of temper. “Good girl. Now open your legs for me.”
I sucked my bottom lip between my teeth and concentrated hard, for a brief second, on keeping my fangs retracted. I didn’t want to puncture my lip. That shit hurt.
He lifted an eyebrow.
Slowly, I bent my legs and let my knees fall open.
His stare caressed my body.
Heat, never far from the surface, burst to life as he trailed a finger over my thigh, and I moaned.
And just that quickly, I forgot my momentary spurt of rebellion. “Master,” I said.
“I am pleased, my love. I am so very pleased.”
As I was basking in the brightness of his words, he added, more to himself than to me, “You are in there. I see you.”
“I am here.”
I lay with my legs open and my arms flung over my head, giving him complete access to my body. I wouldn’t move until he told me I might. He needed no restraints—his command was the chain that held me.
He ran his hands over my legs, my ribs, my breasts. I arched my back, urging him silently on when he lingered, needing more. Always more.
“Close your eyes, my love. Feel me.”
I closed my eyes immediately. Without my sight, my vampire senses were even more intense, and my body tightened, gooseflesh erupting, when I felt his warm breath on my belly.
He didn’t undress or climb onto the bed, and I knew there would be no blood this time. He’d fed me only a few short hours ago, though, and I could go longer each day without feeding.
“This time,” he said, as though reading my mind, “You will orgasm without feeding.”
I wanted the blood. I always wanted the blood. But he soon made me forget that I would be deprived of that delicious magic, because his tongue was creating a different sort of ecstasy.
He didn’t touch me with his hands, only his mouth. I couldn’t see, because he hadn’t given me permission to open my eyes. I concentrated on the feel his mouth between my legs. There was nothing but his probing tongue, his firm lips, his hot breath.
And that was everything.
He brought me to the edge before pulling back, again and again, until the only thing that existed was his mouth on my throbbing, swollen, wet pussy.
He slid his tongue inside me, then wrapped it around my clit before licking me with long, slow strokes until I thought I would go mad from the pleasure of it.
I cried out at the pleasure pain, and he began to do other things with his mouth. His strokes became faster, then he sucked my clit into the warmth of his mouth, then he nipped the bareness of my lips.
And he let me come.
Finally.
I screamed with the pleasure of that release, and even before my voice had stopped echoing through the room, he was shoving me over the edge again.
He made me come until I knew it was no longer possible for me to climax, and then he showed me how wrong I was by making me come again.
He left me there then, sprawled on the bed moaning and heavy in my own juices, and I did not open my eyes even after he’d gone, because he had not told me I could.
But I didn’t need to see. I needed only to wait for him. He would return to me, and he would feed me, and he would fuck me, and I would be complete.
I sighed and sank into the soft, cradling arms of pleasure and dreams, where nothing mattered outside that room.
Nothing mattered outside my world.
And my world was Amias Sato.
Chapter Four
CLOSE ENOUGH
“They want to see you,” Amias told me, two nights later. “Our werebull is not a patient man, my love, though he has shown remarkable restraint.”
I said nothing, just snuggled deeper into the bed and smiled when he tightened his arms around me.
“He loves you, Trinity,” he continued, his voice smooth and calm. “They all do.”
“I’m not ready.”
“You have a responsibility to them. To Bay Town, the way station, and—”
“I’m not ready.”
He sighed. “You don’t want to be ready. But this is no life for anyone, and you are physically stronger than you’ve ever been. It’s time.”
“I—”
“It’s time.”
There was a tone to his voice I hadn’t heard before. He was done feeling sorry for me. Done feeling guilty for my…brokenness. All of it.
“I love you more than I ever loved life,” he said. “I love you with a fierceness that makes me want to die at the thought of hurting you.”
“Then don’t make me go,” I whispered, full of dread and dark, furtive things. “Don’t make me go. If you do, I won’t ever return to you.”
“Sweetheart.” His smile was as full of pain and tears as my heart. “You will always return to me, because you cannot do otherwise. My love. It is time to grow up.”
He left the bed, despite my clinging arms, and stood waiting for me, his hand out. I wanted to ignore him, but he would have waited forever, my vampire master.
And I could feel it. He was right.
It was time.
I was scared. I wasn’t sure what I was scared of, really, but it was time.
“Angus has decided it’s my fault you have yet to return to them. He believes my love for you, my desire to protect you, has kept you from growing.” He hesitated, then nodded. “He is right. To a point, he is right.”
“Feed me first,” I said, as I stood trembling in the circle of his strong arms.
“No, darling. Tonight you will stand in the city. You will watch the humans, you will allow humanity to seep back into your bones, you will feel your heart begin to beat with the magic of existence. You will not feed. You will learn control. And you will do this every night until yo
u are…”
“Until I am what, Master?”
“Until you are Trinity.”
“How will I know?”
He smiled. “You will know. We will all know.”
“I’m not the same, no matter what you teach me. No matter what you make me do. No matter how much I grow, I will not be the same girl who died.”
“No,” he murmured. “But you will be close enough.”
And after he’d dressed me, he walked me from our perfect, protected house, and he stood me on a street corner like a human prostitute and he left me there.
That was the first night I was forced out of the cocoon he’d created for me.
I would become a butterfly.
A butterfly that possessed tattered, scarred wings, fangs, and a taste for blood.
But I would never again be Trinity Sinclair, the girl who’d died.
Because she’d fucking died.
“God,” I whispered, alone on my corner. “Help me to care.”
Then I laughed, because I did care, didn’t I? If I prayed for it, then I cared.
And the humans walked by, tentative smiles and looks of horror and pity and some anger and hatred, and the reporters came, and I stood on my street corner and slowly, I began to grow. To change. To care.
To become Trinity.
Chapter Five
TEMPTATIONS
The city was different.
I wouldn’t have known anything about it if Amias hadn’t fed me information as he fed me blood. He’d held me in his arms, discussing events of the day and circumstances of the city, attempting to woo me back to life.
The changes had happened almost overnight, and the humans were not the same.
We had the rifters to thank for that. And the demons.
Himself and the supernaturals.
And me, I guess.
The city was different and the world was changing.
Changing once again for the supernats, but not only for them.
I stood on the street corner, unmoving and silent. I ignored the small group of human women as they trooped past me, hiding their giggles behind their hands, their pores releasing the stench of alcohol and cigarette smoke and sweat and food.
Food.
I didn’t cry. I would never eat again, but I didn’t cry.
The thought of consuming food made me ill.
The humans stopped walking and speared me with slightly drunken, almost shy gazes, and I closed my eyes as the scent of their blood overpowered their other, less appetizing odors.
I was slowly gaining control of myself. Amias had stood me on the street corner for the last two weeks with only one command.
“You will not feed.”
I would either obey him, or I would be punished.
I would learn control, because otherwise I was just a feral animal. A parasite.
And I wanted it. I wanted, finally, finally, to dig myself out of the deep hole in which I’d hidden since the master had brought me back.
I began to mature rather quickly, now that I was given no choice.
I began to breathe again.
“Are you okay, Trinity Sinclair?” The woman addressed me as they often did since my transformation—by using both my names.
She was young, maybe twenty, her white-blonde hair wispy and clean, her cheeks red, her eyes bright and blue and full of life.
I shuddered and stared over her head, hopeful that my silence would encourage her and her friends to carry on with their night and leave me alone.
They were tempting. So tempting. And I was weak, hungry, and sick. Sick in my new vampire head.
“What’s wrong with you?” one of the others asked. “Seriously. If you want a taste…”
Don’t do it. Don’t do it.
She waved her wrist under my nose, smiling. “Let me buy you a drink.”
“We owe you,” the first girl said. “The least we can do is feed you.”
There was scattered laughter, uncomfortable and tentative. But they liked their fear. They liked their bravery. Their progressiveness.
Not all the humans were so changed, of course, but enough of them were that it made a real difference.
My fangs dropped in response to the aroma of the fresh blood that rushed teasingly beneath her thin skin, the way a starving human’s mouth might water at the scent of a tantalizing meal.
The sharp fangs sliced into my tongue and I groaned at the rich, tangy slide of blood. I didn’t bleed much—Amias wouldn’t feed me until after my long night of deprivation. Then, just before dawn, he’d draw me into his arms and reward me.
God, that reward.
A familiar figure stepped from the shadows of the alley across the street, waited for a line of cars to pass, then walked toward us.
He was quiet and smooth for such a big man, and the women continued tempting me, unaware a half-giant was right behind them.
“Trinity.” His voice was a deep, dark rumble, and the eager humans gave soft squeals of fright and turned to look at him.
“Leo Trask,” the blonde said, as though he might not know his own name.
He didn’t look at her. Leo didn’t often look women in the eye. He was too afraid—too sure—of what he’d see there. “Go on about your business,” he told them. “You don’t need to be here.”
The blonde lifted her chin. “I want to feed her. She died to save us. The least we can do is offer her our blood.”
“Another time,” Leo said, gently, calmly.
“I think it’s up to me,” she said, stubborn and brave in her inebriated haze. “And I want her to bite me.”
“You have no idea what you’re asking for.” His voice was a little tighter. He pulled the neckline of his T-shirt down and showed them the jagged, still healing wound on the tender flesh between his neck and his shoulder. “She gave me this the last time I offered to feed her.”
I swallowed convulsively as I stared at the forming scar. It didn’t matter that he was lying. I smelled the blood of that wound.
And I wanted it.
Unintentionally, Leo was tempting me more than those humans, with their alcohol-laced blood, ever could.
Then he lifted the hem of his shirt and showed the horrified humans the scar across the side of his muscular abdomen. “She gave me this the first time I offered.” He grinned, somewhat ruefully. “I have not offered again.”
“But—”
“She’s too new,” he said. “She has no control. She cannot make it good for you like the older vampires can. You have been told this countless times. All the humans have.” His face hardened, as did his voice. “You’re hurting her. Walk the fuck away.”
I trembled. I needed blood. Wanted it. Craved it.
But I wanted my control more.
Amias would be angry that the half-giant was interfering yet again. Leo didn’t give a fuck. He was my self-appointed bodyguard and there wasn’t a person on earth who could have made him stand down.
The humans did not test him further.
When they were half a block away, Leo turned back to me. “Come home, Trinity,” he said, as he always did.
“When he releases me,” I replied, as I always did.
“You’ve been gone for months,” he said. “It’s time.”
I wanted to go home. I could no longer feel the visitors because another caretaker was there to help them.
Himself had appointed one of the vampire elders as caretaker of the way station in my absence, and while I should have been grateful, I was savagely possessive of my home and my station and viciously angry that a vampire elder had taken over.
But no one else could have.
“I’m not strong enough. I…”
“You’re afraid of hurting us, I know,” he said, bland and calm. “But we can take care of ourselves.”
Hunger roared through my body and I put my hands to my ears, as though that might stop it.
Damn you, Amias.
I shuddered. No. I could not go hom
e. Not yet. Amias was the only person in my life who could control me. I would stay with him and only him until I became the person in control of me.
I hesitated, then slid my fingers over my chest, pressing lightly over my heart. I wanted to go home. I needed to be with my men.
I smiled at Leo, maybe the first real smile I’d managed since I’d turned, and his face softened. Leo wasn’t pretty. His face wasn’t pleasant to look at. I’d once heard a human woman say that if Leo were to put a bag over his head, she’d be happy to spend a few hours in bed with him.
No, Leo Trask wasn’t a handsome man.
Sometimes though, the truth inside him shone through and he became something no one could ever have seen as less than beautiful.
“You’re frozen.” His voice was comforting and sure. “But you’ll thaw. You’ll come back to us, Trinity.” His face reddened. “To the way station, I mean.”
Then he dropped his gaze and stared at the ground. Leo trusted me, but he didn’t quite trust me that much. He was afraid he’d see revulsion in my eyes.
He would never.
Not when I’d been human, and not now that I was turned.
I understood though, because I thought I might now see revulsion in his.
“Thawed,” I said. “Maybe. But I’ll still be a vampire. I’ll still need to eat people.”
Once upon a time I’d known what I was. I’d known my place in life. I’d understood myself. I’d been a vampire hunter. A caretaker. A woman tied to a group of men I loved dearly and a town I was born to protect.
Now I was a vampire.
And I had no idea what that meant for me. What would I do? What was my purpose?
“No sign of Shane?” he asked.
Pain streaked through me, stealing my breath, and for a few seconds I was caught up in the intensity of that pain.
“Trinity?”
I focused on Leo’s face. “No. No sign of him.”
He wanted to touch me, I could see it in his eyes. But he only cleared his throat, backed up a step, and crossed his arms. “He’ll come back when he’s ready.”
I sniffed the air, my body stiffening as I caught a familiar scent. Even more than that, a familiar feeling.
