Blood of Life: Cora's Choice 1-3 Bundle

by V M Black

  He closed the distance I had put between us, and I stiffened, but all he did was tilt my chin up with one hand to plant a brief kiss on my forehead. I closed my eyes and sighed involuntarily at it, anyway.

  Dorian released me and turned away. Leaving his clothing on the floor, he went to one of the doors that I hadn’t opened before. As he stepped through, I saw a different bedroom beyond, the mirror of this one, decorated in the dark red of old blood. His room. The door shut behind him, and he was gone.

  I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding and went to retrieve my pants and underwear. Something warm and wet slid down my thigh, and I realized what it must be. Seized with sudden horror, I grabbed a corner of the bedspread and scrubbed it between my legs. The pale beige fabric came away darkened with moisture.

  I could be pregnant.

  Panic suddenly overwhelmed me. I wasn’t using any type of birth control, and Dorian certainly hadn’t used a condom. How could I have not have thought about it? It wasn’t like it happened all at once—Oh, look at that, he’s coming inside me, what a surprise.

  But he was a vampire, after all, and it wasn’t like pregnancy was the first thing you thought about when being seduced by a vampire. And perhaps he hadn’t wanted me to think about it. Could he do that to me? I wasn’t sure.

  Could not-quite-humans and vampires even reproduce? He’d said that vampires were born, not made, but he hadn’t said how. Maybe they could only reproduce with female vampires, and once-humans were nothing more than a toy for sex and blood. I thought of Dorian with another woman, inside of her, his mouth on her.... It made me sick.

  I’ve gone crazy, I told myself. That was the only possible conclusion.

  I grabbed the rest of my clothes and went into the bathroom, where I used a washcloth to clean myself up and got dressed as quickly as I could, shrugging into my jacket last. I went back into the bedroom, squared my shoulders, and knocked hard on the door that led to his room.

  Dorian answered almost immediately, his tie askew and his hair disheveled. He looked even more appealing that way, if it were possible. It should have also made him look more human, more approachable. It didn’t.

  He looked down at me, silent and quizzical as he finished tightening his tie and turned down his collar.

  “Tell me,” I said. “Could you have just gotten me pregnant?”

  He paused, blinked, and said, “That would be quite impossible.”

  How could I ask this without dying of humiliation on the spot, near-immortal or no? “Then how,” I said, “are baby vampires made?”

  He blew out a puff of air. “Bloody hell, Cora,” he said. “You aren’t a coy one, are you? I will answer your question. Just not now.”

  “But—” I began.

  He cut me off. “You have enough to think about right now. You will have plenty of time to interrogate me about all the gory details of vampire biology and society. I promise. You have only been conscious for four hours, and already you have discovered that you are now cured, ageless, and immune to disease and also that you are bonded to a creature that, until today, you probably did not believe existed. A creature that, I might add, then went on to deflower you.”

  “Yuck,” I said, making a face. “Don’t make it sound so Victorian.”

  “And who forgets not to be Victorian because to him, the Victorians were not really that long ago,” he added, driving the point home.

  “I don’t need coddling,” I said. “I need to know.”

  “You will,” he promised. “In time. All things in time.”

  I glared at him, unsure whether I was being patronized and, if I was, whether it was some kind of sexism, ageism, or vampire-centrism.

  “You’re a smug bastard,” I said.

  He just laughed, pulling me against him and treating me to a lengthy kiss that was, by his standards, chaste. I felt my body go warm and soft, my mind bending under his influence even as a part of me stood back and said, Really, Cora?

  “I suppose I am,” he said when he released me. “It has been a very long time since I have had a bond, and human society has changed a great deal in that time.”

  “Those old-fashioned girls used to know their place?” I asked acidly, even as I realized with a jolt that he was saying that I was not the first woman to have shared whatever it was that we had between us.

  And what happened to her? I wondered. But now was not the time to ask.

  “Everyone had a place, Cora, not just women,” he said, his lips quirking in a sad kind of smile. “And when arranged marriages were the norm, this kind of relationship was less of a shock. You have a lot more to take in. More changes to accept.”

  “What if I don’t want to accept them?” I prickled at the comparison of marriage to...whatever was between us. Arranged or no, marriages had for many centuries had a place where the bride said “I do.”

  “It’s not up to you,” he said bluntly. “Or me. The bond is forged. Completed. You will accept these changes because you must. Because you will want to.”

  I wanted to reject the thought automatically. But the reality was that I had jumped in bed with him after less than eight hours in his company when I’d known Geoff for three years and we hadn’t gotten past first base. For someone I denied had a claim on me, he sure was getting a lot of, well, everything.

  I shook my head. I needed time to think. And I was only going to be able to do that away from him.

  But I just stood there, nervously tugging at the bottom edge of my jacket.

  “You had better leave,” Dorian said as if he could read my mind. He pushed a lock of hair away from my face. I tried to ignore the small burst of awareness that his gesture sent through me.

  “If you need me for any reason, call,” he said. “You will now be routed directly to me.”

  “Okay,” I said, not sure if I meant it.

  “The car is still waiting for you. I will see you—soon.” The last word was a promise.

  I was filled with a sudden fear of loss as he began to withdraw back into his bedroom, as dangerous as it was irrational. I slapped my hand on the door, keeping it from closing.

  “So you aren’t going to see me out?” I blurted. Not that I wanted him to, of course, but for all his exaggerated, outmoded propriety, I thought that he would insist.

  He smiled slowly. “You aren’t a guest in this house, Cora. You are its mistress.”

  And with that, he shut the door.

  Chapter Nine

  At the front door, the butler bid me farewell—as in, the actual words, “Farewell, madam”—and extended a pair of sunglasses.

  I blinked at the aviators, still disoriented by the aftereffects of Dorian’s presence. They had Chanel’s double C’s on the earpieces. That made them far too expensive, but I remembered what had happened when I’d tried to go out the door before, so I took them anyway. I flipped the hood of my coat up for good measure.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Very good, madam,” he said, and he opened the door.

  The sudden flood of sunlight made me wince even with the sunglasses, but it was no longer unbearable. A part of me that had been clenched in fear relaxed ever so slightly. Whatever else had happened to me, I hadn’t been turned into a nocturnal recluse, at least as long as I had sunglasses and good sunblock.

  Maybe my old life—my real life—wasn’t entirely out of my reach, after all. Maybe whatever changes had happened were controllable, containable within it.

  “Thank you,” I said again.

  I got into the waiting Bentley and shoved the glasses up onto the top of my head. The interior with its tinted windows had always struck me as dim before, but now the brightness was at the upper limits of my comfort range.

  No longer quite human. I rubbed my wrist where the mark stood out against my flesh.

  That didn’t mean I belonged to Dorian, though. No matter what he said. The bond was his tradition, not mine. When I got back to the apartment, everything would be nor
mal again. I’d be fine. A little lingering sun sensitivity—heck, acne medications could cause that.

  I almost convinced myself I believed it.

  The Bentley rolled to a stop in front of my apartment building, and I went in. The halls were eerily quiet, the lights dimmed to their nighttime levels and the usual background human noises replaced by a stifling silence.

  Christmas break, I reminded myself. Almost everyone had gone home. Everyone who had a home. Without the other students, there was no normal here to return to. The elevator’s ding echoed in the emptiness.

  When I reached the fourth floor, I found the door to my apartment propped open, and I could heard voices from the hall. Cautiously, I stuck my head around the doorframe. Two police officers were standing inside the living area, a woman poking through the kitchen cabinets while a man scribbled on a notepad.

  “Hello?” I asked cautiously.

  The man looked up, rubbing one hand over his close-cropped hair. “What’s your name, miss?”

  “Cora Shaw,” I said, my stomach sinking.

  Lisette had called them, just as she had threatened.

  “How may I help you?” I asked stiffly as I fumbled in my pocket for my driver’s license.

  “We’re here to do a wellbeing check following up on a potential missing persons report. We got a call that you are seriously ill and dropped out of contact for a period of—” He checked a piece of paper in his hands. “Five days.”

  “Yes, that would be correct,” I said carefully. I had my lie ready. “I was at a private clinic for an experimental cancer treatment. It was supposed to be an outpatient procedure, but there were complications, and I was admitted and put into an induced coma. I wasn’t able to reply to my friends’ messages until today. But I’ve been discharged now, and I’m perfectly all right. See? That’s me.”

  I showed him my driver’s license, and he looked it over carefully.

  “Good to hear that you’re okay, miss,” the officer said, a hint of boredom in his voice.

  “The treatment was effective, so I am more than okay, thank you.” It was more than I had to say, but it was too important not to share, however uninterested the officer was.

  “Glad to hear it, miss,” he repeated, flipping his notepad closed. “We’ll put in our case report that we talked to you, and that should close it out.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m still recovering, and I’d like to try and get some sleep.” That part wasn’t entirely a lie, but mostly, I wanted them out of the apartment. I needed to be alone with my thoughts in the closest thing I had left to a home now that my Gramma’s house was empty.

  “No problem, ma’am, and thank you for your cooperation,” he said. “Your friend Lisette Bonner filed the report, so she would appreciate your call.” He put his pen into his breast pocket, and he left, the woman following after.

  I pushed the doorstop out of the way so that the door swung shut behind them, locking automatically. I started to take off my sunglasses, but the glare from the windows was still too powerful until I had lowered the blinds to a crack. I folded up the aviators and put them on the kitchen counter.

  Alone. I was alone in my own space for the first time since I had gotten into the Bentley bound for Dorian Thorne’s house. I flopped onto the couch, staring up at the ceiling as the seconds ticked by, stretching into minutes, and willed my mind to be blank.

  Willing all traces of Dorian away.

  I made it, Gramma, I thought. I’m alive. The leukemia’s gone. It’s going to be okay.

  Had so much really changed? My life was still here, waiting for me. I still had my classes and my friends and my plans for my future. Whatever else had happened, those were all the same.

  I snagged my laptop from the coffee table. I needed an appointment with Dr. Robeson to confirm that I really was getting better. I fully believed it, but I knew not to trust any confidence that came from Dorian Thorne. I flipped my laptop open, then navigated to Dr. Robeson’s appointment scheduling. Next opening: Friday. I punched my information in. Then I logged into the campus Health Center website and made an appointment there, too. Dorian had said that I couldn’t get pregnant, but again, I had little reason to trust him.

  He was gentle, part of my mind whispered. He didn’t have to be.

  But maybe he had just been trying to win me over.

  Why bother when he could make you feel and do anything he wants?

  My head ached. Thinking about it all sent my mind into circles. I wanted him before the bond, but the bond meant that I had to want him, and the bond also meant he wanted me. He had wanted me before, too, but not with the same force that I had felt from him the last time. And he could make me want to do anything at all with nothing more than his will.

  He had demonstrated his power over me the second time we had met, ordering me burn my finger in a candle flame. I had done it eagerly even as his presence had twisted the pain into sharp pleasure in my mind. And that was before the bond. I feared what he could do to me now.

  I felt my phone buzz against my hip again. It was another text from Lisette.

  Cora! CALL ME!!!!!!!

  If I didn’t call her soon, she’d never forgive me. The phone rang only once before she picked it up.

  “Cora?” Lisette sounded almost frantic.

  I had never been so glad to hear her voice. It was the most real thing that I’d experienced since I woke up in the vampire’s bed.

  “Yes, it’s me, and yes, I’m fine. I had some complications and I couldn’t call, but the treatment was a success. I’m cancer free, and I’m in the apartment now.”

  “Oh, thank goodness! I’m so glad,” she exclaimed. “When you went silent, I assumed the worst.”

  “I know,” I said dryly. “Our apartment was full of police when I got back.”

  “Oh, Cora, I’m so sorry!”

  “No, it’s actually cool,” I said. “I’m glad I have someone who cares enough about me to call the police after I go missing for nearly a week. What if I’d come back home and gotten so sick that I couldn’t use my phone? You could’ve saved my life.”

  “So then, this Bentley-sending CEO. His company is legit?” Lisette asked, sounding a little skeptical.

  “Well, I’m going to follow up with Dr. Robeson, but his tests show that my lymphocytes are already returning to normal.”

  “That’s amazing,” she said.

  You don’t know the half of it, I thought.

  “I think the CEO might have the hots for me,” I ventured. That was the understatement of the century. But I had to tell her something about what had happened.

  Also, he’s an ancient, blood-sucking vampire who has marked me for life. Right. That would go over great.

  “Oh?” Lisette asked, her tone oozing with disapproval. “Wouldn’t he be a little old for you?”

  What’s a few hundred years, give or take? Oh, and he bought me dinner just once before we had sex on his bed, only it’s my bed because he thinks I’m going to live with him now or something.

  Aloud, I said, “It’s hard to tell how old he is. He looks younger than he has any right to, that’s for sure.”

  “Huh,” Lisette said. “Well, be careful. You know how those rich douches are—total users.”

  He just needs a sip now and again. Is that so bad?

  “Yeah, I know.” Lisette’s parents were accountants and together made ten times what my grandmother had. Rich was relative, I’d learned. “Look, I’m still recovering, so I’m pretty tired.” And if we keep talking, I’m going to say something that will convince you that I’ve lost it. “I know you’re dying to tell me all about your annual Christmas family drama, but I’m still pretty tired. I’ve got to catch a nap. Call you later?” I suggested.

  “Sure thing,” she said. “Bye!”

  “Bye.” I hung up.

  I could smell Dorian on my skin, all over me, like the mark that I carried on my wrist. I had to get it off me. Even that was messi
ng with my head.

  Rubbing my arms, I heaved myself off the couch and headed for the bathroom. I turned on the shower, setting it just below scalding, then peeled off my clothes and stepped in.

  The smell of him got stronger for a moment in the steamy enclosure of the tub, then it came sheeting off under the assault of soap and water. I scrubbed my hair, my face, my neck, my breasts, my belly.

  I rinsed the folds between my legs, and then, hesitantly, I felt the opening with my fingers. I was hardly a novice to self-pleasure, but always before, I had rubbed my clitoris to bring myself to climax. I had never had anything but a tampon inside me before...him.

  I set one leg on the edge of the bathtub as the water poured down over me, and carefully, experimentally, I slid my index finger inside, up to the third knuckle. I could feel the fleshy walls clasp it, smooth hills and deep furrows. I pulled it out and thrust it in again, but there was no blossoming heat deep in my belly. I slid in another finger, and I felt myself stretch against them, but still nothing like his hands on me, in me. I used my other hand to stroke my clitoris as he had, with the shower rushing in my ears and sheeting across me.

  I closed my eyes and thought of his fingers instead of mine, how I must have felt to him, buried deep inside my heat, and then the sensation came, spiraling out of me. I leaned my head against the shower wall and pressed on, remembering his mouth, his hands, his body over mine. Pushing me. Inside me.

  Anticipation coiled more tightly, sweat springing to the surface of my skin only to be instantly washed away. His body, with mine, in mine.

  I broke, and the release rushed through me. I kept my hands going even as my legs shook and I panted against the shower wall, water pouring over my face. The wave receded, carrying the pleasure with it, and I slid my hand out of myself and let the water wash my fingers clean.

  Then reality came slamming back.

  I was, I decided, bat-shit crazy. No sooner had I escaped from the—let’s not forget—evil, people-eating vampire’s house than I jump in the shower and get myself off thinking about him.