by Addison Cain
“I love you.” The words were breathed into my mouth, the softest of confessions. Malcom’s ruination.
He was so hard. Even with the fabric of his trousers and my panties between us, I could feel the pulsating outline of him. I could smell him—the tang of cum yet to be spilled. His sack was so full, swollen with what he’d usher between my legs so I might have my wish. Thinking of it in that way, of his cock, of his seed, had me making noises the man greedily swallowed.
Provoked, encouraging him with my arching body and digging heels, a space inside me shifted. I felt it like a physical thing, an opening door I was forbidden to look through. Desire unraveled, it possessed me with terror. Unsure how to equate the two, or why I suddenly began to tremble, to weep.
To beg. “I need you to hurt me.”
“Never.” Soft kisses trailed down my throat, my shoulder, the careful drag of fang leaving just enough sting to soothe.
Ethan. I thought of Ethan and why I needed to stop hyperventilating and control irrational fear. I’d been fucked by hundreds of men: violent men who took pleasure in my misery. Shy men with fumbling hands and sloppy mouths. Generous men who coaxed climaxes from my body. Terrible men I’d been attracted to. Vagrant men. Drunken men. Men of God. Women.
A virgin’s fear had me pressing my thighs closed, had me stretching away from an expert mouth and the weight of oblivion.
Fully clothed, cashmere sweater, pressed, pussy-soaked trousers, even socks, this male was more threatening to me than all the others combined. And I’d once lost a limb when my father’s champion was far too rough.
I was going to come again. From nothing. From just soft touches and rocking hips.
“Help me!” God help me. Save me. Deliver me. End this!
“I swear to you I will.” How earnest this fallen angel sounded as he spun me into greater torment. Wet, hot, his mouth closed over my fabric-covered breast. Nipple aching, it was undulated, worked. Suckled.
Tears were in my hair, sobs wracking my ribs. “I’m dying.”
This had to be how the sun felt to pure-bloods. A blistering, searing incursion that turned a body to dust. But I held form, even when couture split on the claws of a vicious warrior. My panties, ripped by the flick of his finger. My thighs gripped and spread until my knees hit my shoulders.
Malcom, ruthless Malcom, twisted his demon’s tongue through my folds, penetrated where his fingers had planted their uninvited touch earlier. And I screamed, deformed, and scattered.
One moment I was having my pussy eaten by a starved man, the next I was in hell.
The Cathedral.
Chapter Sixteen
One moment the world was up, the next it was down, travel through an unanticipated magical portal leaving me to cough up a bubble of blood. One immediately swallowed down before a drop might pass my lips and mark the ground. I knew where I was by rote. The cracked, worn stones, the stink of agelessness, rotting flesh, and everlasting life.
Evil, unseen and gelatin, weighed down all things in the throne room. Even the air refused to stir despite the masses gathered to watch a rare occasion where my father sat the throne.
A sight even I had not seen in decades. Not when I avoided him at all costs.
Yet there I was on my knees, the straps of my slip dress having fallen down one arm, panties sodden and sticking to skin swollen from friction. And I had garnered attention. There was no need to glance up to confirm that those vampires nearest where I had appeared out of thin air stepped back from my panting, bent, and objectified frame.
It wasn’t before the dais I’d landed. It was amidst the crowds. Hidden by the grandeur of court dress and the press of many bodies.
Terrified.
I was terrified, and almost screamed like the little girl I had been when a hand twisted into my hair. Pulling black tangles by the root, subjugating me before curious glances, the very bane of my existence put his lips to my ear and snarled, “Think of nothing but the hate you bear me.”
And I did hate Malcom.
How could he drag me here, like this, after what he’d just done to me?
Only seconds ago his tongue had delved demon-deep into my cunt. The bastard had made me come. Arousal, a single bead of hideous, naked, and plain truth, dripped down my thigh for any behind me to view.
I hated.
I hated thoroughly.
To be seen this way. To have my head held in a bow by strength I’d never match. Left kneeling in a crowd where all others stood over me, where they laughed behind their hands at me. Where they hated me. That’s what the Cathedral was. That was the revolting malevolence fostered here and worshiped by all my father collected in his flock.
Pressing against the stone with all my strength, shaking from the strain as hairs tore free from my scalp, I gave over.
Daughter of the Devil.
Unimportant. Completely forgotten once evil incarnate broke the chambers echoless silence. “Vladislov, welcome.”
Straining to catch a glimpse between the knees of those separating me from my father’s gaze, my full attention was caught up in that name. I even felt an echo of my brains busting against the far wall as if reliving that day.
Waved brown hair, long as a woman’s. High forehead, pointed nose, an ugly sort of eternal beauty. An immortal potentially as old as my own sire stood before the throne and didn’t so much as dip his chin in deference.
I knew his eyes, I’d dreamed about them puzzling me back together. I’d drank of that man when he’d come to where I’d gone to die all those years ago. I’d swallowed blood thicker than tar as he’d stuffed handfuls of brain matter back in my skull.
The guest more important than my little life when I’d made the mistake of biting my father before him.
The reason I still lived.
Perhaps I hated him as much as I hated Malcom. He should have let me die.
Corner of thin lips twitching upward, it was as if my mind were as open to the immortal as my skull had been decades before. I think he laughed at me. Not that his face was turned my direction, or that I had been in any way acknowledged
My gaze was forced lower, Malcom still as marble, if marble might vibrate with a threatening decibel too low for even vampire hearing.
Denied another glance of my long-ago secret savior, driven to bend in ways that left joints screaming, I found my nails uneven, dirty, and chipped.
Which troubled me in the oddest way.
That I was not dressed for court—lacquered, scented, draped in jewels for this ancient to see. Because I knew he would. Despite the crowd, he could see me. Under all of it. Just how ugly I was. And maybe he’d give me that last fragment of myself that had been left to rot on the ground when I’d been a silly child who’d thought her daddy adored her.
His voice, like his features, was unattractive in an entrancing way. Making something lackluster pleasing. “My faction accepts these new terms with open arms, Darius. The alliance between our flocks grows stronger with each tithe gathering.”
How long could he have been alive to have learned such a trick? To manipulate so many with so little effort.
“And just what have you brought me, old friend?” I didn’t need to see the throne to know how my father’s immensity sat upon it. There was no more chilling sight to behold.
“We are beyond the age of chests of gold and favored bloodlines. Dreadfully boring as they were. Yet, as you requested, one hundred of my healthiest stock shall be transferred to your pens, for breeding whatever blood vintage you prefer.”
“And one hundred of my human cattle shall be placed in yours.” My father was a greedy man for blood. My own eyes had seen him fell thirty in a single feeding. One hundred was a snack.
All of this was politics, even though I had no idea what took place, it was clear the back and forth were practiced, unimportant yet required.
Father didn’t want Vladislov in his realm.
And that I had never he
ard of a tithe gathering though I had lived for many years.
Though by the way his fist refused me so much as an inch, Malcom had. Everyone in the chamber understood what this was.
“Where is that precious daughter of yours?” My flesh chilled, the fine hairs on the back of my neck rising. “I have a stud who wishes to woo her. Of course, any offspring would belong to my house should he succeed.”
“Which daughter?”
No hesitation came with the answer. “The sweet one.”
Slander nailed those words to my back. Physically bowing, I felt the drill of sweet and knew the joke they made of me. There were no other daughters.
None living, at least. Had King Darius fathered others, they were long from this world. Or had escaped him through the ages, no longer counted and free.
Which was impossible when every immortal mind was open to him like a book.
Once, long ago, I’d tried to run.
Malcom had found me in minutes. Literally minutes. He’d brought me to the throne bloodied to dump at my father’s feet.
He’d beaten me so badly that my father had not so much as lifted a finger to crack another bone. Knowing him now, I imagine Malcom thought he’d done me a mercy. My father could do things even to an immortal that could not be undone.
“Where is the little girl?” How strange it was to hear a hint of teasing in Vladislov’s voice. One did not mince words with the devil and survive it. One did not poke the bear.
A coarse, bored, devious, and light reply. “I will allow your stud to attempt to breed her, but there will be no talk of my daywalker.”
“But I like her.” Again, I knew the foreigner was aware of my presence, and had the sinking sense that through some strange turn, my father was not. “Why be so greedy? She was a taste of heaven when she sat on your knee. I’d offer you a legion, an army, any member of my court in exchange for the precious child.”
“Denied.”
The guest grew openly agitated. “Ten years.”
I moved, fought to look up. Malcom twisted my hair tighter, clawing my scalp until skin punctured, simultaneously grinding my knees harder into the stone.
“Think on it, old friend.” Though I couldn’t see him, I imagined Vladislov smoothing his embroidered sleeve, careless that the man on the throne could see his head rent from his shoulders with little effort. “No need to make a rash decision. I can offer your kingdom much. And what is one, unwanted, burdensome half-breed? It would do her some good to go to the old country and learn of her heritage. I have a particularly vicious warlord in mind for her to tend. Instability on the continent affects even your Americas. And, of course, I’d watch over her as if she were my own daughter…”
“You’d find her lacking, weak, and insubordinate. Ungracious in bed. The complaints I’ve heard…” Was this really how my father spoke of me to strangers? To ancients? My mouth went sour with the shame of it, thighs quivering to close despite my painful posture.
“Sad news for my stud, I suppose.”
“I have no interest in your stud’s complaints.” And the meeting was over. A shuffle of silks, the king of all undead this side of the ocean rising to leave as if bored of all he saw, all he’d lived. As if he had somewhere to go.
And go he did. The force of his presence lifting from the room. Those within sucking in a breath as if they had been denied air for an eternity. I found it funny, the immortal, breathing in relief.
The crowd began to jostle and migrate, careless feet stepping upon splayed fingers. Caught up in the tide, Malcom kept me still, like a dog on a leash by the hair. Tethered to be stepped on.
Until the room was vacant, as if all inside acted on some unseen order to wander away.
My father’s throne empty, until it wasn’t. Until the brunette foreigner in his surcoat and cravat, his thin fingers heavy with rings placed himself upon it.
And my heart stopped beating. Arteries stopped pumping. Ghostly white, I felt dread to see something so horrific.
“Child.” He smiled at me. One perfected with age and practice. “Is it true you are disobedient?”
Eyes darting around, looking for the trick, the lingering vampire who would have me existing in a room where another dared sit my father’s throne. “How is it that you have done this?”
Proud, arrogant, ugly-beautiful, in completely different ways from my sire. Vladislov offered a shrug. My father would never shrug. “We all have our tricks. What’s yours?”
I don’t know why this banter drew my anger, but it did. There were enough problems piled on my plate, and pieces of my brains had once been in that man’s pockets. “I can walk in the sun.”
Without taking his eyes from my face, Vladislov flicked his wrist. A kingly, courtly gesture, both demeaning and silly. “Get out, Malcom. You’re not required at present.”
And my hair was set free. Just like that.
And just like that, I reached back for my guardian because I knew to remain in that room would see me ended. I even turned, eyes wide as I pled, “We had a deal.”
“But you see.” Stretching his legs out from my father’s throne, Vladislov murmured, “He and I had one first.”
There was no soldier more loyal to King Darius than Malcom. Not a one. Which made this foreigner a liar.
As Malcom backed away, Vladislov mused, “She is young, isn’t she? An unopened bloom.”
The one fixture in my life—the lingering, annoying presence of my custodian—walked away without answering.
The question had, after all, been rhetorical.
And I was still on my knees, reddened by the stone. I was dirty, disheveled, unable to look away from the figure in the chair.
“Stand up and let me take a look at you, little one.”
Like a child, dusting my hands on my dusty dress, a look of shame about me, I did.
Chapter Seventeen
There was a hand on my face, turning it to and fro, but no one touched me. A compulsion to move that felt so real I gasped, even as I obeyed.
“I know what you’re thinking.” He murmured from my father’s throne. “I could make you rip out your heart and eat it.”
Those weren’t my thoughts exactly, but near enough that I shivered.
Vladislov’s voice became more beautiful. “You cried that night, the innocent tears of a hurting babe. I found it moved me. Old as I am, very little does.”
“I’m not supposed to be here.” In this room for this meeting. My father wouldn’t want me near the Cathedral or this man. The power of that latent thought was so insidious, so all-consuming that my eyelid twitched.
A frown, the expression insincere when his eyes shone so bright. “Then why did you open a portal and come to me?”
“I don’t… know.” I couldn’t cast portals! I didn’t know how I’d come to be here or why Malcom had vibrated with apprehension. Why he’d told me to think of hate, and how easy it had been to fall into the habit.
My father had not noticed me. Because my thoughts were ugly and unremarkable in the sea of ugly unremarkable minds.
Hypnotic, a voice I could love moved through my spirit, my flesh, and made all the little aches go away. “Tell me of your father. Spill every secret you know.”
And I laughed, loudly. “I know none.”
“Ahhhh, child.” The caress of that endearment, of Vladislov’s complete attention, warmed me despite the chill of the room. “Start at the beginning, and let’s peel back some of these layers, shall we?”
My story began with my head cracking against the wall, the sensation of my brain matter spilling out. The smells of the floor and taste of grape as I’d dragged my carcass to my casket. How a stranger had come with handfuls of me to put back in the crater. One who sewed me up with tar-black blood and careful attention. Freely, I told that man these things.
I spoke of beatings and sex. I unfurled every bit of personal shame, all the words spilling from my mouth like a corrupt
ion. Decades of my life purged, belched, made the air grotesque, but not once did Vladislov lose interest. He listened without speaking.
Uninterrupted hours.
Until I felt unburdened, changed.
Chin resting in his palm, soaking me in attentiveness, the man sitting the throne said, “And you thought you knew no secrets. What a vault he’s made of you. Can you even recall half of what you told me?”
I felt so young then, nothing but a little girl in a blue dress. “I’m tired. I want to go home.”
“Child, tell me one more secret, and I’ll send you on your way.” I’d tell him anything. Anything he’d ever wish to know. “What would you do to this Cathedral had you the power to act as you pleased?”
No hesitation, I wasn’t even afraid to say something so hideous. “Burn it to the ground.”
“With or without your father’s flock inside?”
That was the question that stumped me, because I had no answer.
Hands to the armrests, Vladislov stood, moving like a cool breeze. Whispering past me he said, “Think on it. I’m interested in knowing you better.”
And then he was gone.
Alone, barefoot and underdressed. I stood like an urchin before a vacant throne, unsure what to do with myself or where to go.
I never even heard his steps before a coat was wrapped around shivering shoulders. “Of all the places you could have traveled through portal to…” Malcom pulled me to him, wrapped me in strength and a niggling, itchy comfort. “Time to return home.”
Portals could not be cast within the warded Cathedral. Antechambers existed that allowed the magic to work, but I had somehow, without chanting and without meaning to, landed in the middle of an audience.
I had done that. Not Malcom.
It was to myself I muttered, “I don’t know how I did it.”
But I thought of home and how badly I needed to be anywhere but where I currently stood. And then I was. My kitchen was a mess of takeout containers and empty ice cream bins. It smelled like human laziness and petulance. It smelled of several days gone.
