Cathedral Manuscript-WIDE FINAL

by Addison Cain

  And Malcom was there, having followed me through whatever magic I had unknowingly used, ushering us toward my room. Toward a bath.

  It was dark outside, leaving me no sunlight to soak in or the ability to wriggle out of Malcom’s never-ending touch.

  Tub full and steaming, bubbles added in, it waited for me. And I stood there like a simpleton while Malcom removed my dirtied dress, my panties, another layer of me. I stood there staring forward, trying to navigate a mind that made no sense.

  “I told him things.” Horrible things that I should not have known, that even now flickered in and out of my memory as if imaginings.

  “Of course you did.” No censure was in Malcom’s response, nothing but doting attention as he helped me step into the bath.

  Knees to my chin I stared forward while he ran a length of expensive Egyptian cotton across my shoulder blades. Tracing the length of my spine, the shape of my ribs, dips and curves, taking his time.

  He washed my hair, an intimacy even Ethan never participated in. Dipped me back to rinse it. Carefully combed through conditioner. Cleaned my nails of chipped polish, shaped them. While I soaked in heat as if I’d been frozen inside and needed to thaw.

  I was incapable of considering Malcom’s attention as anything unclean. It was impossible when my mind was spinning—full of the face of an ancient who’d opened me up like an unripe bloom. Too early, petals not yet fully formed, but free nonetheless. A forced bloom that looked the most striking in a vase and failed the soonest.

  It took unimaginable effort to shift my eyes to catch the devoted gaze of my guardian. It was even harder to ask. “What deal did you make with him?”

  Cupping my cheek, gentle, Malcom said, “In exchange for fealty, I begged him to save the thing I loved most.”

  A little girl in a blue dress whose mind had been tampered with by her father and was in such a riotous mess that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to climb back out of it. “You committed treason.”

  “I couldn’t let you die, cast off like… not when I’ve always known how precious you are.” His grip on my jaw grew firm, as did Malcom’s fiery expression. Even his fangs elongated to a startling degree. “I stood there the whole time he pieced you back together. Paid an eternal debt in exchange so that one day I could keep you. The little girl in the blue dress all grown up and mine.”

  And that sank deeper than any bite. “I’ve been everyone else’s but yours.”

  I’d never seen this side of him, passion enraged, so beyond collected I hardly recognized him. “You’ve always been mine. From the moment I held you bloody and fresh from the womb. He hadn’t even swaddled you, just dumped you cold and naked, cord still attached, in my hands. I quitted your cries. Found you milk; nursed you blood from my fingertips. I hid you from the court except when your father wanted to prance his prize pony about. I’ve murdered almost every human you slept with, hundreds. I didn’t even drink them. I just left them to rot.”

  This fairytale sounded so untrue I began to wake from my stupor. “My father would have never allowed any of this.”

  Not out of love for me, but out of control. He dictated every breath I took.

  “Your father is an absentee king so obsessed with his treasures he forgets you exist for months at a time. And when the bastard is coherent enough to serve his duty, he orders you whored out—as if you were not the offspring of an ancient bloodline and precious. He had you lay with humans.” The last word was said with such disgust, I felt it like a living thing in the room.

  Malcom was not finished. “Do you not think he would do the same to our children? That he would not toy with them in his sick-minded fascinations with suffering. Darius has lived too long!”

  This was some trick, some new game my father played. Sloshing back, water waving in the monstrous tub, I put space between myself and this stranger who spoke of our children as if it were some given. And I looked at him. I really looked at Malcom and found a stranger in his skin.

  As if he might read my thoughts, he swore, “You don’t need to be afraid of me.”

  At that I laughed, choking on bile, and I backed into the farthest corner my tub might allow. “You are insane. No one can challenge Darius and live. I’ve seen it. You’ve seen it! We’d all be a puff of ash with a mere snap of his fingers.”

  “I paid the price for you. And I will keep paying it. That’s all you need to know.” Fully clothed, he followed me straight into the tub, burning with all he had to say. Shouting. “Hate me! Hate me with your every last thought so your father remains blind to the beautiful workings of your mind. And when it’s over, I’ll teach you to love me.”

  Practically speechless, I shook my head, water droplets falling from my hair. “It doesn’t work that way. I love Ethan...”

  “And we have a deal, remember that.” Pressing me tight to the tiled wall, my legs slipping at odd angles due to the tub, Malcom promised, “You will have your Ethan as you submit to me. Your vow was already given. And I’ll take the rest now.” Mouth on mine before I might grasp the need to flee, a tangling tongue drove in.

  If a kiss were life, if it were death and rebirth. If it were ownership. That was what was poured past my lips. Into me like blood. So this must be what the change felt like when a mortal was turned, the power flowing from one to another. Swelling empty veins, undoing the rot of a dead heart.

  This was how a man in love kissed his bride before riding off to war.

  How demons fornicated in the dark.

  The very last kiss I’d survive.

  I wore Malcom’s ruby locked around my neck. I felt his trousers wet with suds pressed into my skin, his fingers already working between my legs. It wasn’t even a question of friction or skill, it was a moment of being. One instance I was Jade, the next I was nothing.

  Because I came so hard, bones broke.

  The pain was unbearable, left me sobbing as I rode pure magic and disassembled.

  Agony.

  A zipper was torn, fingers pulled from my cunt so a ready cock might replace them. Against the wall, soaking wet and slippery. Malcom fully dressed with his slacks hanging around his thighs, he fucked me so hard the tile at my back cracked. And I came again, clawing at his back through his sweater. Shearing the fabric when another wave of toe-curling torment broke from my center to my fingertips.

  It was as if his cock were too big, the way I burned and stretched. Which was unthinkable considering the myriad lovers I’d fucked. The ways in which I’d been fucked. The amounts of cocks that had fucked me at one time.

  And yet, I was overly full. When his spend began to shoot down his shaft, when even that fluid added to the corked well inside me, I burst.

  Split right down the middle and shed my skin like a snake. At least that’s how it felt when he cried out that he loved me.

  Swallowing back screams, I found my voice didn’t beg him to stop this madness. I was guilty of the opposite, I begged for more. Harder. To break me. And though he’d emptied his sack, still hard, he ravaged.

  Tore at me with his teeth, drank from my breast.

  Tiny flutters, minuscule pulsations came from my cunt, feathery light against the intrusion. Edging my enemy past sanity so I might know more of this pain.

  “Never stop!” If he did, I’d go mad from want of it.

  A world of white and blood where, for the first time in my pointless existence, I felt the truth. There was no pain in this.

  Malcom only gave bliss.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Malcom

  She was flawless in my arms. And after the hours and myriad ways I had pleasured her, it almost seemed her blue eyes were even enthralled when they ran over the man who ruthlessly pumped his hips to fill her cunt with cock. Never had Jade looked at me in such a way. Not even when she was young, before her father poisoned her mind against me.

  She had never looked at me as the females of my kind did. They begged for my body. I had been called beau
tiful in hundreds of languages. I had driven women to despair when I denied them.

  Until that night, Jade had only seen hideousness.

  For brief flickers within our joining, she saw me.

  Inside her, moving our bodies into artistry that would make angels weep.

  There was some roughness in my bed-sport. Necessary when handling a female saturated in entitlement. But should she whisper a desire, I gave.

  And gave.

  And took decades of yearning out upon her weaker form.

  So many bites and bruises, kissed with loving lips. Healed when I put her mouth to my veins and offered power.

  We drank as we fucked, her lips to the crook of my neck, mine to hers. Like husband and wife while I was cradled in her thighs. Which is what we always had been. Fate had made her mine from the day she was born.

  Nipples pink, peaked, and waiting, I’d pinch, pulling them from her body until her back arched and she came… again. Full of my cock. My seed. My blood. When I moved within her, felt her velvet slickness, I found home. The words that fell from my lips would have shamed the long-forgotten warlord I’d been.

  An eternity I’d waited for this. For slender limbs and guttural moans. For acknowledgment. For Jade to cling to me, arch her hips for what I might give. For me to show her the study I’d made of her body in all the decades I’d observed her whims.

  Each nerve was attended, sometimes with pain. Just enough to cull any thoughts she might have of retreat. The notion had crossed her mind, more than once in the hours I’d rode her hard. Small moments of conceptual duress, mental pockets still poisoned that required purging.

  She’d retched once. Just the once. When I’d made her say my name. Panting from the exertion to unwork another buried layer of ugliness her father had tucked in her psyche. Fighting back, claws in my ribs, she bucked to remove me from my home.

  My cock held fast, drilled all the harder so I might undulate my pubic bone against her sensitive and exposed clit.

  “My name is Maelchon of the Picts. I’ve conquered and decimated tribes, countries, destroyed peoples—salted their earth while mortal. I took no wife in pillage, waiting to find you. Immortal, I waited still—slain for you, sold my soul to have and keep what’s mine. The treasures I’ve collected, finery I’ve provided, your food, your drink”—pressing my lips to her gaping mouth, I breathed into her lungs—“your very air comes from me, wife.”

  Twisting our bodies, upending our play so my female might straddle my muscular thighs, I lifted her, lowered her, filled her up as her head lolled and her body fought through a faint. “And you will speak my old name, my true name, until I am satisfied.”

  But she couldn’t, not with her eyes rolling back and her pussy clamping down as if to beg my sack to fill her again.

  I obliged.

  Convulsions moved her as if she were possessed by the devil, made all the more extravagant when my thumb mashed her clit and my hand left a bruising grip on her ass. Seated, she would stay. Forever, if I had my way.

  Seated upon me. Full of me. Who loved her best and would cherish even the most horrible parts of her.

  Slick with sweat, she fell forward to my chest, her hand to my heart. Little claws digging into my ribs. Like this, she slept.

  Vulnerable, womb sticky with my fluids, hair matted from how I’d tangled my grip in it to hold her still when she thought to tell me how to fuck.

  I had never been more in love.

  Right then I made my vows, in the ancient language, inundating each word with magic. I took the vows from her as well, wove them into her being as she foolishly snored over my beating black heart.

  Just as I would have stolen her from her people ages ago, taken her to my hut, and made her my wife.

  Force was a powerful motivator to eternal bliss.

  Vladislov kept his word to me. None interrupted.

  Satan himself could be no worse than that one. But he’d been strong enough to hide portions of my memory from Darius, who never once understood how his child had lived.

  In sleep, Jade’s cunt tried to push me out, spilling some of my liquid gift. I’d give her more, make her fat with babies. But now my dear one needed rest. So I explored the bones of her spine, dipped my finger under her shoulder blades to work out knots. Forming her musculature into soft, pliant, comfort that made her hum in sleep.

  Ethan had never done this for her. The mortal pig had never tended her.

  Or given her the pleasure I had, dozens of times in the span of one night, I might add.

  No male—and I had witnessed every last act of fornication my woman had endured—had made her scream as I had. While feeding, she’d only tried to kill me twice. A marked improvement and playful tussle.

  Wine, food. No bath. A point had to be made when she woke. Already the sun was rising, I could feel the snapping whip of its spark upon my skin. But so full of her, I did not char. I tolerated. For as long as I might.

  I sang her to deeper sleep, the old songs my mother had warbled over fires. I spoke to her what my people considered the duties of a wife. How I’d be gentle with her when I laid her in my furs. That she’d drink from none but me, growing stronger daily until she remembered all the gifts she’d been born with.

  We’d have dozens of children. Mighty warriors and elegant lasses. Pureblood to glorify our house. We’d change whomever we desired, building an army of servants to tend our brood and to cook my daywalker's fine meals.

  Ethan would scrub her toilet, not that I’d speak that slave’s name aloud. Why disturb a perfect moment? The sun was already doing that.

  My skin began to smoke, to crisp down to the bone, but I had held her in it for at least an hour. And were I not certain it would kill me and leave her without a protector, I would have lain in that misery until moonrise.

  Careful with my prize, I rolled my wife from my chest, not so much as twitching when sunlight found new skin to burn. The finest sheets, wet from our lovemaking, were pulled to cover her, down-filled duvet bearing blue blossoms on a white background fell like snow over her body.

  She smiled in sleep.

  A thing I had never witnessed.

  Warmth spread from my heart, bringing with it a horrible certainty that should I lose her, I would cease to be.

  My Jade. Named for a common stone but more remarkable than a diamond.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I saw it, the look on her face when she woke to find her sheets smeared with char. The outline of my body where I’d burned caressing her as long as I possibly might. Fully healed and well-fed, I stood in the shadows and reveled.

  Those beautiful eyes had flashed with concern. For me.

  For a brief flicker, she’d believed I’d gone to ash in the sun. And she’d felt.

  Sitting up, linens falling from her perfect breasts, she’d traced her fingertips over a soiled soot mark that smelled a bit of burnt flesh. Jade moved as if aching, groaning and sinking down into her sheets even as she gathered them about herself. Covering the subtle, lingering bruising I’d purposefully left behind.

  I wanted her thighs to ache, her sex to throb, her joints to remember what we’d done. It was nothing that a single feed wouldn’t erase. But these teachable moments were precious and never to be wasted.

  “Coffee first… or a feed?” What a pushover I was. One grimace from her and I was already tripping over myself to lavish my princess with whatever she desired.

  Hand to her forehead, eyes anywhere but where I lingered in the dark, she grew shy. So sweet a thing my blood-fat heartbeat. My necklace was still around her throat, had been for days, and it was there her fingers trailed next. Testing the collar, she found it was solid and not designed to be easily removed.

  The fact she had not tried sooner, intriguing, though much had happened since I’d locked it around her throat.

  “I’ve taken the liberty of filling your chests with more treasures, but that necklace will remain in pla
ce until I see fit to replace it with another.” It was not about the childish way Jade enjoyed flaunting her throat before our kind, it was about ownership.

  I owned her, and now she knew. Vampires did not trade flimsy rings.

  She tried all the harder to remove it, but the clasp was ancient and the workings beyond her ken. “Jade, take a deep breath. Look at me.”

  It wasn’t instant, obedience never was with her, but after a few more pants, a pouty warble, and a long sigh, she did. “Our agreement never involved this.”

  “You offered me your body. There was no stipulation on how often or for how long I might enjoy it. I have decided on eternity. Take better care when making deals in the future.”

  “Are you insane?” There it was. Her fire, her anger, her spirit. “I think you really have finally cracked. Get this damn thing off my neck.”

  Time wasn’t wasted sauntering to her. I flashed from the dark corner to our bedside, took her wrist in hand. Her fingers flailed for a moment, the widening of her eyes betraying surprise before she tried to hide all she was feeling behind a cold mask of indifference.

  “My gift to my wife stays around her pretty throat.” I pressed a kiss, one that would have been considered chaste had it not lingered, to her temple. “And more gifts shall be put upon you and inside you.”

  I lowered her hand to cup my erection, Jade failing miserably at pulling away until I’d made her feel the throbbing, hard line of me. I set her free, she scooted back, the headboard containing her when I crept like a wolf over prey.

  I had bathed, though I’d despised rinsing her scent from my skin. But too much had been burnt for the perfume to remain without the stink. I had dressed: pressed slacks, cashmere sweater. Both dark and perfectly fit to my powerful form.

  She’d tear at them, I was sure, when I captured her parted lips and pressed her deep into the bed where I’d finally claimed her. Patience I had in spades, but I could also be playful. I knew she secretly loved playful.