Oh, his resentment was deadly indeed.
But his comment didn’t bring about the reaction she might have expected.
“Are you…did you get jealous?” Her stomach lifted, but she quickly suppressed the feeling. Valek didn’t deserve to be toyed with. Though, still, if he were jealous…it meant he wanted her all to himself. And she liked that idea.
“Of course I want you all to myself, Charlotte.” His pipe bobbed between his lips as he responded to her thought. He pulled it from his mouth, setting it down on the small table near his chair. “Isn’t that obvious?”
“Sometimes, hearing the words makes the difference.” She smiled weakly.
He sighed and more smoke furled from his nostrils. His glare touched hers again, his eyes flashing. “I…want you all to myself.”
The melodious tone of his voice descended into something of a seductive growl and it made the muscles in her lower stomach clench. His jaw tensed.
She shook her head. “But it was just feeding. He’s done it before.”
“No, Lottie. It is never just feeding. You don’t understand what it means to us—the attachments it holds. Because…you’ve never experienced them before.”
Her breath hitched. “Then, explain it to me.”
His winced. “I...It is not something I can very easily explain.” He shifted her in his lap, suddenly seeming uncomfortable. Leaning away from her face, he balanced his chin on his knuckles, his elbow rested on the chair arm.
“Try,” she begged quietly, edging closer anyway.
He swallowed. She could see his mind turning over some idea.
“Lottie…I don’t think I can ever truly be what you want me to be.” The admission sounded dry and broken.
“What does that mean?” The onset of panic tightened her chest. “You’re still unsure about the way things are now—”
“No. It isn’t that.”
He tugged at his ascot, continuing to avoid her eye. What was he getting at?
“I never anticipated how difficult this conversation would be because I never anticipated having it. If every other fundamental reason is not enough, this is the real reason it is so hard for mortal and immortal to be together, Charlotte. It has nothing to do with my feelings. It has everything to do with what I am. You must understand…feeding…it’s like….” He rubbed at his chin. “Our gratifications are different from yours. Do you understand?”
Charlotte’s eyes widened with her realization. Oh.
At last, he looked at her, his stare more intense than ever. Finally, he stroked her cheek.
“Blood isn’t just…food. It is not that simple. It’s life. It’s drug. It’s air, and love, and sex, and passion, and ecstasy.” He dragged his thumb across her bottom lip as he went on. “Everything that could make a mortal feel any sort of pleasure…that is what it means to us. It is the most intense high and the most terrible low. It is anguish. It is relief and release. Do you understand now?”
“Yes.” Charlotte nodded, her gaze cast to the floor. And, as best she could, she did understand.
Allowing Lusian to feed from her in front of Valek –it was sort of like…adultery. She was reminded of Evangeline, then. It must have hurt Valek. Bad.
“You didn’t know,” he muttered.
“That was why you were so upset about Francis’ request.”
“There were so many other reasons for me to be upset about Francis’ request, Lottie. They used you like trash.”
“But…all of your victims—”
“It is the most horrible addiction you can ever think of, Charlotte. Consider the worst alcoholic—the worst opiate addict in the world—and know that my suffering is even worse. And the worst withdrawal symptom is…a fate worse than death. Eternal agony. There is no choice for me. No escape. But you do have a choice. And I’d rather you choose only me. Because my heart cannot tolerate it otherwise.” The admission came out quiet and very sincere.
I only want you. She wasn’t sure who might be at the door listening, so she thought it at him.
He exhaled, smiling at last. Even though it didn’t reach his eyes, at least he smiled.
“That night…with Evangeline—”
He closed his eyes. “It was one of the greatest mistakes I’ve ever made. But your feelings baffled me at the time.” He peered at her again. “I’m sorry, Charlotte. Please know, I still remember what it is like to be human. Of course, I do. I know what you want. I’m not saying I lack the ability. What I’m saying is…the way I love is different. I have different needs. Different satisfactions.”
Charlotte nodded slowly, her mind reeling. “So…you and I have already…”
“In my mind…yes,” he admitted. Bringing his palm to her face again, he held her stare. His lips twitched with a new hint of a smile.
She thought about it, the memory of their first night together in Francis’ house. The wind. His claws. Low growls in her ear. The pressure. “And you…you and Evangeline never…”
He chuckled. “No, Lottie.”
It was an odd thought. The way she found he and the Witch together had been horrible, but at least she shared something with Valek Evangeline never would.
Her life.
But…what if I want you my way? She raked her teeth over her lower lip.
He smirked darkly but shook his head. “Maybe one day. But not now. My only endeavor is to make you well again. It’s bad enough I can very rarely come within ten steps from you.”
“I’m sitting in your lap now,” she pointed out.
Watching each other without acting on their impulses was cruel and torturous. So many notions rolled around in her mind and all she wanted to do was—
Valek chuckled darkly, making a noise that did everything to unhinge her. She loved the dimples flanking his mouth. She loved his pearly fangs—discrete—and the way they glinted in firelight, his thick, dark eyelashes, the way his hair waved over his shoulders, and the crinkles that appeared near his eyes when he smiled hard enough. She wanted a life-sentence imprisoned in his thick arms. She wanted to hide from the world with her face pressed to his broad chest. His legs were so long. His fingers were graceful, crowned by tapered claws that starred in both her fantasies and nightmares. She wanted to—
“Charlotte!” Valek snapped, his eyes wide but filled with interest.
He was still grinning, though maybe he hadn’t noticed because he was trying his best to sound severe. But she ignored it, shifting around and straddling him with her knees on either side of his hips. She held his face between her hands.
“If I can’t make love to you here and now,” she whispered in his ear. “At least let me do it in my mind.”
His lips parted. At once, and for the first time in some weeks, she watched his eyes shift from frosty blue to wicked and thirsty black. The lump in his throat dipped as he swallowed. Hard. Sighing, he shook his head no.
“When I am well again,” she breathed. Her fingers knotted in his hair, pulling lightly. “It is the first and only thing I want.”
Valek’s jaw tensed again. His brow furrowed.
“You and…Evangeline….” She stopped talking. She knew she shouldn’t keep bringing it up and it still hurt too much to say out loud. Instead, she recalled the images in her mind—the evening she’d walked in on Valek and the Witch together…in that very library. In his favorite chair. It the same position.
Valek shut his eyes too, looking just as pained. “Lottie. She wasn’t—”
“Your charge?”
“Mortal.” His eyes snapped open and they surged with anger and lust.
She considered what he meant. “Does it really make so much difference?”
His nostrils flared as his chest rose. “You’d be surprised.” He was struggling to hold himself together. She could tell by the way he leaned away from her, by the strain in his face.
Since I was sixteen….
He lifted his hand to her. “Don’t say another word.”
“I’m no
t saying anything,” she admitted innocently. Please, she mouthed the word.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Charlotte. You’ve never been frightened in such a way before.”
“You don’t frighten me.” She mimicked the words she uttered to him months ago when they were hiding in Francis’ basement.
“Don’t I?” He continued with an arch of his eyebrow, challenging.
This time, he wasn’t dying in front of her. This time, there was only his effortless charm—the ease of his sultriness. It was a quality all Vampires had, but Valek carried it with a refined grace that made it hard for her to concentrate.
Absentmindedly, Valek twisted one of Charlotte’s curls around his index finger
She wanted him to look at her again. “Do you like my dress?”
“It’s very pretty,” he murmured without meeting her eye.
Charlotte leaned in closer to his face. “I hope that you are not too worried for me. I know we will overcome this, too.”
He blinked once, as if there was something he needed to say, but he remained quiet.
“I think I am more like you than you know. I take lives as you do, so I am already a killer. I have an addiction, as you do. Why will you not transform me entirely if I am already as damned as you are?”
Finally, Valek dropped his gaze, though at nothing in particular, his focus distantly fixated at the floor.
“Your soul is clean, Charlotte. Your justifying murderous behavior is my responsibility. Your belief in the good of what you’ve done is blood on only my hands, for I’ve commanded it of you. Please, do not compare yourself to the likes of me.” His voice was pained, his gaze soft and sweet. He stroked one of his claws lightly across her cheek again and smiled. “And anyway, I prefer a killer in an angel’s body to a shell as beastly as mine.”
Charlotte trailed her fingers along his jawline, longing to pull his mouth closer to hers. “You don’t look very beastly to me.”
She kissed him lightly, trailing her fingers up the sides of his face and burying them in his soft hair. The sweetness of his scent enthralled her, but he pulled away after a few moments.
“You are playing with fire,” he panted.
“I know.”
His brow furrowed for a moment. “Why am I sensing that there is something else vexing you? It’s something you refuse to discuss with me,” he prodded, his knowing eyes narrowing at her.
He was all too observant. He probably didn’t even need to listen to her mind anymore to know when she was troubled.
Charlotte dropped her gaze, struggling with the next bit of it. “Well…it’s not a big deal now. Just something that happened some days ago.”
Valek sat straighter, his undivided attention jostled her nerves.
“It was something I dreamt. Though Mr. Třínožka said we should never discuss our nightmares for fear they might come true,” she started to explain, nervously toying with the hem of her dress.
Valek squeezed the point of her chin. “That’s silly. I’ve never heard that said before.”
“There might be some truth to it,” she confessed.
Her tongue swelled in her mouth as she grappled for the right words, her cheeks burning at one particular memory of her nightmare. She shivered.
“Tell me, Lottie. I’ll make it better. Let me.” His claw grazed the bandage at the curve of her neck. “Perhaps,” he offered, “it is the only thing I can make better.”
Bashfully, Charlotte peered up at him. “I dreamt of your wife, Valek.”
He drew in the smallest breath. He went rigid again, and at once, all his walls were thrown back up. He looked at the floor.
“She returned to you…in my dream,” Charlotte went on.
She could see him struggle to conceal his utter shock. New sadness filled his eyes, though he smiled faintly despite it. Softly, he traced the curve of her shoulder with the back of his hand.
Charlotte dropped her eyes again, blushing with the next memory of the nightmare, knowing he would see it play in his own mind as instantly as she did.
“You –you welcomed her.”
She wound her fingers together in her lap as she waited for his response. When he answered with nothing but silence, she looked back up to make sure he was still in the room with her. He only continued to stare forward, eyes narrowed and pained, as though watching her memories like watching a film.
“You still love her, don’t you?” She twisted Andela’s band around her right ring finger.
Valek’s eyes nervously darted about the room as though he were searching for the right thing to say. He cleared his throat. Her heart fluttered in her chest. When she saw that he wasn’t responding immediately, panic bubbled in her stomach.
“There will always be a type of love for her, yes,” he said finally looking back at her. “She was the love of my human life –when I was something different than I am now. Even though I keep those memories, that time in my life is over. I am a monster entirely new now, and you,” he held up his left palm to her, “are mine. You are the love of my life as it is now –the very one fate has brought me to. Don’t you ever forget it.”
Charlotte relinquished the breath she’d been holding for what felt like weeks. She leaned up and kissed him on the cheek.
“Thirsty?” she forced out breathlessly.
Valek sighed, sounding solemn, and almost a little peeved. His eyes narrowed.
“Your addiction is getting worse.” His words condemned her. They were a cold diagnosis –one a doctor would tell his patient. She wanted to argue back, but he interrupted. “It grows worse every time we do this. Sarah is right to worry for you.”
“I thought Sarah said there was no cure.” She grimaced. “Aside from the…obvious one.”
Valek’s expression hardened even further. His gaze snapped to her face, causing her heart to leap into her throat. He traced one of her dark, under-eye circles, trailing down her cheek and her chin to the small dip at the base of her throat.
Even though she knew it was biologically impossible, Charlotte thought about how much he seemed to have aged recently. Never at rest, his usually bright characteristics seemed to lack their unnatural glow. Constantly turning around dismal thoughts in his head –worrying about the Regime’s next move. Worrying about Charlotte’s condition. Carrying the weight of the world on his too-capable shoulders. She knew these things haunted him behind his eyes set aglow by the harsh firelight. Valek didn’t need any sort of God to send him to hell. He’d already put himself there.
“I know you hate me,” he whispered so close, his cold breath washed over her earlobe.
“I don’t,” she managed to get out, though her words were barely audible.
Valek ran the back of his hand down her arm as his gaze dropped to her lips, parted from the anticipation of him being so close.
“You’re an awful liar.”
Valek, continuing to focus on her mouth, slid his one nail down the center of her neck again and watched her shift uncomfortably as a wave of an odd new emotion fluttered down her middle and between her legs. Her fists knotted in his shirt. He chuckled and she could see the full glory of his pearly fangs.
“I love that I can do that to you,” he murmured, satisfied.
At last, he closed in. He kissed her with a great intensity, crushing his mouth to hers. Her scar reacted at once, flaring. But it was worth it.
Pulling away, he grabbed her wrist and drew it toward his face, sliding it along his cool cheek. “Don’t tell a soul.” He inhaled slowly. “I’ve missed you so much. Your taste. Your scent. Your pulse haunts me all the time.”
Charlotte watched his eyes engulf in black again. He opened his mouth and penetrated her skin delicately, the red pooling up around his lips.
The pain was rapture. It radiated up her arm and into her face where her cheeks tingled as she watched him. She rocked her hips forward, pressing herself tightly against him. She heard him groan into her flesh.
Releasing
her wrist, he plucked a wine glass from the end table and held it just under her open wounds. Charlotte watched her blood flow in silky, scarlet ribbons down her arm and into the glass –it was the most evocative thing she’d ever seen. She was hypnotized, almost wanting to lap it up herself.
When the flute was filled about a quarter of the way, Valek brought her arm back to his mouth and ran his tongue over the punctures, keeping his eyes painstakingly locked with hers as her wounds healed shut under his gentle licks. He dropped her wrist at last.
Then came a light wrapping at the library doors before Sarah’s face peaked through. “Everything back to normal in here?”
Valek held his finger to his lips, reminding Charlotte to keep their secret.
“We will continue this another time, Lottie,” he murmured, and sipped casually at the warm red contents as though it were an aged cabernet.
With the Lights Out…
Nikolai’s heart slammed hard once against his sternum, causing his eyelids to burst open. In utter panic, he grappled at his chest, willing his heart to beat hard again just to be sure.
I’m dead. My weird life caught up with me. I’m dead. I’m dead. I’m DEAD.
But what filled his vision did not meet his expectation of glorious gates, nor clouds, nor cherubs with trumpets in their tiny hands. Instead, he found himself surrounded by dank marble walls, the cavernous ceiling too high to see, but dripping with some unidentified moisture. His back was bear as he rested over a chilled stone slab in the center of a tomb-like hall.
Fuck. I’m in hell.
But he still was breathing. Interesting. Dead people didn’t breathe, did they? A dull pain throbbed at the sides of his head, flaring harsher when he inhaled. A concussion? This was impossible. He checked his pulse, feeling the beats go on at a slightly elevated rate. Why wasn’t he dead?
He sat straight up on the unfamiliar stone bed, blinking at the massive room. It was large enough to fit his entire house. Three times over. He began to count the pillars along the walls, the torches spewing scarlet and gold flames.
Near the farthest wall, deep in the shadows, a floor-length mirror stood on gold-leaf claws with nails sunk deep into the dirt. He couldn’t see his reflection underneath the thick layer of dust and time, though he swore he could see each and every little crack in the gold leaf. As a matter of fact, he could see every flake of dirt suspended in the stale air. He could smell the weird, earthy moisture, hear water running somewhere beyond the thick walls…but how? Heightened senses had never been part of his mysterious, oddball abilities.
Of Blood and Magic Page 19
