Craved: A Vampire Romance (Marked by Night Book 1)

by Sara Thorn

  “You can’t just keep distracting yourself with self-indulgent revelries and playing the fool forever,” I said.

  He rolled over onto his back and continued his blank stare at the ceiling. “Watch me.”

  The door was locked, and Cassius was beside me like a watchful guard dog. So I let myself fall asleep. This time, in my dreams, we were drowning, both Cassius and me. I gasped for breath until Quinn’s hand pulled me up from the surface of the water. And when I reached down to grab onto Cassius, his mouth opened as he tried to speak with bubbles escaping from his lips.

  “What are you doing to me?” he said.

  In the morning, there was a fresh set of clothes and a towel laid out beside the bed for me. Cassius was no longer beside me, but I could hear water running in the shower from off the corner of the room, so I knew he was still here. I got up and went over to the table at the edge of the room and helped myself to a cup of fresh coffee and the top corner of some kind of muffin. His servants must have already brought all of this in, and I must have been in a seriously deep sleep not to have heard any of it. I was a slave to him, too, and I wondered what the other servants thought when they saw me asleep in his bed. I mostly wondered what Quinn would think.

  When Cassius walked back into the bedroom with nothing but a small towel wrapped around his waist, I nearly choked on my coffee. His body was the stuff of dreams for every woman who had ever watched one of the sexed-up vampire movies or fallen in love with the deeply disturbed, supernatural bad boys. He was only partially dried off, and water droplets ran over his pale, glistening muscles as he walked. He shook his head so that his dark hair, which was much longer than Athan’s, whipped around him and sent a spray of wet rain across the room. Then, he walked over to where I was standing and poured himself a cup of hot coffee. The dark circles under his eyes were intensely purplish.

  “Do vampires ever sleep?” I asked, wondering if it was normal for them to just stare at the ceiling all night, and also wondering if he had indeed gotten any sleep at all.

  “Not when they are plagued by the annoyance of a dancer in their service,” he chided.

  I stood next to Cassius as he took the first sip of his coffee, and I tried to resist the temptation to look at him more than I should be.

  “I have something for you,” he said. “For tonight.”

  I rolled my eyes without thinking. “Another party?” I asked. “And I’m dancing again?”

  “Yes,” Cassius said as he walked over toward a dresser and pulled the top drawer open. He returned with one hand held behind his back and the other bringing his coffee cup back to his lips.

  When I tried to tilt my head around his shoulder to see what he was hiding, he smiled and pulled his hand in front of him to show me. I took the black ballet shoes from him and turned them over to look at. They were gorgeous. The black satin ribbons were long enough to tie around my entire calf. Normally regular ballet shoes didn’t even have ribbons attached to them, only pointe shoes. But these were unlike any shoes I had ever seen. They were such a deep and inky black that they reminded me of Cassius’s eyes.

  “Thank you,” I said. “But why are you giving these to me? Do all of your dancers get these?”

  “No.”

  “Then why—”

  “Do you like them?” he interrupted.

  “Yes,” I answered gratefully.

  “Then there isn’t anything else to know,” he said. “I’ll have Quinn come and fetch you after your shower.” Cassius grabbed an armful of clothes that were hanging against the back of a chair.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “To prepare for my party, of course,” he said as he resumed his detached air. “Don’t worry; the door is heavily guarded. No one will be coming in or out of this room without my permission.”

  The party that evening was even more full of people than the previous one had been. I wondered how it was possible to throw giant revelries almost every single night. But apparently, revelry was something that vampires enjoyed, and Cassius was famously known for throwing the best and most flamboyantly indulgent parties, which drew great numbers of partygoers and lasted well into the following day. I was starting to lose track of time; without being able to see the passing of day and night, it all seemed to be blurring together.

  When I walked into the main hall with Quinn, Dregon was there in Athan’s place. I found it amusing to think that perhaps Athan was too intimidated by Cassius to attend his festivities tonight, although I had no proof of whether or not that was the case. I didn’t like Dregon. Even when I knew him as “Greg” at Inside Out, he always had kind of given me the creeps. Now that I knew he was Athan’s second-in-command, he creeped me out even worse. Quinn seemed to have the same feeling about him because he watched him suspiciously as we entered.

  “What’s up?” I asked him when I noticed how concerned he seemed to be by Dregon’s presence.

  “He never attends Cassius’s parties,” Quinn said as he tilted his head toward Dregon’s direction.

  I shrugged, not knowing anything about most of these people or their relational dynamics. One of the lace straps of my dress fell over the tip of my shoulder as it moved, and Quinn gently lifted it back into place for me. For a moment, his finger hesitated on my skin.

  I was already getting kind of used to being dressed up in new clothes each day. I guess that what they said about being a prisoner was true; after a while, you get used to it and even start to get excited about the bone you are thrown, like a caged dog.

  The dress was black lace and some sort of gossamer that clung to my body in the way I would imagine a wet butterfly wing would cling to itself. It reached the middle of my thighs and matched the deep-midnight ballet shoes that Cassius had given me. I had wrapped the satin ribbons all the way up to nearly my knees. Sen was with Quinn when he came to pick me up from Cassius’s bedroom, and when she saw my wild, loose hair hanging down to my waist, she offered to braid it for me. In a matter of seconds, she had nimbly twisted two long, black tendrils of hair that started at the top of my head and stretched down the back of my neck like reins. Sen seemed fascinated by my light-blue eyes and told me that she had never seen anyone who had such dark hair with such starkly contrasting light eyes. I told her that made us even because I had never seen anyone with cat-eyes before. She laughed, and I immediately liked her. I thought that brought my friend count here up to two now.

  “Hello, poppet,” Dregon said as he approached Quinn and me.

  I grimaced and didn’t want to answer him. Who uses a word like poppet anyway? “Dance with me,” he said, grinning.

  “No, thanks,” I answered as I moved my stance a little closer to Quinn.

  “That wasn’t a request,” Dregon said, without the grin this time.

  “Mara answers to Cassius,” Quinn said. “Not you.”

  “She’s a slave,” Dregon said as he grabbed my hand from my side and pulled me toward him. “She answers to any vampire who calls her. Feel free to run and tell your master I said that.”

  I saw Quinn’s eyes narrow and his mouth open as if he were about to throw some sort of curse at Dregon.

  “It’s okay,” I said quickly to avoid making another scene. “I’m sure one dance will be fine.”

  I hated that I even said that, and I hoped that Quinn would still go get Cassius. Cassius seemed to be playing the dual role of both my captor and rescuer.

  As Dregon pulled me to the center of the room to dance among the crowd of swaying vampires, I noticed that he didn’t seem to be dressed in party attire as the other people did. He looked as though he were wearing some kind of militant uniform, probably to support his ego, I would imagine. I tried to make small talk as he wrapped his arm behind my back and took my hand, hopeful that it would make the time pass quicker and keep him from trying to do anything other than dance with me.

  “So, are you here on business or pleasure?” I asked as I glanced down at his uniform.

  “Both,”
Dregon answered.

  “Is that smart?” I asked, pretending to be coy. “Mixing business and pleasure, I mean?”

  “I always derive pleasure from the jobs I do.” He pulled me closer toward his chest as we moved across the floor. His grip was tight and uncomfortable. “In fact, you’ve just helped me remember that I haven’t claimed my prize yet from the last job I did; the job where I brought you and those other dancers through that stupid game last week.”

  Wow, has it already been a week?

  “What kind of prize?” I asked.

  “I always make sure I take a prize for myself with every job I complete as a reward for my efforts. I think maybe I’ll take you as my prize this time. You can be my pretty pet and concubine.” His fingers had started to dig into the sides of my waist.

  My heart started to beat faster as my nerves raced out of control. “I don’t think Cassius would like that very much.” I tried to steady my voice, but the shaking was still noticeable.

  Dregon laughed and let go of me as the music paused. “I don’t think I care what Cassius would like.”

  As soon as I was freed from Dregon’s hands, I ran toward the door, hoping to find Quinn still standing there. But instead, Cassius was just walking in. When he noticed the look of fear on my face, he immediately grabbed my hand and pulled me tightly beside him.

  Chapter Eleven

  “There is talk,” Cassius whispered to me as I sat down in the chair next to his throne. “That Athan has agreed to let Dregon claim you for securing all the new human recruits.”

  “But you would never allow that,” I gasped. “Would you?”

  “No, of course not.” The way Cassius answered made it sound like I should have already known he wouldn’t have given me up, and despite still being trapped here, I was feeling less and less like merely his prisoner. “But, if the rumors that my servants have heard are true, then Athan may be effective at eliminating my ability to stand in the way of the arrangement he has made with Dregon.”

  “What arrangement?”

  “Athan has granted Dregon his request, in exchange for an assassination attempt on my life.” Cassius's voice sounded cool and void of trepidation.

  I, on the other hand, felt as though anxiety had just swallowed me whole. “Athan wants to kill you?” I asked, realizing that I should have kept my voice down.

  “Of course he does,” Cassius chuckled, but I failed to see how this was amusing. “He wants to silence the threat against him and gain unfettered rule over all the supernatural beings on Mystreuce. As long as I remain alive, Athan’s rule will never truly be unchallenged.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to watch you dance,” Cassius smiled as he waved his hand toward a rather attractive fae who immediately brought him a large glass of blood-red wine.

  “You can’t be serious,” I said. “You’ve just found out there’s a plot to assassinate you, and the very man who is preparing to do it is here in your hall, and you’re simply going to sit here on this highly visible throne to drink wine while you watch me dance?” Even he couldn’t be that foolish to risk his own life.

  “Oh, I’m very serious,” he grinned. “I’ve been waiting all day to see you dance in those new shoes.”

  “But—”

  “Mara,” Cassius said as he lifted my hand from the arm of the chair and coaxed me to my feet in front of him. “The snakes have to writhe out of the grass before they strike. I am watching, and I am waiting, but in the meantime, I would like you to dance for me.”

  It wasn’t as if I could refuse him anyway, regardless of how strange my relationship with Cassius was becoming, he was still capable of forcing my hand, and I really didn’t want to give him any reason to let Dregon at me. So I stepped onto the floor in my beautiful new ballet shoes and started to move. The music was lyrical and enchanting, and although I was nervous about being near Dregon, I knew that Cassius was watching my every step and his. I didn’t close my eyes this time. I watched the crowd around me and tried to stay as far away from Dregon as physically possible. I occasionally glanced around to see if I could spot Quinn, who hadn’t returned yet as far as I could tell. Mostly, my eyes were locked with Cassius’s fixed gaze as I danced until the music stopped and my feet were too tired to do more. When I took a break to have some water, I sat at the edge of the floor and sipped from a silver cup that felt cold enough to be made of ice. Cassius walked over and stood next to me.

  “I’m just getting some water,” I said. “Then I’ll dance more.”

  “I think we’ll leave now instead.”

  “But the party isn’t nearly even halfway through. Won’t your guests be upset if you leave your own party?” I asked.

  “One of the great joys of being the host is that I can do whatever I please,” he said.

  The other dancers stared at us as I got up to leave with Cassius. Surely, there were rumors about how much time he spent with me and not with any of the other humans. He grabbed a bottle of wine off one of the tables as we passed by it and shoved it into the crook of his arm. Then he picked up two silver goblets and let them dangle between his fingers as we left the main hall.

  We walked along the corridors, and I happened to notice when I looked down that he was barefoot. It made me giggle to think that he was so powerful and esteemed in this world, and yet couldn’t care less about the formalities of it all. I wondered if he did it more for a show of defiance, or if he truly just couldn’t be bothered with shoes. Cassius veered off into a tunnel that seemed narrower and darker than the others. It also seemed to be winding upward as if it were trying to surface from beneath the ground.

  “Where is Quinn?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  “I was just wondering. I hadn’t seen him since the party when Dregon pulled me to dance with him.”

  I noticed Cassius make a small grunt, and when I looked over, I could see his jaw muscles tightly clenched. I wasn’t sure if it was my asking about Quinn that had upset him or the thought of Dregon forcing me to dance with him. Cassius must have an extremely high level of restraint to be endowed with so much more power than the others and not be tempted to fly off the handle and use it against them.

  For some reason, though, he doesn’t seem to have that amount of restraint with me, I thought to myself as I remembered his hand going through the wall of his bedroom.

  Although maybe his restraint with me was even more remarkable, and that could have been something other than the wall that he took his frustration out on.

  The tunnel finally became too narrow for us both to fit through, so we had to walk single-file the rest of the way. Cassius motioned for me to walk in front of him, and as the climb became steeper, I felt his hand on the back of my waist to steady me. Finally, we reached the end of the tunnel and emerged outside. I couldn’t believe it; I was outside of the caverns and standing on the surface of Mystreuce. It looked exactly like the game I had played. It was nighttime, so the light was dusky and dim, but I could still make out the faint green of the rolling hills that spread out before us. And off in the distance, towering over the lower hills as if it were standing in a regal pose, was the glimmering, golden castle that I had become lost in exploring while inside what I had thought was virtual reality.

  “Oh my God, it’s real,” I said in a hushed tone.

  Cassius stepped up behind me and watched my expression as I looked around in awe.

  “Thank you,” I said as I turned to look at him. “Thank you for bringing me up here and showing me this.”

  The look on his face was one of pleased satisfaction.

  “Whose castle is that?” I asked.

  “Mine.”

  “What? Then why does everyone live down in the tunnels below the surface?”

  “They’re vampires,” Cassius laughed. “Remember? They can’t be in the daylight. That entire castle is lined with floor-to-ceiling glass windows. There’s no way they would be able to move around during
the day there.”

  “But you can,” I remembered. “You don’t share that weakness against the light, do you?”

  “Correct.”

  “Is there even a sun here in Mystreuce?” I looked up and saw what appeared to be several moons in the star-filled sky. It definitely didn’t look the same as my world.

  “Yes, equivalently, at least,” he answered.

  “So why don’t you just go live in your castle by yourself? Take your human slaves with you, and your fae servants; why would you want to stay down there in the tunnels and be in constant argument with Athan, when you could just as easily leave them all behind?”

  Cassius sighed heavily and looked forlornly out across the landscape. “It’s not always a matter of what I want.”

  The circles under his eyes seemed darker now beneath the moonlight, and the weariness in his shoulders was more pronounced. There was a look of yearning in his eyes, one that comes from having an unfulfilled dream that lingers just out of your reach. Cassius did want to live in his castle, above the ground, and on the beautiful land of his world, but despite the show he put on, he was too conflicted about his duty to his people to leave them all behind under Athan’s rule—even if he didn’t wear the official title of ruler.

  I wasn’t sure what came over me, but I threaded my fingers into his. It surprised him, too. At first, his hand jerked back as if a bug were crawling on him. But as soon as he realized what I was doing, he inhaled deeply and closed his fingers around mine.

  “How long can we stay out here?” I asked, not really wanting to put a time limit on this fleeting tease of freedom.

  “For the night,” Cassius answered. “Come,” he said as he softly pulled me alongside him. We walked up the hillside in front of us until we reached the flat, grassy top and sat down. Cassius lay down with his back against the ground and looked up at the moons. He clasped his hands over his chest and closed his eyes to breathe in the fresh scent of the night air.

  It must have been difficult for him to be surface the ground with the others, knowing that he didn’t have to, but also realizing that he did. I sat and stared at him for a few minutes as he lay there with his eyes closed, just breathing. His black silk shirt dipped into a deep V-shape on his chest, and the lines of his torso surfaced from beneath the thin fabric. I let my eyes run down his body and felt embarrassed when they seemed to stall at the top of his jeans. Cassius was always wearing black, which, along with his black hair and black eyes, made his pale skin look almost luminescent under the stars. I lay down beside him, close enough that I could feel his skin slightly pressed against mine, but not too close.