by Zara Zenia
I kiss her tenderly on the forehead, cupping the back of her head as I do so. Her hair is so soft and full. She smells amazing, despite the sweat from our passionate love making. The mingling of our desire has made an intoxicating miasma in the room that is still driving me insane. This is the first time I've felt truly at home in my plain room. There are no real decorations on my white walls. I admit to myself that it must seem weird me having nothing but a photo of her supposedly dead father on my wall.
"Well?" she says, taking me out of my thoughts. "Why did you hesitate to answer?"
"What? I'm sorry, I was lost in thought. This is all a lot for me to think about too. You can trust me, I won't make you regret that. Okay, Stephanie?"
"Okay..."
Chapter Thirty
Liam
Stephanie seems disappointed by what I've told her. She’s frowning, but there is something in her eyes that I can’t quite figure out.
"To think, I assumed you wanted me for me, not because you respect my father. It's kind of old fashioned don't you think? To arrange this whole thing with my dad like some arranged marriage. Did you sign contracts and everything? How many fattened goats did he give you as a dowry?"
"I can't tell if you're being serious or poking fun at me," I respond indignantly.
To her I must seem pretty childish with how reserved I'm being about it now. Finally she laughs and gives me a playful punch on the upper arm.
She says, "I'm just teasing you, Liam. Don't get so uptight on me now. I thought we'd broken through that."
"You seem to have broken through whatever negative emotions were holding you back before coming to this planet. Too bad I can't say the same. But your father has really helped me. He saved my life, gave me a chance to start over and improve myself. You can't blame me for wanting to get closer to you."
She smiles. "I suppose I can't blame you."
"Even if you weren't your father's daughter, I would have still wanted to mate with you. Do you really think I'm the kind of guy who would do something like that with someone I'm not crazy about? That was fucking amazing and you know it."
She smiles a sheepish smile. "Well, maybe..." I can tell she agrees with me though. Dirty thoughts are starting to come to her mind too, that's clear from her bedroom eyes.
"In fact, it seems like we need to go for another round. Right now. I can't get enough of your amazing body." I run my hands over said body, enjoying the firm curves beneath the blanket.
"Oh, so you just want me for my body then?" she asks teasingly.
"You really are a trouble maker, aren't you?" I respond in kind.
It's fun to have a laugh together after such an awkward moment. This is how we were before at the bar, flirting and making jokes with each other. Like we've known each other for much longer than just a few hours.
"Are you too tired out for my second wind? I can understand if I'm too much for you to handle."
"Wow, those are some big words from a guy who thought he wouldn't be able to last the first time. Although, you sure lasted. And then some. Come on, big boy, take me again."
Chapter Thirty-One
Stephanie
After we make love again—it was even better this time if that's even possible—it's finally time. "Are you sure you want to go do this now?" Liam asks me.
"I do, but do you think I could take a shower first?" I reply. Going to re-meet my supposedly dead father seems like something I need to shower for first. After all the sex, it would be nice to feel clean. Once I'm done, Liam takes me by the hands.
"You've already been to the red-light zone before, correct?" he asks.
I nod. Then we're gone, just like that. Gone from his bedroom and whisked away to the strange unsettling place that's known as the red-light zone. The first thing I see is a group of aliens gathered near us. They must have noticed when we warped in, or whatever it's called.
"Those guys seems kind of nosy," I say quietly to Liam. "Is it because we transported in all of a sudden like that?"
"No, it's probably because they know you're a human. And it's called tele-transporting. Don't worry about them though. This is a place people only come to when they want to get away from all the rules. Away from the prying eyes where people might be judging them."
I scoff at that. "So why are they gawking at us like that?" I ask.
He shrugs. "They're probably much more polite back on the Paradise side of this world. Here they can stop worrying about politeness. It's something that can really bring out the worst parts of a person. Promise that you won't let it do that to you, okay?"
"I promise." There's no way I want to let this dark and bizarre place get to me, change me for the worse. I'm not sure if meeting my father again is making me more nervous, or the fact that Liam could easily be lying to me. Maybe he's lured me here for some nefarious purpose. I wouldn't be able to stop him if that were true.
"I have to leave you now," Liam tells me.
I just stare at him in disbelief. "What, why?"
"Truthfully, I'm not really in the red-light zone with you now. I've teleported you there by yourself. Look closely, can you really see me, or just hear my thoughts in your mind?"
Like that, I realize he's not even standing beside me.
I call out to him, but he's gone. Apparently he just sent me here, and now our link between worlds is severed. Maybe I'd just been imagining his voice, his presence. That's not comforting at all, considering talking to an imaginary presence is not a good sign for my mental health. As I'm thinking all of this over, someone bumps into me. They don't even try to avoid me.
"Watch it, bitch." The woman's scowling face is full of disdain for me. "You're a long way from home now," she adds. She doesn't seem to be much older than me, a young woman in her twenties. Although I know that physical appearance here is not a clear indicator of true age. I just had sex with a man who was over a hundred years old yesterday, after all. Maybe she's a vampire, for all I know. There might be more races on this planet that I'm not aware of yet. That thought makes me feel so small, and in the dark. More accurately, in the red. The ever present red glow is starting to give me a headache. I don't think this is the kind of place my father should be coming to.
I'm so distracted that I don't notice someone taking me by the hand. This is where the nightmare is going to begin. Someone's about to take me captive and force me to do untold things. My time in Paradise has become a real life nightmare.
"Can it be?" asks a familiar voice.
I focus my eyes on the person beside me. "Dad?" is all I can say.
"It really is you, isn't it?" he asks.
We both seem just as lost as each other.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Stephanie
I lunge forward and hug him. There's no way I want to give him a chance to leave me again. It was all so sudden last time, without a chance to say goodbye. I didn't get to tell him how sorry I was for causing him to crash, making him leave me. My father hugs me back and tears begin to roll down my face. I can feel his tears on my face too, which only makes me start to cry even more. Then I move back slightly to get a good look at him.
"Why did you leave me?" I ask. There's no reply, but his face tells a story words perhaps could never tell. "You didn't even bother to come to Earth and let us know you weren't actually dead. What about poor Mom?"
"Come with me, and I promise to tell you everything." We walk wordlessly through the streets until we come to a humble little apartment nestled among the endless structures of the red-light zone. "It's not much," he says as we enter his home, "but it's all mine."
"You have a home back on Earth," I remind him with sadness. "With your wife, and your daughter..."
"You said you'd give me a chance to explain myself," he says.
"I honestly don't know how to feel about you. How do I know you're even my father? You could be some kind of fucked up doppelganger." The urge to run back through the front door takes over me. This was a foolish thing, to come t
o this place all alone. I didn't know I was going to be sent here by myself. Why did I trust Liam? He just wanted to fuck me and send me off to meet my fate. Katie's probably in on this cruel trick too. Everyone's against me—
"Whatever paranoid thoughts you have in your head, please just stop them, they aren’t real. Let me talk to you. Let me look at you," he says. "You're even more beautiful than you were the last time I saw you, Stephanie. Do you remember how we used to watch late night movies together on the weekend when Mom had to work late?"
"You always let me choose the movies we'd watch. Even though you probably hated what I picked."
"It wasn't about the movies to me," he says. "It was just about spending time with the most important person in my life, you."
I shake my head and look around his place. It's so small and somewhat rundown. Why would he choose to live here alone instead of coming back to Earth with his family? Anger rushes through me and I want to yell at him. The only thing stopping me is a wave of equally strong disappointment. I'm absolutely lost about what to say or how to react. I thought I wanted to see him again, but now he seems like a stranger. "The father I knew would never have abandoned his family like you did," I say. It hurts to utter the words, but they need to be vented.
"I don't know what to say," he replies sadly. There's a lost look in his eyes.
"You let us think you were dead."
"I am dead," he says. "It was better for you to think that. Better than letting you know the truth, that I'm a vampire."
"Vampires don't seem to be so bad," I say. Remembering the vampires I know, in a very close way.
"I'm glad you've had time to come around to that conclusion," he says. "But what if I'd shown up on Earth earlier? You had a funeral for me. Would you have been overjoyed to see me, or run screaming from the living dead freak?"
That gives me reason to pause. I want to give him a fair chance to explain himself.
So I stop and think about his words for a moment. Those familiar eyes are boring into me. He's the same person, my dear old dad. Only there's a strangeness to him that makes my heart hurt. Now I realize that's why I didn't want to go to him the first time I was in the red-light zone. He was this shadowy figure in the distance, alone, lost. Not quite the same person I knew. My emotions were already too mixed up at that time. Seeing him then would have been too much for me. Call me a coward, I don't care. I needed time to get used to the idea of having to confront him like this.
We sit on his tiny, two seat sofa in his dingy living room and talk. He's fascinated by the idea that he can be in Paradise, but still come to what he thinks of as a kind of hell. "It's the way people are wired, Stephanie," he tells me. "Pure Paradise would be too much goodness for us to handle. It would get old, and then we'd just end up inventing our own hells to even things out. We can't handle pure harmony."
"That's not what I've been told," I confide in him.
"Half of the people on Etwan are vampires, don't you forget that. They need to drain life to feed. How can there be a Paradise where undead monsters like us are so common?" His shoulders slump and he shakes his head. "I feel like I'm still human, and Paradise is all I want. Then I get that hunger to feed, and so I need to come back to the red-light zone. Being out here in this place, void of virtue, that's what makes me feel like less of an abomination. That's how it is for a lot of the vampires on Etwan. Some choose to remain here permanently. I don't know how they do it. Who can resist Paradise, even if it's just the occasional glimpse?"
"The other plane is Paradise, isn't it?" I ask him. "I've felt so different since Katie brought me to this planet. I don't want to stay in the red-light zone anymore. It's making me start to feel, I don't know, bad I guess?"
"We should leave. I wanted you to see me in this place so you could find out what my life is really like. Being in the Paradise side can make a person blind to the bad things in life. That's no way to be all the time. What's the difference between only ever being happy and being ignorant to the truth?"
"What's it like," I ask him. "Being a vampire, feeding?"
"Don't you dare start that. It's nothing to fantasize about. I will not let you become a vampire, Stephanie, no matter what you say or do."
Chapter Thirty-Three
Wayne
That's enough! I've let the others have their turns with Stephanie, but now I miss her too much. I've decides to go looking for her. Something doesn't sit right with me, but I can't figure out why. I've already looked in the local teen hangout, the bar, but she wasn't there. And the local cafes around her cousin Katie's place too. As I'm getting ready to give up trying to find her, Stephanie walks around the corner.
"Stephanie!" I call out. She's on her way back to the palace. She stops and waits for me to cross the street toward her.
"Wayne, long time no see," she says jokingly.
I chuckle a bit, happy to see her safe and in a good mood. At least, I think she's feeling good.
“Is everything okay?” I ask. The slight pause before she answers makes me worry now.
"I'm fine," she says. "If you want an honest answer... I thought you weren't interested in me anymore."
Dumbfounded, I stare at here wordlessly.
"Calm down," she says. "I didn't mean anything by it. Just, after we were together, you brought Dan to my room. You didn't even try to come near me. You just left him to have his way with me. And then Kurt? And all of you waiting in the living room? You didn’t talk to me. And Liam, you asked him to see if I was his mate! If you wanted me why would you bring me others?"
"I… it’s not like that, Stephanie, I promise. Things are different here. And since I already knew you were my mate, I needed to help you find your others. And when you were with Dan, it wasn't my time," I reply. "Trust me, I wanted to be involved. It's bad etiquette to get involved when someone's mating for the first time though. That's all over now though. We can be together as much as you want. Or ... as little?" I say it like a question because I'm worried she won't want to hang out with me anymore. To be with me again. I'm craving her body so badly, the taste of her sweet, salty skin. The way her body felt beneath me is all I've been thinking about these past days. I move toward her and hold her by the waist, drawing her nearer to me.
"Then I take it you do want to be with me still," she says with a big smile. "I wish you'd just be more open with me then. Be yourself."
I feel ashamed that she's seen through my bad acting. I need to stop trying to appear like I don’t care. That's not how a real man acts. It's not what a real woman expects either. You need to be true to yourself, I think.
"I promise to stop trying to be someone I think you want," I say, "and be more myself."
"That's a good start then," she replies.
"You're the only interesting person on this entire planet," I say. It's cheesy but true, and that's what I'm going for over being impressive. I want to kiss her, so I do. Our lips are like long lost lovers, exploring each other and finding everything just as beautiful as the last time they met.
"Wow," she says after our lips finally part.
My dick's getting hard with her closeness, not to mention the kiss.
She adds, "I believe that you did miss me now."
Her sly smile makes me want to take her right here in the street, but that's not the kind of thing people look kindly on in the Paradise side of Etwan.
"I can't believe you think I'd ever forget about you like that," I say, brushing her hair over one of her ears. She's so beautiful. "Those sparkling green eyes have me in a trap," I say. Again, cheesy as hell, but also very effective. She melts before me, eyes flitting away shyly.
Her smile is enough to tell me she loves my sweet talk, but she speaks too. "You're such a sweetheart," she says. "Let's go back to your place?"
"You took the words right out of my mouth," I say. With her on my arm, we go back to my home.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Wayne
I know the other guys are a lot different to m
e. Each one of us has his own style, and that's probably why we're such a good group to be mates with Stephanie. There's a harmony formed by the uniting of all five of us. I just need to be myself, as she suggested. It's the best way to be, probably.
My favorite method is to take things slow, be serious, make things really matter. I take her into my bedroom and lay her on top of the covers. Then I position myself over her, resting the weight of my body on one elbow so I can hover over her comfortably. Gazing down at her lovely face, I feel like everything else in the world is melting away. No one else matters in this moment, and nothing is going to rush such a sweet and perfect union.
"I can't get over how beautiful you are," I tell her before leaning down and kissing her cheek. I then kiss the same cheek again, and again, raining down kisses until she starts to giggle. Then I move to the other cheek until she starts to gyrate beneath me as though she's being tickled.
"Help, I'm being kiss attacked!" she mock-shouts out as though she's calling for help.
It's adorable and makes my heart beat tenfold more strongly. It beats for her, and only her for her.
"You're such a sweetheart," she says to me as we gaze into each other’s eyes.
With a warm, but still serious, smile, I respond with the first words that come to my mind. Those are the honest words that best represent my thoughts. "It's natural for me to be a sweetheart to you, Stephanie. That's the person in me you bring out."
She beams at me and says, "It's good to see you again."
She moves, flipping us, then, after unbuttoning my jeans, goes down on me. It's like she's a different person when it comes to sex. The first time, she was so shy about it. That was her first time though. Now she's been with three more men since then. While I watch her run those full lips over my hard cock, it actually turns me on to think about it. She might have had all of them in that mouth—it's almost a given that she did.
