12. Novak
Chapter 12
Novak
“ E ver ridden a motorcycle before?”
Amy shot me an apprehensive look as she walked next to me. “No.”
“Would you like to?” I dug out my keys, tossed them in the air, and caught them. “The night is young, and it’s not too cold.”
We walked a few more steps down the cobblestones of the oldest neighborhood in the Heart, approaching my home.
“Okay, fuck it. Why not?” Amy said.
She seemed distracted, maybe a little wistful. She’d been in a cheery mood when I’d arrived for the ceremony, but by the time it ended, she was noticeably more withdrawn. Maybe she thought her friendship with Tavia would take a backseat now that she was officially mated.
From what I gathered, Amy was also a bit of a romantic. Did she wish for a relationship like what Tavia and Cyan had? I mean, who fucking didn’t?
A blood mate was rare, but a long-lasting romance filled with passion, love, and devotion? Before witnessing the ceremony today, I wasn’t sure such a thing existed at all.
There was no love between my parents, or even between my father and his primary blood pet. She’d had good genes for breeding, so he fucked her until they made my half-brother. That heir, the golden child, was one of my biggest tormentors.
My mother may have loved me. Our household staff said she was sweet and soft-spoken, but Rathka’s Curse took her before I reached adulthood at one hundred. My memories of her were vague at best. My brother’s mother made her resentment of me extremely clear. She made sure to let me know how much she hated my existence simply because my father paid attention to another woman who wasn’t her.
I pulled my focus from those thoughts as I unlocked my garage door. Dwelling on my past would send me spiraling if I ruminated too much, and I wanted to enjoy the rest of this night.
“Put this on,” I said to Amy, handing her my spare helmet.
I waited until her ears were protected inside the helmet before turning the motorcycle on. The initial roar filled the garage before it lowered to a rumble. Amy stood nearby while I did all the initial checks—tires, fuel, fluids. I didn’t take the bike out nearly as much as I liked to, so I always made sure it was in riding condition.
Once satisfied it was good to go, I threw a leg over and settled in the seat. “Hop on.”
Amy climbed on behind me and placed a tentative hand on my waist. Reaching behind me, I brought her hands forward until they rested on my stomach, her arms snugly embracing my sides.
“Hold tight and lean with me. We’ll go fast, but keep holding on and match your movements to mine. You’ll be safe as long as you hold on. Understand?”
Amy nodded, her eyes bright as full moons in the slim opening of the helmet.
I went slowly at first, minding the busy streets full of pedestrians and other riders in the Heart. Everyone seemed to be in a celebrating mood after the ceremony. Businesses and homes threw open their windows, letting loud music blast out onto the street. People danced on rooftops and as they crossed the street.
The celebratory atmosphere was infectious. I wanted to feel it too, but where it was quiet. And with only one person.
As soon as I found an open road heading north, I accelerated with a roar of the engine and tore across the landscape. Amy clutched me tighter with a gasp, and I couldn’t help the grin on my face or the leaping thrill in my blood as she pressed against my back.
The wind made her dress flutter behind us, baring her legs that cradled mine. When we got to a comfortable cruising speed my fingers itched to fall to the side, to rest on her knee that gently pressed on my outer thigh. My thoughts weren’t even sexual in nature, at least not entirely. I just wanted to casually touch her with no ulterior motives, because she was there.
I wanted to touch her to give her comfort, maybe even seek comfort from her. And something else I realized with the clarity of the cool evening wind whipping at my face: I wanted to touch her like she was mine.
While my grip tightened on the handlebars, Amy had begun to relax. Her hands rested on my hips, her torso leaning lightly against my back. The elevation began increasing as I headed for the mountains, and the roads started to wind.
Amy leaned her weight on me with every turn, just as I told her to. She remained relaxed, even as the roads grew steeper and the turns more harrowing. I knew these roads well and her body language suggested she trusted me. The higher we climbed, the more the temperature dropped, and the only tension I felt from her was an occasional shiver from the cold.
I pulled onto the next available turnout, which just happened to have a spectacular view of the full moon and the forested valley below.
After shutting the bike off, I leaned forward to peel my suit jacket from my arms. “Here, put this on.” I held it out toward Amy. “I could feel you shivering.”
“Thanks.” Her voice came out muffled from within the helmet’s padding.
“You can take that off if you want,” I said, sliding off the bike. “I’m not about to punt you into the valley.”
With a laugh, she removed the helmet and shook out her hair. “Is this our destination?”
I realized I was staring as she smoothed her hair out, and turned to look beyond the guardrail. “I didn’t have a destination in mind,” I admitted. “I just thought you’d want to get away for a bit.”
“Well, this is beautiful.” She walked up next to me, swimming in the jacket she’d put on. The moonlight made her eyes shine even brighter, like two galaxies in the cosmos. “Is all of that still Sanguine?” She pointed at the distant mountain range, the contours of the sharp, jagged peaks just barely visible.
“Yes, that’s the Crown. The northernmost region of Sanguine. If you head east,” I pointed to the right, “you’ll eventually run into Vargmore, the werewolves’ land. But those mountains are ours.”
“What’s with the names?” Amy wondered. “The Crown, the Heart. I’ve heard vampires say Sapien is in the Ribs. Is all of Sanguine supposed to be a body?”
“Yes, actually. We believe Sanguine to be the body of Temkra, our primary deity. The story goes that she lay down and sacrificed her flesh and blood so that her children, the vampires, would have a home.”
“Oh.” Amy fell quiet for a few moments. “I see. That’s really beautiful, actually.”
“Sometimes I do forget how beautiful this place is.” My gaze remained on Amy’s face. “It’s nice to be reminded.”
“And who is Rathka?” Amy walked forward, approaching the guardrail.
“Temkra’s younger brother. He’s an opposing force to Temkra. While the goddess is nurturing, patient, loving, Rathka is impulsive, vain, and violent.”
Amy turned to look at me, an impish smirk on her face. “And your clan chose to embody him over the goddess?”
“Correct again.” I sighed. “Rathka’s Order was a warrior clan, but we also enjoyed wealth. Obscene wealth, often to the detriment of other vampire clans. Some believe we took it too far, and that’s why Rathka turned his back on us, and cursed us.”
“With the sickness that made your clan monsters?”
I nodded. “The Crown region was actually my clan’s territory. The fortress I grew up in is just beyond those mountains.”
“Do you miss any of it?” Amy asked gently. “Your home? Your family?”
I let out a long, heaving breath. “Yes. I guess I do. I mean, it’s where I spent my childhood. They were the people who raised me. We used to be at the top of the vampire hierarchy, and now it’s just… me.” I frowned, trying fruitlessly to untangle the complicated feelings I’d carried my whole life. “I had everything I ever wanted, but I wouldn’t call my childhood happy. I can’t definitively say if I ever loved my family. Especially as everyone around me got sicker and I never changed.”
“I’m sorry,” Amy said. “That must have been so scary and isolating, watching everyone change like that with no answers.” She slid her arms underneath mine and looped them around until she was gently hugging my bicep, her head leaning on my shoulder. “If your family knew you’ve been trying to find a cure all this time, I’m sure they’d be so proud of you.” Her head lifted and her voice brightened with hope. “If you discover it, you’ll be able to tell them then. Wouldn’t that be amazing?”
I smiled in spite of myself. She was so pure-hearted, she had no idea. If my father was still out there, and I cured him of Rathka’s Curse, he’d flay me alive with silver knives for allowing Blood ‘til Dawn to become the ruling clan, a title he believed belonged to Rathka’s Order alone. Of course, he conveniently ignored the historical facts that we’d never managed to hold onto the ruling seat in the few, brief times we’d had it.
“Honestly, I don’t know if I’m any closer to finding a cure now than when I started,” I admitted. “Part of me wants to throw my hands in the air and give up, but… ” I trailed off, once again at a loss to describe my feelings of obligation to my family. I didn’t love them, actually hated them most days. But they were my kin, my blood. I owed them the effort, didn’t I?
“You still feel the need to be loyal to them,” Amy said. “Like a sense of duty.”
I looked at her. “Yes, that’s exactly it.” Her embrace around my arm had loosened, and my fingers found hers to entwine with gently. “Don’t tell me your family is like mine.”
“My blood family? Never knew them,” she said with a shrug. “Sapien’s population has been shrinking over the years because so many humans left to live among the vampires. The elders said that’s what my parents did. Tavia’s too. The whole community raised us. So they’re all my family, in a way.”
“That can be good and bad.” I walked toward the guardrail at the edge of the turnout and stepped over it, leading Amy along by the hand.
When I took a seat, she settled down next to me. We had an unobstructed view now, the massive moon painting the mountains and valley below in silvery light.
“Yeah, it wasn’t all good.” Amy released my hand to clasp hers together in her lap. “I was… bullied. A lot. The only one who ever stood up for me was Tavia.”
“Bullied? Why?” I stared at her, unable to comprehend it.
She was breathtakingly beautiful, clever, and so sweet. Not that cruel behavior toward a child was ever warranted, but it just didn’t make sense to me. If I were a human boy, I’d be a stammering, blushing mess every time I talked to her. As a man, I would have been trying to impress her, to court her until she told me off or agreed to be mine.
Like you’re trying to do now?
“I was born premature,” Amy explained. “So I’ve always been small for my age and I had some health conditions. A heart murmur and asthma. I never could keep up with other kids my age, so I got ridiculed for it.”
“Fuck. That’s terrible.”
I didn’t have the exact same experience but could relate to what she must have felt. My brother and I were constantly thrown into competition against each other, and it was never a fair match. He was forty years older than me, and bigger and crueler in every way.
“As an adult, I still struggled with a lot of things,” Amy went on. “Anything to do with manual labor, really. I think people started to resent me because I couldn’t push myself as hard to contribute. So I tried in other ways. Cooking, making blankets in the winter, watching children while parents worked.” She let out a sigh that seemed to deflate her whole chest. “Don’t know if it ever made an impact though.”
“I’m certain that it did,” I said. “You don’t need brute strength to be valuable to a community. It sounds like they didn’t appreciate you enough.”
She shrugged and laughed lightly. “Whether I was appreciated or not didn’t matter to me, honestly. I was always happy to help. It felt like I was doing something important, keeping our human community alive in a vampire-run world.”
That was one place she and I differed greatly. All my life, I sought approval from my father and my brother. I thirsted for a single word of praise or pride like a prized drop of blood. Sometimes I wondered if I was still chasing that approval, that acknowledgment that I’d done well by our clan, by trying to find this fucking cure.
Amy’s smile faded as her fingers rubbed absently at her throat. “Since becoming a brusang, I haven’t felt any of my symptoms from before. No shortness of breath, no crazy heartbeats or feeling faint. I feel physically stronger too. I bet I could do a lot more for them now than before.”
“It must be the healing properties of vampire blood,” I mused.
She laughed bitterly. “But would they even want me back now?”
“Are you thinking of going back?” My chest squeezed with an uncomfortable ache at the thought.
“I don’t know.” She sighed again. “Now that Tavia’s got a life beyond fighting my battles for me, I have to figure stuff out. I just never thought we’d end up in such different places, you know?”
“She’s not going anywhere,” I reminded her. “She’s still your friend. You two live in the same place.”
“I know, it’s just different now.” Amy laughed. “It sounds silly, but we really were attached at the hip all the time. People thought we were sisters. Now I have to do life without her.”
I waited a long time, weighing the pros and cons of my next thought before taking the leap and saying it. “You have me, you know.”
Amy reached across her lap and placed her hand in mine. The small touch sent a fire blazing through me.
“Thanks for saying that. And you have me too, Novak.”
“Thank Temkra for that.” My thumb moved across her wrist, and it was only then I noticed that her veins felt more rigid and prominent than they should have. Almost like tendons instead of blood vessels. Her face looked fine, if a bit thinner than usual.
“Akra, when did you last feed?”
Amy lifted an eyebrow. “When I was last at your house. Why?”
Concern tightened my chest. “That was over a week ago. Why didn’t you take blood during the week?”
“I don’t know.” She pulled her hand from my lap, turning her gaze away.
“Aren’t you hungry? Your veins are stiff, have you not been feeling well? You should have told me.”
“It’s not a big deal,” she protested. “I’m a little hungry, sure. But I’ve felt okay all week.” Holding her wrist in her opposite hand, she mumbled something else under breath.
“What was that?”
“I just… I… ” She stopped and chewed her lip with her small fangs. “Never mind. It’s probably weird and childish.”
“Akra, tell me,” I urged. “You’re new to this; there’s no need to be embarrassed.” I reached for her hand again, just lightly brushing my knuckles against her fingers. “I would never ridicule you.”
Amy slowly opened her fingers, allowing my hand to rest in her palm. She spoke looking down at our hands, in a voice almost too quiet for me to hear.
“I don’t want blood from anyone but you.”
My chest tightened again, but for a different reason. Pride and affection threatened to burst through my ribcage. She wanted me, and only me. To her, it may have been childish, but to me it was everything.
“Let’s ride back,” I suggested. “We can stop at a restaurant for a glass, then find somewhere private for you to feed.”
Amy looked up briefly, then returned her gaze to our hands. She turned my hand over and gently stroked her thumb across my wrist as I had done to her. I heard the small hiss of breath as she touched my pulse, her fangs growing long and her pupils dilating.
“Can I try without the glass?” She was already lifting my wrist toward her mouth.
Please, yes, I begged inside my head. Put your lips on my skin. Taste me and take what you need.
“Are you sure?” I asked with a tight breath.
She unbuttoned my cuff and pushed my sleeve to my elbow. Just the light drag of her fingers on my forearm lit up my nerves like lightning in a storm. She could touch me anywhere and it would be bliss.
“I don’t want you using the knife,” she said. “I don’t like seeing you hurt yourself for me.”
“It’s not a problem. Don’t make yourself uncomfortable for my sake.”
“I’m not uncomfortable.”
Her lips touched the skin of my wrist in a moment of heightened anticipation before her fangs sank in. The sharp penetration was brief and little more than a scratch, and then her instincts took over. Amy’s lips sealed over the wound and she began to pull from my vein.
My eyes shunted closed at the sensations sweeping my body. It had been so long since I directly fed anyone, and I remembered it being pleasant.
But this... This was something else entirely.
Every draw of her mouth was like a caress on my erogenous zones. My neck, my groin, even my lips and ears. I shuddered with sensitivity, desire filling me with aching need. Why wasn’t she in my lap? The only thing better than her pulling on my vein would be if her ass pressed against my cock at the same time. Then I could bite the nape of her neck, tease between her legs with my free hand, anything to make her feel just as good as I did.
“Akra. Darling.” My fangs throbbed in time with the pulse in my cock, the need for her rendering my words as little more than growls.
Amy’s aroused scent bloomed in the air, tangy and floral. Her thighs pressed together, hips shifting in little squirming movements. My forearm pressed between her breasts as she sucked at my wrist. I used my free hand to push her hair from her neck, massaging and caressing her nape as I leaned in. Fuck, she smelled incredible. I hadn’t even tasted her yet and I was drunk on this woman. I wanted to drown in her.
“Amy… ” Her name left my mouth as a reverent moan, the type of thing I would say at the height of pleasure.
But saying her name seemed to break a spell.
Amy removed her fangs from my wrist and turned her head to face me. I had leaned in so close that her forehead and nose pressed to mine.
“Novak?”
The question in her voice was what sobered me and prompted me to pull back. Sexual need still coursed through me, and her bloodstained teeth and lips did nothing to dissuade it. Those bright, questioning eyes with her bloodthirsty mouth took my breath away and would fuel my fantasies for ages to come.
But she had stopped feeding and my mind cleared of the overpowering lust. I realized what I was about to do—bite her in return, and touch her in ways that were anything but platonic.
Two things she had definitely not asked for, and would certainly erase all trust if I carried out those desires. She felt safe with me and that was not something I intended on changing.
“Have you had enough?” I asked, my voice like gravel.
Amy licked her lips then ran her tongue over her teeth, and it was all I could do to stifle the groan in my throat.
“I think so. Thank you, Nov?—”
“Good. Let’s get you back.” I stood from the guardrail, stepped over it, and hurried back to the bike before I could do anything I regretted.