22. Novak
Chapter 22
Novak
A my is my blood mate.
It didn’t fully hit me until I’d been standing under the shower head for a few minutes. The result of my embarrassingly fast orgasm had washed away, and at the first thought of her, my cock thickened and pulsed, already needy for a real touch from her.
Only her.
Her blood was better than anything I’d ever tasted in my life. It was life itself, beautifully bright and vibrant on my tongue. Every swallow felt like a caress from my throat to my groin. I had felt some tingles of arousal from drinking blood before, but nothing like that. Amy had never even touched me directly and yet I’d made a premature mess of myself like I was a juvenile being gripped and stroked by my wildest fantasy.
Amy was everything I never dared to fantasize about because I never thought she could be real. She came to me when she needed safety in a vulnerable moment, defended me because of who I was, not because she was hoping to gain something from my clan’s name. She didn’t even care about the status of Rathka’s Order, or our contentious history with Blood ‘til Dawn. This stunning brusang with galaxies in her eyes and kitten fangs cared about me.
But blood mates were on a different level than caring for. Her blood was chemically and nutritionally perfect for me and me alone. All other blood sources would taste rancid and foul now that I’d tasted her. My vampire biology wanted me hooked on the one source that was my perfect biological match until my death.
That was absolutely fine with me. Another six hundred years of kissing Amy’s perfect neck before I sank into her? Sign me up.
The only question was, did she feel the same way?
I closed my eyes under the shower’s spray, the hot water running over me a poor replacement for Amy’s fingers. Weeks ago, when she first came to my house, she made a little offhand comment. Why does your blood taste so good?
At the time, I chalked it up to the fact that she was starving. Any blood would have tasted like a miracle. But then I remembered scenting her arousal in my kitchen, her little moans and squirms when she took from my wrist the first time. And the fact that she had never successfully taken blood from anyone else but me.
Had our true, physical chemistry been driving us toward each other since the very beginning?
“Fuck.” My head tilted back, letting the water rain down on my face. “Temkra, is it really true?”
No answer came from the shower head. If I really wanted an answer from the goddess, I’d have to meditate at my mother’s altar in my office. Or consult with a member of Temkra’s Blood.
A blood mate. For me, the disgraced second son of an extinct clan. After centuries of trying to prove myself worthy, it felt too good to be true.
Amy was already in my bed, asleep and breathing deeply, when I turned off the shower and dried myself. I slid in next to her slowly, taking care not to disturb her rest. Once beside her, I couldn’t seem to shut my brain off. I was lying in bed with my blood mate beside me, and she had no idea.
Now I had an even better reason to end the arrangement with Baros. Not even he could argue against who Temkra had chosen for me.
But there was still a problem that could get in the way of our happiness. One that had an insatiable hunger for vampire flesh and was currently haunting my basement.
My sleep had been fitful and restless, with long stretches of staring at the ceiling and watching Amy lying peacefully next to me. She roused when dusk fell, adorable as she stretched to wakefulness.
“Evening.” I slid against her back, kissing her nape as my arm went around her waist.
“Mm, hello.” She rolled into me, snuggling into my chest until she found a comfortable spot. “Sleep well?”
I kissed the top of her head. “Well enough. You?”
“Like the dead.” She yawned and kissed the space between my collarbones, firing up my pulse. “I should probably call Tavia to let her know I’m alive and well.”
Besides a relaxed sigh that sent her melting into me, Amy made no effort to move.
“Are you staying another night?” My hand moved lazily up and down her back, smoothing out the large T-shirt she wore to bed.
Amy’s head lifted, her brow furrowing. “I should probably go, huh? This is what, three straight days? I’m sure you want your space.”
I cupped her ass, ran my hand down the back of her thigh until I reached her knee, then brought her leg over my hip. “Do I look like I want space from you?”
Her head went back on a soft, musical laugh and I leaned in to kiss the long, pretty stretch of her throat. I could spend hours just exploring her neck, finding all the tiny blood vessels and sensitive areas that made her gasp.
“I just don’t want to overstay my welcome.” She kissed my brow, hand sliding around my waist until her fingertips stroked my spine. “Being with you is like staying in a dream I don’t want to wake up from.”
“You’re always welcome here.” My thumb rolled circles alongside her knee. “Come and go as you please. If you need space, take it.” My lips rested on her forehead. “As long as you come back,” I amended.
Her answering smile was slow, coy. Sexy. “As if you could keep me away.”
That would have been the right time to spill my secrets, to inform her of the ravenous undead monster in my basement, as well as Carpe Noctem’s chain around my neck, even though the agreement was null and void in my eyes. Also, surprise! I’m literally, biologically, dependent on your blood to survive.
Amy deserved to know everything and make her own choices based on that knowledge. But right then, wrapped up in each other, in the warmth of my bed, it made the most sense to kiss her and not ruin the perfection of this moment.
She sighed contently into my mouth, our lips moving with slow, unhurried friction. My eyes closed so I could take her in with my other senses. This did feel like a dream, the best kind. And I wanted to prolong this for as long as possible.
Her leg slid farther over my hip, toes grazing my calf. The closer proximity brought more contact to my thickening cock, the organ trapped between our pelvises as we wound tighter around each other.
Amy made soft, eager noises through our kisses, her lower body beginning to rub against me more insistently. I grabbed her ass and pulled her closer until we were flush, her leg spread wide and my erection grinding against her core.
The friction was maddening through our underwear. I wanted skin-to-skin contact, to see her beautiful naked form wearing nothing but my bite marks. I grabbed the hem of her T-shirt and began to pull it up?—
“No, don’t!”
Amy reacted faster that I could comprehend, swinging her arm down to stop me from bringing her shirt up. It was so unexpected that the fabric slipped from my fingers.
In an instant, the mood changed. Playful and passionate became tense and guarded. Amy held the shirt down so low, the collar stretched at her neck. Her eyes were wide with panic.
“Darling, I’m sorry.” Hesitantly, I reached a hand toward her face. She let me touch her cheek but the stiffness didn’t leave her body. “I thought we were… fuck, it doesn’t matter. Are you all right?”
She let out a long, slow breath, her body relaxing a fraction. “I… don’t like being naked. I didn’t mean to freak out, I just… panicked.”
Her voice was so small, like she was ashamed.
My mind immediately took off, speculating all the possible reasons why on Temkra’s soil she would ever feel that way. Did it have anything to do with that filth of a human male who broke her heart?
One day I’d find out the reason, but now was not the time.
“I’m really not a prude. I just don’t like having my top off.” Amy grimaced with shame. “I’m sorry. We were having fun and I ruined it.”
“Stop. You didn’t ruin anything.” I leaned in, caressing her cheek as I kissed her forehead, brow, and nose. “It doesn’t matter what we’re doing. I’m satisfied as long as you’re enjoying yourself.”
She didn’t look convinced. “You’re sweet, but you don’t have to lie. I know I’m weird.”
“I like weird. Especially when it shows up on my doorstep with the prettiest eyes I’ve ever seen.” That finally got the smallest curve of a smile on her lips, and I seized the opportunity to kiss them. “Seriously, akra, I’ll never do anything you don’t want. Your sense of safety is of utmost importance to me.”
A sigh of relief left her lips and her hand wrapped around my nape, fingers tangling in my hair. “Thank you, Novak. You’re amazing.”
“You are,” I breathed into her mouth.
We fell into lazy, slow kissing again, but a thought nagged at the back of my mind. She still didn’t fully trust me, and why should she? The whole time she’d been open and vulnerable with me, I’d been holding back. Keeping secrets.
A gust of wind howled and made the house creak. I could imagine the creature downstairs snarling at the noise, dragging his skeletal fingers along the bars of his cell. Talk about overstaying his welcome. I’d kept him here for probably fifty years too long.
But it wasn’t like I could set him loose, not even to the deep forests of the Crown. He, like his cursed brethren, would make his way to the towns and villages of that region, following the scent of living flesh.
A nip on my neck pulled my focus back to Amy and her sharp little fangs.
“Where did your mind go?” she asked, softly mouthing at my neck. “Thinking about what a weirdo you’ve got in your bed?”
I pulled away and leaned back against the headboard, too deep in my fucked-up thoughts to lose myself in her. “You’re perfect as you are, akra, but I haven’t told you everything about my research. And I should. It’s only right for you to know if we’re going to be… involved.”
She took a long moment to respond to that, blinking slowly. “Okay. What haven’t you told me?”
My fingers drummed nervously in my lap. “There’s a cursed member of my clan here, in my house. I captured him fifty years ago, and well, he’s been here ever since.”
Amy stared at me, wide-eyed. “Here? Where?”
“In the basement level. The house is safe. There are multiple security doors between the main floor and his… his cell.” I leaned my head back, letting it thunk against the headboard. “No matter how much I told myself that it was to find a cure, that everything would be justified if I could undo the Curse, it doesn’t change the fact that I’ve been holding one of my kin prisoner for this long.” My head shook from side to side. “And now that I’m almost certain there is no cure, that the damage is done, I don’t feel right keeping him down there. But there’s no way I can release him. He’s a danger to others.”
“Novak.” Amy had sat up and was now at my side, her hand reaching for mine. Her expression was calmer than I expected. “Who is he to you?”
My eyes closed and my throat tightened. “He’s my brother.”
Amy’s face fell with sorrow. “Oh, Novak… ”
“I swear I was trying to help, to do my duty for Rathka’s Order.” Once the excuses and justifications spilled from my mouth, there was no stopping them. “All I wanted was to make my clan proud, to be more than a do-nothing second son. I worked for centuries to save them, to decode this curse down to its atoms so they would find me worthy of the clan’s name. If I cured them all, brought Rathka’s Order back to its former glory, that would mean something, right? I didn’t even want anything in return. Just an ounce of pride, a single fucking acknowledgment from my father and brother would have been enough. It would have been everything .”
Amy was silent at my side. If I didn’t feel her hand over mine, I would have thought she’d left the room.
“I’m seeing now how delusional I was.” I rubbed my temples, suddenly feeling an ache behind my eye sockets. “Even if I had cured everyone, they would have found a way to credit someone else for it, to diminish what I had done. Nothing I ever did made them respect me in the past, so why would they start now? Even if they did give me some hollow appreciation, it wouldn’t have been enough. I was starving for my father’s approval. I would have tried harder, done anything for more scraps.”
A bitter laugh escaped me. “Just fifty years ago, I was convinced that all I needed was tissue samples from a live specimen. If I captured one of them, I would be that much closer to figuring it out. I realized it was my brother because of the scraps of clothing left on him, and his signet ring. I had daydreams, fucking fantasies even, of him hugging me after he was cured, telling me he was so proud of me. That he was so grateful to have his mind back, his life back.”
I shook my head again. “But that’ll never happen. It doesn’t actually matter that I’m the last one left because I was never one of them to begin with. That was the one truth they never let me forget.”
A long silence followed, and I felt a strange emptiness in the center of my chest. Like the vault I’d kept everything hidden away in was suddenly wrenched open and the contents had taken flight. I was afraid to look at Amy, to read the expression on her face now that my deepest, ugliest truth was out there.
But she had come to me when she was at her lowest, found shelter in my arms, during an emotional storm. I had to trust that she would hold that same space for me.
By the time I gathered the courage to look at her, she was already crawling into my lap. When I opened my mouth to speak, her kiss pressed me into the headboard.