Chapter 30
Thirty
MARIS
Turns out, vampires will make a girl cum more in an hour than she’s ever cum in her entire life. Yes, I know that means that my love life was shit before but look at the material I had to work with in Vesper Point. It’s not exactly my fault.
“Wife.” Julian holds his hand out to me expectantly.
There’s that fucking word again.
Wife.
I feel insane that I believe Julian.
I take his hand only because I can tell from the look in his eye that he’ll pick me up anyway and I’m not keen on a repeat of what happened in front of Maxine.
“Are you expecting anyone?” Julian asks me. He’s pulled up his pants and picks up my dress. “Come here. I’ll help you get dressed.”
Part of me wants to be stubborn and tell him I can do it on my own but that Maris got vaporized about two orgasms ago.
There isn’t a part of me Julian hasn’t had his tongue or fingers in.
I’m what’s left after all the orgasms. My knees nearly give and I have to grab onto Julian’s arm.
I’m in no condition to mouth off to a vampire.
“Thanks,” I tell him.
“You’re very welcome, Maris.”
Maris.
That’s…better. Not a ton because my name sounds sexy coming from his mouth and hearing it just makes me want to yank him back down to the floor and see what else he’ll do for me.
BANG. BANG.
“What the fuck? What idiot doesn’t just use the doorbell?” I complain. I can’t see Julian’s face mainly because he’s pulling my dress over my head but I know he’s agreeing with me. I yank my dress down my body and turn to charge out into the hallway but Julian catches my arm and slows me.
Julian smooths my hair down and nods when he’s satisfied with how I look. “My guess is whoever is at the door is someone you didn’t invite.”
“Maybe,” I agree.
“And after today’s attack, you are not answering that door. I am.”
I start to protest that it’s my house and that if anyone is going to answer the door, it’s me when Julian says, “If they stab me I won’t die. Anything that anyone does to me won’t kill me but your condition is far more delicate.”
I make a face. “My condition? Since when is being human a condition?”
“Since time immemorial.” Julian motions for me to walk with him. “Stay behind me until we’re sure they’re harmless.”
“Fine.” I go to cross my arms but I never get the chance to. Julian’s hand finds mine and he tugs me to his side.
“Stay close,” he tells me. He presses a kiss to my forehead and I hate that part of me swoons at the touch of his lips.
How can this be the same man that was three fingers deep in me while I screamed myself hoarse?
And now here he’s giving me a forehead kiss?
I clear my throat and lean away from him to put distance between us.
Julian lets me get as far as an inch away before he has me right back against his side.
Julian gives me a disapproving look. “I said stay close.”
I bite the inside of my cheek so I don’t say anything stupid. My entire body feels stupid after the orgasms Julian squeezed out of me. I feel…well, I feel good. Relaxed and loose. Is this what I always heard about when girls said they were dickmatized?
He hasn’t even given me dick yet and I’m dopamined up and ready to accept the fact that he’s a vampire. The only thing that keeps bringing me back to reality is when he calls me wife. For years that was the goal—at least where granny and the Martinez lineage was concerned.
Find a man, make him take your name, and keep going.
When I became damaged goods and Billy asked Minnie to marry him, I gave up on marriage.
Not all at once, but slowly, over time. Piece by piece I let go of the idea of what a normal life could be.
I accepted that I was never going to have that.
I told myself I was fine with that and that I didn’t need it. I didn’t need anyone.
Before Julian, I was content to live out my life here and die.
Maybe I would adopt or pass on everything to some distant niece who’s never heard of me, I didn’t know.
There wasn’t a future where I wasn’t the last Martinez woman to walk these halls and know its secrets.
Someone new might move in but they wouldn’t love it like I did.
They wouldn’t understand Vesper House because they couldn’t.
That was reserved for someone like me. I’d clung to that knowledge.
It was precious. What else could it be in a world that shunned me, one that I had willingly made the same mistake twice in.
I’d broken the rules of nature, of society, the thin boundary that separated humans from animals.
I’d smashed that boundary into a million fucking pieces, hadn’t I?
And now what was there for me?
Julian squeezes my hand and stops walking. We’re in the foyer now. It’s almost a repeat of the scene that played out earlier with Maxine.
“I should have fucking known it was him,” Julian mutters. His face becomes hard and cold. The predator that I glimpsed earlier rises to the surface faster than I can blink and it’s him that steps in front of me and stalks towards the door.
“Fucking Billy,” I whisper. I’d forgotten all about his threat to come by. His stupid ass insistence for me to leave the light on like I had when we were dating and he would come by after work stinking of fish guts and dish soap.
“What are you going to do?” I ask.
“I’m going to teach him a lesson,” Julian tells me.
I hurry after Julian. What does that mean?”
He stops in front of the door and looks down at me.“Don’t worry, I won’t kill him.” I let out a sigh of relief. After today, no, after this week, I don’t think I can stomach another death. “I’m just going to beat him up a little. Okay, not a little. A lot.”
“As long as you don’t kill him,” I say.
Julian grabs my hand and kisses the back of it. “Cross my heart.”
BANG. BANG.
I jump away from the door at the banging but Julian doesn’t.
“Open the fucking door, Mare. I see you. Who the fuck is in there with you?”
Julian opens the door wide enough for Billy to see only him and keeps me out of sight on the other side of the door. I almost swallow my tongue when he leans against the door like it’s his house.
“Can I help you?” Julian asks.
“What-” Billy sounds confused, lost. I get it.
I’m confused and lost and I’m inside the house with Julian.
“What the fuck are you doing here? Where’s Mare?
” Billy tries to shove the door open. It swings inward just half an inch before Julian stops it with one hand.
I hear Billy grunt which tells me he tried to shove the door again, but the door doesn’t move this time.
I can’t see him through the wavy glass from where I’m standing.
It stays right where Julian holds it. Holy shit.
How strong is he? The vampire hasn’t even moved from his casual pose against the door.
“Get out of my way, man. Where the fuck is your shirt?”
Julian moves this time. He lets go of the door and steps forward. I lose sight of him but I hear the solid sound of a body hitting another before there’s a crash on the porch. I go to the door and poke my head around to see Julian standing over Billy’s body.
“Plant your feet next time,” Julian tells him. “It’ll help.”
Billy splutters and shoves himself back and away from Julian. “What the fuck? You just hit me!”
Julian holds up his hands and shrugs. “More of a shove really, but sure. We can say I hit you.”
I step to the side and a floorboard creaks under my foot. Billy looks past Julian and sees me. “Mare! What the fuck is this guy doing here? You knew I was coming over tonight.”
I hear the implied meaning there. You knew I was coming over tonight.
Billy was coming over because he thought he’d get to pick right back up where we left off. He thought I was going to fuck him. That gross idiot. I can’t believe I ever willingly let him touch me.
“I told you not to come here,” I remind him. “You’re not welcome here.”
“You don’t mean that. I’m the best you’ve ever had.”
When I laugh it doesn’t sound fake, mostly because it’s not and especially because I had better than Billy not five minutes ago.
“Billy, come on. Don’t embarrass yourself.
You have a fiancee, remember? You chose Minnie.
Go home. I’m sure she’s waiting up for you like the little Stepford cunt she is. ”
“You fucked him.”
“Not yet, but I plan to.”
“Oh my god, you totally fucked this asshole!”
“What I do isn’t your business, Billy. You made that clear when you proposed to my best friend like a psycho!”
Billy staggers to his feet and glares at me over Julian’s shoulder. “I don’t love her. She’s the fucking worst, Mare. You know that. You know I could never love her like I do you.”
My mouth drops open. “I don’t fucking know that. Holy shit, Billy Wright, just when I thought you couldn’t get any more disgusting you surprise me. You-you love me? Are you insane? I can’t believe you.”
“You’re the only woman I’ve ever loved. Just you.”
“I can’t listen to this shit. It’s pathetic. Make him go away,” I tell Julian.
“Gladly, wife.”
This time when I hear wife it doesn’t make me want to run away. There’s a warm feeling of satisfaction that sits heavy on me because now Billy has heard it.
“Wife?!” Billy gapes between us like we just told him the world was ending.
“Yeah, wife,” I say with a smile. “What’s the matter? Upset that I beat you down the aisle?”
“You did not marry him. Stop fucking lying, Mare. It’s not funny. I know you’re trying to get back at me because of what I did but we both made mistakes. We were both wrong and I’m big enough to forgive you for it.”
“I made mistakes?” I walk out onto the porch and stop at Julian’s side. “I made mistakes? What did I do that made you jump into Minnie’s bed?”
“We were on a break. You and me. It just happened, okay?”
“You’re lying. I know you were fucking her while we were together. My best friend, Billy. ” I’m lying mostly. I think he was when I think back on those times. The suggestive looks, the lingering touches, the way Minnie found excuses to just go by his place. None of that was normal.
Billy’s sigh and look heavenward tells me I was right.
“Come on, Mare. She doesn’t mean anything to me. She’s easy. She’s not like you. No girls are like you.”
“You’re right, she isn’t like me. I’d never do what she did to my friend.
You’re both sick. You deserve each other and you know, I can’t decide who’s more pathetic, me or the pair of you.
I wanted you to pay. To say you were sorry and admit what you did.
I waited for it, but it never came. You both just went on your stupid fucking way together like I never existed.
Posting on social media and pretending that you didn’t do anything wrong and the whole time I was dying inside. You’re evil.”
“I’m evil? You killed a guy and I’m still here.
I’m willing to fucking take back the black widow of this town.
You’re lucky I even want you. Do you know how many guys talk about what you did?
How you’re going to end up killing yourself one day and no one is even going to know it until they smell you rotting. ”
None of the things Billy tells me is new.
That one though—I don’t know why but it stings.
It hurts. Maybe because it’s close enough to the truth of what I wanted to have happen to me when I went after Brian.
I wanted to end things. I really did. Maybe that’s why I attacked Mike, too.
I thought he’d stop me. That he’d be the one to walk out of Vesper House, not me.
Both times I was wrong.
I lived.
“Shut your mouth,” I whisper. “Shut the fuck up.”
Billy smells blood in the water. He knows me well enough to know he scored a direct hit with that one. He gives me a mean smile and I know the next thing out of his mouth is going to be worse.
“Your parents,” he starts. Yup, so much fucking worse. “You’re lucky your parents died before-”
Julian’s fist slams into Billy’s jaw and he falls backwards. “Turn the light off, Maris,” he says quietly.
Fear spreads through me. Loud men are weak, they make noise because they don’t even trust themselves to do what they threaten, but a quiet man?
Those are the scary ones.
They’ll do what they say, and when they don’t say much you never know what they’ll do.
“You said you weren’t going to kill him,” I remind Julian.
“What the fuck?!” Billy yells. He’s trying to get up but Julian hit him just right and he’s dazed. He grabs onto the side of the house and ends up half landing on the porch swing before he falls back down to the ground.
“The light, Maris.”
“Okay,” I tell him and flip the light off like he asked.
I don’t go though. I close the door behind me and stay.
There’s enough moonlight that I can see what’s happening.
Billy tries to get up, but Julian catches him with a foot to the chest that sends him flying backwards over the porch railing and into the yard.
Julian sighs. “I told you to plant your feet. Now look at the mess you’re in,” he chastises as he vaults over the railing after Billy.
I can’t see them anymore, but I can hear them.
“P-please don’t,” Billy rasps.
I lean back against the house and wait.