Fourteen
Adelasia
I can’t sleep.
I can’t stop thinking about Kaius. I can’t stop thinking about the way he kissed me, or about the very real possibility that a vampire has feelings for me.
Or the very real possibility that I might have feelings for him, too.
Why else would I let him kiss me? It can’t be because I’m lonely here. I’ve never craved intimacy from a man before, not even something as innocent as a kiss.
Though, our kiss wasn’t exactly chaste. It was passionate and warm and addicting. I didn’t want to stop kissing him, and though he walked away from me, I know he didn’t want to stop either, because the golden line on my arm is still perfectly intact.
I toss and turn in my bed trying to will my mind to stop thinking about Kaius. I settle on my side, and I focus on the quiet of the room and the crackle of the fireplace. I focus on their warmth until it lulls me into that limbo between wide awake and asleep.
And then I hear the door creak. I stay on my side, pretending to sleep, but I can’t help the smile that creeps to my cheeks.
He came back for me. Even if it’s just to check on me, he came back. I’m sure he can hear my heart thudding wildly in my chest–giving it away that I’m awake and desperately want him to kiss me again.
I feel him come closer and closer, his footsteps nearly silent. A hand tenderly brushes along my cheek.
And then it flips me onto my back and clasps over my mouth. I gasp and try to make out the figure above me. When I realize it’s not Kaius at all, but Dravon, I begin to panic and screech. All of it is to no avail. I know I have absolutely no chance to fight him off.
He shushes me, but it’s in no way comforting. It comes off as a hiss more than anything. He looks down at me with a wicked smile on his face and a raised brow, telling me without words that if I’m quiet, he’ll let me go. His eyes look demonic and more unsettling than usual, like there’s a cloud of malice in them.
After a few more useless attempts to buck him off, I stop fighting. He releases my mouth and sits back a bit.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
I gasp, trying to back away from him, though I have nowhere to go except closer to the headboard.
Dravon grabs my jaw and squeezes until it feels like my bones are about to crack under his ruthless grip. Then he moves my head from side to side to examine my neck as he’s done before. He scowls. “Why hasn’t he fed on you yet?”
I scowl back. To that, he smirks. “Unless…he’s been feeding…elsewhere,”
he murmurs as he lets go of my jaw to run his hand down the front of my nightgown. I shove his hand away and then smack him.
My bravery quickly turns to fear when he backhands me so hard that it knocks me from the bed to the floor. I groan in severe pain as I sit up, trying to reorient myself. My hand goes to my cheek, and I feel a warm wetness there. I look at my fingers and find blood.
I look up at Dravon, now standing over me as I sit dazed and confused on the ground. He examines a ring on his middle finger and licks my blood from it. That must have been what cut me.
He lets out a pleasurable groan and then smiles. “You taste…so good,”
he growls as he pulls me to my feet by my elbow. I stumble around, colliding with the wall to hold myself up. My blood still drips down my cheek, and he turns ravenous at the sight of it. His eyes turn black, his fangs grow longer, and before I even have time to react, they’re digging into the tender flesh of my throat.
I do the only thing I can do: I scream.
Though it doesn’t last for very long, because just as Kaius told me earlier tonight, the pain doesn’t last long. It’s quickly replaced by…warmth. Pleasure. Euphoria. My eyes roll back as my body goes limp. I can’t tell if it’s from the sensation, or because I’m slowly falling unconscious from the blood being drained from my body.
The scary part is–I don’t really care. The racing heat in my body won’t let me think about anything else. As I am teetering on the dangerous edge of consciousness, Dravon makes a noise of shock before he releases me.
He stares at me, wide-eyed as my blood drips down from the corner of his mouth. My hand clasps the bite at my neck as I watch Cassius slither up Dravon’s back to peek over his shoulder at me.
Then Dravon falls to the floor, his eyes still aware, but his body unable to move. Paralyzed. Cassius must be venomous to demons.
I sink to the ground with my back still against the wall, breathing heavily, still on the verge of passing out. Cassius lightly nudges my leg as if to tell me it will be okay.
Kaius bursts through the door then, with so much urgency and conviction that it breaks free from the hinges and the iron lands on the ground with the metallic clang.
His eyes meet mine and he rushes to me, crossing the room quicker than my human eyes can comprehend. When he reaches for me, that’s when I break down. I fall into his embrace and sob incoherently, clawing at him.
“Kai…Kaius please…help me.”
I desperately beg and plead at him, but he simply kneels next to me looking perplexed. I grab him by the front of his shirt and pull him close to me so we’re face-to-face, our foreheads touching as I look at him from under my wet lashes.
“Kaius please help me. I don’t want to be a vampire.”
I manage to get out my full sentence before I completely break down again.
“Adelasia,”
Kaius coos. “Adelasia, look at me.”
I sniffle and whimper as he forces my eyes to meet his again. “You’re not going to be a vampire. I promise.”
“But…but…”
I stutter as my hand goes back to touch my neck. I can see Kaius struggling with his own bloodlust at the sight. His eyes flicker from red to black and then back to red. He opens and closes his mouth as if his fangs are aching and causing him immense pain.
He doesn’t say another word until he lifts me into his arms and cradles me to his chest. I shake and cry quietly into his embrace as he carries me out of the room to his own. A few minutes later, he gently deposits me on a marble countertop next to a basin of water and some rags.
I flinch when he moves my hair out of the way to look at the bite mark on my neck.
I swallow thickly, all of my energy going into forming a coherent sentence. “Can you…can you suck out the venom or something?”
It feels ridiculous to suggest it out loud, and that feeling only fortifies when Kaius’ face twitches into a devilish smirk. He takes one of the rags and soaks it in the water basin before gently wiping away the blood on my neck.
“You’re not going to turn into a vampire, Adelasia. There would be no humans left to feed on if all it took was one bite. How could we keep cattle if that were the case?”
I don’t speak as I consider that. He’s right, of course. If all it took was a single bite to turn humans into vampires, the human population would quickly dwindle until the vampire population became unsustainable.
Kaius stares at the cut on my cheek as he cleans my neck and then sighs. “You’re going to be fine. I promise.”
“Why did he attack me?”
Kaius again focuses on the cut across my cheek. “I suppose I’ll be spending tomorrow trying to figure that out.”
“What will you do to him?”
“Some light maiming, perhaps.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
I gulp, and as Kaius wrings out the rag filled with my blood, I watch him struggle to control his thirst. His eyes grow darker by the second, his movements more rigid, his energy more dangerous.
When he lifts the rag to my neck to wipe again, I gently grab his wrist to stop him. His tense jaw flexes and his mouth quivers almost angrily as his now black eyes meet mine.
“Taste it,”
I suggest.
“Adelasia–”
“It’s okay,”
I whisper. “Why let it go to waste?”
I can feel the hesitation radiating off him in waves, clouded by desire and hunger.
He examines me for a moment, perhaps looking for fear or justification that this is a bad idea, but I can see the moment he finds none and allows himself to accept the invitation of this simple pleasure he gets to indulge in after all these weeks of resisting.
He cradles my head in his hand, and the other snakes around my waist to tug me closer to the edge of the counter so he’s snug between my thighs. I feel his tongue drift over my neck, savoring every drop of blood still seeping from my slowly clotting wound.
I still feel lightheaded, so I let him fully support my head and neck with his hand. I simply slump forward, close my eyes, and focus on the way his tongue slides across my skin.
His tongue finally darts over the fang marks on my neck, and a sharp zing of pleasure darts from my neck straight down to my core. I feel him hesitate there at the existing fang marks, and I can feel his mouth twitch as he contemplates finishing what Dravon started.
I don’t move or make a sound as I wait for him to decide what he wants. If it’s to feed, then I will let him. I knew this would happen eventually, right?
It feels like an eternity before he moves. He brings his mouth even closer to my neck, and I close my eyes as I wait for the prick of his fangs, but they never come.
Instead, I feel him place a gentle kiss on my neck, and another on the line of my jaw. Another to the cut along my cheek. Then, he reaches my lips and gently kisses me. I open my mouth to let him softly explore, slow and languid.
When he finally breaks the kiss, I open my eyes to find him already staring at me. I watch the thick lump travel down his throat as he swallows.
Still catching my breath, I let my hands trace up and down the fine details of his coat. “Can I ask you something?”
He nods, setting the rag to the side, still standing between my parted legs. His long arms rest on the countertop next to my thighs. The fabric of my nightgown sits high on my legs, and I feel his thumbs brushing across the lace hem. His cold fingers bring goosebumps to my skin.
In truth, I have more than one question. Hundreds, even, and many of them start with ‘why’.
But I settle on something seemingly more simplistic.
“What does it feel like to crave blood?”
“Agony,”
he answers. I quietly scoff at his one-word answer before he elaborates. “What’s your favorite scent, Adelasia?”
“Um…peaches, I suppose.”
“Then imagine you’re starving. You’re nauseous and shaky and irritable. Then the smell of fresh, ripe, juicy peaches wafts from another room. You’d be inclined to search for them, yes? And then when you finally see them, your mouth begins to water, you begin to fantasize about how satisfying that first bite will be. Now imagine you finally get to taste one, and you’re so hungry that you can’t even enjoy it. Then, when it’s gone, you realize it wasn’t satisfying at all. The hunger is still there, consuming your every thought, and so you eat another because you’re convinced you’re just not full yet. That one doesn’t sate the hunger either, and on and on it goes until you’re nearly weeping for relief that you know will never come.”
“If that’s true, why didn’t you finish what Dravon started?”
“Feeding and tasting blood are two different things,”
he explains. “We feed by siphoning blood through our fangs. Tasting is…well, I’ve already explained what it does to humans and vampires. It’s an outlet for pleasure only. It provides no sustenance, no nutrition, but that’s not to say it isn’t any less delicious.”
“So you liked it then? My blood?”
“Liked it?”
he retorts, pulling me even closer to the edge of the counter so he can easily lean down to whisper in my ear, the very tip of his index finger on his right hand tracing up the inside of my thigh.
“You cannot fathom the thirst currently residing in my throat for you.”
I swallow the rock in my own throat.
My heart begins to race with every inch his finger travels over my leg, up and down and back up again.
Despite how cold his fingers are, the touch lights my skin on fire.
My body tingles in places no man has ever touched before, and there’s a part of me, mostly between my legs, that’s begging Kaius to touch me there.
Maybe even taste me, too.
“Do you remember the first night I was here, when you said that fear makes my blood taste better?”
I ask as he traces his nose up the side of my neck.
“Vividly.”
I gulp. “What do you think desire makes it taste like?”
I feel him smirk against my throat. “Peaches.”
I scoff, and it gets cut off with a hiss when he lightly nips at my neck where Dravon bit me, though not enough to sink his teeth into me. His fingers travel further up my thigh, so high that I know he can feel the heat gathered at my core.
I find the courage to meet his eyes, and all I see in them is pure lust. Lust for my body and my blood, and I can’t tell which he wants more.
The black depths of his eyes used to scare me, but I see so much of him in them now. Now instead of unholiness, all I see is uncontrollable vulnerability. Uncontrollable need.
Achingly slowly, he moves his finger to gently rub along my core over my thin underthings. It’s tingly and warm and the light touch of his finger has my body silently begging for more. I wonder if he can smell it like he can smell my blood.
My thighs tense as he rubs the pad of his finger in circles around the most sensitive part of me. My mouth falls open, and I quietly sigh. Each circle feels so sickeningly sweet. I shouldn’t want this, but I do. I want this and more.
I want him.
Shamelessly, I grind my hips against his finger, forcing his touch to become firmer. He licks his teeth and smiles as if he’s been waiting for that.
“Let me taste you, Adelasia. Just one more time.”
I gulp before slowly nodding, tilting my head to the side to give him access to my neck. He smirks, still rubbing me in soft circles. He stops only to have his hands glide up the outside of my thighs to wrap his cold fingers around my underthings. He slowly, so slowly, pulls the garment down my legs, never once letting his eyes leave mine. If he’s searching for hesitation, he won’t find it there.
My forehead crinkles with confusion when he kneels before me, still not letting his eyes drift from mine.
“What are you doing?” I gasp.
“Tasting you,”
he purrs, placing gentle kisses to the inside of my thigh in a line until he reaches my sex, which is now thoroughly weeping for attention.
“I…I thought you meant–”
“Silly girl, do you think I can’t multitask?”
he murmurs against the most intimate part of me, his words dancing over the sensitivity there.
“Kaius I’ve never–”
His middle finger inches closer and closer to me. When the pad of his finger touches my bare center, I throw my head back and suck in a sharp breath at the sensation.
I feel a slight pinch and a sting. I look down to see Kaius has used his fang to cut my skin right above my core. He lets a small drop of blood gather before he sensually licks it up, trailing his tongue up to my navel and then kissing back down my stomach without breaking eye contact.
The pleasure that surges through my veins sits deep in my core, begging for more. He lets another drop of blood gather and trail down my sex, and only then does he lick up the drop. The action is sinful and erotic and my heart begins to beat faster. My skin grows flushed. My eyes grow heavy.
His tongue slides between my folds and he circles it around the bundle of nerves just below the cut before tasting both my blood and arousal in one swipe.
“Delicious,”
he purrs against my skin. His mouth skillfully pleasures me while he greedily swipes up every drop of my blood that seems to drip faster the longer he devours me.
I feel a coil deep in my center begin to tighten, and my cries of pleasure grow more desperate as he slips his middle finger inside me. Between his mouth, his finger, and the way he groans with each pass of his tongue that tastes my blood, I fall apart. My body tenses and I throw my head back again as I convulse around his finger and experience a taste of the pleasure he’s always told me I could find only in his world.
He licks along the cut one last time before standing abruptly and crashing his lips to mine. His hands go to the straps of my nightgown–mine go to his cloak to shove it away from his shoulders until it falls to the floor. My perky breasts spill over the top of my gown as my hands unbutton his coat.
His hands leave my body to unlace his pants, but something in his energy shifts in the opposite direction. We’re both half-dressed, but I no longer see desire in his eyes.
I see that hardened, emotionless wall I’ve spent these weeks slowly breaking through.
Without a word, he tenderly lifts the straps of my nightgown back into place, covering my chest with the fabric, and then steps backward to remove himself from the cage of my legs.
“Kaius–”
I plead in an attempt to hold onto the moment before it’s gone completely, but he holds a finger up to my lips and shushes me. He takes my hand in his to help me down from the counter. There’s something…shameful in the downturn of his mouth.
“Your neck will bruise by morning. I’ll bring a salve for the cut on your cheek to help the swelling. You can sleep here tonight.”
He leads me to his bed where he settles me under the blankets and even takes care to tuck me in. He sits at my side and uses a gentle finger to brush away a strand of hair and trace down my jawline.
“Did Dravon say anything to you before he attacked?”
The sting of rejection must be very clear in my eyes. I can feel the pathetic tears ready to spill over, but he does not seem to care.
I shake my head.
“Are you sure?”
“I…I remember thinking his eyes looked strange. But Kai–”
He cuts me off with a nod. A sign that he doesn’t want to hear more. He stands without a word, and I lunge for his arm, fisting my fingers into the sleeve of his shirt.
I gulp through the ache in my throat. “Kaius. Stay. Please.”
He lets out a long exhale, before roughly tugging himself away from my grip, all of his earlier care and gentleness gone.
And then he leaves the room, but more importantly, he leaves me feeling lonely, confused, and heartbroken.
Quiet tears continue to spill from my eyes, shame and humiliation flowing freely. I wipe my face just as I notice Cassius slither onto the bed, slowly making his way towards me. I lie down and turn on my side so he and I can be nose to nose.
His eyes scream intelligence, and though I wish Kaius was here with me, Cassius is good company too.
“Thank you for stopping Dravon,”
I say quietly through a sniffle. Cassius’ forked tongue flickers out, touching my nose. I blink rapidly in confusion and interest. I sit up slightly, and Cassius follows my action. “Can you understand me?”
His tongue flickers out again, and I settle back on my side.
“Will you stay with me?”
I ask. Cassius then curls into a spiral at my stomach, and I take it as a yes. I stay silent for a few moments, and then look at him again, my lip quivering. “What did I do wrong?”
Cassius perks his head up at my question, pauses for a moment, and then moves his head slowly from one side to the other, as if to say ‘nothing’. I don’t believe him, and so I bury my face into the pillow, which only makes me cry harder because it smells like the only person I want in the world right now–Kaius.
Cassius comes closer to me, winding himself around my wrist. A line of scales all the way down the center of him turns from pitch black to shimmering gold. When he lets my wrist go, I look to find that there’s a golden line circling it. A vow.
I compare it to the one on my other arm; the vow Kaius made to me. It’s still golden, too. I tuck my hands under my pillow and sigh. “I don’t know what promise you’ve made, but I trust you.”
I swear I see a smirk on the corner of his mouth, before he lowers his head and tightens himself in a coil again. I take one last peek at the golden lines on my arms, and drift to sleep.
My dreams are filled with visions of a white-eyed, dark-haired, white-winged man standing next to Kaius and me.
His gaze on us can only be described as unbearable longing.