Chapter 7
Seven
Wesley
My eyes flutter open and the first thing I noticed is how cold the bed is.
Because he’s not here. He’s never here when you wake up.
I am not sure why I keep doing this to myself. Why I keep hoping things will change. I know the definition of insanity is to keep repeating the same things over and over, expecting different results.
But a part of me doesn’t want to give up the hope that maybe some day it will be different.
That one day, I will wake up and Adrien will be here, beside me. Sleeping like a baby in my arms.
I know he thinks we are doomed, even if he doesn’t say it.
I can feel his fear like a living breathing entity, especially when he holds me at arms length.
It’s always the same song and dance with us.
I fall into my bloodheat and he comes running to sate it, comes crawling to my aid.
He takes care of me. My needs. As if they were his own.
And in the midst of the bloodlust haze, he loves me.
He loves me until I am so far gone in him that it is impossible to know where I begin and where he ends, and then when the bloodheat disappears…
He pulls away.
No. He pushes me away, shattering the perfect moment where we exist for no one other than one another. Where we are free to love one another without judgment.
And those moments, however brief they are, are what keep me addicted to Adrien Claire.
Inevitably, he always comes back, knowing he can’t stay away from me any more than I can stay away from him.
We make up. We kiss, we fuck, and he holds me like he doesn’t want to let go.
And then the morning comes, and it is lather, rinse, repeat.
I reach out into the empty space, running my fingers over where he slept.
I can’t help but feel like something’s different, though I can’t put my finger on it.
Last night was not out of the ordinary, but Adrien seemed…
off. Several times, he seemed to tense, to stop as if he was fighting some unforeseen force. Perhaps his demons are getting louder.
I thought maybe this was it. That he’d finally decided he couldn’t do this anymore—whatever this is. We’ve never really discussed what we are. He is a vampire who helps me sate my bloodheat. He is a… friend, I suppose.
A fellow comrade in this bloody school, in this war of matedom thrust upon us.
But he is more than that, too, I think.
We’ve spent the last two years together, dancing this macabre waltz. Two years is a long time to be dancing with our hands tied.
I’d asked him if he was going to leave and he told me no. But I’m not sure I believe him.
I feel him slipping through my fingers, and I’m worried I won’t be able to catch him.
But can I let him go? How can I let go of something I don’t even have?
The clock chimes, pulling me from my morning melancholy, and I rise to head to the shower.
It’s Monday, so Adrien has Mental Manipulation and Combat and I have Art.
I’ve been here for four years and avoided the damn class, but my time is precariously balanced.
Soon enough, I will have to leave the academy.
I have one more semester left to claim a mate, or I will be expelled, an issue my mother has yet to address, and I refuse to bring it up to her.
I haven’t seen her in four years, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t corresponded with the woman when it was absolutely necessary.
Though I am convinced she has only checked in to make sure I am indeed alive, and that is the extent of her giving a shit.
If my mother truly cared about me and my well being, she would not have sent me here in the first place, after I caught her being fucked by both the knights she favors.
I would have kept her secret, not because I wanted to lord it over her like a prized hawk, but because I loved her, and I wanted her to be happy. I knew she favored her knights, and her stable boy. I knew they made her happy, and I knew how tumultuous and awful her relationship was with my father.
I would have taken her secret to my grave. But she did not trust me, her own son.
She thought me the enemy, and so she locked me away and threw away the damn key, and I will never forgive her for what she did.
Which is why I will not tell her about my impending expulsion. I will not give her the chance to condemn me further. I am not sure what I will do when the time comes, but I know what I’d like to do—I’d like to go home. To the castle that belongs to me, not my stupid puppet of a brother.
Mother always favored Wyatt, and my father did too. In their eyes, he was the prodigal son, the good boy.
He is anything but good. He is a manipulative menace who has caused more trouble than what he is worth, but I supposed some apples don’t fall far from the family tree.
I wipe my eyes and head for the shower, taking my time as I let the water hit me.
My stomach feels heavy, as does my cock.
I don’t think twice about taking my piss in the shower before I find the shower gel to wash my hands and my body.
I sniff it, breathing in deep. It smells like Adrien—like rainstorms and moss. I love a good rain storm. Always have.
I lather my hands together and close my eyes, relishing in the feel of my fingertips on my own skin.
When I get to my cock, I groan. The bloodheat only lasts for a few days, a week at best, but it is quite a nuisance when it is here.
I revel in the afterheat, when I am not hard as a rock damn near seventy-five percent of the time I’m awake.
I know for vampiresses, this heightened desire is purely an evolutionary factor that drives them to mate.
Vampiresses, during their bloodheat, are at their most fertile.
But since, to my knowledge, there has never been a vampire like me, it’s anyone’s guess why I am like this, given the fact I have never mated with a vampiress in my life.
I’ve fooled around with a few vampiresses when I was a teenager, before my bloodheat hit me for the first time, mostly just some making out and grinding all over one another trying not to get caught, but even then I didn’t feel the desire for them that I felt the first time I let a man breed me.
I know I can’t actually be bred like a vampiress. Realistically, I know this. But the voice in my head that appears during my bloodheat is an entity all its own, and that is what it craves. And Adrien…
Adrien is the only person who’s never made me feel like the anomaly I am.
The first time we hooked up, something clicked.
I can still remember every second, even though it was years ago and it was an intense, heat of the moment thing.
It was pure bliss, though, hearing his words that stoked the fire inside me.
Adrien always knows how to give me what I want, even when I’m too afraid to ask for it, like I was then.
It’s like he just knows. Like he’s tapped into me on another level.
Sometimes I swear it feels like a bond, but neither of us are claimed or bound, so I know it’s just my wishful thinking.
But sometimes, when I’m in the throes of those perfect moments with Adrien, I pretend we are. Bonded.
Which is so fucked up, and I know that. But I can’t help the thoughts that permeate my brain in a bloodheat haze. It’s beyond my control and I’ve learned to just ride it out instead of fighting it.
I grimace as I slowly stroke my cock, trying to push past the pain.
It’s always like this, the day after I feed.
Which is another reason why I try to resist feeding as much as I can.
Humans are better, there’s less pain the day after, but that’s only because I don’t get as full from human blood.
Not like I do after I’ve had Adrien’s blood.
Plus, I don’t particularly like feeding on humans. They’re too unpredictable and their blood isn’t always clean. Smoke, alcohol, illnesses… I can taste all of it and it’s not all that appetizing. But vampire blood? It’s richer, sweeter.
The only upside to my bloodheat is that I only need to feed when I’m in heat.
Otherwise, I don’t feel the urge at all, not like most vampires.
But that doesn’t mean I want to do it. Adrien gives me enough, and though I know he’d tell me it’s fine, I feel like I’m taking too much from him.
And when the time comes, and he leaves, how am I supposed to function without his blood?
That’s why I’ve been trying to resist feeding these last couple months, because I know one day I won’t have him.
And I need to be prepared for how to manage without him or his blood, since no one will ever taste as good or feel as good as he does.
I grit my teeth as I stroke my cock, knowing I need to come and I’ll feel a thousand times better.
Nothing sucks more than having to do this alone.
I wish Adrien was here, wish he’d walk in through that door and take my cock in his hands and kiss me and tell me it’s okay.
That I’m not the fucked up creature I feel like I am most of the time.
I close my eyes and imagine just that. Adrien waltzing into this shower, his dark hair falling in his eyes, his mouth hot on mine.
His hand wrapped around my cock, stroking me slowly until all the tension leaves me.
I look up at his eyes, in my psyche, but they are not the eyes I know.
They are red, blood-red. Thick black eyelashes frame them, and my balls draw tight.
I quicken my pace, my heart racing as those eyes stare back at me, beckoning me to give in.
I come hard, my entire body locking up as relief hits me.
Hot water rushes over my skin and I open my eyes, watching as rope after rope hits the shower wall, spilling down the tiles.
I feel lightheaded as the onslaught continues, my muscles loosening with each pulsing release until I feel normal again.