Chapter 22 – Dahlia
Dahlia
I don’t argue when Valtu wants to take me home, but I’m only going back to his home, not my apartment. All that distance I felt between me and my slayer life, even before the evening started, has tripled.
He takes me by the arm and leads me down a corridor to the back of the conservatory where there’s a small dock with a bunch of boats tied up.
He takes me to his and helps me in and then we putter off down the narrow canal behind the school until we get to the Grand Canal, passing through the mist and fog.
If he’s worried about people thinking we’re heading off somewhere together, he doesn’t show it.
We don’t speak, letting the space fill with the sound of our motor, of the passing boats and vaporettos, the sloshing water, the music drifting in and out of different calles as we pass them by. By the concerned looks he keeps throwing my way, I know he’s worried about me being sick.
As for me, well, I do feel ill, but not in the way he assumes.
I’m overwhelmed to my very core. It’s one thing to live one lifetime, trying to dig up old memories that have been buried by time.
It’s another to have lived two others in two different periods of civilization and to have them all collapse on you at once.
I feel like I’m drowning in a million different versions of myself, even though in reality there’re only three.
That I remember, anyway.
Could I have been anyone else before Valtu?
How does reincarnation work anyway?
When I die again one day, will I come back in this body during another point in time? Can I ever appear in people who don’t look like me? Can I be a boy? Can I be another race? Or am I forever doomed to have this face?
Not that I’ve ever taken issue with my face.
I suppose there is some comfort in knowing you always look the same, give or take weight loss and other changes during the different lives.
I was rather plump in my life as Lucy, obviously because I had a lot of access to rich foods, and luckily both me and Valtu liked that extra weight.
I was underweight when I was Mina, because my father liked to starve me, even though there was enough food to go around in a general’s family.
And today, well, I’m somewhere in between. But in the end, still me.
Still me and Lucy and Mina.
Dear lord, Lucy and Mina. Bram Stoker wrote about me .
Okay, well at least my names were used for his characters, though they were nothing like me.
What a fucking trip this is.
The funny thing is, the concept of past lives isn’t new for witches.
I’ve heard of others remembering their past lives here and there, but none of it seemed very concrete or fully formed.
I have to wonder if I’m an anomaly and, if so, why?
What is it about me that makes me keep coming back?
Do I have unfinished business or something?
Or is my business Valtu?
Perhaps I keep coming back because each time we haven’t been given the chance to make things right, for our love to get a chance to last.
“Almost there,” Valtu says as he takes the boat down another narrow canal that leads to his place. “How are you feeling? Being on a boat can’t help, can it?”
I shake my head. “I’m doing okay.”
He gives me a sympathetic smile and is about to say something else when his eyes narrow at something over my shoulder.
I turn around to see something big and long and dark slipping into the water a few yards in front of us. It goes in with a splash and disappears into the inky depths.
“What the fuck was that?” I gasp, quickly remembering that my current life is full of all kinds of crazy shit. I quickly shuffle back from the edge of the boat, just in case whatever it is tries to pull me under.
You know what it is.
The bad thing.
“River otter,” Valtu says.
I look at him over my shoulder. “Are you nuts?”
He presses his lips together and doesn’t say anything.
God damn it. It’s like the universe is trying to keep me in my current role. I have to get that fucking book back before this shit gets worse, then I guess I’ll figure out how to eventually reveal to Valtu who I really am.
Luckily, we get back to his place without a demon capsizing our boat, and the moment we step inside his back doors, I calm down a little.
I don’t think his house is protected by any wards, not like the ones I have currently around my apartment to keep those bad things out, but I always feel safe and protected here.
“Do you want me to make you tea?” he asks, looking so adorable and yet dapper all at once in the tux and I’m only now realizing that I’ve seen him wear this tux before. To my twenty-third birthday party in London, a month after we got married. The love I felt that day…
“Valtu,” I utter, suddenly so overcome that tears flood my eyes.
He stares at me in confusion, mid-reach for the kettle.
I stride over to him and grab his face, my palms pressed against his cool cheeks, his stubble scratching my skin. “Fuck me,” I whisper, staring deep into his eyes. Oh these eyes, how dark and rich they are, as they’ve always been. I’ve lived so many lives staring into these eyes.
He raises his brows. “So, no tea then.” Then he gives me one of those beautiful smiles that look like the heavens are shining down on him and he kisses me.
I could always count on him to oblige me.
Especially when it came to sex.
Our kiss deepens and I feel like I’m kissing for the first time, the first time with all my lives and memories.
It’s been so long that I’ve been without him.
I had him and lost him as Mina, I had him and lost him as Lucy, then I became Dahlia and I had nearly thirty years without him in my life, and now he’s here and I’m here and that’s a fucking miracle in itself.
I kiss him with everything I have. All the love for him I have, all the sorrow, the loss, the missing him without knowing I was missing him.
“Dahlia,” he whispers against my lips, groaning as I reach down and run my hand over his cock that is pushing against his tuxedo pants like a tent pole. “You are a firecracker tonight.”
He breaks off into a guttural moan that sends shockwaves through me.
“You better take advantage then,” I tell him as his mouth goes to my neck, licking and nipping and sucking.
This is the first time I’m with him as Lucy and Mina knowing he’s a vampire, and I want him to feed on me. I want them to know what it’s like to have that feeling of total submission.
“Hold on,” I say to him and I lean over, swiping a knife out of the knife holder on the counter. “I have a request.”
He eyes the knife. “You want me to cut you out of your dress.”
I consider that, sawing my jaw back and forth. “Only if you let the knife go a little deeper.”
His black brows knit together. “What do you mean? You want me to cut you?”
“I want you to feed from me.”
His eyes blaze as he shakes his head. “Nope. No. Not here without anyone to stop me. Don’t you remember what happened last time? We had a whole room full of people watching me and I still almost killed you.”
I chew on my lip for a moment. “Can we compromise? What if you just had a taste?”
He growls at me and kisses me again, pressing me against the counter. “How about you stop making requests and let me be in charge. You want to feel pain and danger, I can bring you that, my dove, but I will not feed from you.”
And at that he picks me up like he’s a caveman taking a captive woman back to his den. He carries me to the bedroom, my clothes coming off as he kisses every inch of my exposed skin, my dress falling to the floor.
He lays me on the bed and I writhe naked on top of the covers, watching in desperate anticipation as he quickly shucks off his tux in hurried movements, wanting nothing more than to feel his hard cock inside of me.
I want him to fuck me now that I remember everything.
Now that I am not just Dahlia, but everyone else.
Still me.
Just me with a deeper understanding of him.
A deeper love for him.
A love so deep that it transcends time.
A love so strong it lasts beyond death.
And he doesn’t even fucking know it.
Now he’s naked, standing at the foot of the bed, and I’m staring at him with new eyes.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asks quietly, stroking his cock with a quick flick of his wrist. Such a magnificent animal, so much power and prowess.
“Never been better,” I tell him, my voice coming out husky as my emotions go into overdrive.
He gets on top of the bed, his movements smooth but measured, like a prowling black panther, or a wolf stalking its prey. His eyes rake over my body, leaving goosebumps in their wake and shivers down my spine.
He gets halfway across me, his cock jutting out in front of him and primed at where I’m wet and open for him, then pauses, running his tongue over his teeth, his mouth curling into a smile. His gaze is eternally wicked.
Always has been.
“You want to see a magic trick?” he asks in a rough voice.
I look at him in surprise, not expecting him to ask that.
“Okay…” I say.
He braces himself over me on one arm while lifting up the other, holding his fingers in front of my face.
He stares at them. I stare at him, not sure what’s about to happen. This can’t be an actual magic trick, right? I mean he’s not a witch.
Poof.
Suddenly every fingertip on his hand bursts into flames.
I jump, pushing back slightly against the headboard.
He laughs. “Don’t worry,” he says, gently waving his hand in front of me. “I’m in complete control.”
“How are you doing that?” I ask, unable to keep my eyes off the flames. His fingertips aren’t sooty or burnt at all, yet the flames are flowing.
“I told you, magic.”
“Like from a witch?” I pause, holding my breath as I wait for his answer. I’ve never said the word witch out loud yet and—