Chapter Twenty-Eight
He was curled behind her, lips grazing kisses against her neck while his fingers traced runic patterns against her stomach.
Her heartbeat had slowed, the sweat cooled on her skin. After a sleepless night, early morning and an intense fuck session, she was struggling to keep her eyelids from drooping. A small part of her brain that still functioned told her she should shower first, to wash away the sticky residue that coated her body. But that part of her brain was foggy, the voice easily squashed.
“Soph,” Eli murmured against her spine. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
The sudden hesitance in his tone had her eyes flashing wide once more, breath catching painfully in her lungs. Post-fuck clarity had hit him and he’d changed his mind. He was going to tell her to leave.
“It’s not normally a topic I’d bring up, but you’ve mentioned it twice now, so I think it’s something you should know.”
The tracing of his fingers on her stomach jerked in agitation and she held her breath, waiting to see what he’d say. Something she’d brought up twice? She wracked her brain, searching through their previous conversations.
He exhaled a sharp breath against her neck, fingers abandoning their pattern drawing to splay across her skin. “I can have children if I want to.”
For almost a full minute she turned the words over in her mind. They made absolutely no sense in the context of who and what he was. But as they looped, one implication quickly became apparent. Suddenly his hand was a hot brand against her stomach and she shoved it away, rolling to all fours to stare at him.
“You what?”
“Soph…” he began. She didn’t let him continue.
“You couldn’t mention this beforehand? We just fucked! You just -” she gestured wildly at the cum smeared between her thighs. “I’m not on any birth control! You couldn’t just follow proper hook up etiquette and mention you’re a fertile fucking vampire?”
He tried to grab for her, but she swung out of reach, crawling to the edge of the bed. “What was your play?” She raged, scooping her puddle of clothes from the floor. “Are you trying to trap me?”
He sat up, eyes widening in alarm. “Fucking hell, Soph, I’d never -”
But she didn’t let him finish, instead stalking towards the door. God damn fucking men! Now upright, more cum gushed from between her legs. She could feel it dripping down her calves, for fuck’s sake. At the last moment, she veered, heading instead to what she assumed was the ensuite. Carpet changed to cool marble beneath her feet and she slammed the door shut.
She didn’t know what she planned to do; go home and vent to her mother or find a family planning clinic were her top thoughts, followed by a visit to a bar. But she couldn’t leave looking like this. She didn’t even know how to leave. Would she have to walk halfway back to the city before she could hail a taxi?
Chest heaving, heart racing, she leaned against the marble counter and stared at herself in the mirror. Eyeliner ran in rivulets down her cheeks to mix with the cum Eli had spurted there. She ran fingers over her kiss-swollen lips and willed her brain back to calm.
What he’d said made no sense. Fertile vampires just weren’t a thing.
The door clicked and swung open, Eli filling the frame. He held his tracksuit pants bundled over his junk.
“I might have neglected my supernatural studies,” she growled before he could speak, “but I’m not stupid. Vampires can’t have children. It’s not possible.”
“It is,” he didn’t move from the doorway and she suddenly had the claustrophobic feeling that she was trapped, “because I’m not a vampire. Not completely, anyway.”
She blinked at him, once again trying to work the words through her mind to understand them. “Then what are you?”
“I’m a witch.”
A witch. A Founders-damned fucking witch. She always knew there was something not quite right about his vampirism. He’d always been a little too human. She swallowed back a lump of utterly confusing emotions. “You better start talking.”
He stepped into the room. “I will, but have a shower while I do.”
She stared, and he smiled slowly. “You look thoroughly fucked.”
Yeah, no thanks to him. She pushed back from the counter, taking in her skewed, messy bun, the sticky substance that coated her breasts, the creamy fluid still rolling down her legs, the red bite mark on her ass in the mirror.
“Soph,” he murmured, closing the distance between them and letting his tracksuit pants drop. Already he was semi-hard again. “I enjoy filling your pretty little cunt with my seed, and I intend to do it quite frequently. I haven’t tried to deliberately mislead you. I said I can have children if I want.”
She snorted, the sound turning to a choked groan as he swiped his fingers between her legs, spreading the mess they’d made together further over her stomach. “If you want? Are you telling me you can turn your fertility on and off at will?”
She said the words derisively. Noone could do that, and she was thoroughly shocked when he murmured, “that’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“What sort of witch are you?”
He gave her a nudge, using his body to herd her towards one end of the long, glass-panelled shower. Before she could stop him, he flicked the mixer with a hand and the hot spray waterfalled down over her head.
Spluttering, she pushed water from her eyes and watched him move to the other end of the shower where a second shower head awaited him.
“You can’t just tell me you’re a witch and then brush it off, Eli!”
“Get washed,” he reiterated, fiddling with his own mixer until water poured over him too, cascading over the carved muscles of his back. Scowling, Soph turned back to her own shower, hunting through the neat row of products in the arched recess before her.
Most of them were in black or white bottles, branded with a label she’d never heard of before. She popped the cap off a liquid soap and sniffed it. It had an earthy, smoky smell - oud wood, she read on the label - coupled with cinnamon and a lingering sweetness that could have been vanilla. It smelled like the shirt he’d gifted her. Like him.
The bottle was clearly expensive, so she took a savage sort of pleasure in globbing more than she needed into her hand and lathering it over her skin. The scent wafting into her nose was divine, and when she washed it away, her skin was as soft as silk.
Her initial fright of being possibly pregnant had eased, and she took her time washing her face and hair before finally turning back to Eli. He was waiting for her, water pouring over his shoulders, hands clasped behind his back as though to keep from reaching out to her.
“What type of witch?” She demanded. As far as she knew, witches couldn’t turn fertility on and off at a whim any more than a vampire could. Maybe he was some sort of hybrid…
“A gaian witch.” He looked away. “The gaian witch, actually. There are no others.”
Soph swallowed, her heart suddenly thumping unevenly as she recalled what he’d once said about the gaian witch. “You’re a Founder?”
His gaze flicked quickly back to hers before he shut off his shower and prowled towards her. When he pressed a hand to the shower screen, effectively trapping her in the corner, her breath hitched painfully.
His arm dropped away almost immediately, though he didn’t step back. “Stop that,” he murmured.
“Stop what?”
“Stop fearing me. I’m not going to hurt you. I can hear every time your heart kicks off.” He watched her for a long moment, jaw working, but when she didn’t speak he said, “I need to know the trust is still there. Whether you leave today or in five years, what I tell you now has to stay between us.”
He was finally verbalising the unspoken agreement they’d kept each time they’d crossed paths prior to this, to protect each other. To keep each other safe. She nodded, swallowing against the lump forming in her throat and when he continued to watch her intently, she whispered, “the trust is still there.”
He remained quiet, and she shifted uneasily beneath the spray of water still against her back. “I don’t understand,” she finally broke the silence. “How do you have vampire powers?”
“I told you.” His tone was reserved and his gaze flicked away again as though he really didn’t want to be talking about this, even though he’d brought it up first. “I took them.”
Setting her jaw, she reached out, brushing droplets of water from his face as she cupped his cheek and coaxed his eyes back to hers. “Then you better tell me again. And the whole of it this time.”
He looped his fingers around her wrist and while he still looked troubled, he didn’t pull her hand away.
“The powers Ethereal gifted the Founders weren’t hers to give. She took them from someone else, then dished them out to five mortals to hide them. I don’t know if she knew the magic could be passed on through procreation - or recreation in the case of the vampires - but it worked in her favour that the Founders could hide among their own.”
“Five Founders?” Soph pressed. “You told me there were six.”
“My powers didn’t come from Ethereal. I was gifted mine by someone else.”
“The same someone that Ethereal stole the original powers from?”
Eli stared at her for a long moment before nodding, as if he weren’t sure that it was a good thing for her to make such a connection.
“So you’re collecting vampire powers because…?”
“I’m going to use them to put Ethereal back in her place, then give them back to their owner. I’ll do the same with the light and black witch powers when I can track them down. The Light Witch and I have an agreement… one more lifetime and she’ll seek me out, but the Black Witch is elusive.”
“Is it Adriana?” It had to be. Who else would drug a hoard of witches and set them on Eli’s tail? Eli, however, shrugged.
“I don’t know. It could be. Or Adriana could be a pawn in a grander scheme. I’ll only know who it is when I meet her face-to-face. There’s this… familiar bond that we all have where we recognise a kindred spirit, no matter the lifetime.”
Soph looked past Eli towards the bathroom door and the vista window visible beyond. It was a massive bomb to drop on her. It made Marco’s secrecy around Jacob pale in comparison, and yet she didn’t feel panicked at all. She wasn’t ready to run yet. There were still so many questions to ask. Eli drew her hand from his cheek, kissing her palm as he brought her thoughts back to the present. She sighed.
“It sort of pales in comparison to everything you’ve told me, but I definitely don’t need to go to a family planning clinic, do I?”
Finally Eli cracked a smile, and he pulled her into the circle of his arms, the hot shower now enveloping them both. “No, Witchling. No clinics. No children unless they are wanted and discussed at length.” He kissed the top of her head. “At great length.”
She made a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a groan against his chest.
“I think you better get me a drink.”