Feed, prey, fuck
27
Rosaline was nothing short of a goddess.
Her hair snaked in bountiful chocolate waves around her shoulders. Green eyes shone from the inside out, but somehow still looked a dark green, like the deepest depths of the forest. Her ivory skin glistened like a delicate doll, yet her posture demanded subservience like a drill sergeant—or more familiar to me, a mob boss. Her presence needed no introduction. I’d never seen anything so beautiful and yet so terrifying.
“Oh, come now, don’t be so standoffish. I’m merely here to officially introduce myself.” Her sharp tone hid a playful cadence, each syllable dripping with arrogant amusement.
“I have nothing to do with Riftan anymore, so please leave me be.” My voice was timid, but my words could have been more cautious.
“Why are you acting so afraid, darling?” She reached out one of her slender fingers, decked in gold, and twirled it in my hair. “I’m here to offer you company, not hurt you. After all, we have something in common. We’ve both had our hearts broken by you know who. Don’t you want to gossip about him, write it in our burn book, or put a curse on him with the use of black magic? You know, whatever it is you girls do these days after a breakup?”
“It wasn’t a breakup,” I mumbled, mostly to myself.
“Regardless of what you call it, a broken heart is a broken heart, and I know what it feels like to be crushed by Riftan. I was in love with him once, and he knew what kind of misery I’d feel to be discarded so deftly. Once I could see past my feelings for him, I realized how much of a selfish prick he was. A real pansy ass twat.” She colored each of her insults like they were meant specifically for my ears.
She stared at me with a raised brow as if waiting for me to agree. But she’d be waiting forever. Yes, I was broken hearted and it was completely Riftan’s fault, but I didn’t harbor ill feelings for him for it. Riftan had never treated me poorly. In fact, he’d only ever taken care of me like I was his princess. He was foolish and maybe a little bit self-inspired, but that was about the extent of his downfall. A prick or a twat? Absolutely not.
When I had nothing to say in agreement with Rosaline, she tilted her head at me and added, “Don’t tell me that you still care about that pompous bastard.”
I scowled, my lips failing to hold back my tongue when I snapped, “Please stop talking about him like that. It’s not that I have any sort of feelings for him anymore, it’s that I do not like the level of disrespect you are regarding him with.”
“Pardon me?”
For some ridiculous reason, I went on, “I’ve heard the story about your relationship with him from enough perspectives to know that Riftan was not at fault for the way it ended. He did what was best for himself—which was get away from the manipulating, parasitical leech you’d become. You are the villain in this love story, so don’t you dare try to soil his name with duplicitous statements.” By the end of my rant, my breaths came is short, harsh huffs.
A dumfounded look crossed Rosaline’s perfectly manicured face. As quickly as it’d come, she wiped the look away, snapping her hanging jaw closed and refuting, “I assure you that the stories you’ve heard have been exaggerated. Regardless, I’m not here to talk about me. I sought you out for the purpose of offering you my consolation—a shoulder to cry on, or what have you. I want to help you through this time that I know so personally can be very hard to recover from.”
I sighed, breathing out the remnants of my frustration, knowing the emotion wouldn’t get me anywhere except six feet under. “No. I’m doing fine. I don’t need any help. Thank you, though, for the offer.”
“Are you doing fine, darling?” Rosaline’s fingers tickled at my chin, tugging until I looked her dead in the eyes. “Because it seems like you are merely existing through the days. You can’t lie to me. I am the woman who sees all. It’s why every immortal comes to me when they need information nobody else can get them. There’s nothing I don’t know about you, and I’ve seen the way you battle with your own instincts to stay within some bounds of morality that permit you to live in two different worlds. Believe it or not, you are not human anymore, and it’s not becoming of you to act as one.”
She poked at one of the fangs in my mouth and continued, “I mean, look at you! You are a vampire, dearest. You drink blood to survive. But merely surviving is not the same as living. To live, you must embrace what you are. Yes, you must murder to survive, drink to survive, but you should do so for fun as well. You are the predator, and these little peons are your prey. Even basic mortal instincts tell you to eat when you’re hungry, kill when you’re threatened, and fornicate when you’re horny. Now you’re of immortal blood, and those instincts in your DNA are even more important to listen to. Feed, prey, fuck—giving in to those raw urges is the only thing that will make eternity bearable. You are free of the mortal restraints they trained you to refrain from. I can teach you to embrace this way of life—how to thrive the way an immortal should. You don’t merely have to face eternity, revel in it. Don’t you think that’d be superior to the life you’re living now?”
Feed, prey, fuck… that certainly sounded more titillating than eat, pray, love.
While my heart ached at her candid insinuations of my life, the truth was, “No. As I said, I’m doing perfectly fine.” But I won’t be for an eternity.
I was subsisting—not living. I had an eternity, but I didn’t know how to live it. I wasn’t happy living this life. At least I was healing—maybe—but it wasn’t enjoyable merely biding my days. Foolish optimism could only get me so far and last so long. I had nothing to look forward to. Eternity looked bleak.
“So, you are fine now, but I can offer you more than fine. I can offer you fun.” Rosaline sunk in beside me, batting her long, thick eyelashes. She was stunning, her looks almost making up for her aura that still drove shivers down my spine. She bit a little fang over her voluptuous lips, making my heart pound. I couldn’t tell if it beat out of jealousy or desire from her beauty. Hell, maybe Riftan and I actually had the same type, because I was getting closer to the possibility of accepting her offer with each little inch she pushed closer to me.
My chest ached when she snaked her hand over my showing leg, the change in my heart rate so obviously noticeable to her a little snicker flicked over her lips in response. She went on, hooding her gaze as she looked me over. “Let me help you over this little hurdle in your eternity. I can promise you that I will love you better than Riftan ever did—better than any man can.”
Her sharp tongue almost had me. She’d seen my weakness and played off my momentary lapse in judgment—but momentary it had been. Shaking it off, I responded, “Knowing the things I do of you, I’d be crazy to accept your offer.”
She retorted, “Knowing what you do, you’d be crazy not to accept my offer.”
She was right on that account, too. I knew that denying her could be bad for me. She could make life hard for any immortal. Being the Rosaline, she could kill me if she so pleased—though even she’d struggle to get away with it right then and there. I’d have to look over my shoulder every day for the rest of my life, but I still had to tell her, “The answer is no, Rosaline. I’m no fool, and I know you have a game you plan to play with me if I give in to you.” I stood and shimmied out of the booth.
Both Rosaline’s large bodyguards held their hands out to stop me. Her superficially frail-looking fingers grabbed onto my arm with startling force. “There’s plenty of fun I could have with your pathetic little heart. You’d make it easy for me to torture you, but at this rate, you’re going to do it to yourself. I don’t need you as my toy. You’re too pitiful to last long enough to be worth keeping around. The only thing you have left to offer me is the anguish that it’d bring Riftan if I had you for my own. This is my last offer. I won’t keep you as my pet like I so very much wish to, but in return, let me wear you like a sexy little badge of honor. Some arm candy, that’s all I’m asking of you, then I’ll let you go back to your useless existence.”
Her words cut through the shield I’d attempted to erect against her, slicing into me with a tender ache. So that was the game she was playing at.
I wished she couldn’t get to me the way she so obviously wanted to, but everything she said was too close to factual. My existence was useless, and my heart was probably too pitiful to withstand anything she threw at it.
Avoiding eye contact, for fear of giving in to her, I pulled out of Rosaline’s grip and pushed past her bodyguards. To my surprise, they let me through, but Rosaline still yelled after me, “Watch your back, Cowitz. I own the underground, and it encompasses this whole fucking city. You make one wrong move here, and I’ll seize the opportunity to have your head.”
Her voice faded into the suddenly silent crowd as I retreated. Everyone’s eyes were on me, but Rosaline and her guards didn’t follow.
They’d let me go, but that almost felt worse than if they’d stopped me. Rosaline knew she’d already said everything she needed to say. She’d cut my wound, and attempted to sew in the seed that she could heal it. Unfortunately, her weapon didn’t need to be very sharp, as my wounds were far from healed up. But if she thought I’d come running back to her after everything she’d said had time to settle in, she was wrong. I didn’t need her to fix me, or to save me; I could fix myself.
To be fair, Rosaline had been right about a lot of things, and the sickening feeling her words gave me was proof of that. My existence was sub-par, living off my human friend and tiptoeing around the underground. I needed to take control, live like a vampire—because I was one. Not this lowly, homeless, dependent burden on society—immortal and human alike. I’d chosen to become immortal so I could make more of a legacy for myself than merely being a name on Johnny Roufe’s list of bodies.
I was tired of letting people do whatever they wanted to me. No longer was I going to be a pawn. Only I would tell myself what to feel and how to act. Fuck anybody else who tried, starting with Riftan and ending with Rosaline.
This is my story, and I didn’t need anyone’s help to write it.
I had a legacy to create.
Feed, prey, fuck. Those were the fundaments Rosaline called the basics of immortal living. I had a strong feeling that strictly following that list would mean forgoing my humanity, so I decided to use it more as a guide than a rulebook.
First things first, I wanted a clear roster—no debts—which meant I needed to repay Jayleen for everything she’d done for me. I could get anything I wanted from the hands of foolish mortals, and I should have been taking from them all along. I could have been swimming in riches like the rest of the immortals I knew.
After getting some cash, I would need a meal—because I wanted the thrill of a kill. That was the feed and prey part of Rosaline’s little lecture. She’d also said something about fornication.
I’d never had any trouble hooking up with guys before Riftan, but since leaving him, things weren’t so simple. It was admittedly pitiful, but even feigning romance with other men hurt to an extent I wasn’t yet able to overcome. But I was a vampire, and Rosaline was right—I needed to fornicate if I was really going to enjoy my infinite years on this miserable planet.
A man would never let emotions get in the way of him getting laid, so I shouldn’t either. Riftan probably wasn’t…
No! I can’t think about that right now!
I’d have to find the proper victim. If I did, I could accomplish all three of my tasks at once.
A rich guy who I was willing to sleep with in Creswell wasn’t hard to find. The city was full of hot young go getters fresh into their positions as VP at one of our many large tech firms. There were even more daddy money boys riding off their families’ trust funds or organized crime rings.
I made quick work of convincing one of these promising young men to get me a large sum of cash. That was something I’d been able to do before becoming immortal, but now it was a piece of cake with the help of hypnotism. The last two parts were a little harder. I still struggled to bed the guy, getting far enough into our encounter to know that I didn’t enjoy kissing him because all it did was remind me of Riftan. And after that, it was like the image had soiled my meal.
I suppose becoming a powerful and autonomous immortal woman didn’t require an immediate fuck. So, I’d continue to work on that aspect and not let it weigh down my ultimate motive.
Back at the apartment, I dropped several rolls of cash onto the kitchen table and watched as Jayleen’s jaw dropped.
“Rent, for letting me stay here these past couple weeks despite the obvious challenges,” I declared, chin held high—where it was going to stay.
“Rent?” She poked at the rolls curiously, but with unwarranted caution. “But this is, like, thousands of dollars…”
“Would you like more? I can get you more.”
“Leanne… What’s gotten into you? How’d you come by this? You didn’t steal it, did you?” Her tone wasn’t helpful in cluing me in on whether she was mad, concerned, or curious.
“Is it stealing if the owner hands it to you willingly? And nothing’s gotten into me. This is what I should have been doing this whole time. I’m immortal Jayleen. I can get anything I want. I can get anything we want!” I merely hoped she’d want in on the fun. Everything was more fun with an accomplice—and I had that position to fill.
“Is the person you took this from still alive?”
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answers to.”
Jayleen nodded, the thoughts behind her eyes distant while she sorted through the information I’d given her.
Looking up, eyes certain and unclouded, she told me, “I want in on this charade. What kind of stupid shit can we get into?”
And with that, I’d found my new partner in crime—literally.