Chapter 15
C assia
It tasted like the richest caramel I’d ever tried. It was the strangest thing. Not a single metallic flavor in his blood—not even the scent.
When I met his eyes, his pupils were blown and his irises had liquified, the emerald shade ebbing and flowing, almost like liquid pearls catching the light.
It was stunningly beautiful. It took several seconds before I could tear my gaze away from the pure, unadulterated look of burning fire and desire on his countenance.
He broke the spell first, crushing my lips with a punishing kiss before releasing me. “That was... intense,” I stated. “The whole thing.”
“Yes, it was.” Lukas swooped up the remains of my lunch and put it in the bag. Then he strolled over to me, his eyes hooded. “Just think about when I spread your pretty thighs.”
He dropped that bomb on me and turned around, eyeing the trail while he hoisted the bag over his shoulder. He was too hot for his own good. There was no way he didn’t know how he affected me. I felt the dampness between my thighs and watched the subtle flare of his nostrils. He fucking knew.
And I knew my face was turning red. Being embarrassed had never really been my thing but this man—this vampire—he had a way of flaying me wide open.
At some point, I was going to have to deal with the impending progression of our relationship but for now, I decided to focus on the oddity of a man wearing what equated to a designer suit strolling about and feeding me donuts all nonchalantly on the peak of a mountain that looked similar to Mount Everest.
He didn’t have a single smear of dirt or a solitary leaf stuck in his gorgeous, near-white hair. There was a grass stain on my knee, and I hadn’t touched the ground.
“Do you want to walk back or do you want me to carry you?” He asked when I stepped beside him.
“Honestly, I just wish we were back already. I think this was enough fresh air for one day.” I took one last peek at the vista around us, trying to commit it to memory so I could mark every single tiny detail with my pencils.
He took my hand. “I’ll bring you back here. I’ll bring you to other places, too, where you can paint and draw.”
“Thank you,” I said, giving him a small smile. “Thank you for today.” It felt odd to thank him for what he’d just done to me with his blood, but I couldn’t say I was as upset as I should have been.
Lukas’s lips were soft and warm against my forehead. “You’re welcome. I am glad you had a good day.”
I expected him to start walking but he didn’t take a step. He grabbed both of my wrists, and I felt the ground beneath my feet disappear, and then a rush of wind.
When I opened my eyes, we were back in my room. “Holy shit,” I muttered, snatching my hands away. “How about a little warning next time?”
My equilibrium took a couple seconds to settle, and I shook my head, trying to overcome the sudden displacement.
He smirked at me. “Would you have let me transition you willingly?”
Not waiting for an answer, he strode to the door and opened it. Katarina walked in, bowing her head to Lukas and making a beeline for me.
I gave her a quick hug and caught a wince. Searching for the source of her pain, I saw her hands. They were covered in bandages. “What happened to you?”
White material was wrapped around several of her fingertips, and she glanced at Lukas out of the corner of her eye. “I’m sorry for endangering you the other day, I meant no harm. I wasn’t thinking and I failed. Please forgive me?”
“Hold up.” I glanced over my shoulder. Lukas stood there, his official “vampire” face firmly in place.
Gone was the man I’d just been on a date with.
Immediately, I knew he was responsible for whatever horrible thing happened to Katarina.
I hadn’t even had the chance to fully process being spelled to drink his blood, and now, there was this.
“You did this to her?” I stomped across the floor, pointing at him. “What did you do?”
His gaze flickered before he replied. “Katarina knows her responsibilities and she failed them Such behavior cannot go unpunished.”
“You’re such an asshole! I asked to go—are you going to punish me, too?” I was practically screaming at him.
I felt a tug on my sleeve and twisted my head to see my maid’s look of horror. “Don’t, Cassia, he’s not wrong. It was just my fingernails, I’ll be okay. I deserve far worse.”
“No. No, this is not okay. In what kind of barbaric ass backward swamp horror freaking world is this right?”
Katarina pulled on my shirt a second time. “Cassia.” She may have whispered, I didn’t know. I couldn’t hear her over the panic my blood was infused with, and I turned around, walking blindly.
Lukas materialized in front of me, stopping my forward progression and snatched my chin in his hand. The tips of my shoes banged into his.
“Cassia, listen to me.” His voice deepened and his eyes darkened, causing my heart to stutter in my chest. “There is nothing I won’t do to keep you safe. No one I won’t hurt or kill. If it leaves the two of us as the last people standing, so be it. You will accept this. It is my law.”
He disappeared from the room, and I grabbed the back of the couch to stop myself from falling down. Katarina rushed over to me. “Are you okay? Seriously, none of this is your fault. I’m used to this stuff.”
My chest sank thinking about how I’d screamed at him after we had such a nice day. But whoever heard of pulling someone’s fingernails off because they went shopping? It defied logic.
My maid helped me up despite the sorry shape of her hands, using her forearms and wrists to try and stabilize me. She guided me onto the couch and sat quietly beside me while I stared out the window, my head numb.
I was emotionally depleted and I knew it.
The highs and lows of the day had been drastic, and it felt good to just sit with Katarina’s steady presence.
As I leaned against her with my head on her shoulder, I told her, “I don’t care what happens, but I won’t let him punish you ever again.
I know you wouldn’t do anything to try and hurt me. ”
She chuckled softly. “If anyone could keep a promise like that, you would be the one.”
* * *
The next couple weeks went by quietly. The window became my home as I finally took out my drawing supplies and spent hours transforming blank pages into landscapes. I hadn’t yet seen a unicorn, but they graced several canvases.
Lukas was a ghost. Haunting the corners of my mind and my memory, leaving me with alternating visions of the embrace and his kiss, and then his dark and stormy face when I screamed at him.
Guilt prickled my belly and my heart continued to feel heavy. I was slowly accepting that I wouldn’t be leaving this Realm any time soon and that it was inevitable I’d be wed to a vampire lord—of all things.
I had to laugh at my circumstances sometimes, considering the disconnect between the future I’d envisioned and the one I was faced with. Marriage with a boring, distant finance bro or a coupling with a violent, distant, ancient bloodthirsty creature?
The creature intrigued me far more than the Wall Street guy ever had.
Katarina knocked on my door, and I yelled for her to come in, setting down my paint brush. Lately, I preferred colored pencils, but now that I had huge stretches of time to play with, I was working on perfecting my oil technique.
“Oooo,” my maid drawled, “you got the colors perfect. I love it. Looks like you can just jump inside the paper.”
I grinned. “Thank you.”
Kiam strolled in, hands in his pockets and his head jerked, eyeing my art. “You painted that,” he stated.
“I did.” I stood and wiped my hands on a small rag.
He tilted his head slightly as he looked at me. “It is very good.” I may have blushed as self-consciousness trickled through me.
“Queen Annalise is expecting you for your luncheon today,” he remarked.
In the back of my mind, I’d assumed she’d forgotten since so much time had gone by. “Oh? Okay. I should probably get ready.”
He glanced at me. “Do that. Katarina, help her. When you’re done, we’ll go.”
The man settled in an armchair, crossing his legs, and Katarina and I headed to the walk-in closet.
She swiped the hangers back and forth, searching. “You want to be formal, but not too formal. Casual. But casual-formal? And you should show some skin. She loves that.”
Patiently, I waited while she agonized over the options. “We should have gone shopping,” I remarked.
She stopped suddenly and pulled her head out of the rack to level me with a gaze before shoving her face back in.
“Or not...” I muttered.
Katarina popped back out with a dark blue minidress. “This one. It’ll show off your legs and your back,” she flipped the garment around to display the lack of material behind it, “and with the high neckline you’re sending a message.”
“That I’m not drinkable. Got it.”
I took the garment and changed right there in the closet. My maid tugged my hair from the neckline of the dress, arranging it around my shoulders. She didn’t have use of all her fingers, so I ended up assisting.
“Thanks,” I said. “I guess I need to put some makeup on.”
“You do,” Kiam said as we walked out.
Katarina paled. “I can’t help with that.” She held her hands up. “I can’t grip pencils or anything.”
Gently, I took her wrists. “I don’t understand how these aren’t healed yet. Shouldn’t this be better by now?”
“Cursed,” someone replied.
Kalix had walked in and I smothered a sigh. My room was turning into Grand Central Station. Plus, it was weird. I couldn’t remember if I’d ever seen him in here.
“Yeah well, uncurse her. This isn’t right.”
Kalix folded his arms. “Everyone is aware of your opinion.”
Oh, yeah. That’s right. My screaming at Lukas. Was nothing private?
“Kiam, can you help her? Aren’t you some, like, master at magic or something?”
Katarina nudged me, “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. It has healed, some.”
“Sit down,” Kiam ordered me, pointing at a small stool.
I did, and he strode over to the dresser and returned with a makeup palette. “Really? You look like a mime,” Katarina scoffed.
Kalix chuckled and then said, “Are you sure you want to do that?”
I eyed the tall, darker skinned man. “I need to fix my reputation, I guess. Might as well look my best doing it.”
“If you were my woman, I would have sewn your lips shut with twenty-four-gauge wire.”
“That’s oddly specific.”
He stared down at me, unmoving, before he said, “I have discriminating taste.”
Okay .
Kiam was bent over in front of me, holding an eyeshadow brush. “Hold still. Ignore Kalix or you’ll end up looking like a mime.” I caught the glance he flicked at Katarina.
She rolled her eyes and perched on the end of the sofa, watching the professional begin to paint my face.
“Stop breathing,” he snapped.
My lips separated in disbelief, and he glared at me. I closed them and he continued. My eyelid twitched, tickled from his ministrations while my mind raced over the break in his usual stoicism. I ached to ask him what was wrong and I must have moved again because he stopped.
Kalix swayed into my line of vision. “I rest my case.” His cloak swooped around his legs, and he strode away.
“Cassia,” Kiam caught my attention. “This is impossible when you keep moving.”
“Annalise is waiting. She is not a patient woman.” Kalix’s voice reached us.
“Fuck it,” Kiam muttered and grabbed my chin.
Surprised, I froze, and he continued working. The sensation of his fingertips against my skin felt wrong . It was as if I’d plunged my hand into a gelatinous substance by accident; it was that jarring.
I didn’t have to worry about it for long because suddenly, he was ripped away from me. The brush fell to the floor with a clatter and I saw my maid, her head tilted all the way back. I followed her gaze, and there was Kiam, tacked to the ceiling.
A shadow fell over me, blocking the view.
“Another man touched you,” Lukas growled, wiping his hand over my face.
The gross sensation instantly dissipated, and I let out an exhale. “Lukas, let him down. Please,” I begged.
Then I stopped. I couldn’t hear my own words.
“What is wrong?” Panic filled my chest and my fingers reached for my mouth. “What’s happening?” My lips moved, but no sound came out.
Lukas raised his hand again and pressed the tips of two fingers to my mouth. My lips stopped moving. The look of amused satisfaction that covered his face was diabolical. He tilted his chin up very slightly, keeping his eyes on me.
For some reason, completely unbeknownst to me, I found his arrogance hot. Or, at least, the space between my thighs sure as hell did. Internally, I cursed myself. I didn’t want to encourage him, and I knew he’d be able to tell the effect his assholery had on me.
I took a deep breath through my nose and watched as he reached for the discarded makeup kit. Gently, he applied eyeliner to my eyes, and then he carefully lined my mouth with a lipliner before swiping a tinted gloss over it.
Even without a mirror, I knew he did a good job. I mean, just look at these vampires. They were masters of everything they did.
Their own cosmetics were impeccable. That night that I’d first met Lukas and Kiam, I’d admired their skill even though I’d thought it strange to see men wearing makeup. Somehow, it just worked on them. It worked well enough I couldn’t stop staring at the ridiculously hot man in front of me.
Katarina’s jumping around in the background pulled me from the comfort of my distracted thoughts.
Kiam looked like he’d burn Lukas where he stood, but the most interesting thing was how the air wavered around him.
Transfixed, I sucked in a breath. I was observing magic in action. The air twisted around him, appearing as small tendrils of heat. It reminded me of the moisture above a hot summer road. As the power worked around him, he slowly freed his limbs.
Once he released himself, he landed in a crouch on the floor. Then, he stood up, dusted himself off, gave me a nod, and walked out of the room as if nothing had happened.
Lukas cast a casual glance his way, ignoring him, and smoothed my eyebrows with his thumb.
Kiam, my guard and escort, had walked away. My heart thudded in my chest. I knew what I was going to do and screw Lukas if he tried to stop me.
No . There will be no screwing of Lukas.
A disappointed lump formed in my stomach, and I shoved it to the side.
The man straightened and gave me a tiny smile. He loomed over me for a moment, rubbing his chin.
Why I paused, I have no idea. I kept locking up my tumultuous thoughts until they narrowed down to one single course of action.
Lukas’s eyes narrowed and I stood.
Then I leveled him with a gaze and walked out of the room, leaving him calling my name behind me.
I ignored him.