Chapter 13 – Tristan
Chapter Thirteen
Tristan
About an hour before dawn, knowing that I had to leave because Kali’s apartment was a deathtrap for a vampire during daylight, I lifted Kali into my arms, intending to give her a warm bath before taking her to my penthouse suite.
“What are you doing?” she mumbled. She didn’t bother to open her eyes, probably still exhausted after our night of marathon sex.
I had been a damn glutton, and now she was paying the price. Thank God she heals so quickly. Otherwise, she would not only be emotionally exhausted but she would also be sore as hell.
“I’m taking you for a bath and then taking you back to my suite with me,” I told her soothingly. “You will stay with me going forward.”
She immediately opened her eyes and tried pushing away from me.
I refused to release her and instead tightened my grip around her.
“Just because we had sex doesn’t mean that I’m consenting to a marriage,” she growled at me.
“You and I both know that when a vampire takes a mate it is truly until death and not some weak-ass marriage where there is a possibility of a divorce.” I tried to sound reasonable, but I couldn’t help a bit of impatience from leaking into my voice. “You are my mate. Only death can separate us.”
“I never agreed to that,” she said in a shocked whisper. She peered up at me with a frown of utter confusion.
“I don’t understand how being my mate is a surprise to you.” I was right there with her on the confusion meter. “I told you repeatedly throughout the night what our joining meant.”
“But…but a human can’t be the mate of a vampire.” She seemed truly stunned by my words.
I loosened my grip and let her slide to her feet.
She immediately took advantage by running into the bathroom and closing and locking the door behind her.
Soon after, I heard the shower going. I knew that she was going to be stubborn about this. I gritted my teeth and waited. As soon as she emerged from the bathroom, wearing only a large towel held fast over her breasts, I rounded on her to continue our discussion.
“Are you crazy enough to think that we can continue living apart and that you can keep your job?” It was my turn to lose my patience. “You are my mate, Kali. I know damn well that you know what that means.”
The entire time I was speaking she didn’t look at me once. She kept her head down and started pulling on black jeans and a black T-shirt. “I know that only a vampire can be the mate of a vampire,” she bit out crisply and started pulling on her clothes at vampiric speed.
God, I loved watching her move. She was elegant and graceful in every line of her body.
“I know that I am not a vampire. I am human, so therefore I cannot possibly be your mate!” She pulled on her boots and started packing a backpack.
“What the fuck do you think taking my seed and my blood meant?”
She glared at me. “Don’t take that tone with me,” she gritted out. She grabbed her backpack and left the bedroom, leaving me gaping after her.
I couldn’t believe that we were having this conversation. I couldn’t believe that she could so effortlessly ignore me. That pissed me off even more. I breathed in and out, trying to regain some semblance of control over my rage. When I finally felt marginally in control, I followed her.
She stood in her kitchen, making coffee.
I cleared my throat, hoping to gain her attention, but she kept her back to me.
Again, I breathed in and out, even though it did absolutely nothing for me other than give me time to cool my anger. “I don’t give my lovers my blood, Kali. Ever.” I tried to sound rational and not at all as frustrated as I felt.
I didn’t bother telling her that she and I would never be able to remain apart for long periods of time. She would find that out the hard way if she continued to defy me. Our bond wouldn’t allow it. And it was even worse that our bond wasn’t complete. It would be impossible for us to go even one night without the other. She needed my blood to sustain her, and I needed to at least taste her essence. Without either, we would both suffer debilitating thirst and dehydration. Without my blood, she would feel like a drug addict being deprived of their drug of choice, and nothing would be able to quench that addiction, not even another vampire’s blood. I needed to make her understand.
“I noticed you don’t have the same exclusivity with your sperm,” she sneered.
I narrowed my eyes, wanting to spank her ass for her sassiness but also wanting to take her back to bed. “Don’t worry. We have a lifetime left for all the exclusivity you want.”
“I am not arguing with you about this, Tristan,” she dismissed and continued making her coffee. “I’m going to work, and you can take your draconian ideals and go jump for all I care.”
I pointedly looked at the still-dark sky through the cracks in her curtains over the kitchen windows.
“This has nothing to do with my ideals, but it is about your own safety.” I tried another tack to reason with her. “I have known and unknown enemies, Kali. They would stop at nothing to get back at me.” Yeah, that was true and important, but my main reason for wanting her with me was that I wasn’t ready for her to find out what our mating meant, since she didn’t seem to know. What the actual fuck was I going to do? When she found out that I had completely messed up her life, she would hate me.
She looked up from her coffee preparation and held my gaze. “Why would you have those kinds of enemies? Are you talking immortals?”
Just then, the predawn light filtered into the room.
Shit! I was out of time. Unless I wanted to kidnap her against her will, I had no choice but to leave her here and return to my suite. It was clear from that shitshow last night that my enemies were getting desperate. By taking her out on a date, I had just placed her in danger unintentionally. I had been so convinced that she was ready to be my mate that I didn’t anticipate leaving her so exposed. I didn’t like it, but I would have to try again at the next sunset to convince her to come with me.
“We will revisit this tonight,” I warned her before leaving the apartment by teleporting to my suite.
I was terrified of leaving her, but I consoled myself with the thought that, after a day of separation, she would be in a better frame of mind to appreciate what being without me meant. This was a new reality for us. And this separation wouldn’t be pretty, for either of us.
First, though, I instructed Aidan to reassign a few of the elite wolves to watch over her during daylight since I wouldn’t be able to. He refused to respond to me, but I knew he would get it done. Kali’s safety was too damn important, despite his disapproval of our mating.
Within minutes of leaving her, I reached out my senses to feel for her wellbeing. Although our bond link hadn’t been completed, it was damn strong, but it was still not as strong as I would have liked. I was anxious about our bond being incomplete, despite its apparent strength. It pulsed between us like a living, breathing thing. I felt her lifeforce and her emotions. She was already in work mode: serious, focused, and determined.
That day became the longest damn day of my life. Usually, since I was forced to remain indoors behind thick blackout drapes or windows, I would conduct meetings via video conference, review reports of my various holdings around the world that were outside of mafia business, catch up on my duties to Petrov Enterprises as a senior vice president of the company, or even teleport to another part of the world where it was nighttime. However, I couldn’t even stomach the thought of being so far away from Kali right now.
Throughout the day, Aidan kept trying to lecture me about Kali, but not only did I not want to hear it, I was too wrecked with the need to be with her to even be rational about hearing her name on another man’s lips. So, every time he said her name, I went for his damn throat. We destroyed several rooms, leaving both of us having to take long minutes to heal afterward. At least those momentary painful encounters helped distract me from craving her.
The only thing that kept me if not rational but marginally sane was our bond. Our bond allowed me to reach out to her every few minutes and touch her psychically. Touching her mind briefly to assess her wellbeing for myself and giving a psychic caress, I was confident that my frequent presence in her mind soothed us both.
Despite my efforts, I still wanted desperately to hear her voice, to touch her physically, and to taste her. Every moment away from her gave me a phantom thirst.
Xander had once told me that he experienced a debilitating thirst when Alexandra ran from him. If this is what it felt like, my respect for my brother increased tenfold because they had been separated for weeks. I have only been away from Kali for a few hours, and I was a damn wreck.
I forced myself to be content with our brief psychic connections. And with the wolves reporting back to me about her safety, I had to remain patient.
Cyrus reminded me of a meeting I had with some of the high-ranking Dons. The meeting was to be held in New York.
Like my brothers, my staff were all members of Owen’s pack. I had over fifty wolves in my employ. I had accountants, investment advisors, secretaries, pilots, flight staff, mechanics, housekeepers, gardeners, etc. If it was necessary to run my life, I had the staff for it. And they were all part of Owen’s pack.
It was nothing for us to run an empty flight from Vegas to New York for a meeting like this. Usually, I didn’t bother with that level of detail, but I had too many mortal eyes on my movements now. The Regiment, the other organized crime families, the Dons in my own mafia, and even the mortal authorities were all nosy motherfuckers, trying to monitor my whereabouts. So, an empty plane was a necessary camouflage when I teleport from Vegas to New York.
I couldn’t teleport directly to the meeting either. I needed to be seen arriving from the airport for the meeting, arriving in a mode befitting the Godfather. Image was everything in the mafia.
After teleporting into the city, we used an Apache helicopter as transportation to the meeting place. I didn’t want to waste a second of my time in New York traffic, and I was determined to be back in Las Vegas by nightfall to be with Kali. I instructed both Aidan and Cyrus to guard Kali because I couldn’t shake the fear that someone might get to her when I left Vegas. So, Apollo and Drago were with me.
“Gentlemen, you requested a meeting?” I phrased it as a mild question, while wanting to fry these fuckers for even daring to summon me.
Vincent Castellano, the Don of the Gambino family of New York, Salvadore Luciano, the Don of the Genovese family also in New York, Nicholas Sarno, the Don of the Outfit of Chicago, and Antonio Mazzone, the Don of the Bruno family of Philadelphia, all stared from across the round table at me. These were the Dons of some of the largest mafia families in North America. That was the only reason I bothered to honor their request for a meeting.
All of them had met me only once before, and that was when I was just an enforcer for my father.
Yeah, that was a lifetime ago. I know what people saw when they looked at me back then. I was a born killer, and I was the embodiment of my name Il Carnefice, the executioner. Now, as a monster with a flawless veneer, I’ve seen seasoned killers shy away from my gaze. Yes, the monster vibes jumping off me were satisfyingly disturbing to mortals. It was that sort of sixth sense one got to run when danger was near but also knowing the running wouldn’t save your ass.
However, despite their fear, these fuckers still call me here to listen to their bullshit.
Given Apollo’s ability to read minds, I knew what these bastards wanted within seconds of entering the room. Apollo telepathically relayed whatever was on their minds even before they opened their mouths.
“This bastard had better listen to us. Otherwise, we will kill his ass tonight. He doesn’t have his goons with him. This is our chance to take him down. Smug bastard!”
I wasn’t surprised at all by Castellano’s opening salvo.
“We know that we all agreed to the new business model.” Castellano spoke up first, using air quotes around the word, new. “But we think that the model should be revisited.”
“Oh, you do, do you?” I asked coolly. I sat back in my chair and observed them with a blank expression. “Are you the spokesman then?”
“Now look here…” Castellano deepened his voice and sat a little taller in his chair as if someone told him that he could intimidate me that way. “Your father knew the way of it. He understood that we made most of our money from the drug trade, and we can’t simply give it up. The uptake in fentanyl demand has made the market even more lucrative for our organization.”
“Say you guys restart the drug trade…” I said conversationally. “Do you have the manpower to fight the Cartels, the Albanians, and Russians for their turf?”
Castellano grinned and rubbed his hands together, completely misunderstanding my mild tone. “Well, that’s where you come in,” he said eagerly.
“No one in their right mind would come against you,” Sarno piped in. “Everyone knows that you have an elite force that could take out any obstacle, the Cartel, or anyone else for that matter.” Sarno laughed eagerly.
Sarno sounded as if he was trying to kiss my ass, but he was in fact thinking:
“Not that we have to worry about that tonight. Vince might be right. We should try taking him out while we have this chance.”
“We have every confidence in your ability to clear a path for whatever we need done,” Castellano enthused.
I fought to maintain my nonchalant facade.
“I want you guys to stand outside the door,” I told Apollo and Drago telepathically. “Anyone who tries to enter, kill them.”
As soon as my nephews left the room, I relaxed even deeper in my seat and observed the men before me coolly. By removing my nephews from the room, I was giving these assholes the opportunity to attack me as they so desperately wanted to.
“You want me to use my men to push a drug agenda when I specifically told you motherfuckers that we are no longer drug dealers?” I asked softly. “Did I get that right?”
“You are young to this business,” Castellano started.
Ah, hell no. I wasn’t listening to this bullshit. While he was on the final syllable of the word business, I pulled my karambit blade, and in a blink, I sliced his throat open from ear to ear. I was so damn pissed that I wasn’t even mildly tempted to drink his blood
The other mob bosses were spattering some shit about the fact that they meant no disrespect and that they were only there at Castellano’s request. I shot the fuckers in their heads for wasting my damn time.
From the noises coming from the other side of the door, Apollo and Drago were making light work of the Dons’ protection details. As soon as every asshole who came along with their Dons was dead, we boarded the helicopter. I trusted my staff to do the necessary cleanup.
Not wanting to deal with any more bullshit, I teleported directly to Kali’s apartment and was knocking on the front door of her apartment less than half a second later.
She had barely opened the door for me before I was pulling her into my arms.
She wore a floaty summer dress that felt almost as soft as her silky skin. The dress not only allowed me easy access but I could feel every inch of her exquisite shape through the flimsy, paper-thin material.
With her feminine curves pressed flush against my hard contours and her intoxicating scent filling my senses, every cell in my body pulsed with electrifying hunger.
I had never felt need like this, so strong that nothing penetrated that fog of desire, so thick that I couldn’t feel, scent, or see anything but her. Our partial mating bond was saturated with our mutual lust. And the enforced hours of separation had only made us more feral for each other. I swooped down and fused our lips with raw passion, and she kissed me back with a frenzy I was only too happy to match.
She wrapped her arms around my neck, holding me to her as she took over our kiss to curl her tongue around mine and explored the warm crevices of my mouth as though she wanted to consume me.
I would have pounded my chest in triumph if she hadn’t reduced me to a trembling, fogged-brain mess. Her taste, her unrestrained passion enflamed my need through the stratosphere and pushed my control to nonexistent within seconds.
I lifted her into my arms, crushing her against my chest and was barely coherent enough to pull her front door closed behind us.
Kali wrapped her long legs around my waist in a sensual climb up my body, aligning her soft curves against my body in an explicit, erotic invitation as she angled her head and deepened our kiss. And just like that, her kiss went from molten to nuclear. Her soft purrs of passion spurred me on and drove me to move to the nearest wall at vampiric speed. I pressed her up against the flat surface and took over our kiss. I wanted to own her, to dominate her.
I was fucking desperate. I couldn’t get enough of her taste. I couldn’t get close enough to her. Hell, I wanted in her like a drug addict wanted their next fix.
Consumed with lust, I caressed her firm breast with one hand and palmed her ass with the other. With her legs around my waist, her wet heat nestled my rock-hard length, and when she rolled her hips in that provocative, sensual swivel, I ached so fucking much I couldn’t help grinding against her, matching her passionate rhythm.
I needed in her with a primitive wildness that bordered on manic. I needed to feel her tight channel around me. With desperate fingers, I tore my fly open, shoved my underwear down, and my hard cock sprang free. I didn’t even look down because I had yet to stop kissing her.
Kali mewled passionately and undulated and ground her lush curves against me as if she wanted to meld herself into me. The boomerang of our potent desire consumed us, until every breath she took became mine, every beat of her heart had the cold organ in my chest pulsing at the same beat, and my body felt the same currents of breathtaking pleasure.
Rabid with lust, I flipped one of her legs up over my shoulder, tore her panties, and entered her in one smooth, powerful thrust.
Drunk on the taste and feel of her, I drove in and out of her wet, snug walls in lusty abandonment. Pure-hot flames of ecstasy licked throughout my body as I drove hard and deep into her.
Kali cried out and begged, but I was ruthless and relentless in pulling her on and off my thick cock, over and over, until she violently trembled and spasmed, exploding in sobbing ecstasy. Her tight walls squeezed and choked the fuck out my cock, forcing a release so damn intense I lost strength in my legs.
When I’d arrived at Kali’s apartment, I had every intention of us sorting out our living situation and finding out once and for all what she was. I was convinced that Aidan and the elite wolves knew what she was, but for some fucked-up reason, they were not letting me in on that secret. At least that had been my plan. But I was fast learning that making love to Kali once is never enough for me, and clearly not enough for her either.
I barely let her up from our bed long enough to eat. Despite my acute thirst for her blood, I was determined to not bite her and complete our link without that critical knowledge of what she was. Instead, I tried to satisfy my frenzied need for her blood by tasting every inch of her body.
Several times throughout the night, I spread her before me like a decadent dessert and buried my face between her thighs. While it didn’t alleviate my thirst completely, her sweet honey was an instant elixir to the overwhelming dryness in my throat. Of course, with a simple cut on my lip, my wrist or a finger, Kali satisfied her thirst in one feeding of my blood.
We spent another night fucking each other’s brains out while feeding each other’s thirst. I watched her sleep for a few hours, dreading the moment when she would insist on leaving my side again. Dreading dawn.
Sure enough, as soon as dawn approached and I had to leave, she again refused to come with me. And even after she experienced our separation thirst, our shared discomfort, she doggedly insisted on going to work.
No argument or appeal worked.
I left her determined to end my business here in Las Vegas that night and take Kali, whether she agreed or not, back to my island, which was a few miles off Rome. It used to be called Bruno’s Island, which my father had obscenely paved with cobblestone that had gold, diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and emeralds the size of pebbles intermixed at the entrance of his estate. Since my father’s death, or I should say since I killed my father, I have changed the name of the island to “Soulless Island.”