Prince 0f Midnight (Dracula's Bloodline Book 1)

by Ana Calin

  It’s not long before I understand, by his moves, by the tilt of his head, by the way his hand flows repeatedly over her sleeping forehead and her curls—He’s into her. He’s actually into her.

  My mouth twists as the taste of bile hits my palate. I turn around, my back slapping against the cold wall by the door. My jaw locks painfully, my teeth screeching against each other. Hell. His senses are as sharp as a wolf’s, he’ll catch me.

  I hurry back the way I came, expertly feeling my way in the darkness with hands against the cold stone wall like a spider. Inside, I’m boiling with anger, and cursing. For years and years I’ve waited for him to realize that only I love him as he is, a monster in the night. I knew he didn’t feel love for me but, hell, I thought we had a bond. All the other women came and went, he used them and dumped them like garbage, but he always kept me around.

  No. This is only a glitch in his wicked nature, it must be. He’ll come back to himself. But can I take a chance?

  I creep my way into the other wing of the castle, and further into Gruia the guard’s room. He responds to my presence as soon as I’ve slipped my naked body by his side, and his brittle reddish beard scrapes my breasts—he always goes for them directly, without bothering with petting the rest of my body. We don’t have a relationship or an emotional thing, what we do is fuck hard and often, sometimes right after I’ve watched Radek and his boys with some slut. There’s something about watching him gang bang the bitches that turns me on like crazy.

  While Gruia pumps me from behind, my hands holding tightly to the headboard, I decide on a plan in my head.

  A grin stretches my lips as my hair bounces around my head at Gruia’s beastly thrusts. This sweet affair between city girl and dark prince won’t last long, not if I can help it. And I have just the thing to make sure Juliet Jochs ends up dead in a ditch.

  If I know anything about Radek, it’s that, no matter what, he has a deadly nature. If he did fall in love with this city brat, he’ll want her only for himself, and he’s no easy man to have around. He’s alluring, but also intoxicating, and his powers are poisonous in the long run.

  But, if he really fell for her, I won’t even have to wait that long until his poison consumes her—he’ll kill her with his bare hands when I make him believe that she betrayed him, and took off with another guy.

  CHAPTER IX

  Juliet

  It’s sick and twisted, but there was never a time in my life when I’ve been happier. I stroll the castle hallways freely, the vaporous white dresses that Radek likes me to wear floating behind me. It’s become kind of a guilty pleasure, making the people who see me unsure of whether I’m real or not.

  The most interesting thing is that no matter how much I explore the winding corridors of this castle they remain a maze, and I never find my way out into the courtyard anymore. I only get to see it from the tower above. If I’m completely honest, it often feels like I live in this castle like a ghost, in another dimension than the living, breathing tourists.

  Lately I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather, too, especially at dusk. I always got a bit of a headache if the time when day fades into night caught me outside, so maybe this sensitivity has just become more pronounced here in the Carpathians.

  I’m not sure how long it has been since I’ve last been out in the open, I’ve barely felt the time pass in this castle. But what bothers me most is that Radek hasn’t made love to me since the night I played his slave, and my body screams with desire for him.

  “Don’t you want me anymore?” I whisper while lying in his leather-clad arms, my hair spread over his chest, my vaporous white dress over the bed. He hasn’t allowed me to touch his skin again since that night.

  “I do,” he says softly, watching our fingers as they tangle together—his are long and powerful under the leather glove, mine thin, white and ghostly.

  “You’re unlike any woman I’ve ever met,” he slurs in my ear, awakening my senses. I want to feel his breath and his lips all over my body. “I worship your body for the pleasure and healing it’s given me, and I’ll always put you on a pedestal. You’re the purest, most loving woman.” He touches my chin and guides my head to look into his turbid blue eyes through the mask. “But you’re also a witch, Juliet Jochs. You’ve bewitched me. Not one of all the women I’ve met in six hundred years has made me feel this way.”

  Other women. Needles of jealousy go through my heart. I sit up.

  “How many women have there been, Radek,” I demand, holding his gaze.

  “You don’t really want to know that.”

  “It’s okay, you can tell me. It’s not like you’ve been the first man in my life either.” The last thing I want to do is hurt him, but jealousy pushes me, and I can’t help it.

  His body tenses under the leather. We may not have been physically intimate since that night, but we still share an incredible soul connection. I know what he feels and what that does to his body, and I’m pretty sure it’s the other way around, too. But when jealousy comes into play I go blind in matters of fidelity, sex, cravings. He has twisted fantasies, dark and perverted, and he might turn to other women for them. Maybe variety in terms of sex partners is one of his underlying preferences.

  “I was actually in love with my former boss, Herald Gruff when I first came here,” I continue when he doesn’t reply, hoping to also wake jealousy inside of him. “So I’ll understand if—”

  “I knew you could be hard sometimes,” he interrupts me, “but I honestly never thought you would be cruel.”

  He stands up and squares his shoulders, his eyes like quicksilver behind the mask. He’s angry, and suddenly I’m not so sure about what I’m doing.

  “I admitted there have been women before you, and many. Considering my age, it would be absurd to claim otherwise. But I’ve also said I never had feelings for anyone the way I do for you. Why are you holding up Gruff in my face?”

  I look up at him as he begins stalking like a tiger around the bed, his shadow coming to a halt behind the canopy curtain.

  “Now that you mention your feelings for your former boss, I can’t help wondering—how stable are your feelings for me? I made you forget about him quickly enough, what if someone makes you forget about me soon?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t think that’s possible.”

  He scoffs. “Why not? You’re a mortal woman, your feelings aren’t as reliable as immortals’.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You can feel offended all you want, but it’s the truth. With us, immortals, romantic feelings are a very rare thing, but once they hit, you know they’re here to stay. With mortals, on the other hand....” He trails off, and I feel offended to my core. I jut out my chin at him.

  “I don’t deserve this, Radek. I’m capable of giving up everything for you. I’m even okay with staying locked inside this castle, and only breathing fresh air through its open windows. I feel like I’m under your power all the time, with no chance of escaping. So don’t you dare doubt my feelings.”

  “Please, don’t get me wrong, Juliet,” he replies. “I’m grateful for everything you’ve given me, and I treasure every moment we have together. But let’s face it, you might want to be free of me one day—in the end, I am a monster, one that drains your youth and vital energy.” His leather fingers move the canopy curtain to reveal a side of his mask. He looks intensely into my face. “I can’t imagine losing you. I will not lose you.”

  I just stare at him, fascinated, my lips parted. He raises his chin, now seeming even taller, regal.

  “I don’t want you seeing or even talking to other men,” he commands. “Ever. Not even inside this castle.”

  “But Radek—”

  “At least for a while, things have to be this way. At least until I get used to this new feeling inside, until I become more secure....”

  Something rebels deep inside of me, but his power of mesmerizing me begins clouding my head. It feels like someone shooting a tranquilizer u
p my veins, making me high as a kite. I grin like a lunatic, dropping back on the pillows.

  Deep inside, I’m aware this is wrong, very wrong. He’s playing with my perception of reality and my body chemistry. But even that small flicker of clear reason expires as Radek kneels on the bed at my feet. His hands in leather wind around my ankles, then brush their way up my legs towards my more intimate parts, making me arch from my waist and moan, already craving him.

  The sensations he gives me are exquisite. I haven’t had much experience with men before Radek, and all of that experience is so long ago that I barely remember anything beside the fact that... well... that it happened. But I remember it didn’t come close to what this prince of darkness is doing to my body.

  His leather hands wrap softly on my inner thighs, and I already cream between my legs only thinking that he’s finally going to touch me there again. His finger finds my nub through my silk panties—he loves to have me in his arms wearing silk—and massages it gently. He’s now on top of me, his eyes hungry for my pleasure.

  “I love watching you come for me, Juliet,” he slurs.

  “Put that leather on my naked skin, my lord, please,” I entice him.

  Radek slips a leather finger through the side of my panties, and lets it glide between my folds. I moan, pushing my head into the pillow. The way he moves those leather fingers on my clit drives me crazy, making my pulse race, but then, for a split second, a cutting feeling runs through my chest—He’s an expert at this because he’s had so many women.

  I cry out like an animal in pain, and grip his arms over his fitted leather jacket. It stretches over lean muscles that feel like stone, strong as only a warrior’s who’s fought a thousand battles can be. So many women must have drooled after him, wanted him...

  “Don’t just use on me skills you’ve developed by pleasing others,” I hiss like an angry cat. Radek seems surprised at first, and he stops moving. Only a few moments later, though, he laughs a soft, purring laugh. He sounds delighted, if not a bit amused by my outburst of jealousy.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, “but I can’t live with this. I can’t just accept that you’ve been a master of sex slaves for so long that giving women pleasure has become second nature to you.”

  “It’s not easy for me to accept that you’ve been with other men either,” he says.

  “You can’t compare the two of us, Radek. I’ve only been with two guys my whole life, while you....”

  “Well, you haven’t lived for very long yet, have you? You’re only twenty-two, while I am a six-hundred year old monster—give or take a few decades.”

  He begins loving me with his leather hand again, but I stop him by placing my index finger symbolically on the vampire mask’s blood red lips with ivory fangs.

  “What’s one thing you haven’t done with any other woman before me?”

  “One thing?” There’s reproach in his voice, like how could I forget such an intimate and important thing. “I’ve never let a woman touch me, never licked a woman’s pussy, and I’ve never, ever—” His mask pushes against my finger to mark his words. “Kissed a woman. You were my very first kiss, Juliet Jochs, my first kiss in centuries. Isn’t that special enough?”

  The way he speaks those last words, slightly, only slightly muffled behind the mask, makes me cream down there, my heart swelling in delight. I fidget with my thighs against his leather-clad body.

  “Those are three uniquely wonderful things,” I whisper, my eyelids burdensome with desire. “But....”

  His eyes narrow behind the mask. “They aren’t enough for you?”

  I cup his mask with both my hands, gently, making sure he doesn’t jerk back thinking I might want to remove it. “It’s important that you know this, Radek—I’m yours, completely yours, no matter what. I place my heart, body, and my life in your hands, because I trust you. But I can’t lie—I want you all to myself in return. And, right now, I want you to sleep with me like I’m your first woman, and the only one you ever desired.”

  “I can’t risk depleting you of vital energy, Juliet. We can’t—”

  “I appreciate your concern, my prince, I truly do. But if you don’t fuck me right now, I’m going to lose it.”

  Radek purrs, like he loves the sound of my words. He sinks his leather fingers inside of me, slowly, moaning as he takes in my pleasure. I arch into his fingers that move deep inside of me, building up and soon coming all over his hand. But, as I descend from my orgasm and open my eyes on his again, fear grips my throat.

  Radek stares hard at me, the skin around his eyes porous and visibly reddening. He’s also visibly in some kind of pain.

  “I need to feed,” he says roughly.

  He springs off the bed like a cat. By the pain I saw in his eyes I would expect him to crouch and move with difficulty, but no. He’s quick and agile to leave the room, his scent of wet leaves and earth lingering behind him.

  Juliet

  RADEK HASN’T COME TO see me in days. At the dinner table, I’m biting my fingernails—I don’t know for how long I can put up with the uncertainty. Is he sleeping with other women? Only thinking about it hurts like hell.

  His absence hurts, too, physically. It’s like I’ve become dependent on him, on the warmth of his body, on the way he constantly looks at me like I’m the most precious thing in the world. Probably another technique he’s learned in all his centuries to make women lose their minds for him? I feel like a junkie without her crack so he’s probably done all this on purpose, to make me addicted.

  “Try to relax, Miss Jochs,” Miss Victoria says in a mock-appeasing tone. There’s a self-satisfied, I-told-you-so grin plastered to her face, one that she’s been wearing for all the past days that Radek hasn’t joined us for dinner.

  “Have you ever slept with him?” I find myself asking like a mad woman. Miss Victoria looks up from her plate across from me, and I can tell she’s genuinely surprised. Whether at the question or at my audacity to ask it, I don’t know, and it’s irrelevant.

  “Is that why you hate me so much?” I insist when she doesn’t respond. “Because he used to sleep with you, and now he took a new lover—me?”

  Miss Victoria resumes chewing, inspecting me with a mock-innocent face, as if she’s pondering what to tell a lunatic who’s asking crazy questions. I must be looking like one indeed, biting my nails, glaring at her, my foot nervously tapping the floor, my hair disheveled because I haven’t seen to it in days, too busy obsessing about Radek.

  She sets her silverware slowly on the table.

  “He needs to feed, Miss Jochs. He decided he no longer wants to feed from your body, so he had to go search for replenishment elsewhere.”

  She clearly enjoys telling me this, and her words do cut deep, just as she intended them to. But she’s my only source of information right now.

  “Feed how? By killing people or by sleeping with women?”

  She smiles a theatrically sad smile. “Poor child. You haven’t even begun to understand what’s happening.”

  “Then help me, Miss Victoria. Take pity on a poor child, as you say, and relieve me of my ignorance.”

  She waves a finger at me playfully, her small, penetrating eyes flickering at me from under her eyebrows. “You might want to be nicer to the people you need, and not make fun of them.”

  I jut out my chin, narrowing my eyes at her. I keep my tone calm as water. “Let’s make a deal, Victoria—you’ll allow me to use your first name, yes? In the end, you said yourself you’re younger than you let on.”

  She nods gracefully.

  “All right then,” I continue. “What do you want in return for information?”

  “That’s easy Juliet, very easy indeed.” She bends a little over the table. Even though there’s a lot of distance between us, I can see her features clearer—small penetrating eyes, long nose, long chin, thin lips. She reminds me of a witch from bedtime stories, only younger. “I want you to go away and never come back.”

  Lea
ve Radek?

  “I don’t think I’m ready to give him up. Is there nothing else?”

  “Oh, believe me, if you’re a sane woman, you’ll want to leave him as soon as I show you who he truly is.”

  “First I must tell you I already know certain things, and I decided I can live with them. I know that he turns into a monster, that he is, in truth, the legendary Prince of Midnight, and that—”

  “He feeds on people’s vital energy when they look him in the face—the most nutritious thing for him—or on sex, which only helps him subsist. A rather pitiful alternative to his main source of sustenance. But he’s never told you what the curse is that he transmits through his monster looks, has he?”

  “No. But I’d love to find out.”

  She picks up the napkin from her lap, drops it on the table, and reaches for her glass of wine. “You don’t need to know, trust me. Actually, everyone who knows runs a risk that I’d rather not subject you to. So—” She takes a sip of the wine, and makes long work of it just to tease my nerves. “Let’s say I want to help you anyway, because.... Well, to be honest, because you’re wasting away in here, and it’s painful to watch.” She relaxes against her chair like a queen, cradling the glass of wine loosely in her hand. “I mean look at you. You’re pale as a ghost. You haven’t seen the light of day in what? Three months?”

  Three months? It’s already been that long? I try to control my face, not allowing my surprise to show, but it’s too late. Victoria laughs hard.

  “You’ve lost all sense of time, haven’t you?” she says. “You don’t even know how long you’ve been here, in his power. He’s using his mesmerizing ability on you to keep a willing slave.”

  “I’m aware of that, and I’ve agreed—”

  “You’ve agreed to shit, Juliet.” The grin vanishes from Victoria’s face, and her stare deepens. She places the wine glass on the table and leans forward to make a point. “You can’t decide anything, you only think you do. He’s manipulating you, you’re basically high on him all the time.”