“You touch my friends and I will kill you once you’ve led me to Anastasia,” I warned him. I pulled my hand away and let him watch me retract my nails.
Instead of being intimidated, he laughed again. “It’s very uncanny.”
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing. Shall we?” He gestured towards the doorway. “I would say ladies first, but I am the only one who knows the way. Try and keep up.”
We followed him out of his lair and down another path. I kept Galen behind me so Lucas would have to come through me if he decided to go psycho and attack him. Knight walked beside me with his hands tucked firmly in his pockets. I mourned having one of them clasped in mine.
“I trust you,” he said when Lucas had turned a corner ahead of us. Stopping, I looked up at him in the dim light, but I could see his features as if they were illuminated by a thousand candles. He looked down at me and reached out with one hand to move some curls out of my face. “About this. About everything.”
Guilt was overriding me, I was unable to look into his eyes.
“You shouldn’t.” And I plunged ahead after Lucas.
It was dark outside by the time we made it to the surface. Galen was showing signs of weariness, but he still limply held up his flashlight.
“Lucas,” I called when the vampire didn’t stop walking down the street. “We need to rest.”
“Why?” He looked legitimately confused until he saw Galen panting against a wall. “Oh. The human. Hmm. Why did you bring him exactly? Were you baiting me? It would’ve worked had you not already bitten him.”
I scoffed at him. “I would never use a human as bait. Things have changed in the last century. The rules are different now.”
Lucas bounced on his heels, whistling a weird tune. “Don’t know, don’t care. The rules don’t really apply when one has a kill order on one’s head. Gods above, it’s nice to be outdoors again. The air is so…” He took a nice long whiff, a smile on his lips. “Fresh.”
“I’ve got Galen. You handle Phantom of the Opera,” Knight quipped. He lifted Galen’s arm and picked him up like a beautiful damsel.
We went back to our hotel, Galen carried in Knight’s arms, Lucas skipping down the pavement beside me. As soon as we walked into the door of our penthouse suite, Lucas disappeared into one of the bathrooms. Knight let Galen down, who then limped to the bar and poured himself a very large drink.
“I wonder when was the last time that man had a bath?” Galen said with a laugh as we heard the shower start running.
Oh that’s fucking gross.
Lucas emerged an hour later smelling like sandalwood and peaches, wearing only a towel around his waist. Galen was asleep in one of the bedrooms, while Knight and I sat on opposite ends of the couch.
“Hey, crazy,” Knight threw in Lucas’s direction. “Feel like telling us where this Anastasia is?”
“In a hurry?” Lucas poured a drink for himself and chugged it in one breath.
“I just spent five hours underground, I’d rather get the rest of this over with.” I toed him with my foot so he’d calm down. He grabbed it and started massaging it without prompting. Fuck me. The last time a man massaged my feet, it ended with his face in my pussy. I doubted that would happen this time, but the thought was enough to ignite my desire.
Lucas stared at Knight’s hands on my feet with amusement and I wondered if he could smell my arousal.. “I have put out a message, so I know where she is now.”
I found it hard to focus on anything with Knight’s fingers doing very sinful things to my toes. Under Lucas’s gaze, I felt weirdly inappropriate, so I pulled my feet away and stood up. “We’ll head out tomorrow morning.” I walked over to Lucas and stared into his deep green eyes. “Promise me you won’t leave. Promise me I’ll wake up and you’ll still be here. Please.”
He reached out to touch my face, surprising me, and smiled. “I swear it on my life’s blood.”
10. Eating coffee beans
True to his word, Lucas was sitting on the floor eating cereal when I came out of my room the next morning. He’d forgotten the milk and was eating the dry cereal with chopsticks. Knight was lounging on the nearby couch playing a game on his phone, and Galen was in the kitchen sipping coffee while reading a French paper.
Knight saw me first, looking up with a smile. He turned his phone to show me the game he was playing. “Look, I infected the entire world with vampires.” I raised an eyebrow at him and walked to the kitchen to get a cup of coffee.
“Are you okay?” I asked Galen quietly, tipping the pot to a mug already set out. I took a sip of the hot liquid and felt warm all over.
“I’m fine, cheri.”
As I turned, I noticed his bags packed and next to the door. Damn it. I knew he’d have to leave, but I didn’t want him to. If felt like I was leaving everything familiar behind.
“You going?” I asked him. Nodding, he finished his cup of coffee and we moved over to the front door. I opened it, took his bags, and shut it after we’d gone into the hallway. “I didn’t umm…” I had to blink before tears came.
Not needing words, he kissed me on the forehead and wrapped me in his warm arms. “I hope we meet again soon. When Renard comes home, tell him I miss him. I expect an invitation when he and Olivier become bonded.” He kissed my hair again and we stood there for a few minutes, not wanting to let go.
“I wanted more time,” I said with a sniff.
“You are welcome at my home, always. Knight too, but… not the other one.” I laughed, feeling tears escape my eyes. “Until we meet again. And Lisbeth.” We pulled away to look at each other, his face thoughtful as he brushed back some of my hair. “You deserve to be happy too.”
One last kiss on my head and he was gone down the hallway. My heart sank because I couldn’t help but fear that I would never see him again. Several painful seconds passed, and then I shuffled back into the hotel room to finish my coffee.
“Bonded?” Knight asked after a few minutes. “What’s that?” Of course, they’d listened in.
“It is a ceremony,” Lucas explained, as if Knight had addressed him directly. “Two vampires pledging their lives to one another.”
“So it’s a marriage?”
Keeping my eyes down, I rinsed the coffee mugs in the sink. “The closest thing we have to it, yes.”
Lucas got up and put his bowl on the counter. “We need to go now. They are expecting us.”
“They?” I asked him in confusion. There was someone with Anastasia? Lucas didn’t elaborate. Instead, he came over and started munching on a package of coffee beans.
Getting up from the couch, Knight raised an eyebrow at Lucas. “I’ll just be a minute. You watch Crazy, make sure he doesn’t lick the electrical sockets.” He disappeared into one of the rooms, leaving me alone with Lucas.
“Your friend thinks I am insane,” he said, mid-crunch of another coffee bean.
“Well… you’re eating coffee beans.”
He frowned and looked down at the bag. “Is this not how they’re consumed?” I leaned over and took one, popping it into my mouth and chewing it.
“Not bad,” I told him with a smile. My phone rang during our moment, scaring Lucas enough that he threw the coffee bag and beans flew everywhere.
“WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT? IS IT A DEMON FROM HELL? Just playing. Who’s calling you?”
Shaking a finger at him, I pulled my phone from my pocket. “Clean up the mess, Lucas.” He grumbled and bent to pick up the scattered beans. My screen showed Olivier was calling me in a video chat. I answered and saw her holding Kitty in her arms.
My heart squeezed, and nothing else mattered except my little girl. Kitty looked healthy and happy. She held her little teething toy to her mouth and munched on it with gusto, stopping every now and then to giggle at Olivier’s fingers tickling her.
“Say, ‘Hi mommy,’” Olivier prompted in her baby voice. Kitty squealed and looked over at the phone someone was holding for Olivier. When she s
aw my face and realized it was me on the other end, she looked happier than she had with the teether or the tickles.
She grabbed for the phone and I heard Arthur say, “No phones, young lady,” his voice making my stomach fall a thousand stories. Kitty looked sad for a few moments until she saw me again. She shook her teether to show it to me and cooed happily. “Hand her to me,” Arthur said. The phone changed hands, then Olivier set it down and sat on the couch next to Arthur and Kitty so I could see all three of them.
Kitty sat in Arthur’s lap, looking so natural together. He’d already bonded with her so much.
“How’re the negotiations going?” Olivier asked me, bringing me away from Arthur. Oh. That.
“We haven’t started yet. Knight reached out, we’re waiting for an answer.” It wasn’t wholly untrue, we had sent them a letter that they should’ve gotten already. The follow-up would have to wait, though.
“Let me see the child,” Lucas insisted, and he grabbed the phone before I could stop him. “Aye, she is perfection. I am so proud of you, fiică.” I took the phone back and slapped at him when he tried to stop me.
Olivier and Arthur shared a suspicious look when I got back on the camera. “Who was that…” Arthur asked me, bouncing Kitty slightly on his knee. Watching me, Lucas had his hands together, tapping his fingertips in excitement.
“Rogue vampire,” I answered quickly. “We’re trying to convince him to come back with us. He’s a little…” I glanced up at Lucas’s smiling face. “Odd.” His smile deflated in a pout.
“Okay then,” Arthur responded, his eyebrow still raised at me. “Call us back when you hear from the Lycans.” He moved the camera to show Kitty again, and with a wave of her teether, the screen went dark, and my heart squeezed in pain, my entire chest was on fire with it.
Remember the mission. I could do this. I could do this.
Lucas was still pouting as he munched coffee beans from the floor.
“Have you fed?” I asked him, forcing myself to stay on task.
“Room service,” he said with his mouth full of beans. “You call, and a human comes. It’s very convenient.”
When had that happened? Oh fuck. Was there a body in here? I was not in the mood to dispose of a body. I glanced around with a few deep sniffs to see if I’d missed the stench of death.
Lucas stood up, offended at my lack of trust. “I didn’t kill him. I fed, altered his memories, and let him leave. I’m not a monster. I may have stolen people in the catacombs, but I always let them live.”
My cheeks flushed in shame. I’d naturally assumed he was a human killer, but that wasn’t fair of me. “Sorry,” I mumbled. “I’ll be right back.”
I left Lucas to the coffee beans and walked over to the door Knight had entered. The door was slightly open, so I pushed it and knocked on the side.
“Knight?” The room was empty and the shower was still running. Knight’s small bag sat at the edge of the bed with a shirt on top of it. I walked closer to run my hand across the soft fabric. It had, ‘Translation: This house is bitchin’ written on it.
“Yo,” Knight said behind me.
“Hey,” I said as I turned, only to see he was shirtless. Right. His shirt was on the bed. Of course he wasn’t fully dressed. “Heyyy,” I repeated louder as I turned my focus to the crown molding of the ceiling and not on the shirtless man in front of me. Or what that glorious display felt like under my fingertips. God, had I actually forgotten how hot he was? No, not possible. “I just umm, well, it’s morning, so I kind of… need…” I twirled my hand around to get my point across, my heart starting to race.
“Blood?” he asked with a smirk. He came up close to me and held out his wrist.
“Umm, shirt first?” I suggested in a higher pitch than I intended, but he wiggled his wrist at me with a sigh. “Fine.” I grabbed his hand and sank my teeth into the muscle on his forearm. Mid-sip, he pulled me until my back was against his chest, and he folded me up in his arms.
Fuck me, I felt so safe and warm. This was everything I’d missed, everything I’d spent countless hours wasting away thinking about how much I needed it, needed him.
Latched onto his arm, I couldn’t really move when his spare hand came up and pulled the clip from my hair, letting all of my glorious curls free. Knight’s mouth nuzzled through them and down to my neck where he kissed at my skin reverently. It took everything I had to not let out a sound, but I couldn’t help sighing against him.
“Do you have any idea what its like smelling your desire and not being able to touch you?” he purred into my ear. I guessed it was exactly like feeling desire and being unable to touch him.
I drank until my stomach was full and licked the skin clean. “That was a dirty trick,” I complained half-heartedly. Was he trying to tease me and show me what I could never have? Maybe he was trying to punish me. Either way, this was nice. Wrong, but nice. Could I stand here forever?
“I don’t see you complaining,” he countered, and his fingers pulled my shirt aside so he could kiss the creamy skin of my shoulder. “Fuck, your smell…” He nibbled at my skin like it was a candy bar. “You’ve never smelled this good before. I swear, I’d come instantly if I was inside you.” Why was he saying that? He still wanted to have sex with me? He breathed a sigh of relief that I wasn’t fighting him, and pulled his arms tighter around me. “I missed you so much, Lis.” His lips floated up my neck, closer to my lips.
Wanting this moment to never end, I relaxed against him. “I missed you so much I wanted to die. I even…” I swallowed and hesitated to tell him. “I tried to kill myself.”
“In the bathtub,” he whispered without pausing, his lips almost upon mine.
In the bathtub? How had he known that? I pulled away from his warm embrace, the last thing I wanted to do, meeting his eyes. “How did you know that? How did you know I tried to kill myself in the bathtub? I never told anyone that.”
Reaching out, his hands opened and closed, trying to invite me back into his arms. “Because I was there? I was outside in the prison they’d made me, muddy and cold, and then suddenly I was in your bathroom and you were holding your head underwater. ‘I was being a dolphin,’ that was what you said. You were trying to kill yourself? Why would you do that?”
“That was a delusion. You weren’t really there,” I insisted, mostly because I couldn’t wrap my head around this.
“I was,” he said back.
Lucas popped his head in. “Can I turn on the telly, or are we leaving soon?”
I looked away from Knight’s searching eyes. “We’re leaving. Pack up.”
11. Pizzeria Bathory
Had my delusions been real? That couldn’t be true. No way. I’d never heard of such a thing. Being crazy and conjuring up a mirage of someone, sure, that’s normal. Being crazy and actually conjuring someone? That’s just ludicrous. Knight was mistaken, but how could he be? He knew that I’d been in a bathtub trying to be a dolphin, not to mention when I first saw him back at the castle, he was wearing the clothes he’d had on in one of my delusions, clothes I’d never seen him wear before.
Maybe it had something to do with the blood binge, or that I almost killed him, or when I pushed into his mind as I was being dragged away from him. Who could I ask about this? James would know, maybe. Or Olivier. Arthur. Those that had blood binged in the past weren’t exactly sharing that fact with the public, so I had no idea who would know anything.
To make matters worse… that… had happened. Knight holding me against him, kissing my skin and feeling his heartbeat against my ear, it was too much. I’d wanted to turn, capture his lips in mine and let him slide his cock inside me, over and over. What if I had? What would he have done? Pushed me away? Kissed me? Both?
“Deep in thought?” Lucas asked, unearthing me from very deep musings. He was sitting next to a sleeping Knight on the airplane, across the aisle from where I sat alone. There was something about the blonde vampire’s smile that was gradually bringing my guard
down, so I leaned over my armrest to be closer to him.
“You’ve made mistakes before, right?”
He looked surprised. “That’s what you’re pondering over? I never think about my mistakes.”
I sighed and realized I’d asked the wrong person. If only Balthazar was here. First I’d ring his neck for being a neglectful baby daddy, and then we could have a heart to heart about how stupid feelings are. “Surely, there are some that you regret?”
The drink cart went past us and when I looked back, Lucas had a lollipop in his hand, and a face that was too serious for someone holding a lolly. “Yes. I regret things.” He was staring at the treat like it was someone’s face, and he missed that face very much.
Watching him, I felt my heart sinking. “What if those mistakes hurt people? What if they were too big to forgive?”
He looked thoughtful at the lollipop. “I suppose it depends on the love. I wonder if she loves me. Maybe she can forgive if she loves.” He licked at the lolly without taking the wrapper off, and continued looking woefully pensive. I left him licking plastic and shut my eyes with his words in my head.
Maybe she can forgive if she loves.
Vague, and specifically about a female, but it still had some wisdom, from a guy who licks lollipops, eats coffee beans, and may or may not be the Phantom of the Opera.
“Hey,” I asked him, drawing his gaze over at me. “Have you ever like… conjured someone? An apparition, but they could see you too?”
He pointed to Knight and I nodded. “You’ve drunk his blood, right? He is immortal. You can summon his mind when you need him, no matter how far away, it’s part of your type of powers.”
After that to contemplate, I fell asleep and woke hours later when the plane was about to land. Lucas was still licking the lollipop and pondering life, only someone had removed the wrapper so there was a deep indent where Lucas’s tongue was. On the other side of him, Knight was on his phone playing his game again, but he looked up when he noticed I was awake.
The Born Vampire series: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance (The Complete Series, NSFW Edition) Page 42