Chapter Thirty
Magdalena
I didn’t know what to say to Cian. He’d left me alone for a while, and even after thinking about it more, I still didn’t know what to say. I did love him, and no, I wouldn’t have wanted him to spend eternity without me if it would hurt him, but I hadn’t really had time to process the idea. To think any of this through.
We sat in his room. The shades had gone up and it was a beautiful night as I watched the lights on the bridge. Cian came up beside me and wrapped his strong arms around me.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Cian, I just…well, I’d never considered being a vampire. I just thought I’d spend my life with you as a human. Grow old and die a normal human death whenever and however that occurred.”
“I’d rather be staked in the heart a thousand times over than watch you grow old and die.”
I stared at him as the lightbulb in my head went off. “We really can’t die?”
“No. That’s not completely true. We can die. If we are decapitated or burned in fire, we will perish. But if one manages to avoid that nasty demise, we will never grow old, never get fat, and never get grey hair or wrinkles.”
I wanted to see what I looked like, but Cian didn’t have any mirrors that I knew of. “Do I look any differently?”
“You’re more beautiful, which I never thought possible.”
“I wish I could see my face.”
“You can.”
“But I thought…there are no mirrors here.”
He shook his head. “No. There are not. Come here.” He pulled me close to him. “Look into my eyes.” I did. “Do you see your reflection?”
“Yes, but that’s not very large.”
He smiled and took me to the computer and turned it off. There we were, standing side by side in the reflection of the dark computer screen. “This is the best I can give you.”
“Why can’t we see ourselves in a regular mirror?”
“That puzzled me for years. But from what I understand, a mirror requires radiant light to reflect an image. Radiant light comes from sunlight. We, as vampires, cannot stay in direct sunlight without having all of our energy drained from us, so we don’t have enough radiant light in us to generate a reflection in a mirror.”
I decided it wasn’t worth dwelling on my appearance. I was a fucking vampire. What did I care how I looked? Besides, every vampire I’d met so far had been beautiful. Cian, Lane, Chelle, all of them. Even Jewels was gorgeous to the point of obnoxiousness. I’ve never hated anyone more. Cian’s maker or not, she was a monster and he should have killed her.
“Cian. Why didn’t you kill Jewels? Why did you leave her in that state?”
“Death would have been too good for her. This way, she can never hurt or turn another person, but she doesn’t get the luxury of eternal rest either. From what the others told me earlier before I came back in to check on you, the poison had paralyzed her body long enough for them to bind her, but her mind was still functioning. Is still functioning. At least from what Vanessa said about the spell. That’s got to be hell, to know you are chained up inside a metal box and can’t get out, feeling the suffocating heat of the volcano around you.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the necklace he’d given me.
“Here, I think this belongs to you,” Cian said as he placed the gold heart pendant around my neck.
“You caught it. I remember.”
“Yes, and ever since, I’ve ached to put it back on you.”
I fingered the delicate heart that had his name etched on it. It was so pretty. My soul overflowed with elation, so proud that he wanted me to wear something so special to him.
Cian gently tugged me against him. Lifting my chin with his finger so that our lips were just inches apart, he kissed me. Tender. Then harder. I wanted more. I wanted him to rock my world the way he’d done the first time he drank my blood. I wanted to know what it would be like now that I’d been turned.
His kiss seared with heat and made every inch of my body tremble with desire. The temptation to tear off his clothes and then sink my teeth into his vein was very strong. I ached to rub my naked body all over his. I kissed him back, wild desperation taking control of every cell in my body. My senses heightened and I detected the vampiric pheromones.
Intoxicating.
Then there was a sudden jolt and the entire room bounced and juggled. At first I thought, holy hell, Cian read my mind and he’s literally rocking my world. It was magnificent. But then his voice became demanding, forceful as he tugged me over to the doorway of the bedroom.
“We need to take cover. It’s an earthquake.”
A fleeting notion ran through my mind. But we are invincible.
The shaking and rumbling stopped almost as soon as it had started. Nothing in the room seemed out of place nor was anything jostled to the floor from any of the vibrations.
“It was just a small tremor,” I said.
“Can’t live in San Francisco without having one of those every now and again,” he laughed and pulled me back into his embrace.
“What was the point of taking cover if we can’t die?” I asked.
“Pain still hurts, even for the short time it would take for you to heal. I didn’t want you to feel pain.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Cian
“So, what do we do for the rest of eternity?” Magdalena asked.
I pulled her in close so that her chest was against mine, delighting in the slight pressure of her breasts.
“A hobby would be good to have.” I grinned.
“Humph. You mean like knitting or something?”
“If you like. You can do whatever you desire. You can take up skydiving if you want.”
“That is tempting.” She laughed. “What about my job?”
“I think it would be best if you quit that.”
“But I just started.” The slight pucker of her mouth made my cock twitch, and I wanted to suck on that pouty bottom lip. “It’s always been my dream job. That’s what I went to school for.”
“Quit for now,” I added, quelling her protests. “Human contact right now is going to be a bit of a challenge for you. But once you overcome the temptation to kill every human being you come in contact with, well, then you can go back to work. If that’s what you want.”
“How long will I want to kill?”
I thought about that for a moment. “Do you…want to kill someone?” I asked.
“No. But you said…”
“Magdalena. The only reason a vampire kills is for nourishment. We need to ingest human blood to survive. New vampires, when left to fend for themselves like Lane and I were, or others that are raised by animalistic vampires, don’t know how to control the urge. They want to drain a body of all of its blood, and therefore, end up killing. They don’t mean to do it. Not at first.”
“But then, over time, and because of habit, the monster side takes over and that’s what they find thrilling,” she quipped.
“Something like that.” I grinned. “But, Magdalena, you don’t need to work if you don’t want to. I mean, we don’t need the money. You won’t need the money.”
“You expect me to simply live here and not contribute anything?”
“I never said that.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“Just that you won’t need to work for a living. We have plenty of money, but you can work if you want to, or you can pursue something else entirely. You will have an eternity to experience a multitude of different adventures. And, we will do many of them together. Come here.” I led her to the bed. “You haven’t had the pleasure of experiencing one of the best parts about being a vampire.”
“Are you trying to tempt me into having sex with you?”
“Absolutely.”
Her lips curved. Sexy. Seductive.
She placed her palm on my bare chest and shoved me down to the bed. My cock pointed up at her, tenting the lo
ose-fitting lounge pants I wore. But those became nothing more than a memory as Magdalena ripped them from my body. She gasped at her actions. “Sorry. I guess I don’t know my own strength.”
“I have another pair,” I huffed, unable to control my lust. I yanked her down on top of me. I took one of her nipples into my mouth, sucked and scraped my fangs over the little nub as it hardened, making her hips buck at the sensation. My eager hands were already searching up her thighs, and I got rid of her undergarments the same way she had my lounge pants. “You should just stop wearing those, my love.”
“Okay,” she breathed before lowing herself onto me.
She was so tight. The sensation of her walls hugging my hard shaft stole my breath and I hissed. “Magdalena, I love you. Forever.”
“I love you, Cian DeMarco. For eternity.”
“Take my vein,” I told her.
Her eyes shot to mine. She hadn’t taken blood from my neck before. In fact, she hadn’t ingested any blood for about four hours. She smiled, her fangs already lowered with anticipation. She placed her mouth to my neck and sank her fangs in. Deep. Sucking as if she’d been doing it for years. And when she positioned herself so that I could also take her vein, I bit into her neck. Her hips bucked up then plunged back down, hard. She grew stronger each time she drank from me.
She raised her head for a moment and screamed, “Cian!” as her sex clenched tightly around me in waves of pleasurable orgasmic ecstasy. She was experiencing a climax of tsunamic proportions, and I let myself fill her with everything I had to give—my essence, my blood, and my love.
Also by Susan Griscom
The Whisper Cape Trilogy
Whisper Cape
Reflections
A Secret Fate
The Beaumont Brothers Series
Beautifully Wounded
Beautifully Used
The Sectorium Series
A Gypsy’s Kiss
Single Titles
Allusive Aftershock
Acknowledgments
Many, many thanks to my husband, the love of my life, for giving me the support and opportunity to do what I love and for reading everything I write. I’d be lost without your helpful suggestions. I also appreciate your mentioning my book to every complete stranger you meet, which embarrasses the heck out of me, but I love it and love you. You are my rock and my knight in shining armor. To my kids, for all your love and support and my Mom, for your encouragement and support.
Thank you, Michelle, my outstanding editor, you are the best. You’ve been a huge help in bringing this book to life with all your encouraging words and praises, along with all the giggles we had at some of the comments. Your tenacity in wanting to make this the best book I’ve written so far and your drive in pushing me to show more of myself were very much appreciated. I love the way you allow me to pick your brain even when you’re probably too exhausted to think. Thank you, to my beta readers Amber Garza, Suzan Lacey, Heidi Hudson, Kimberly Shaw, Trallee Mendonca, Tina Donnelly, Ravannah Rayne, Julie Bromley, Jessica Wentz, Katherine Eccleson, and Amanda Catoe. Thank you for your insightful suggestions, your help in pulling this book together has been remarkable.
To you, the reader, you own my heart, because without you, this story would be sitting on my hard drive collecting cyber dust.
Thank you for reading Tempted by a Vampire, the first book in the Immortal Hearts of San Francisco series. Writing this story has been one of the most enjoyable endeavors I’ve ever had the pleasure of undertaking. I live about two hours from San Francisco, give or take a few depending on traffic, and have always been in love with the romance of the city. I’ve always thought the city would be a great location and setting for a romantic vampire series, and that's how I came up with the idea for Immortal Hearts of San Francisco. I hope you all enjoy Cian’s and Magdalena’s story and continue with future
stories of all the other characters. I'm hoping to make all the books stand-alones, giving each character their individual spotlight, but sometimes things cross over and bits of information is needed from a prior book, but not enough to ruin the story either way. But if you're a stickler for reading things in order, then I guess that's always the best thing to do.
So, here are some of my future plans…
I’m already working the next book in the Immortal Hearts of San Francisco, but I’m still trying to figure out whose book it is going to be. So, I’m still in the planning stage for that one.
I am one third of the way into the next Beaumont Brothers book, Beautifully Pulled—it’s a working title and may change—but it’s coming along fairly well. What? You say. A third book in a series that only had two brothers? How is that possible? Well, I’m not going to give anything away just yet, and I don’t like to mention character names this early in the writing, because as I get to know them better, sometimes their name changes to suit them better.
As long as we are on the subject of what’s coming soon, there is another book in the Sectorium series that I’ve started. It will be Quinn’s book as a grown up and will revolve around her love life as she struggles to cope with her abilities, which if you read Whisper Cape, know that there are probably quite a few.
I always have new ideas popping into my head so there will always be stories coming, both new and continued.
Thank you so much for reading Tempted by a Vampire and for spending time with me.
I love you,
Susan
About The Author
Susan Griscom writes paranormal and contemporary romance. She’s hooked on gritty romances and is a huge fan of superheroes and bad boys confronted with extraordinary forces of nature, powers, and abilities beyond the norm mixed with steamy romance, of course.
She loves those days when she gets to sit around in her sweat pants, doing nothing but writing emotionally charged stories about love and violence and drinking coffee.
She lives in Northern California with her romantic husband and together they have five great superhero kids and eight mini-superhero grand kids, so far.
Tempted by a Vampire (Immortal Hearts of San Francisco Book 1) Page 16