by Zara Novak
The Vampire’s Captive
Tales of Vampires – Book 4
Zara Novak
Copyright © 2018 by Zara Novak
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Epilogue
Thanks for Reading
Other books by Zara Novak
Mailing List
Dedication
To you, the reader.
Thanks to everyone in your patience with this 4th book. I’ve been trying to write Wraith’s story for a while. He was an enigmatic vampire to discover.
This book focuses on Wraith and Ellie. There is a brief glimpse of Eric and Claire (just to let you know how they’re getting on with their triplets) but the majority of this book focuses on the former couple.
If you’re new to ToV and wondering if you can jump straight in with this book, the answer is yes. It’s mostly standalone. (If you have any questions you can always message me, my details are at the back.) If you like this book you can always go back and check out the earlier ones too.
I have not forgotten about Ansel, Kat, Ruth, Logan, Edmund, Sophia and the other relationships that are springing up in this universe. Everyone will have their story told at some point as the series progresses, and everyone will get their HEA. (I promise!)
I hope you enjoy this 4th book in Tales of Vampires. The next one will be with you before the summer and I have some other surprises coming too.
Bye!
1
What would she do if his hands touched her body? How would she feel if his lips touched her skin?
Ellie swam through endless dreams, lost in a haze and blur. Her mind tried its hardest to process everything that had happened in the last few days. She was a prisoner. She was chained. She was his captive.
He came to her in the night as he always did. It wasn’t already enough that every waking moment was spent with her captor. He infiltrated her dreams too. This one was the same as the others. The world felt small. They were somewhere dark. Somewhere warm. Somewhere for lovers.
The vampire towered over her as a mountain of flesh and muscle, knelt at the end of some dark bed. As she looked down she realized she was wearing a sheer black robe. Where the hell had she even got that thing? Her eyes found him again and she swallowed at the knot in her throat. Those blazing reds stared back at her, almost seeming to heat the air itself.
He was a vision of masculine power and beauty. Broad shoulders, square pecs, a narrow waist and six-pack abs. Kneeling there naked at the end of the bed, perched on two powerful thighs, with that oak hanging between his legs. Her eyes traced back to that face. It was handsome, though lost beneath a wild tangle of black hair that covered his face and head. Feral. Uncontrolled. Out of his mind.
“I can smell your fear,” he said. His voice was a burning whisper. Deep, powerful, attractive. He spoke with the confidence of a man that had no fear. It did things to her. It made her feel weak. He crawled forward on the bed until his body was over hers, brought his lips to her throat and kissed her. The warm flourish of his breath sent tingles up and down her spine. Her body tensed in response, making the chains around her wrists jangle against the bedpost.
“Please…” she whispered. It was a pleading whisper, but they both knew it was all false pretense. She wanted him, and he wanted her, though she could never admit it out loud. A vampire and a vampire hunter? It was lunacy. It was… hotter than anything she’d ever known.
“Please,” he said the words back to her with a laugh, growling as he did so. His lips devoured her throat, making her stomach flush with warmth. He pressed his body against hers, sealing her beneath a blanket of muscle and warmth. Legs spread, she pushed back against the molten rock pillar burning against her sex. God, she wanted him.
“Fuck me,” she whispered through a breathless moan. Those red eyes came back to hers again, glinting with wickedness and fire. Absolute power radiated from him. Testosterone pulsed through the air with the scent of oak and earth. She pushed her fingers through that dark tangle of hair and kissed him passionately. Her captor. Her master. Her vampire lover.
He pulled back, his red eyes burning down at her body, grabbed his cock and pushed the tip against her glistening folds. Her eyes rounded, her mouth gasped in shocked silence as his girth cleaved her. Heaven. Hell. Everything in between. She wrapped her hand around his neck and kissed him hard as he pushed all the way inside.
Prisoner to a physical devotion. Slave to the very thing she had sworn to destroy. How could she destroy something like this? The beast pulled back, his eyes flushed completely with black. His lips moved aside to reveal the long white points of his fangs. His eyes locked on her throat. He moved in and pierced the flesh, hips rolling against hers as he did so. Blood trickled down the milk white skin. Heat boiled in the pit of her stomach with each powerful thrust. Her lips found the sweet salt of sweat on his chest, her nails bit against his muscled back. He drank deep, his hips thrusting long and slow.
She gasped through the pain and the pleasure, holding on tight for dear life. He’d be the death of her, but right now she wasn’t sure if she cared. A lost daughter of the prophecy. A plaything to a murderer that had lost his mind. She was doomed to dream of this madman that would surely be her end. Another girl lost to the vicious underworld of the vampire.
Aroused, terrified, close to dying.
She was the vampire’s captive.
2
“Wake up,” the vampire said, kicking her lightly in the side.
Ellie jolted awake, scrambling to her hands and knees. She looked around the dilapidated cabin in confusion for a few seconds before remembering where they were. “What time is it?” she asked, looking up through the darkness at the feral vampire.
“Sunset. Time to move on.” The vampire unhooked the chain from off the wall and pulled Ellie to her feet, shoving a piece of bread into her hands.
“What’s this?”
“Breakfast. I stole it from a town over the hill. Hurry up and eat. We leave in five minutes.”
Five minutes for stale bread in a dark cabin that smelled of moss. Great. She wolfed the food down and sat in silence while she watched the vampire drink blood from a tall glass. Another night of unwanted erotic dreams. When the hell had her libido ever been like this before? The vampire that had taken her captive
wasn’t exactly the image of cleanliness.
Long hair. Thick black beard. Skin scored with dirt and scars. He might look half-decent if he cleaned up a bit. She couldn’t ignore those strong looking hands and those thick forearms. On his right wrist there was a tattoo of a small black hammer. She’d first noticed it two days ago and wanted to ask him what it meant, but it seemed pointless. It must have been nearly a week since he’d taken her, and in that time, she’d probably heard him say no more than a dozen words.
A week of long nights full of walking. Silent walking. Following behind him through the forest on the end of a chain. Being led god-knows-where like a dog on a leash. She hadn’t seen the sun in almost a week, what with living to his schedule. Her feet hurt, her body ached, and her dreams wouldn’t quit with their erotic assault.
It had been a weird week.
Several more hours of walking followed that night. She followed the vampire through the forest. Wrists bound in chains, her hands pointed up in the air before her. The metal chain arched through the air several feet until it stopped in the white fist of her vampiric captor. It seemed that she was a slave now. Great.
“How much farther do we have to go?” she asked as they continued their endless trawl.
The feral vampire looked back at Ellie through the dim dusk light, his bright red eyes glowing with fierce intensity. “Quite a way yet. You might as well stop asking.”
Rude bastard. You might as well eat a stake. There’d been little opportunity for Ellie to make an attempt at escape so far, but she sure as hell would make an attempt when it first presented itself. Her thoughts cast back to the initial abduction, and she felt a shiver run down her spine.
“All I want is my mate.” That is what the crazed vampire had said when he took her from the burned-out church. Hand pointed in her direction, red eyes blazing like demonic fire. She’d never forget that night as long as she lived. She’d never forget the terror she felt then, or the terror she felt now.
Ellie sucked in a sharp breath as they stumbled across the muddy forest floor, stepping over fallen trees and dead leaves. “I’m just saying… we’ve been walking for hours, and my legs are starting to get tired. You might be able to walk for days without rest, but I’m a human, okay? I need to rest at some point.”
The vampire came to a stop and slowly turned around. He lifted his free hand to his hood and pulled it back, letting it fall around his shoulders to reveal his face.
Gods, Ellie thought. That face. What was this creature? Who was he? He was a vampire, she knew that for certain, but he seemed to be so much more than that as well. Her group had hunted the feral for the last few weeks, and she’d witnessed extraordinary displays of strength and magic from the mad beast. Her eyes lingered on the thick black hair growing from his head and face. Long, matted, in much need of a shave. The vampire had clearly let himself go a long time ago.
He had the bright red eyes of a Super. A vampire that was gifted with super power and strength. His skin was deathly pale. A moonlight alabaster that seemed almost luminous under the pre-dawn sky. He stared at her in silence, his eyes piercing into her as he stood in perfect stillness. The look rooted her to the spot completely, but it did something else to her too. Something foreign and completely unknown. There was warmth inside of her.
“What’s the matter?” Ellie said in exasperation, staring back at the irritatingly mute vampire. “Cat got your tongue? Why won’t you answer me?!” A glimmer of something appeared in the vampire’s eyes, and for a moment Ellie wondered if it was amusement.
“You really love to talk a lot, don’t you?” he said with a smirk.
“You have taken me captive,” Ellie hissed, putting extra emphasis on the word captive. “This might be a normal everyday thing for you, abducting girls and leading them back through the woods to some unknown location, but it’s pretty new for me! We have been walking for days. We are in the middle of nowhere, and if I’m not mistaken, it’s going to be sunrise again soon. There’s no shelter around and you’re going to be a ball of dust.”
His eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Careful human, it almost sounds as if you care about me there.”
Ellie bit her cheek to stop herself from screaming. How could he be so laid back? How could he be so confident? “I couldn’t care less. It’s quite clear that you’re mad. You can go up in flames for all I care, but if you die then I’m left alone out here, chained up with no idea of where I am. If you’re going to kill me then just kill me now, because I don’t want to take a step further.”
It was a bold statement to make, and a risky bluff to put forward, but Ellie didn’t see much harm in putting everything on the line. This vampire was unpredictable, dangerous, and infuriatingly aloof. If she didn’t put her foot down now and get answers, she might be all the worse for it.
A dark chuckle erupted from the vampire’s plump red lips. The sound tinkled through the air and washed over her, almost seeming to make her feel lighter. “Why on earth would I kill you? I couldn’t think of a more terrible waste. I don’t know if you were paying much attention back there my sweetest darling.”
The vampire stepped forward across the forest floor, dry leaves crunching underneath his feet. Ellie backed away with each step the vampire took, retreating until her shoulder bumped against a tree behind her. The vampire closed the distance between them almost completely, stopping just in front of her. He turned his head slightly, examining her with those vibrant red eyes. He lifted his free hand and brushed hair from off her face, gliding his cold fingers down her cheek. Ellie took a sharp breath, steadying her body as she tried to hold his gaze. He leaned in closer, his eyes flicking from her eyes to her lips and back again. The broad forest suddenly felt very small.
“You’ve got something very special inside of you,” he said, his voice whispering like hot coals. “You know why I took you. You’re a breeder. You’re one of the lost daughters that everyone has been looking for.”
Ellie’s heart quickened in her chest as the vampire brushed his hand down her face, bringing his thumb to her bottom lip. She swallowed at something in her throat, suddenly feeling very hot in the cold morning air. A nervous smile flickered on her lips, she shook her head and pushed his hand away. “You’re wrong. I’m not one of those girls. I can’t be. It’s not possible—”
The vampire pressed forward, closing the distance between them completely now. He towered over her as a pillar of muscled flesh and torn woolen clothing. The scent of earth and oak rose through the air to meet her nostrils. It was powerful. It was familiar in some distant way. It was both enticing and terrifying.
Another chuckle rose from those perfect red lips, and they curled into a smile, mirroring the bewitching glint of amusement in those sparkling red eyes. “You are one of the girls everyone is looking for. You have the mark…” The vampire’s hand brushed around Ellie’s side, resting gently on the small of her back. He lifted the back of her white jacket, exposing the bare flesh at the base of her spine. There on her milk-white flesh was the spiral birthmark she’d had for as long as she could remember. His finger traced over the spiral in a slow and delicate movement, sending tingles across her flesh and making it goose bump.
She brought her eyes back to his and held her gaze on those sparkling reds, aware that her breath was jittering from her own lips in short and shaking breaths. That scent of oak and earth rose again around her and seemed to surround her like a wall, heating her, lifting her, stirring her. Her eyes felt as if they were caught in his, somehow bewitched by the swirling red patterns that circled around those bottomless black circles. All she wanted to do was lean forward and feel the softness of that bottom lip. Her head craned, she inched forward feeling as if she was almost drunk.
The vampire pulled away, breaking Ellie from her most unexpected reverie. She squeezed her eyes hard and shook her head, placing a palm against the rough bark behind her to ground herself. “What the hell was that?” she asked, looking over at the vampire who was now a few f
eet away from her.
“What’s the matter darling?” he smirked. “Never been up close with a vampire before? We’re captivating creatures… or so I’ve been told. It’s very normal for mortal women to fall prey to us…”
Prey. The word sent a shiver down her spine. In what context had he used the word? Was this all just some elaborate hunting game for him? Was there something even more sinister, lurking beneath his words?
Ellie breathed the fresh air, feeling more in control of her senses now. She straightened up and looked at the vampire. “You’re delusional if you think you have any effect over me. I’ve spent my entire life learning about your kind and your despicable ways…”
Another deep laugh spilled from his lips and he looked her up and down. “Yes. I’d noticed from that ghastly uniform of yours. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. We’re almost at the northern border now. Your clothes will be a problem.”
Ellie looked down at her white uniform, which signaled her part in the White Order, the vampire hunting organization she belonged to. White trousers, white shirt, white jacket. A black cross was emblazoned on her jacket just above the breast, acting as the insignia for her group. The only other part of her uniform that wasn’t white was her thick black boots. Her uniform had been crisp, clean and neatly pressed a few days ago. It was now wrinkled, dull grey and marred from the dirt of the forest.