by Aja James
“I don’t suppose you serve the tea and sweet breads I smelt while passing by the shop?” the young man inquired in a melodious yet deeply masculine voice. “Or sell the lovely trinkets displayed on these shelves?”
She considered him for a long moment, so long that he wondered whether he’d somehow forgotten his disguise and was standing before her in his true form, a naked and ugly abomination.
Finally she answered, “I do not sell the wares you see here, but I would be happy to serve the tea and biscuits. And don’t worry about paying,” she waved a hand, “It’s my treat.”
The creature was stunned.
It was to receive something for free?
There was no such thing in the world. A unicorn, dragon and Big Foot might have been standing together before it and it would not have believed in the myth of getting something for nothing.
The young man hesitated indecisively four feet from the entrance of the shop, as if he couldn’t convince himself to commit to staying for a short while, just long enough to consume some light refreshments. The old woman came forward and took the sleeve of his expensive overcoat between her fingers.
“Come, come,” she coaxed, “I don’t bite. You’ll be doing me a favor by staying a while and sharing my afternoon tea. It’s not every day I get to practice flirting with such a handsome young thing such as yourself. But I must say, my luck’s been getting better these past few days.”
She chuckled to herself as she ushered him to an antique chair seated at an oval tea table and all but pushed him into it.
“If only I were forty years younger,” she said on a sigh, “why, I’d give you a run for your money then, deary.” She shot him a wink and a grin. “But as it is, you’re quite safe with me.”
The creature was charmed, despite itself, by the old woman’s chatter. If it ever had a mother—did one have to have a mother or could one be birthed fully-grown like Athena from Zeus’ head?—it would have imagined someone like this lady.
“Now you sit tight, my dear,” the old woman said as she hustled toward the back of the shop, “I’ll bring the tea and biscuits lickity split.”
The young man made himself comfortable in his chair and looked around him once more. For some odd reason, his eyes alighted on an intricate wooden comb carved in one piece, the handle in the shape of a crouched leopard, the feline’s eyes made of dark purple amethysts.
When the lady came back with a tray laden with victuals, she caught the young man staring unblinkingly at the comb, a glint of something undefinable in his eyes.
“That is one of my favorite treasures,” the old woman said as she laid the tray on the table and went to the shelf to retrieve the comb.
The young man’s eyes tracked the object as if mesmerized. She gave him the comb to hold, and he took it with unsteady hands.
“It’s supposed to be very old,” she said as he continued to stare, simmering in silence. “But it’s quite strong, so I don’t worry that it might break. It is made from African sandalwood and I keep it polished regularly.”
As the young man continued to appreciate the comb, now stroking the tines with his graceful, long fingers, the old lady chattered on, “I keep it for its sentimental value. If you’re the fanciful sort, the story is that it used to belong to a beautiful Princess, given to her on her birthday by her beloved. He carved it himself, the tale goes, though the amethysts were added later.”
The young man’s countenance started to quiver, as if he could barely control his facial muscles from contorting. There was a bleakness and despair in his expression that the old woman could not bear to witness. She didn’t ask what bothered him. It was none of her business and she didn’t want to pry. She just knew that she wanted to make him a little bit better if she could.
She needed it, in fact.
“Keep it, if you like it so much.” The words were out of her mouth before she could recall them.
And when the young man raised startled eyes at her unexpected offer, she knew she had made the right decision.
“This must be priceless,” the young man finally spoke again. “You don’t realize its value.”
The old lady smiled, a bit sadly, a bit wistfully. “What’s the value of an old comb compared to the joy of its owner for having it? I’ve had it in my possession for a good bit of time now, and I’ve appreciated it fully. The older I get, the more I realize that sometimes you have to let things go rather than keep things all to yourself and stay a stingy miser. You feel freer that way.”
“And as you can see,” she gestured to the veritable treasure trove that surrounded them. “I have too many things holding me back, weighing me down. It’s time I let this one go. I’d be pleased as a pickle if you’d take it off my hands.”
Wordlessly, the young man accepted her gift and put the comb inside the inner pocket of his wool coat.
“Now let’s quench our thirst and make our stomachs a little happier too,” the old lady said, pouring her guest and herself two cups of fragrant, steaming tea.
“After all,” she said and smiled such a girlish smile at him, he thought she was truly forty years younger in that moment, “I have to tempt you to come visit me some more if I want to see your pretty face again. But honey, you have got to work on your conversation. Maybe the refreshments will loosen your tongue.”
The creature in the young man’s guise smiled in return, as genuine a smile as it had ever attempted, in any case.
Yes, it would come back. It wouldn’t be able to stay away even if it wanted to.
*** *** *** ***
After a light dinner, some movie time with Benji (there was a marathon of Hollywood classics on TNT featuring “There’s No Business Like Show Business”, one of Benji’s favorites), and putting the kiddo to bed after he dozed off in the Second Act, Inanna pulled Gabriel into their room to have a sit-down talk.
Which turned into a lie-down talk. Her favorite kind.
“So you’re saying that I can still have an… an Awakening?” he asked, trying to make sense of everything she’d told him. “What happens if I do?”
“You have to survive it first,” Inanna answered.
They were snuggled in bed, warm and naked, his pectorals a pillow for her head, one of her arms draped across his taut abdomen, her hand entwined with his at his hip.
“The Awakening is usually triggered by a critical process, where the body and mind that the soul resides in is caught between extremes. Many might call it a ‘near-death experience.’”
Gabriel released a long exhale. “Okay. So number one, ensure I survive.”
“I have never been through one myself, but now that I know I have a Pure soul too I don’t know if I could or would have one.”
“What about us?” he asked quietly, “does the dynamic change? Will we still be able to provide Nourishment to each other?”
Inanna shifted and sat up, bracing herself on his chest, covering his lower body with her own, until her sex was flush against his, gliding against it in a hot, wet kiss.
“I don’t know the answer to that,” she said, staring down into his black-fringed eyes. “All I know is that I will love you whatever the consequences, whatever the future holds. And even if…”
She stuttered on a breath as she swallowed back tears. “And even if we cannot Nourish each other and must survive by other means, I will still love you and only you. This I vow.”
Gabriel searched her deep blue eyes and nodded.
It had been seven days since he’d known her. It didn’t matter if it was seven hours. He knew her. She was his home.
“I want you,” she said, her voice turning darker, huskier, her pupils dilating until the blue irises were all but eclipsed.
The reply was past his lips before his mind had even registered it: “Then you shall have me.”
He lifted his hips to penetrate her, but she avoided the thrust by moving down his body at the same time.
She trailed scorching kisses everywhere she touched as she
meandered her way down his chest, his stomach, to rest at his lower abdomen. She pointed a finger from his navel down the smooth expanse of his abdomen to the coarse thatch from which his manhood swelled, hard and thick and long.
“I want to taste you,” she whispered, and her fangs extended from her gums, dripping saliva as lust cranked her hormones into overdrive.
“Here.” She took his reddened cock in one hand and suckled the thin stream of pre-cum that seeped out of its fat, satiny crown.
Gabriel gasped and shuddered, unprepared for the sensations she evoked.
This was the first time… every time with her, the first time.
She moved her hand steadily up and down, squeezing rhythmically as she went, suckling slowly but with steady pressure in counter point to her fisting, until his penis was flesh-encased steel and a sweet ache pooled in the sacs below.
As if knowing what he needed, her other hand tended to his scrotum, rolling the balls gently in her palm, in full control of the pleasure she gave, the pace of his climb toward his zenith, the flow of his seed through the most private, intimate parts of him.
“Please,” he begged, his breath ragged, one hand tangled in her hair.
But she insisted on having her fill, at her leisure.
She increased the pressure of her sucking, taking more and more of him in her mouth, abrading the hypersensitive skin of his cock with the edges of her fangs.
A shudder racked through him, and she squeezed his scrotum at just the right time with just the right pressure to stall his release, frustrating him, yet prolonging the pleasure and intensity of his orgasm.
If she ever let him achieve it.
Gabriel was beginning to doubt she would.
It seemed like she was settling in at his lap for the duration. Licking, suckling, nipping, squeezing, pulling. While he was on the verge of exploding out of his own flesh for the volcanic heat and pressure she stoked in him.
She took him out of her mouth briefly and he almost wept for the loss of the hot, wet haven.
“Say my name,” she commanded. “I want to hear you say my name.”
Gabriel parted his lips to fulfill her request.
Yet, the word would not come.
She was not Nana Chastain. That was not her name.
“Say it,” she commanded again, skimming her fangs along the large dorsal vein that visibly throbbed against the skin of his penis.
Gabriel gulped on nothing but air. Why wouldn’t the word come?
Holding his gaze intensely, she let him watch as she slowly sank her teeth into that throbbing vein, right beneath the glans. Pain and pleasure battled for supremacy in a cocktail of sensations that took Gabriel to the edge.
“Inanna!” he came on a hoarse shout, so violently, his entire body shook as every muscle contracted and released just as his cock shot semen and blood into her mouth, filling her in a tidal wave that could not be contained, the fluids dripping down her chin, her neck.
She sucked him hard and fast, trying to swallow everything, and he came and came, one wave after another, his hand mindlessly pulling her hair as he writhed with such intense pleasure it was almost but not quite pain.
When he was finally wrung out, a glorious soreness settling in his manhood, Inanna released the plump head with an audible pop, licked the puncture wounds closed, then meticulously cleaned the fluids at the glans, and up and down and around the still turgid column of flesh with her nubile tongue.
She finished her ministrations with a kiss against the mouth of his cock and another lingering suck, as if affectionately rewarding a student for a job well done.
But the suck seemed to trigger another obsession, and she moaned as she savored more of him, licking and suckling the most sensitive crown as she would a particularly juicy ripe plum.
He forcefully pulled her up so that her face was next to his, her body draped over him like a human blanket.
“Hurts,” he rasped huskily, his eyes barely open. “Give me a few minutes before you do that again.”
Inanna smiled a little at his words. “You’re willing to give in to me again even if it hurts?”
“Hmm,” was his languorous response.
She snuggled close and ran the edges of her fangs against his jugular. “What if I like it to hurt a little?” she whispered darkly. “Would you want me to stop?”
He rolled her onto her back and penetrated her to the hilt with one deep thrust. “Then hurt me some more, Libbu mine. I never want you to stop.”
Hours later, when both were sated and secure in each other’s arms, Gabriel sleeping dreamlessly beside her, inside of her, Inanna’s last thought before entering her own slumber was:
How did he know the ancient Akkadian word for heart?
But Hypnos, the god of sleep, had already covered her in his relaxing fog, and the thought receded into the shadows of her mind.
*** *** *** ***
Inanna left Gabriel and Benji with the Pure Ones early in the morning the following day.
Not only must Gabriel continue to train, but he needed to learn more about the other Race’s history and laws as well as the Dark Ones’.
He seemed to be taking things in stride, however.
Perhaps just like her, the past few days had inured him of shock. There was an equanimity to his demeanor now that was consistent with the Gabriel she’d always known. A calmness and steadfastness that she’d admired and grown to love.
Benji, by contrast, became a ball of excitement, all but bouncing off the walls, when he learned that not only were Mommy and Daddy vampires, but they were also vampire-elves!
Surely that must be the awesomest of all living beings. He immediately wanted to know how he could become one too, but was then mercifully distracted by the Starcraft game Aella and Sophia were playing in the living area.
Inanna made her way to the Cove with some trepidation. The report in could not be delayed much longer, and she needed to check on progress against the fight clubs as well as seek out Ryu Takamura for a few questions.
As per her new habits, Jade had risen with the sun and was standing before the floor to ceiling windows in the throne room when Inanna entered, having requested a private audience.
The Queen had even dismissed her ever-present “escort,” Seth Tremaine, the Pure Ones’ Consul.
“I appreciate now why the ancient ones kept Blood Slaves,” the Queen said by way of greeting, continuing to stare through the spotless glass with her back turned toward Inanna. “The blood of Pure Ones is dangerously addictive. It allows us, who live for the dark, to also bask in the sun.”
Inanna made no response and did not think one was expected.
She could not say for other Pure Ones, but in her own case, if Gabriel could be considered half Pure, she could certainly agree with the sentiment. But it was entirely because of Gabriel, not because of his blood.
“Have you come to ask me for judgment or to quit the sphere of my protection?” Jade asked, still without turning. “I lose count of how many of our laws you have broken of late, but perhaps you are not bound by those laws because of who you are.”
Inanna was not entirely surprised that the Queen knew her secrets. Jade Cicada was extremely astute and well-informed.
“I always suspected that you might be the one,” she said, turning finally to regard Inanna with large, almond-shaped blue eyes, “the mythical Light-Bringer that walked between our two worlds, Pure and Dark.”
“How…”
Jade tilted her head slightly as if preparing to examine Inanna in great detail. “The fact that the sun has less effect on you. The fact that you are extremely selective in your sexual partners and don’t exploit that side of vampire nature as almost all of us do. You have had, what, three partners and for only a few nights each in the decades that I have known you.”
Inanna cast her eyes downward. Guess her privacy and secrecy had been an illusion, at least where the Dark Queen was concerned.
Jade continued to count of
f her observations, “The fact that you’ve chosen a way to sustain yourself for millennia without both the blood and sex. Your Contracts are far more in service of the subjects than yourself. Rather noble for a Dark One, wouldn’t you say?”
Inanna looked up at that. “Dark Ones can be noble. Just as Pure Ones can be ignoble.”
The Queen did not reply, merely continued to smile. “So what will it be, Light-Bringer? Do you want to take your Mate and leave this circle? Or will you continue as a Chosen and face the consequences of potentially having mated with a Pure One?”
Put like that, Inanna didn’t have a choice.
She would never endanger Gabriel or Benji, even if she must leave all that she knew and forge a completely new and uncharted path.
Jade had approached silently and was now immediately before Inanna.
Unexpectedly, she took Inanna’s hands in hers and said, “Good choice. You must first and foremost protect your own. But I will miss you, my friend. You were… my Angel too.”
Inanna hesitated a moment, but then drew the slighter woman into a heartfelt embrace. She knew about Jade’s past, knew how difficult and rare it was for the Queen to trust other females given her experiences. But Inanna was among that closely guarded number. It had been an honor and a privilege.
Jade pulled back and stepped away, already distancing herself as if beginning the process of separation.
“I am afraid I do have to convey one unfortunate message to you before you go,” she said, worry and regret in her expression.
Inanna awaited for her to expound.
“A formal Challenge has been issued.”
Inanna inhaled audibly. No! It cannot be!
“You have been Challenged to the death for the possession of your Mate. You have twenty-four hours to respond or forfeit your right to Gabriel D’Angelo. The Challenger has prior claim of his blood and will fight for possession of him as her Blood Slave.”
Every sentence the Queen uttered was a sledge hammer to Inanna’s internal organs. Her heart, her lungs, her stomach.