by Lund, S. E.
My body tenses at that.
“He won’t love you like I do,” he says finally, his voice soft. “Or Michel.”
“You and Michel keep saying you love me, but it means nothing to me. Nothing.” I turn away, hating that I have no memories of my life.
“You wanted the truth, Eve. No more lies.” He takes my arm and releases a calming endorphin that saps my ability to resist him physically. He turns me back around and holds my shoulders, bending down so his face is just inches from mine.
“I love you. I wish I didn’t. I hate loving you. I thought I’d given up on love centuries ago, but it’s so hard to live forever without it. I can’t do it anymore.”
Then he pulls me along the beach, going back in the direction he came from.
“What are you doing?”
He doesn’t answer, just keeps walking, my hand in his, our fingers threaded together.
“I followed Michel here on a whim one weekend,” he says, laughing ruefully. “Just to see where he was going and I find he’s bought this cottage on the ocean. What’s he doing here, I wondered. I staked it out. Didn’t see anything but him and Vasily staying here, so I thought maybe he bought it for Vasily because he was hurt in the bombing. I come out here today to check on things because I was starting to miss Michel and who the fuck do I find but you, wandering the beach, security detail trailing you like the fucking queen. Jesus Christ.”
We climb up the dunes to the road and his car, which is parked down a tree-lined side road. He opens the door for me and I climb in, my mind resisting but my body betraying me, as usual. He fastens my seatbelt like the chivalrous knight he once was, except of course, that he’s taking me against my will.
I can’t even speak. I just sit there as he gets in the driver's seat and takes out his cell. He speaks into it briefly, relaying two words.
“I’m coming.”
"My parents…" I say.
"I'll call them later."
We drive off and I watch out the car window as the landscape passes us by on the road back to Boston.
* * *
We drive to a suburb and to a stately mansion in a grove of trees. The house is old, with huge windows looking out over a large green space of manicured lawns and shrubs, a fountain in the center. There’s heavy security and a guard at a gate admits us, nodding as Julien rolls down his window. We round the circular driveway to the huge double doors where another guard stands.
“I thought you lived at the monastery.”
“I have several properties.”
The guard opens my door and Julien comes around and takes my hand. I can’t resist him, because the endorphins he’s released in me are still too strong. We enter the house, and I stand in the huge foyer with a cathedral ceiling and a large winding staircase up to a second floor. The floors are marble, as are the walls, and the furnishings ornate and antique. It looks like it's been transported from some grand home in eighteenth-century Florence or Paris.
“This doesn’t seem at all like you,” I say. “Not from what I read in my journal.”
“You don’t know me," he says, his brow furrowed.
He speaks with someone who looks like a servant or butler and then he comes to me, taking my hand. He pulls me up the staircase to the second floor and into a huge reception room, past an ornate grand piano and several instruments – a cello, violin, and bass. We walk through the reception room, through a hallway and then into a bedroom with a magnificent bed all draped in sheer white curtains. He closes the door and his wings unfurl as he leans against it, his arms slipping around my waist, pulling me against his body.
“Don’t,” I say in protest but my heart is racing just from his touch and his intensity.
He shakes his head.
“I’m not arguing with you anymore,” he says and his voice is breathless. “I’m listening to your body from now on, not your words or your mind. You want only the truth? I'll tell you the whole truth. All of it. But I want only the truth from you, Eve. You lie all the time, to yourself, to me. Your body doesn’t lie. It’s the only truth that matters now.”
He kisses me, his mouth soft on my lips, holding them there as he threads his fingers in my hair.
“Please,” I say again when he pulls back. I'm barely able to speak. “Don’t.” But my body has already warmed from his touch.
“Shh,” he says, pressing a finger against my lips. “No more lies between us, Eve.”
He kisses me again, this time his kiss is more intense. Despite my mind telling me this shouldn’t happen, my body responds to him when his tongue touches mine. He makes a sound deep in his throat.
My heart responds to the blatant desire in his face, to the need in his eyes, a thrill of lust shocking through my body. As we kiss, he opens himself to me and I experience everything from our shared past through him, how he first saw me when I was a child in the darkened hallway in our house, how he felt that night at the diner when we first met, how he followed me to the crime scene, to everything afterwards when he and I were together in Boston, then the moment he saw me on the beach, the image of me standing there making him fall to his knees, overcome, covering his eyes. His memories and his emotions speak more loudly than any words ever could and in that moment, I know he loved me – he loves me.
He pulls me against him tightly and there’s nothing I can do to resist him. So I don’t.
I don’t even try.
When he feels me give in, he pulls back from the kiss and exhales heavily, his forehead against mine. He drops his arms and stands there not touching me, just looking in my eyes.
Then, he offers his hand to me and I look at it and I know what he's doing. He's giving me a chance to choose. I hesitate. There's no doubt that I'm aroused by his touch. I know he loves me from our shared memories. He needs me in an almost desperate way.
I take his hand.
He exhales heavily and for a moment just squeezes my hand in his. He pulls me over to the bed, sitting on it, his wings folding up. He guides me between his thighs and embraces me, his arms around me, his lips pressing against my neck.
We remain like this for long moments. His tongue is wet against my throat where Michel bit me – where he bit me so long ago – and it sends another shock of desire through me so that I can’t help but gasp.
He lies back, pulling me on top of him so that I’m resting on my elbows, my face above his. He brushes my hair back, tucking it behind my ear and I stare into his eyes. He’s so beautiful, I can barely stand it.
Then I lean down and kiss him, his mouth opening against mine, his arms squeezing me more tightly, his emotions surging through me as we connect again, and whatever my mind thinks about what I’m doing, my body doesn’t care any longer. I don’t care any longer. I only know that this feels as if it could finally fill the void in my body, in my heart, that’s been there for the past two months since I woke up.
Perhaps my entire life.
Then he bites my neck, the pain is brief and bright, and I come again, all my senses overwhelmed and it's just too much to bear.
Chapter 56
"To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead."
Bertrand Russell
* * *
I wake in the night, my body starting to feel the effects of my blood addiction. Julien isn’t with me and I get up and tiptoe to the bathroom, where I find a large towel, using it to cover my nakedness.
I go out into the main reception room and he’s standing at the window, naked, talking into his cell. He hears me, of course, and turns, the phone at his ear. He waves to me and I join him. He pulls me against his body with one hand and continues to speak softly into the phone for a few moments.
“Tell him those are my terms. If he doesn’t accept, I'm gone for good and so is she.”
I frown. What plans is he making for me?
“I won’t hear any counter offer. That’s final.” He ends the call, tapping the screen and turns to me. “Why are you a
wake? You should be sleeping.”
“Who were you talking to,” I say, unable to read him.
He puts the phone down on the windowsill and brushes the hair off my cheek.
“Vasquez. I told him you were coming back to work for the SCU and I was going to be your partner.”
“You did?” I say, surprised that he’s going to let me work again. "How can that be? You were implicated in the River Man killings."
"Since O’Neil’s death, there's been a shake-up in the SCU. Files were lost. My case in particular. You and I will work together. This is what we were meant to do, you and I.” He bends down and kisses me briefly. “I know you won’t rest until you follow your mother’s path. Michel won’t give you what you want, Eve, but I will. I’ll give you everything you want. Everything.”
“That’s what he said as well,” I say. “I don’t know what I want anymore.”
He smiles briefly. “Yes you do. You just don’t want to admit it. Listen to your body and your heart. Don’t listen to that moralizing superego that haunts you, telling you that you must atone for wrongs you never did. For bad things for which you had no responsibility.”
I try to ignore his words because that sounds too much like what Michel said.
“I need your blood,” I say plainly, rubbing my hands over his bare chest.
“How do you want me?” he says and I can hear the instant transformation in his voice at the very thought of it. I search him out with my mind and he’s immediately choking with lust at the prospect of me drinking his blood, being on a blood high.
I close my eyes and lean against him.
“Where do you want me to feed?” I say, barely able to speak, I'm so overwhelmed with desire.
“No, this is all about you,” he says, pulling the towel off me, his hands stroking down my back as he pulls me against him.
But I catch a hint of what he wants – a brief vision as he’s imagined it and he wants me drinking from his neck and that image is now what I want as well.
I sit on his lap, my hands on his shoulders, and stroke his face.
“Now,” he says, and uses the corner of his fingernail to open a thin seam on his neck below his ear, just beside the Lorraine Cross tattoo that looks more like a brand than ink. I kiss it first, wondering what it means, and then press my mouth over the wound, sucking at it, nursing, the blood trickling into my mouth, the effect immediate.
My body trembles with pleasure as the endorphins hit my brain and I can’t imagine a more intense experience than this, our minds connecting, the effect of his blood magnifying everything ten-fold.
It’s almost too much to bear.
Almost.
But I can bear it because it's washing away the pain and grief over learning that Michel killed my mother. I will bear it because this is what I need to forget him. I shut off my mind and let my body lead me where it wants me to go – where my heart wants to be.
Then Julien bites me, the pain sharp and short and we wallow in pleasure too intense to describe.
* * *
The next morning, I wake and he’s naked on his stomach beside me, a pillow over his head. I'm surprised to see him there and that he wants to sleep with me. He always left before.
“What’s going on in that too-busy mind of yours, Eve?” he says, his voice muffled under the pillow. “You think too much.”
I smile. “How can I not think with you lying there like that?”
He pulls the pillow off his head and rolls on to his side, reaching to run his fingers over my cheek, aiming for my dimple.
"I was thinking that you never slept with me before and wondering why you are now."
"I've changed," he says softly. "Before I thought you'd died, I thought I had time to position myself so I could win you back from Michel. I can't wait anymore. I have to take what I want or Michel and Soren will."
I don’t know what I think of this possessiveness of his, other than it thrills me a bit and scares me at the same time. He’s so powerful now as a vampire since he and Michel took the waters of life, but it’s just the force of his personality that’s also so powerful.
"I don't like it when you talk that way. I'm not a possession."
“I should never have let Michel take you back when he returned from Pittsburgh, but I didn't want Soren to take you. I love you, Eve,” he says softly. “Whatever you want. Anything you want. Anything.” He sits on the bench and turns my face to him. “I’m yours, in case you didn’t realize it. I’ll do anything you want. Just say the word.”
I look at him for a moment, at the blue eyes, the dark brows. The thin silvery scar on his cheek.
“I read in my journal that you said you couldn’t give me what I want. What made you change your mind?”
"Time," he says and shakes his head, brushing the backs of his fingers along my chin. “Time changes us all.”
Chapter 57
"March on and fear not the thorns, or the sharp stones on life's path."
Khalil Gibran
* * *
“The first thing you have to do is get trained,” Julien says as we sit at a small table in the reception room and a servant brings a tray of food for our breakfast. I select some scrambled eggs and toast, with a cup of coffee and orange juice. I’m starving, having barely eaten since Julien found me on the beach.
“What will that involve?”
He scrapes eggs and bacon onto his plate and digs in, as if he's ravenous.
“You need to learn how to use your powers,” he says between bites, eyeing me. “You beat Michel in the dojo but that was just one on one. If you have several opponents and some of them are also Adepts with fight sight, you’ll need to know how to beat them. You’re going to a special training facility in France.”
“France?”
He nods, takes a sip of coffee. “They specialize in Nitō Ichi fighting. You need to know how to fight with two weapons – a stake and a sword. Or a gun and a stake. The trainers there are the very best. You’ll be there for two weeks to get the basics and then you and I will practice for a while. You’ll be tested when I think you’re ready. If you pass, no one will be able to beat you without a very tough fight.”
“I can’t beat either you or Michel any more, can I?”
He shakes his head, takes a long drink of orange juice, looking at me intently over the rim of his glass.
“No. Not since we both transformed.”
“Since you both can now manipulate our minds, make us think you have wings or can disappear.”
“Oh, ye of little faith,” He says and shakes his head, grinning. “You are so stubborn.”
He turns back to his food but now, he’s a bit less focused, like he wants to say something but thinks better of it.
“What?” I say, knowing he wants to speak up but he doesn’t.
He shakes his head. Puts his fork down and pushes back from the table.
“Nothing,” he says. He regards me from under those dark brows. “It’ll be a tough two weeks, Eve. You'd better eat up. You’ll be worked like you’ve never been worked before. The mental and physical discipline will change you.”
“How?”
“You’ll become tougher. Wiser.”
“Wiser?”
“It’s not just a physical discipline. It’s mental. It forces you to focus on what matters. It centers you spiritually.”
A thrill goes through me at the thought of training and becoming stronger. I took some Kendo as a teen, using wooden katana. I knew that Nitō Ichi was double sword fighting.
“What about Michel?” I say, wondering how he’ll respond to the fact that Julien has me and is planning on training me.
“What about him?” he says, and I can still hear a thin note of anger in his voice. “You’re mine. I made that clear to Vasquez. Michel’s out of this as far as I’m concerned. Things are the way they were supposed to be so forget him and his grand plan of manipulation.”
“What plan?”
He just waves
his hand in dismissal. “He thinks he can control everything. He’s self-deceived.”
I try to push Michel out of my mind, but I know he’ll be upset that I’m with Julien. Right now, I'm still too shocked by his revelation to know how I feel. I sigh and drink down the rest of my coffee.
“What about your blood when I’m at the facility?”
“I’ll make sure you have a supply to keep you healthy. Mine has the strength of ten vampires so it will help you heal from any wounds or bruises you get from training.”
“When do I go?”
“Tomorrow. We fly tonight.”
“You think I’m ready?”
“If you aren’t, you’ll get ready really quick.”
“Will I see you at all?”
He shakes his head. “Not until your training is over. I’ll see you the last day when you’re tested.”
A sense of apprehension fills me. Going to France, staying at a training facility for two weeks away from everything I know.
It will be a real test.
* * *
That night when it’s time for my blood feed, I’m in no mood for sex and Julien retreats when he feels me so apprehensive, his lust doing nothing to arouse me.
“I’m sorry,” I say when he pulls back so I no longer feel his desire. “I’m nervous.”
“It’s OK. You’ll feel better soon.”
I feed on his neck as he likes me to, and when I have enough, I just lie in his arms, the endorphins from his blood relieving my anxiety. He lays me back on the couch and rolls on top of me, his face in the crook of my neck, breathing in my perfume. Soon, I start to respond again to the feel of his body on mine, of his lips pressed against my neck. He doesn’t want to feed on me tonight. He wants me to be as strong as possible for my training.