by Eve Newton
“That’s where you kept them, isn’t it? The substitutes?” I ask in disdain.
Chapter 14
“Speak to me, Constantine!” I snap at him as he remains silent. “That’s where you kept them, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” he says eventually, looking away from me.
I inhale sharply and stand. I can’t deal with this. There is just too much drama, too much heartache, too many secrets and surprises.
“I can’t live here,” I whisper to him and he jumps to his feet.
“No, don’t say that. You have to,” he implores me, grabbing my arm as I back away. “Please, Aefre, please.”
“You called me ‘Liv.’ In there. You called me ‘Liv,’” I say, pulling my arm out of his tight grip. “You didn’t want to call me ‘Aefre’ in there. Why? Is it because you called them that? You called them by MY NAME?” I am yelling at the top of my voice at him. I am sure the entire castle can hear me, but I don’t give two shits at the moment. I am so angry with him. But as I look at his beautiful, perfect face, his expression turns from one of torment to one of horror.
“NO!” he roars at me and I step back from the sheer volume of it. Christ, he has a pair of lungs on him. I thought I was being loud. “How dare you even suggest that!”
How dare I? Oh, you are in for it now, pal.
“How dare I? Who the fuck do you think you are talking to? How dare YOU! How dare you bring those…women,” I spit the word out at him, “…here and then expect me to live here.”
“Where the fuck did you think I took them?” he asks nastily and for the second time in these few short weeks, I bring my hand back to hit him, only this time I bunch my hand into a fist and I knock him flying with a good old dose of Dragon Power behind my Vampire strength.
My breathing is ragged as I try to calm myself. He is going to fucking kill me, but I don’t give three shits by now.
“Fuck!” he exclaims, getting up off the floor a few feet away and rubbing his jaw. “Christ, woman, you might want to give a bit of warning next time.”
And just like that his mood has altered, like flicking a switch and I can’t stay mad at him. I laugh, not an amused laugh, but one of sheer nerves and relief that he isn’t going to counterattack. I may be as strong as he is now, but he knows how to harness his strength and fighting prowess better than anyone else I know. Certainly, better than me, and I am not so sure I want to find out firsthand just how “Roman Warrior” he can go on me.
He peers at me warily as he comes closer. “I’m sorry. That was a stupid thing to say.”
“No, you are right. Of course, you would bring them here,” I say quietly.
“Aefre, don’t ever think that I wanted them to be you. Not really you. I would never have called them by your name. Not ever. Please believe me.”
I nod stiffly.
He carries on when I don’t say anything. “Seeing you in there. In that room, was a shock to me. So many nights I wanted you in that room. I wanted you there with me,” he whispers so quietly I barely hear him. He risks bringing his hand up to my face to stroke me gently and I just lose all the anger and fight. I can’t honestly say for sure why I am so mad. I already knew about the substitutes and have forgiven him, and it makes sense that he would bring them here.
“Sorry for hitting you,” I mumble, and he looks amused.
“No, you aren’t,” he says.
“No, I’m not,” I agree. “I am glad that Sebastian wasn’t here though. I am fairly sure you would be cleaning me off the carpet for weeks if he had been.”
He snorts in amusement. “You underestimate your strength, my sweet. Trust me,” he says rubbing his jaw again.
“Yeah, I seem to be hearing that a lot lately.” I sigh and take his hand. “Can we just take a shower and head back? I meant it when I said I can’t bear any more drama.”
“Of course. Allow me.” He wraps his arms around me and Teleports us into his luxurious bathroom. He turns on the shower and disrobes me, helping me in.
“Aren’t you joining me?” I ask as he just stands there watching me. “You know how I feel about wet you,” I add with a small smile.
He looks relieved. “I wasn’t sure you wanted me to, after…you know…before,” he stammers, and I resist the urge to laugh at him standing there like an uncomfortable teenager.
“Just shut up and get in here,” I say and shake my head at him.
He doesn’t need telling twice and is naked, wet and in my arms in seconds, kissing me as if he had lost me and then found me again.
I am just getting very into the moment, when he pulls back and looks at me with an expression so serious it douses any arousal I felt from his kisses. “Everything is okay, with us?” he asks tentatively.
“Yes. Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I have shocked you and disappointed you and hurt you badly so many times over the centuries. I have kept too many secrets from you that have come out anyway. Never have I seen that look on your face that you had before when you said you can’t live here.”
I just stand there with the water pounding down on me as I look at him. I, too, have never seen this look on his face before. He looks like he is going to cry if I tell him anything other than what he wants to hear. I’m sure that he wouldn’t, but it still frightens me, that depth of emotion coming from him.
“We are perfect,” I say to him. “And I have waited a thousand and one years to be given the opportunity to legally share this castle with you. If you think that I am about to give that up you can go and fuck yourself, right now,” I say, trying to make light so he will get that look off his face.
He smiles then and I breathe in, relieved. “I would much rather fuck you,” he says as he picks me up and pushes me against the wall and proceeds to do exactly that.
Several intense orgasms later, we stumble out of the shower and he wraps me up in a fluffy black towel. Wait, this is my fluffy black towel. He hands me another smaller one with a swirling motion to turban my hair up. I look around the bathroom, turning in a big circle. All of my things from New York are in here. I cast a glance back at him and he shrugs. “You said nothing of yours was in here. I said I’d fix that.”
I back out into the bedroom and it is nothing like it was when I walked out of it last night. It is no longer his bedroom, but ours. He has brought everything from my New York bedroom (except the bed) and placed it carefully around this room. Even the bedding has been changed from his black silk sheets to my preference of red silk ones.
“I figured you wouldn’t miss any of it there as we aren’t going back,” he says to prompt a verbal response from me.
“Holy crap! How, when?” I ask him.
“When you went off on your reading slash conquering adventure. Marguerite came with me and helped bring everything back. She worked quickly to get it ready for you.”
Wow. That woman is amazing.
“It’s perfect,” I say, pulling him to me for a kiss. “It is ours.”
“I do like the sound of that,” he says, smiling his made-for-me smile. I pull away and spin around again. I notice something on the bed and go over to investigate. It looks very much like a property transfer document from where I am standing, being familiar with such things due to the nature of my job. Well, ex-job now. Yes, it is, I note, as I pick it up and stare at it like it might suddenly disappear, taking my dreams along with it.
“I had Sebastian just throw it together. It’s fairly standard,” he says.
I look at him in amazement. “You really did this? You really, really did this?”
“You thought that I wouldn’t?” He purses his lips.
“I thought I would have to work a lot harder to get you to really, really do this. And you got my name right!” I exclaim as I notice “Liv O’Dell.”
“Humph,” he frowns, “as much as it pains me, it has to be official.”
I snicker at him but then sober at the word official. “But I won’t have this name for much longer. Once we move
on, I will have to change it.”
“There is a clause for that. Several, in fact.” He takes the document from me and flicks through, his eyes scanning the pages quickly. There are several of them, in fact, it is more like a book than a document. If Sebastian “just threw this together” then I am a monkey’s uncle. He folds the pages over and shows me. I take it from him with a knowing look and glance down. My eyes widen as I read. It fills nearly a whole page with legalese, heretofore’s and notwithstanding’s, but basically it says that the property will be mine officially under every name that I take between now and when CK and I get married, at which point we will sign an amendment under the name Aefre Allington nee Coortan Aquila. Right, so this document has been hanging around for a while now I would say, and yet we only decided on our future surname yesterday. He must have called Sebastian straight away after I fell asleep to add that in.
“You want me to revert officially to Aefre once we are married?”
“Yes,” he says shortly. He takes the document off me and again scans through the pages until he finds what he is looking for.
I take it from him with suspicion now and with good cause. “Terms & Conditions for the marriage of Aefre & Constantine” jumps out at me. I struggle to keep the smile off my face.
“Really?” I ask him sarcastically.
“It was your idea,” he says huffily.
“And you ran with it,” I say, flicking through the many pages of T & C’s.
He takes it off me and points to number one, where it states that I shall revert to my original name. I raise my eyebrow. Interesting. I read on and a lot of it is easy to comply with, but I stop halfway down the second page and frown. My eyes flick to his and he is staring at me innocently.
“You want me to cease sexual relations with Lincoln?” I ask in disbelief. I had thought we were over this snit but apparently not. “Explain,” I snap at him.
He steels himself and says as mildly as he can, although I can tell he is reining it in, “I will not be a stepfather to a litter of Shifter pups.”
I open my mouth, but no words come out... because I don’t have any.
He stares at me, waiting for me to start yelling or hitting him or something. I remain silent for a few more moments and then regain my composure. Err, sort of.
“There are ways to prevent that nowadays,” I say lamely.
“Not one hundred percent accurate ones,” he says, turning the ring I gave him slowly.
I fall onto an idea and state it without really thinking it through, “The future me didn’t have children.”
“In the parallel universe, you had plenty. With everybody,” he says back.
Everybody? Well, that’s a bit insulting. Eh, who am I kidding, seems it was everybody.
“What I mean is this,” I hold up the document, “will only come into effect once we are married. I intend to carry on my ‘sexual relations’ with Lincoln, if it doesn’t happen in the next hundred years, why would it at all?”
He grimaces at me. “There is nothing I can do about what you do before we are married but once you are my wife and we are trying for a baby of our own, you will not be permitted sex with anyone who can get you pregnant.”
I gape at him. “Well, same to you then,” I round on him.
He looks taken aback. “What do you mean ‘same to me then?’”
“The idea is to get you up to scratch, not me,” I say, and he flinches at the insult. “I will not be a stepmother to any half Vampire, half whatevers, should you knock someone else up.”
He takes a moment to process that and then he laughs at me. I mean actually laughs in my face. “Oh, my sweet. You do not ever have to worry about that. I am yours, completely.”
“You said that before and then did…stuff with Vivienne,” I point out. Yeah, that stopped you from laughing at me. Jerk.
He clears his throat. “I never fucked her. I had no intention of fucking her. I will not ever fuck another woman besides you. And I know this isn’t the point and I will incur your wrath but just for accuracy's sake, I must point out that she is a Vampire, and therefore incapable.”
Wrath? Oh, this is wrath, more than wrath. They don’t even have a word for it.
“If you plan on hitting me again could you mind the furniture and ornaments? There are some priceless pieces scattered about,” he says worriedly. Not so much about me hitting him but about his priceless artifacts. That makes me giggle. Idiot.
I shake my head at him. “Just don’t be surprised when I show up with my own set of T & C’s,” I say breezily.
“I won’t be,” he says, relieved I am not about to go homicidal on his arse for being a tool. He takes the document from me and rips the pages from the back. “These can wait,” he says, holding up the Terms. “This I want you to sign now.” He hands me the property transfer document back.
“I will read it first,” I say, taking it from him and sitting on the bed.
“I expect nothing less,” he says and sits next to me while I read. It is standard but with clauses I am unfamiliar with due to the Italian way of doing things. As the document is in Italian there are also some legal words I am struggling with, but I point them out and he fills me in. Once I have read it and then read it again this time with full understanding, I hold my hand out for a pen and he hands me his Montblanc. I sign with a flourish.
“That is two castles I have given you this week. What next?” he says happily.
I am about to smile back but then my face freezes. So does his as he realizes what he has just said. I stand up and hold my hand up to him. “You bastard,” I hiss at him as he stands up quickly.
“Wait, Aefre. That came out wrong. I didn’t mean it to sound…”
“Save it. It came out exactly how it is. You haven’t given up. You haven’t given up at all. You are still fighting, but now you are fighting dirty. Making me, us, think that you were going back to the original terms. That you were going to respect our marriage.”
“I meant what I said, Aefre. I did step back. I am going to respect your marriage,” he says desperately.
“Then what the fuck is this?” I gesture at the pages he is gripping tightly. Probably so I won’t rip them out of his hand and tear them into two million pieces.
“Our future,” he says quietly.
I shake my head. “Cole wondered what you would cough up next after giving me Cassis. The only other thing in the world that was out of my reach, that only you could give to me.” I look around sadly and say, “This place.”
“No, that is not what this is about,” he says firmly. “I promise you, that is not what I am doing. Please don’t turn this into something foul.” He frowns. “You know how hard these things come to me. You know what this means to me, and I know what it means to you. Please don’t crap on it by making it into something that it is not.”
Please don’t crap on it? That is an amusing phrase coming out of his mouth.
“Constantine,” I start.
“Don’t call me that,” he sulks. “You only call me that when you are mad or upset.”
“I am mad. And upset.”
“Don’t be, please, my love. This is an honest gesture and you are ruining it.”
Wow, the man can pout.
“You are being petulant. Stop it,” I order him.
“No,” he says. “I won’t have you overreacting about this.” He stamps his foot with his hands on his hips and I stare at him. Is he actually about to throw a tantrum right now? Because if he is, I want a front row seat, with popcorn and extra-large Diet Coke.
I bite my lower lip to stop myself from laughing at him and he glares at me. “You find this amusing?”
“What I find amusing, is that a two thousand, seven hundred and sixty-year-old Vampire is about to throw his toys out of his crib,” I say before I bend over laughing, forgetting about the turban towel on my head and it flops down onto the floor at my feet, which makes me laugh even harder as my wet hair tumbles into my face.
&
nbsp; He leaves me to laugh at him as he stands there crossing his arms and trying to look nonchalant, which of course sets me off even more. “I love you,” I snort at him. “I am sorry for crapping on your moment.”
“Our moment,” he says with a sniff as I continue to snicker. “You shouldn’t be so suspicious of my motives, Aefre. We have seen the future. We know that we are going to be together. That is enough for me. It is enough for me to have seen us together and how we will be with each other. If I try and tear you away from Cole before you are ready, you will never be fully mine. You will always be in love with him and wonder about what could have been had nature taken its course. You think that I want you that way?”
He has been speaking really quietly and my laughter has died down to stone cold silence.
“I’m sorry,” I say again, crossing to him, tripping on the cursed towel at my feet in the process. I fall into his arms as he steps forward to catch me. “I am paranoid at the moment. This Thirteen thing has me rattled,” I say just as quietly. “I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions.”
“No, you shouldn’t have, but I can see why you would. It doesn’t help that your husband is putting ideas in your head,” he scowls at me.
“That isn’t what he does. We talk. About everything. I know you don’t want to hear that, but I make the point, so you won’t blame him.”
“I don’t want you to tell him about this,” he says seriously. “This is ours to know.”
And Sebastian, I think absently. But his words have reassured me.
“I won’t. I want it to be just ours as well.”
He takes my face in his hands and kisses me. “I like having secrets with you,” he says with a cheeky glint in his eye.
“Mm, especially as our secrets are so delicious,” I say, taking a nibble on his bottom lip that makes him sigh, “I love you.” He closes his eyes as I pull away and turn to get dressed. “You need to feed.”
“Oh, I already have done that,” I say. “I ran into Ramon downstairs.”
“Oh. You fed on your own?” He doesn’t look very pleased.