by Prince, DD
He took her hand and led her upstairs and at the back of his bedroom closet he opened another door that had a small windowless room. Inside was a futon, a laptop computer, and a small refrigerator, “This is a safe room slash panic room, if you will. There’s an icon on that computer’s home screen with a camera that faces into the bedroom. There are other cameras downstairs, too. If you have any problems, come in here and shut the door and hit the red button on the wall and it’ll go into lock down mode and I’ll get a text notification of the mode change. The green button on the ceiling will unlock it. No one will be able to get in from the other side. I have the only key. And if I lose the key, no worries, locks are another one of my specialties. Not something most vampires are good at,” he winked, “There’s a washroom and a few supplies already stocked under the bed and in the fridge.” There was another slim door that he opened that led into a tiny bathroom with a toilet, sink, and small shower stall.
“Hopefully you won’t need it but it’s here and now you know how to use it. Keep this phone with you at all times, particularly in case you have to go into the panic room.”
He handed her a shiny new iPhone, “I got this delivered for you this morning, too. My number is programmed. Call me if you need anything. I’ll be back in a few hours but if you need me phone me. There’s a spare charging cord with the computer in the panic room and another on the nightstand.” He pulled her into an embrace. She inhaled his desserty scent and leaned up and kissed him.
“You’re trusting me not to run,” she whispered, “big brownie points for you.”
“I am. I’m so in love with you, baby,” he whispered, “We’re going to get through this weekend and go from there. I’ll cash in those brownie points later, okay?” he winked, “It’s all gonna be okay.”
She looked down shyly.
He beamed at her. “See you soon.”
A gorgeous vampire prince is in love with me and showing me how to use his panic room. Out of my depth is the understatement of the year!
~~~
The morning was uneventful. Kyla read the newspaper online, lurked on Facebook (after ensuring the chat function was turned off), watched TV, stared out the window, and wandered around the fairly sterile apartment. She tried to stay out of her head but it wasn’t easy. She was worried about how things would go tonight. She was anxious for him to get back.
Just two minutes before noon music startled her.
It was the pretty new iPhone ringing with Tristan’s name and a photo of a chocolate brownie with a bite taken out. She giggled, recognizing the song, Hinder’s Lips of an Angel, and the chorus where the singer lamented about how sweet it was to hear her voice say his name. She answered the phone,
“Well holy swoon, Batman,” she answered. She felt all gooey and mushy inside.
“Princess.” She could hear amusement in his voice.
“Like the ringtone?”
“I do,” she breathed.
“Everything fine?” he asked.
“Yep. With you?” She was short of breath, her heart rate increasing just at the sound of his voice.
“Uh huh. Tonight’s all delegated and organized. I’m just at the house. It’s not that bad. Bedroom is in good shape. I’m bringing over our clothes for tonight and a few things and then I have someone coming to do your hair and other primping at 3:00. I’ll be there first so don’t let anyone in. There’s no one expected there before then. I’ll be there in half an hour and I’m getting you lunch.”
“Okay, I’ll be your lunch,” she giggled.
“Will you be my all-you-can-drink-and-fuck buffet?” his voice was gruff.
“Haha, very funny. And hell, yeah.”
“I love you,” he said softly, his voice breathy, laced with emotion.
Before there was any sort of awkward silence, he added, “See you in about thirty minutes. If something delays me even a minute after 1:00, panic room. Okay?”
“Okay.”
He was there at 12:26 and she felt her heartbeat’s tempo rise when he strolled in the door looking very much the GQ businessman. She felt like she hadn’t seen him in days. She was upstairs, watching over the railing as he entered with two men following him in with a rack filled with garment bags and suitcases and they both had bags as well. Tristan had his arms full too. He looked up and winked at her and tipped them and then when they left he trotted up the stairs and pulled her into a demanding kiss. Her insides turned to jelly. He tasted like lemon meringue pie.
“How’d you get here so fast?” she was breathless as he kissed her.
“I hurried. I missed you.” He kissed her deeply again and walked her to the bed and they were all over one another.
Kyla and Tristan’s t-shirt and boxers soon parted as he ripped them to shreds. She clawed at his dress shirt, popping a button as she fumbled through getting it off as fast as possible. He helped her by undoing his suit pants as he kicked off his shoes. She pushed his socks off with her feet and a moment later they were connected by lips, by wandering hands, by him deep inside of her, and by his teeth puncturing her throat.
By the time they were both sated, slightly sweaty, and snuggled up together basking in the afterglow, it was nearly 1:30. He was investigating her throat.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. His brows were furrowed as he touched her neck with his strong warm hands.
“It’s too marked up. Looks like I have no control.”
“What do you mean?” she clutched her throat.
“I love seeing my marks on you but don’t really relish the idea of others ogling your throat and my teeth marks are going to draw eyes there. There are too many marks,” he fingered the marks on the crook of her arm, “it looks sloppy.”
“Oh.” Would other vampires really be analyzing her bite marks and drawing conclusions about Tristan’s state of mind?
“We’ll tell the stylist to leave your hair down,” he reached fingers into her hair and fingered a curl distractedly, staring off into space.
The doorbell rang. Tristan jumped up and got quickly into a pair of jeans, commando, and trotted down the stairs quickly. Kyla shrank under the blankets.
She heard his voice, another male voice, a bit of laughter, and then the door shut and the lock clicked. Then he came up the stairs with a huge smile on his face, a pizza box in one hand and small paper bag in the other.
“Oh.” Kyla sat up with a big smile on her face, “Yum!” She clapped her hands.
He laughed and put the box down on the bed. The bag had two cans of grape Fanta pop. She took his dress shirt off the floor and pulled it over her head and fastened the buttons that remained, then dove in to the pizza, which was perfect. Oodles of cheese, roasted red peppers, pepperoni, pineapple, and sliced tomatoes. Just how she liked it and with her favorite pizza-paired beverage. Some liked beer or red wine with their pizza. Kyla liked grape soda pop with hers.
“You can seriously read my mind to the degree that you know what I like on my pizza?”
“Not quite but I do very good recon work….aka, your old roommate is on my speed dial. Although she doesn’t remember our conversations.”
“My old roommate?” Kyla was confused.
“Daisy?”
Oh. Past tense.
“I’m your roommate now,” he winked at her, making her blush.
“My vampire prince boyfriend is---awe-some!” she chanted and took a very big unladylike bite.
He gave her a big dimpled smile and flopped back on the bed, “Your vampire prince boyfriend?” he raised one eyebrow at her.
“Umm…” she blushed furiously. She hadn’t meant to say that out loud. She was mortified and could never remember her brain to mouth filter malfunctioning like this before. It was typically very measured, unless she was angry. She totally had her guard down here.
He snuggled in and kissed her on the cheek, “I think that’s a fairly accurate description. And I’ll take being called awesome. We’ll eat and then grab a shower. I’ll scrub your ba
ck for you, you scrub mine?” He winked and swiped a piece of pizza and sauntered over to the window and looked down at the busy city while he ate it.
“Is that why you made me a real turkey sandwich that first afternoon? Because you found out it’s what I liked?”
He smiled back over his shoulder at her, “Creature comforts are helpful during captivity, yes?”
“Hmmm. I suppose,” she mumbled with mock disapproval, “What else did you find out about me?
He wiggled his eyebrows at her, “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“Uh, yeah. I would. You have a very unfair advantage. Several unfair advantages, as a matter of fact.”
“Yes, I do. I like having an advantage. You’ll have to get to know me the old-fashioned way, I guess. It’ll take some effort on your part.”
She smiled warmly, “I’ll take on that challenge.”
“Come here. You already have a pretty good idea of one or two things that I like,” he whispered huskily. She wiped her mouth with a napkin and wrapped her arms around his neck. She got on her tiptoes and nibbled on his earlobe. He let out a little moan and his hands trailed up under the back of the dress shirt and gripped her backside.
“I love seeing you like this,” he whispered into her ear, “I could feel that this was in you somewhere, deep down.”
“Way deep,” she mumbled, “It feels so good that it’s just us. It feels different,” Kyla told him, “I guess I’m enjoying it while it lasts. Hey, wait a second…the coffee --- was that another creature comfort?”
“Yeah, and I got you another can of it on my way here.”
“What’s your favourite food?” she asked.
“You first, steak, second. Rare steak. Very rare.”
“Favourite colour?”
“Green.” He smiled and his eyes sparkled. She blushed.
“Favourite movie, book?”
“Dracula and Dracula. Favourite cereal, Count Chocula, favourite animal, vampire bat, favourite Sesame Street character, Count Von Count. We don’t have a lot of time before the hair and make-up troupe get here. Come, let’s shower,” he murmured, stopping her from going to the darker recesses of her mind, the place where she was afraid of what was to come.
“We have like an hour and a half.”
“Not enough time for what I have planned for you,” he flirted.
“You mean, like, maybe an eco-tour and well-digging in Kenya?”
“Huh?”
“What you said to Daisy.”
“What?”
“I talked to her.”
“You did what?” he looked pissed.
“Relax. It was just a Facebook chat. I said almost nothing. But now I know why no one is looking for me. They think I’m doing an eco-tourism thing where there’s no internet, then digging wells in Kenya, then moving to Spain with you and ah… marrying you.”
Tristan folded his arms, “When was this?”
“Last night.”
“And you’re just telling me now?”
“Uh…”
“Let me see this Facebook chat.”
“You don’t trust me.”
“Not true. I wouldn’t have left a computer if I didn’t trust you and I’d know if you were lying to me, but I need to check out this conversation. Now.”
She opened the laptop on the desk in the bedroom, logged into Facebook, and then backed up and sat on the bed, feeling slighted, feeling more than slighted.
Tristan scanned the conversation and then snapped the laptop computer shut. He spun around to look at her,
“Don’t even think about get pissy with me,” he pointed his index finger at her, “If anyone has hacked and is monitoring my computer usage and sees you having a conversation about me with someone, if someone is pretending to be someone you trust in order to gain information about me, if anything is happening that puts you or me in more jeopardy than we’re already in I need to know about it. Okay? You can’t just have a recordable conversation like that, Kyla. We need to work together to keep you safe. Okay? I’ll trust you to be alone, I’ll trust you to use a computer, but you have to trust me when I say that we are in danger and everything we do, every single fucking thing, has to be carefully calculated before we do it.”
Kyla was dumbfounded. Then she felt her anger begin to rise. She opened her mouth, ready to fire back at him but he cut her off first.
“Don’t even start!” he hollered, making her wince, “I know you didn’t think that a Facebook conversation could be dangerous but now you know. Don’t go getting your haunches all up now because I’m telling you what to do, alright? I don’t need more stress right now just because I’m trying to keep you alive!”
Kyla blew out a slow breath.
They stared one another down for a beat. Finally, she let her shoulders slump,
“Okay,” she said softly, looking away and giving him the win on another stare down contest.
“No bathroom door slamming? No throwing things?” He eyed her warily.
She shook her head, chewed her cheek, and wrapped her arms around herself, not looking him in the eye.
Tristan looked up at the ceiling and shouted, “Hallefuckinglujah!”
She pursed her lips at him and shot him the evil eye. They were both quiet for a minute. Finally, she broke the silence, “An eco-tour and well-digging is more Daisy’s scene than mine.”
“She concocted the story. Not me.”
“Huh?”
“I got her to come up with the story of why you were leaving. She doesn’t know it but she concocted it based on her own dream. You got to live her dream life.”
Kyla flopped onto her back on the bed, legs dangling over the side, “Gorgeous guy, ecotourism, philanthropy, getting married and moving to Spain. Totally Daisy.”
“What’s Kyla’s dream?” He moved to stand over her, their knees touching.
“Right now? Just a second slice of that pizza.” She gave him a smirk.
He straddled her, pinned her wrists, and kissed the tip of her nose,
“I’m crazy about you, you know that? Eat fast. I need to get you in the shower stat!”
-12-
The afternoon blurred by, getting ready, getting reminded how to act, and getting over her nerves and before she knew it, she was walking into the banquet room on Tristan’s arm, ready to face somewhere around 120 vampires and not quite ready to pretend she was under his thumb.
Opulent was an apt word for this banquet room at the Four Seasons. Everything was meticulous and within a moment of arriving Kyla thought it seemed totally pulled together, not at all like the event had been cobbled together just that morning. Tuxedo-wearing waiters moved through a sea of beautiful ‘people’ with champagne and hors d ‘oeuvres.
A band played soft music and dozens of people swarmed the large room, mingling, dressed to the nines. Tables all had bouquets of red roses on them with black linen tablecloths and there was a black and red banner on one end of the room that said Kovac. The sandwich board outside the banquet room had said Kovac Capital in red on a black background. Kyla eyed it but tried her best not to look curious. Every one of the guests wore some sort of masquerade mask and every single one of them was fit, young-looking, and good-looking. Totally A-list.
Kyla walked in, holding Tristan’s arm. She wore a delicate eye mask in black glitter with a few red feather tips that fringed the upper half. The mask matched her halter dress and her glittery red-soled shoes. Her hair was up with several tendrils cascading down her throat. Tristan had told her to tell the stylist he wanted it worn down but the stylist, Enrique, was very boisterous, very gay, and very verbal about the style he envisioned for her hair based on the dress and her throat, which he’d called elegant (to which, she’d seen Tristan mutter under his breath, ‘and biteable’).
Kyla had whispered to Tristan that maybe he should tell the stylist what to do as he would have the powers of persuasion but Tristan declined quietly and just watched her being primped while working on his la
ptop. Kyla had the makeup girl put some concealer on her throat and it did mute and blur the bite marks a bit.
The makeup girl was a lovely Russian girl who took Kyla into the bathroom to handle the waxing of Kyla’s brows, under arms, legs, and bikini area. She was beautiful with long sleek black hair, almond shaped green eyes and huge boobs. When Kyla saw her eye colour she felt fear rise in her. Tristan was into green eyed brunettes. The girl devoured Tristan with her eyes but he barely even glanced in her direction.
“Amorous sexy man you’ve got there? Lucky girl!” The Russian whispered into Kyla’s ear as she patted concealer onto Kyla’s throat marks, “I love it rough like that,” the girl said in a husky voice, gazing Tristan’s way. Kyla blushed but said nothing.
He’d given Kyla a silver cuff bracelet for the wrist that was marked up from a bite and a silver and ruby collar that took the attention from most of the bite marks on her throat with a silver chain with a dangling teardrop shaped ruby came down to her cleavage, which was evident via a keyhole cut-out on the halter dress. Small red teardrop ruby studs adorned her ears. Tristan had thought of everything and she felt worthy of being on his arm once she was ready to go. He had talked to her at length before their short drive in the back of a limo about behavior.
“You need to leave your attitude at the door, baby,” he’d told her as he passed her the garment bag with her dress.
“I know you don’t like me to ‘control’ you,” he gestured with mock quotes, “but others need to think that’s exactly what I’m doing. No hesitation. I know I sound like a broken record but I can’t stress this enough. Think about this mask you’re putting on and put a mask on the rest of your face as well. This collar, pretend there’s an invisible leash between you and I attached to it. You wearing that is symbolic, shows everyone that you’re off limits; that you’re mine.”