He’d conjured her, rubbing her vision all over the erection he felt in his pants and he’d said it—“Mi amore,”—more as a need than a prayer. And he saw her react in his dream. She’d heard him. He could see it on her face.
“Can you love me, Carabella?” he whispered. He watched as she turned around in the tub and checked the wall behind her. She was looking for him. She rose to her knees. The delicious shape of her shoulders, narrowing at her waist, and the soap bubbles slipping down her back to the upper reaches of her bottom. He was tantalized. With her hair up atop her head she turned again and looked right at him, except he knew she really didn’t see him. But she felt him spying on her.
And the lovely object of his desire wasn’t afraid.
Thank the God of vampires.
Still on her knees, she inserted a finger between her legs, arching backwards.
“Give me your pleasure, Carabella,” he whispered, as he stroked himself. His cock had gotten rock hard and was seeking freedom. He felt her shudder just as if he was deep inside her. “You feel me? You feel my hardness? You feel my seed wanting to find solace in your folds?
He heard her moan, “Yes. Mi amore.”
Could it be? Could she hear him, feel him when he wasn’t there? What was this connection?
“Deeper, I want you deeper,” she said.
Paolo grasped the arms of the chair in his bedroom, then hastily unfastened his pants, peeling them off his thighs and letting his penis leap out unbridled. “Need to be inside you, Bella. Invite me in, please let me come inside you,” he whispered.
And then he heard it.
“Yes. Come to me.”
The summons took only a second and he had traced to her bedroom. He was in the tub with her, his shirt wet and clinging to his skin, but his cock had found her opening and he raised her knees up over his shoulders and, pulling her buttocks toward him with both his hands, forced her over him, sending him deep inside her.
She opened her eyes wide and saw him. Really saw him.
In a flash of energy, water was splashing everywhere as Cara struggled to get herself out of the tub, knocking bottles of bubble bath and crystals all around the granite ledge, some breaking on the floor. She then stepped on the broken glass and cried out as she began to hop, holding one bloody foot behind her as she ran for a pile of clothes on her bed.
Paolo stood up, at first unaware of how ridiculous he must look, with a wet white cotton shirt and nothing else, his cock drooping, his limbs covered in bubbles.
“Bella, please, love. Let me explain.”
“Don’t you fucking get near me you animal!” she screamed. She held a knitting needle in her right hand like a dagger.
“I can explain this to you. Please, let me do so.”
“I don’t want to hear anything from your mouth except the apology you’ll give me after I’ve had you arrested.”
“Don’t you want to know what happened? Don’t you want to know how I got here?”
She looked at him for a second, and he thought perhaps there was a chance she would allow herself a glimpse of the truth. But sadly, she was full of anger and fear. Her naked body shivered, but she seemed not to notice. There was no place where logic could take hold, he realized.
“You get out of my house this instant. I’m still calling the cops. I’ll let you explain yourself to them.”
“Cara, it isn’t what you think. Honestly. Please.”
“No? You sneak in and fuck me when I’m taking a bath. Violate me when I’m daydreaming. Did you slip something into my wine or something? I’ll bet your creepy brother is on his way over here, too, and you’ll both do me and laugh about it all the way home. That the way you rich playboys operate? Can’t get girls the right way, so you have to drug them to get your jollies. Well, not with me, you cretin.”
“Bel—”
“Get the hell out of here.”
“Bella, you called me.”
“I did nothing of the sort.”
“Yes, you called me. I traced here. But you called me. I couldn’t help but come.”
“You lying son of a bitch. Get out!” she screamed. Paolo was worried someone would come inquiring, she was so loud. Soon her phone began to ring.
“I hope this is the cops that someone in my building called. If I had a gun I’d shoot out both your kneecaps.”
“I’ll go. But you need to know one thing.”
“Just go.”
“You need to know I am vampire.”
“Just—what? What did you say?”
“I am a Golden vampire. An old race. Yes, Carabella, vampires do exist. There are many of us—”
The phone stopped ringing abruptly, like someone had ripped it out of the wall. Paolo wondered if his powers had done this.
“Shut up with your lies,” she said.
“It’s the truth. Think about it. One moment you were daydreaming, then you called my name, asked me to come, and I did. You wanted me inside you. I obliged, I am sorry to say.” Paolo noticed his member had begun to arch up again at the talk about coming and obliging. In a horrible twist of fate, Cara glanced back at his groin. Her frown and look of utter disgust broke his heart.
“Who do you think I am, some bimbo you have to give some fantastical explanation to so you can get laid? I’m not falling for it. Or, are you one of those who get off on violence. Well, if you want violence—”
She stepped towards him, holding the knitting needle high above her head, ready to strike. He traced to her side so fast she looked everywhere in front but didn’t suspect he’d made it all the way around her. He grabbed the knitting needle and tossed it out of the bedroom and down the hallway. His arms encircled hers as he held her in place, covering her back with his chest, making her immobile. He whispered into her ear, with a trace of glamour.
“I love you. I would never hurt you, mi amore.”
He could feel the softness of her limbs, the warmth in her heart he had touched, but then her natural human instincts kicked in and she went rigid with fear again. It was no use, he realized.
“You are an animal. Get your filthy hands off me or I’ll scream and alert the whole building.”
Paolo traced back in front of her, standing now longer than an arm’s length away. “Enough,” he said. “In time, you will have questions. When you do, I would be happy to answer them.”
Cara started to shake. Paolo reached for a large bath towel and threw it toward her so she could cover up, which she quickly did. He found another towel for himself and wrapped it around his waist. He felt completely ridiculous in his sopping shirt, wrapped in a light yellow-colored bath sheet, dripping wet, naked and barefoot.
“I’ll return the towel tomorrow,” he mumbled, staring at the wet bedroom floor.
“Keep it. I never want to see you again.”
Paolo loved the stern fixture of her jaw, lips slammed shut together, the determined stare as she tried to be brave. He knew she’d have a problem with this next part, but he couldn’t help himself. He broke a wide grin, and before she could react, he traced home.
Chapter 24
No way this happened in my bedroom. No fucking way.
Cara was still shaking as she looked at the bamboo floor where he’d just been standing. A puddle of bubbly water quivered and began to fill in two small dry patches where his feet had been. Just five seconds ago. He’d been standing there, wrapped in her bath sheet with that smirk, that satisfied smile on his face.
Is it evil that I am still attracted to this—man?
But he wasn’t a man, was he? She walked over to the puddles he’d left behind, as if they held some clue. She dropped to her knees and hesitated before she wiped it up with her towel. His towel’s mate. The towel he said he’d return and she said, “don’t bother.” She didn’t care about the damned thing. She cared about the male she’d spent the afternoon and early evening with, shared a bubble bath with. The male she allowed to violate her again.
‘I am vampire,’ he�
��d said. ‘Vampires exist. There are lots of them.’
He was completely delusional. Or was she? It didn’t make any sense. None of it. She lassoed her mind to focus on him, searching to see if the connection was still intact.
Are you there? No! Don’t answer that. Don’t contact me unless I call you.
A tiny flame inside her belly made her insides glow, and she had her answer. Yes, he was still there, and he could hear her.
Now what do I do? Don’t answer that, she said to him across time and space. It’s a question I have to answer for myself.
She waited. No answer. This was a good sign. She told herself it was a good sign.
Thank you, she told him mentally.
Always, mi amore, came the reply.
“No!” she screamed. “You can’t do this to me,” she said out loud to the room. She checked the ceiling, behind furniture, and in the closet. She let out the water in her tub and checked under the bed.
I am right here. At Marcus and Anne’s home. In the guest bedroom.
Stop it, she answered. Get out of my head. Go away and don’t come back unless I call you. No exceptions. My rules. We go by my rules.
There was no response.
Reassured he wouldn’t interfere unless called, Cara began to focus on her own body. The shaking began again, like she was going through some kind of withdrawal. The stress and roller coaster of her emotions had made her very tired. She knew she needed sleep.
Cara put on a white satin nightie with a fuzzy lining to take the chill off her skin. She did have the fleeting thought about one way she could instantly warm up; she could have him in her bed and immediately the shaking would stop. But the craving would continue. Her memory of his hot kisses, the feel of his limbs against hers, his chest pressing against hers, the incantations he liked to whisper to her belly were becoming hard to ignore.
She turned off all the lights, but lit a lemony votive candle beside her bed.
Why?
Well, she knew why. She slipped between the smooth cotton sheets, lay back watching the fluttering circle of light from the candle as it projected onto the ceiling, and began to smell its scent filling the room. With heavy eyes, she drifted off to sleep, but not before she saw bonfires, old stone buildings, some of them ruined. Wet cobblestoned streets glowed in the moonlight. She could hear the clop clop of horses. She heard weeping; she saw the tear-streaked faces of beautiful women. Some were modern women, some in older dress, like a parade of characters throughout time. She saw Lucius picking apples on the top of a ladder in a sunny orchard, being steadied by strong masculine hands around the little boy’s waist. Paolo’s hands. She felt the trembling body of the boy as if she’d hugged him herself.
She sank into oblivion, grateful for her life.
And feeling oddly protected.
Paolo gazed out the opened window in his bedroom and watched over the nearly bare, leafless vineyard by moonlight. A spitting, raging fire in the fireplace had not sufficiently warmed him. His bones were cold, as if they’d been made of iron. He felt brooding, heavy.
He was both delighted and annoyed that she could still communicate with him. His emotions balanced on the edge of a sabre’s blade. While it meant she wasn’t dead to him, psychically, he also knew that there was no way he could predict her choice in outcome. If she chose to stay away—and she was strong-willed for a human woman, stronger than his wives had been—perhaps she could physically will herself to stay away from him forever. In time, perhaps she could learn this. They were not fated, after all. That horrible fact felt like the stake in his chest that the dark vamps dreaded.
He was losing her. He’d shown her his horrible, animal side when she summoned him and he had no choice but to obey that summons. Fuck her in a bathtub when all she wanted to do was have an erotic fantasy about him. He had no control. He felt despicable, like a dark vampire animal. Like his enemies. Was he becoming his enemy?
When Cara’s natural human psyche took over, she would be dead to him, just as his three wives were. Perhaps that’s what had made him think of them, and the pain of watching them age, and their eventual passing. He did not want to bury a fourth. Cara had a human life to live and Paolo refused to take that away from her.
He had been just as addicted to Maya and the fates of their kind as Cara was feeling about him. But Cara had a chance at freedom, whereas Paolo had none. He’d be forever caught between the mortal world he missed and the Golden vampire world he couldn’t fully embrace. Which meant no happy household filled with lots of brothers and sisters for Lucius.
Lucius. The little boy would need a father who could wisely counsel him.
He’d made his wives comfortable, showering them with riches, with travel, with things to make them forget their empty wombs. But the emptiness, the grief was still there, after all the gifts and fantastic excursions to all the corners of the earth. And while he could heal many of their physical ailments, but he could not cheat death. All passed into the afterlife mortals go while he held them. While he prayed for their souls. While he grieved, again and again.
Paolo had begun to think it was his purpose in life to grieve. The God of vampires had put him on the planet to demonstrate to Golden vamps everywhere what not to do with their lives. Should he have tried to make a life with that half-witch mother of Lucius? Could that have been the right action he’d missed along the way?
The answer he came up with was always the same.
No.
With the coming war brewing, romantic love, at least for now, would have to take a back seat to the safety of his son, his brother’s family, and the future of the Golden vampire race.
He sighed and hoped Cara would find restoration from her much-needed sleep. Sleep that would not come to him tonight. Though he tried to hold the tears back, he found himself weeping silently, looking at the stars exploding in the night sky, wishing for something he could never have. He wondered if the God of man was capable of taking pity on him as well.
He said his prayer for healing Cara’s confusion and hurt. He said his prayer for the safety of his son. He asked for courage to do the right thing, and for peace to come flooding into his soul as he prepared for battle and for the uncertain future that awaited them all.
Chapter 25
Dag returned to his rented two-story flat, and found the little blonde waif waiting for him just the way he’d dreamt he would. She was naked, spread-eagled, and handcuffed by wrists and ankles to his iron bed frame. He had a burning desire to hurt and maim something, and it was the first time he was sorry he was about to fuck his brains out and perhaps kill the mortal woman. This, and this time only, it would have been nice to screw a female vamp so that she could heal and he could do it again later on. Fuck her to death again and again. After all, his needs came first, before that of any other living being, human, Golden or dark.
“Who did this to you?” he asked. Her eyes were dark, and he realized she had taken some drug.
“You did, master.” Her throaty voice made him want to shove his cock into her mouth and make her choke on it. He traced next to her and felt the delicious ripple of fear that went like a lightning rod through her tender pink flesh. He liked surprising, scaring her.
“You altered yourself.” He sniffed her, then licked one armpit, feeling the elixir of her sweat turn his dick hard as steel. It hung cold and heavy between his legs. He wanted her to feel how ripe he was for her.
“I asked permission of your houseboy.”
“Houseboy? I don’t have a houseboy.”
“The one who opens your front door? I assumed he was your male pleasure partner.”
“Can it,” He barked and took another lick, this time running his tongue down and over her left breast, over the knot of her nipple that went purple and welted under the sandpaper of his tongue. He could eat that breast, but the pain would distract her from coming, and he so much wanted her to come for him. “I don’t fuck boys.”
She smiled in that sweet innocent way
that had hooked him the first time he’d seen her panhandling in front of Starbuck’s.
“Not even their—“
“So you decided you liked it in the ass after all? Is that why you’re back?”
“No. I’m back for your cock. I need to be filled with your will.” Her eyes were having trouble focusing. She moved her head back on the pillow, jutted out her chin, which arched her back and put her breasts very close.
“Take me, if I am worthy, master.”
“Did the ‘houseboy’ fuck you?”
“What if he did?”
“I would have to wash you. Or kill you. And then I’d kill him.”
“If you wish me cleaner than I would otherwise make myself for you, you may wash me. But I have not had another man’s cock inside me since the last time you gave me your blessing. I have fingered myself, though. Many times. Remembering—"She groaned into the pillow, exposing her lovely long neck. He could smell her arousal since her legs were wide apart for him.
He wanted to ram himself inside her so bad he felt like shredding his clothes and getting to it. But his phone rang. He swore and looked at the display.
Uncle Colin.
He stood, adjusting himself. She had focused on his package, which pulsed and ached inside his leather pants.
“Uncle?”
“I have good news about the book.”
Hope began to grow in Dag’s black heart and he momentarily forgot about the girl, until he began to smell her again. “I’m all ears,” he said as he watched her struggle against the handcuffs. The pink folds of her labia made his fangs drop and his mouth water. His tongue slid across one sharp point and he tasted his own blood, sending him an erotic jolt.
“The bookseller’s transaction records just came through. I told American Express I was his only surviving relative, explained the tragedy of his whole family, you know.” Colin’s voice trailed off. He continued, after taking a deep gulp of air. “The transaction paperwork and his seller ID you gave me helped.”
Mortal Bite (Golden Vampires of Tuscany) Page 14