Eternal Blood - Books 1-3 Wolf Shield, Sword of the Blood, Vampire Bride

by Maria Isabel Pita

  Only his eyes replied but so eloquently speech almost seemed crude and unnecessary. Nevertheless, she found it was helping her to state everything out loud, which served to make it feel real, and real things could be dealt with, sorted, controlled.

  “I wasn’t in a castle in Scotland… I was in the Dragon’s Breath, nowhere and everywhere, trapped in a mist of pure potential… what modern physics calls the Zero Point Field… that’s why it was so cold there…and that’s where Aapti is now.”

  Jonathan’s eyes said, Probably.

  Darlene’s silence also seemed to reinforce her conclusion.

  “But how can we possibly find her?”

  You know her better than anyone else.

  “Except her husband.”

  Would you care to explain the situation to him?

  “Right… He’s using Aapti to get to me. He wants to bring back to life that horrible bitch I used to be, but it’s never going to happen, surely he must realize that. I’m a different person now; I can’t ever go back to being someone else.”

  Darlene said quietly, “The devil is a charming man.”

  She kept her eyes on Jonathan’s. She was figuring it all out for herself but at the same time he was sharing something with her infinitely more precious and powerful than words.

  “It’s all in the blood,” she went on, “in the receptors. That’s what Wilona called them.” She hit a wall. She didn’t have a clue what receptors were much less what they did. Then, belatedly, she realized Darlene had been warning her, if not outright insulating her, by implying Falkon possessed seductive powers she might succumb to just as her mother had.

  She glanced at the housekeeper. Why had she never truly appreciated before what an attractive woman Darlene was behind her uniform and apron? Probably because she still saw her the way she had as a teenager, to whom anyone over forty looked old. And Jonathan had made love to her! Not her Jonathan, the one holding her hands now, but the man he had been in his previous incarnation. With an effort, she extinguished the jealousy flaring up inside her. Then a thought struck her.

  “But Darlene serves in our household now and she doesn’t have a daughter so how can you-?” Surely he didn’t plan on fucking his own mother?!

  “There’s no need for that anymore, Audrey.” His grip on her hands tightened. “You and I have found each other. Together we can make amends and I can move on naturally. My soul has been nesting in the same genealogical tree for far too long.”

  “Make amends? But what did you do wrong, Jonathan? I saw the woman I was centuries ago, I felt how cruel and selfish she was, how evil. But what did you do wrong?” Her distress was rising swiftly, threatening to brim over in the form of tears because she had been counting on his integrity, his goodness, qualities inseparable from his strength and how absolutely beautiful he looked to her.

  He hung his head and confessed, “I was the wolf who killed you.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  A fire was burning in Audrey’s bedroom. Darlene wasn’t about to let a couple of vampires interfere with the smooth running of the house.

  A quick glance around the room told her Whispers was napping elsewhere.

  Jonathan took her arm and led her straight to the bed. She sat down on its edge. He stood facing her. He had left his coat (now in need of a button or two) downstairs. She gazed up at his face—transfixed by the tenderness she discerned in his stern expression—praying he was going to give her something she needed more than words now. She held her breath as his hands moved to his belt. When she realized he was actually opening his pants, for a second she was afraid she was still lost somewhere in the Dragon’s Breath and only dreaming this. A stimulating touch of fear intensified her excitement as she impatiently helped him push his pants and briefs down. They made her think of soft black shadows surrendering to the golden warmth of his skin. His cock, hardening and growing as she watched, looked more beautiful to her than any erection she’d ever seen, and her mouth found its dimensions just as mysteriously perfect.

  His hands came to rest on her head with the gentleness of a benediction as she licked him and swallowed him hungrily, moaning with relief. It seemed to her that she had been starving for him since the moment she was born.

  He whispered, “Audrey!” and pulled off his sweater.

  Filling her throat with his thick helmet, she ran her hands up his hard yet silky body. She had never felt such skin on a man. He was God’s most sublime creation and he was all hers! The Music of the Spheres couldn’t have sounded lovelier to her ears than his groans of pleasure. Every time his breath caught as she sucked him even deeper between her lips, she scored an electrifying victory.

  Slipping abruptly out of her mouth, he pulled her to her feet and yanked her shirt off over her head. It was like being stripped by a gale-force wind as much as by a man. Reaching behind her, he unhooked her bra with practiced ease and flung it away almost as though it offended him. The instant his eyes fell on them her nipples hardened. He sank to one knee before her and his expression made her feel like a queen accepting the allegiance of her favorite knight. She helped him peel off her yoga pants. Then he he gripped her panty with both hands and tugged her hips toward him. She gasped, glancing anxiously at the French doors, suddenly afraid they might burst open as a low, deep growl filled the room. The sound was a cross between the subterranean rumble of an earthquake and a wild animal’s snarling hunger. But it had come from Jonathan as he effortlessly ripped her panties off with his teeth. As she fell back across the bed he gripped her ankles and raised her legs straight up against his chest.

  She bent her arms languidly around her head, moaning in expectation. This time she was going to be fully conscious of his erection opening her pussy up around it. The first time, it had all happened much too fast and fear had played strange tricks on her perceptions, so that at first she had actually believed it was a wolf mounting her from behind. And apparently it had been a wolf that tripped her and tore her panties off, but with a man’s conscious control, its teeth barely grazing her skin. And it had definitely been a man’s cock that pinned her down against the mattress and stabbed her into another dimension of existence only a climax away…

  “You’re so beautiful, Audrey!” His tone was almost accusing as he rested her ankles on his shoulders and ran his hands slowly down her legs. “Please forgive me!”

  “I forgive you!” She didn’t think he was talking about the night he took her violently from behind, without a loving word of any kind. He was probably referring to the night centuries ago when he killed her. “I deserved it!”

  “No one deserves to be murdered.” He ground his thumb into her clitoris and rubbed it firmly and quickly, somehow knowing that was just how she liked it. “But you definitely deserve this.”

  She didn’t make a sound as he entered her. At once she felt a magical threshold created between them leading into another world that looked just like the old one but felt utterly different. He held her eyes as he leaned into her, gradually opening her up.

  She had never felt this way with a man, never achieved such a divine, inexorable rhythm. Much too soon, she started coming.

  “Look at me!” he commanded.

  Obeying him, an orgasm blew her mind as his eyes held hers, forcing her to remain fully present in the moment and totally conscious of the magic expanding between them.

  ⊕

  “Jonathan, if you had been searching for me for hundreds of years,” like Falcon, she thought, “why did you wait until I was thirty to introduce yourself?”

  “Would you have been ready for all of this any sooner?”

  “No, probably not.” She wasn’t entirely sure she was ready now. They were lying on a rug beside the fire, her head resting on his chest. They hadn’t dressed and she relished caressing his thighs and belly and chest, then reaching up and stroking his head. His hair was shaved so short it felt like a gentle electrical current beneath her palm.

  She said, “I can’t tell what color
it is. It looks dark but there’s a glimmer of gold in it.”

  Without answering, he captured her wandering hand in one of his and kissed her palm, his lips lingering against it.

  “Are you planning to let it grow out?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? Are you still…?” She couldn’t finish the question; the thought that he might leave for Afghanistan again made her feel as though a horse had kicked her in the chest. “You’re not going to-”

  “No.” He brought her hand down to rest against his heart. “I’ll never leave you, not in this life or in any other.”

  She heard herself literally purring as Whispers suddenly appeared and climbed onto his chest, where she sat staring down at his face.

  “She likes you,” she said proudly. “She’s such a smart pussy. Aren’t you Whispies?”

  Her cat glanced at her, then stared back down at Jonathan, her expression intently expectant.

  “She’s as demanding as her mistress,” he observed.

  “Demanding? I thought I was quite submissive.”

  “You got exactly what you wanted.”

  She smiled. “I suppose I did.”

  “You suppose?”

  She laughed. “Everything and more. All I could ever have hoped for!”

  Whispers began purring so hard she swayed gently back and forth in a trance of contentment.

  Audrey wished these moments by the fire could stretch into tomorrow and next week and the following month and next year all the way into eternity. She didn’t want to think about anything else but, naturally, that wasn’t possible; she was always thinking. There were so many questions she wanted to ask but for the time being she relegated them to the shadows.

  He said quietly, “Whispers wants me to tell you what I was doing in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

  She was silent. On the one hand she could easily believe he was communicating telepathically with her cat, on the other hand it was possible he was using the animal to get something off his chest, literally.

  He spoke softly again, “I was helping people, both soldiers and civilians, who had died suddenly and violently.”

  “You mean seriously wounded people?”

  “No. They were dead.”

  “You were helping them cross over?” Immediately she wished she hadn’t used a term she’d heard on television; it seemed to make light of what he’d said and that certainly hadn’t been her intention.

  “It’s not like being an usher in a movie theater directing everyone towards the Exit light, Audrey.” He sounded patient, not irate.

  “What is it like, Jonathan?”

  “It’s sometimes different for souls who die so swiftly and unexpectedly they don't even realize they're dead... and for souls who don't believe consciousness survives brain death.”

  Her stomach chose that moment to complain loudly, letting her know that wandering through the Zero Point Field, and then having great sex, burned a lot of calories which needed replenishing.

  “Your mistress is hungry again,” Jonathan informed Whispers, who thought about it for a moment before jumping off his chest, either because she was annoyed by its motion or because she had accomplished her purpose, or both. “I’ll tell Darlene to send up a tray.”

  “Oh no!” She flung an arm over his chest and buried her face in the side of his neck, half drunk on the smell of his skin. “I want you to stay right here with me, please.”

  He reached over and pulled her on top of him. “We have a few minutes before our food arrives…”

  Straddling him, she sat up and braced herself on his chest. “But we haven’t told Darlene-”

  “Audrey, don’t try and forget what’s happening.”

  “You just spoke to Darlene? I mean, in your head?”

  His eyes answered her.

  “You really can-” Suddenly hearing the angry cawing of a raven, she glanced anxiously at the doors leading out onto the balcony.

  “Don’t worry, love,” stroking her cheek he tilted her face back toward him, “it’s only a bird this time.”

  “You were that beautiful falcon, weren’t you? It’s not just a wolf you can change… shift into, is it?” There, she had said it, it was finally out in the open, the fact that the man she loved was an animal, or could transform into one at will—a subtle but very important distinction. “Is it always difficult for you to control the transformation?”

  “No, not usually. It’s a little more challenging when you’re around.”

  She wasn’t ready to ask him why. It was hard enough talking about it so calmly and ignoring her brain, which kept insisting he was insane and that she was crazy as well for going along with his delusion. She concentrated on the feel of his body against hers. The sensation of his tender cock nestled in her vulva was promising, in every sense of the word, both comforting and exciting; she felt complete, beautiful, and relaxed enough to accept the subliminal mantle of responsibility and power she sensed fall over her shoulders as they stared into each other’s eyes.

  Her perceptions weren’t developing more quickly than she could handle, that was merely her lazy ego talking. The truth was, she was much stronger and wiser than she dared to believe. Her deepest feelings, her wildest dreams, didn’t have to remain confined to childhood. They were bearing fruit in reality, and she was being a fool every second she doubted that wasn’t true.

  “Okay, so my mother’s a vampire,” she said in the tone of someone beginning at the top of a long list.

  “If by that you mean she’s trapped between worlds then, yes, Wilona is a vampire.”

  “What do you mean by trapped?”

  “I mean she’s continually phasing in and out of corporeal existence from a shadowy realm of dark spirits clinging to matter for fear that if they let go completely they’ll cease to be who they are. They believe merging with the One Supreme Being will destroy their own minds and personalities, their memories and individual histories.”

  “Well, won’t it?” She was guilty of this same fear. “After all, when rivers flow into the ocean, they cease to be rivers.”

  “No.” He cupped her breasts in his hands. “In your heart you know that’s not true, Audrey. Dark spirits, from the most foolish to the most intelligent, all have small, selfish hearts, and that’s their problem. Listen carefully,” he said. “In the cores of stars, atomic fusion creates helium atoms out of hydrogen atoms, in the process releasing photons of sunlight, and that’s where we all come from, all our thoughts and feelings, dreams and desires. Our bodies, all of them, are woven of light, and light is synonymous with information. ‘The Word of God is conveyed through fields of light through the depths of space—the Zero Point Field—and picked up by our DNA. We’re immortal because our DNA is embedded within the Field’.”(3)

  “God’s heart?”

  “Yes.” He smiled up at her. “Our DNA is magnetized light. Think of it as ‘crystals of consciousness… as an organic computer chip made of the languages of light codes that is our soul body’.(4) Reality, the Void, the Zero Point Field, whatever you choose to call it, is pure Consciousness, eternal, boundless, infinitely creative Consciousness—God manifesting Himself through us, in us. ‘Our soul is our eternal pattern of information within the Void as captured by our DNA. Our physical body then is only our mind in-form-ation’.”(5) I apologize for this crash course in metaphysics, but we don’t have much time.”

  She sighed, knowing he referred to Aapti and not Consuelo, due any minute now with the food they’d requested… telepathically! She set that amazing thought aside for the moment. “But it’s hard to think of blood as light. It’s also hard for my emotions to catch up with science. Most of the time I feel like I’m still living in the Dark Ages as far as what I really feel is possible compared to what I hope and think and desperately want to believe is possible.”

  “At least you realize that.”

  “How you describe our DNA is fascinating, Jonathan. I never thought of it that way. Technically, I know every
thing is connected on the quantum level but I’ve never felt it; I’ve always felt separate from everything… excerpt Merlin, he really felt—still feels—like a part of me. I guess I had to start somewhere. From the moment he died, everything stopped being just a theory for me.”

  She paused, still thinking about DNA. “What are the receptors my mother was talking about and that Falkon is so obsessed with? Are they what made his wife who she was and make me who I am?”

  He pulled her down against him. “Yes.” Kissing her, he rolled on top of her.

  There was a polite knock on the door, always left open a crack so Whispers could get in and out of the room.

  Audrey sat up crying, “Just a minute!”

  “No te apures, mi amor,” Consuelo said diffidently. “I will leave the tray out here for you.”

  “Excellent idea,” Jonathan replied. “Muchas Gracias, Consuelo.”

  “De nada, Señor Jonathan.”

  Audrey watched as he got up and walked to the door, tempted to pinch herself to make absolutely certain she wasn’t dreaming. If she was making all this up, then she would have to be sure never to wake up, or never to wander out of the magical mist she preferred to call the Dragon’s Breath even though physicists had labeled it the Zero Point Field.

  “What’s in a name?” she whispered as Jonathan disappeared out into the hall. He was only gone a moment but she was on edge until he reappeared, his naked body now partially concealed by a large tray. She was torn between two very different hungers, but before they made love again, she needed her strength.

  He set the tray on the rug in front of her and then dealt with the business of adding more wood to the fire while she poured them some wine and removed the silver lids from the dishes Consuelo had prepared for them. Her stomach groaned as she inhaled the aroma of jumbo shrimp sautéed in olive oil and garlic mixed with a little cumin and paprika and garnished with chopped fresh parsley. There was warm bread to soak up the shrimp’s delicious juices, a fresh curly Spinach salad topped with paper thin slices of Manchego cheese, and a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc to wash it all down with.