His finger trailed against the top of her breast, leaving goosebumps in its wake. “You have gripped me.”
Blythe placed one hand on his hip and letting the other trail down to that warm space in between his legs. “By the… balls?”
“Ahhhh….” He whimpered.
Somehow, it just made Blythe want him more.
He placed his hand over hers, guiding it over the bulge in his pants. “It’s not as base as that.” He said. “But yes, you have gripped me by the balls,” He then picked her hand up, guiding it to his chest. “And by the heart…”
Blythe’s own heart pounded in her chest.
He lifted her hand to his cheek, “And by the mind.”
Blythe’s eyes watered. It was easy in her busy life to forget that she was in love, to forget that someone loved her back. It was easy to forget exactly how miraculous that was. “Oh, I love you, Caius. I really do.”
He kept his grip on her hand, but then placed his free one on the back of her head, drawing her face towards his. He planted a wet kiss on her forehead. Messy. Real. He opened his mouth to say something, then, as if deciding against it, clamped his jaw shut.
Blythe’s eyes went wide. “What? What is it?” she demanded.
He shrugged, “I don’t know, I just hoped you would.” His laughter punctuated the end of that sentence.
Blythe giggled back at him, slapping his chest with her free hand. “Say it,” she ordered as her giggles died down. “Say the words.”
Caius, narrowed his smoky eyes. “You know they’re true.”
Blythe nodded, fiddling with the zipper on his jacket. “But I want to hear them from you, love. I need to hear it.”
He nodded, bending over for another kiss. “I love you, Blythe. I love you with everything in me. I love you more than I love myself.”
Blythe thought her heart would explode from sheer happiness. But then he put her fingers in his mouth. He sucked on them, one by one, her pointer, then her middle, then her ring… and another feeling took over. Unable to control herself any longer, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. She hopped up, wrapping her legs around his waist. He carried her weight gracefully, barely flinching under the strain, and continued to kiss her.
They could have been in the middle of a battle. There could have been bombs going off overhead and explosions happening all around, but because she was with him, because he had his arms wrapped around her, because he loved her, she was safe. He trembled as he lowered the both of them to their knees, his strength infallible. But, as she laid onto her back and the cold and the wet of the mud and the grass began to seep into her coat, she sat up, pushing him off her. “Wait,” She said, turning around so that she could rummage through her bag. “I prepared for this.” She slipped a blanket out of her bag and stood up.
Caius chuckled as he stood up and helped her spread it across the ground. “I love that you can see the future.”
Blythe slipped out of her jacket, draping it over her standing bag. “Realistic expectations, Love.” She bit her lips as he swiped out of his jacket and let it drop into the wet sod. It was that carefree masculinity that Blythe had first hated and also the first thing about him that she fell in love with. “It’s what keeps a marriage alive.” She said.
He pressed his body down on hers. Her legs wrapped around his torso, a cage daring him to escape. He pressed his lips against hers once again. And, once again, she found herself swooning as if this was their first kiss. His hands pressed into her shirt, his cool fingers lifting goosebumps on her skin. She dug her nails into his shoulders, trailed her hands down his back, and slipped his shirt over his head. He was so warm despite the slightly chilly breeze.
He ground his body against hers, his hard cock, nothing more than a rod in his pants, driving up against her leg over and over again. His large arms were like rocks under Blythe’s fingertips. She fumbled with his belt buckle and zipper.
He didn’t want to wait. He ripped her sweater open, a rush of cool air brushing against her nude bra. Blythe’s jaw swung open, a gasp slipping out of her mouth. She sat up a little so that she could slip it out of her arms and throw it over with the rest of her stuff. He dug his hands into the ground on either side of her so as to maintain his balance. As soon as she was naked in front of him, he slammed her right back down on the ground. Her chest hit the blanket with a thud, her heart bouncing around in her chest.
She spread her legs wide for him, willing him to enter her with everything she had. She bit her lip as he sucked on the skin of her neck, his tongue tickling her. The suction created by his mouth was maddening. He continued this way, moving his touch along her neck, to her shoulders, then back to her collar bone while his hands massaged her breasts, his fingers tickling her nipples.
Her toes curled under her feet as she jabbed her hand into his pants and wrapped her fingers around his cock: hot and throbbing. She felt a pulsing in her womanhood, beckoning to him. Caius ripped off his pants, tearing off the shoes with them. Blythe tightened her legs around his now nearly naked body as he slowly moved his way down her chest, taking her breast into his mouth. He wrapped his lips around her nipple, flicking it with his tongue. Her moans rang out into the humid, afternoon air as he moved from one breast to the other.
She grabbed his head with both of her hands gazed into his perfect eyes: hazel, but sometimes green, sometimes blue, sometimes brown. They a true work of art.
He clutched her chin with his strong hands and kissed her like he owned her. And he did. And she owned him.
“Fuck me.” She breathed as she fell back onto the blanket.
He maintained eye contact as he entered her. Blythe’s jaw swung open, her throat elongated, her legs spread and her back arched. Her entire body had expanded to accommodate him. She felt the pinch of pleasure, followed by the pulsing, her womanhood like a human thing purring with approval.
He drove himself into her over and over again, their erotic symphony of sounds drifting up and out to the sky. As Caius shifted his weight onto this hand and the other, he smeared mud on Blythe. Her fair skin, her nearly white hair became soiled in grass and dirt, but she couldn’t have been happier.
“Oh.” She said as she felt her entire body plummet into that one space in between her legs. She gasped over and over again. Her back arching then folding and arching again. Her pelvic floor practically vibrating with pleasure.
The thrusts came harder and faster, until Blythe shifted her weight, forcing herself on top of him. His hands caressed her torso and her breasts. His grunts were louder, almost in time with the waves of pleasure she felt inside of her.
Then it happened, his grunts continued to build until, with one final thrust, he came inside of her. Blythe bit her lip to the sensation of the spasms in her pelvic floor and his warm seed seeping out of her. She slipped his penis out of her, then collapsed onto his chest.
He caressed her back, his touch making her shudder with happiness. “See, I don’t care about anything else.”
Blythe nodded, pressing her chin against his chest. She knew exactly what he was talking about. “Fuck the cameras.”
“Yeah. It’s all bullshit.”
“But this isn’t bullshit.”
He shook his head, planting a soft kiss on her forehead. “This is the only thing that matters.”
She opened her mouth to say something else, but a fat raindrop landed with a plop right in the middle of her back. She grimaced. “Oh.” She mumbled. She hardly had time to ask Caius if he had felt it too before it started to come down hard.
“Oh Fuck.” Caius hissed as they both jumped up, scrambling around to gather their things.
By the time they could even get to their clothes, they were already drenched. Blythe laughed at herself as she clumsily jabbed her legs into the pants. “Caius, what the hell?” She held up her sweater, which had been ripped in half.
Caius took one look at it and burst into a fit of laughter.
Blythe couldn’t help bu
t to laugh at it too. It was weird how a girl could shell out three thousand dollars for a blouse only to have her man rip it apart with his bare hands.
“I don’t know my own strength.” Caius said, lifting his shoulders in a mocking way.
Blythe shook her head. She shoved the shirt into her backpack and threw on the jacket on top of her bra, zipping it all the way up to the neck. She felt awkward and exposed. As soon as they had gathered everything, they started back down the way they had come. They clasped hands almost instinctively; like magnets. Blythe could not wipe the smile off of her face. Sex with Caius was like fighting and making up at the same time. They managed to get all of their negative feelings out while also reminding each other of all of the positive ones.
Just when Blythe could think of nothing that could possibly ruin that day, Caius came to an abrupt stop. She ran right into him, her chest colliding with his back. “What—“ But then she stopped, her head cocked to the side, because, for some reason, he had his nose turned up and flared.
He snapped his head down, his eyes lined with red. Wild.
Blythe had never seen him like this.
“Do you smell that?” he asked.
Blythe jumped at his voice, it was so forceful.
“What?”
But he didn’t even wait for her response. He dropped her hand, leaving it hanging and cold. He veered off to the right, wandering through the dense brush of trees. Blythe furrowed her brow, leaning around the side of the tree trunk to see where he was going. “Caius, we don’t know these woods like we used to. We’re gonna get lost.”
He didn’t even reply to her, but kept going. She watched him, trying to wrap her head around the way that he was moving: with his back hunched over and his hands rummaging, touching every surface he passed.
She had no choice but to follow him.
And so she did. She tiptoed along behind him, her head heavy with worry.
“Caius, what—“ but she stopped in her tracks, because suddenly, she could smell it too. It was like an entire body of meat had been laying out in a hot car for hours. It was like someone had forgotten to turn their fridge on. It was like a hundred people who hadn’t showered in a year had piled into a small, non-ventilating room.
Caius was about five feet ahead of her, but she stopped when she watched his hands fly to his mouth. His whole body went stiff.
A cold chill ran up Blythe’s spine as she scurried to close the remaining distance between the two of them. She looked over his shoulder to find a body: human. The funk of it hung in the air. It lined the inside of her nose and throat, it made her eyes water. It was a woman… It must have been a woman… she could see her long blond hair extending out… everywhere. Parts of her scalp had been ripped off of her head. Her insides had been ripped out, her bloody colon stretched across what was left of her torso. Her right ankle had been broken and twisted the wrong way. An eye popped out of its socket. A finger ripped off. A dismembered leg.
Blythe’s stomach churned violently a cloud of the steak she had had for lunch rolling up her esophagus. Saliva rushed to fill her mouth before…
“Oh God…” she bent over, heaving bile and food.
***
Someone shoved a bottle of water at Blythe. She took it, mindlessly unscrewing the top and pouring the contents down her throat. It burned like a California wildfire. As soon as they had called 911, her mother found out. When her mother found out, so did the camera crew and the news station. They wanted to film the whole thing, wanted to catch Blythe with her hair knotted and muddy, with her face flushed red and her mouth tasting like vomit. But Caius wouldn’t allow it. He didn’t talk much, but what little words that managed to make it out of his mouth were enough to scare them off for good.
She stood down at the bottom of the hill, blinking over and over again in a feeble attempt to get that woman’s image out of her head.
“Wolves. I haven’t seen a wolf in my whole life.” She mumbled to herself, the words hardly making a sound.
Caius snapped his head up. “Not wolves. Bears.”
Blythe glowered at him. How had he heard her?
But he stood feet away from her, his brow furrowed and his hand plastered to the wood of an oak tree. Why was he so far away?
“There haven’t been bears around these parts for—“ the police officer, Harvey, stood leaning against his car, stuck taking care of Blythe and Caius, while the detective and his partner assessed the carcass.
“Fourteen years and eight months.” Caius interrupted without looking up at Harvey or Blythe.
Blythe cocked her head to the side. “What?”
The police officer nodded. “Yeah. Whatever. It wasn’t a bear.”
Why was Caius so hell-bent on blaming it on a bear? How could he even know this kind of thing? Blythe tried on multiple occasions to ask Caius what was going on, but every time she had formed the right words in her head; every time she had mustered up the courage to approach him, he shut her down with one look. He knew she needed to talk to him about this and was just not willing to let her in.
In fact, he practically ignored her for the rest of the time that they were stuck in that forest. When the detective had satisfied himself at the scene of the “crime,” he came down the hill to interrogate the two of them.
“What time did you find her?”
“What were you doing around these parts?”
“Do you come here often?”
“Did you hear any strange sounds?”
The questions came at her like bullets, easily penetrating her raincoat and seeping in to pierce the skin beneath. She tried to answer every question as best as she could, but then, he said, “How does it feel to be back here after all of these years?”
Blythe made eye contact with the detective for the first time during the entire conversation. There it was: big glossy eyes. She found it perverted that he could be thinking about her stupid wedding, her stupid acting career when a woman was dead.
“That’s enough.” Caius snapped, throwing his arm in between Blythe and the detective.
Blythe winced at this, shooting him a disbelieving look. How could he be so rude?
The detective gulped. He stood up straighter, setting his jaw as he scribbled a couple of things in his notebook. “Forgive my questions.” He said in a voice strained with mock authority. “Believe it or not, but there have been a number of killings like this in recent weeks. We have been keeping it under wraps so as to not alert the public but… I don’t know… It might be time for a curfew.” He gestured over his shoulder and back up the hill at the woman still lying there. “An animal: a bear or wolf or whatever, might have killed her, but it wouldn’t have done that to her. It didn’t consume a thing, but it was exceptionally violent. Unnecessarily violent.”
“Like a human.” Harvey chimed in. “A human trying to make it look like an animal.”
The detective shrugged, his lips folded into a frown.
Blythe leaned onto the tree for support as the detective gave the two of them instructions for how to report anything else they would hopefully remember after the fact, then got in his car and drove off. Harvey and his partner offered to drive the both of them home. Blythe sat with her forehead pressed against the glass, her skin beginning to itch from the events of the day. The sun had retreated behind the clouds for the rest of the day, giving rise to a moon and an exceptionally dark night.
Blythe felt wildly like a teenager when the police officer offered to walk the two of them to the front door. But before she could speak for herself, Caius cut in, brushing the police officer off and yanking open his door. He seemed distracted, mumbling to himself as he rounded the front of the car, yanked open Blythe’s door and pulled her out.
The door slammed behind her.
She winced at the sharp pain in her arm, flexing it as she followed him to the front door. Every forceful distracted step struck Blythe. By the time the two of them had showered, she couldn’t hold it in any longer. She emerge
d from the steaming bathroom with her hair wrapped in a towel and her lips folded into a determined frown.
“Caius.”
He didn’t even acknowledge her presence. He was lost. Far away.
Blythe huffed out a deep breath, then crossed the room to him. “Caius.” She said again, trying to keep the begging out of her voice as she laid her hands on his back.
He was like a statue underneath her touch.
She wrapped her arms around him. “Talk to me. Please. That was really scary. Are you scared?”
He didn’t answer her, but shrugged out of her embrace and climbed into her bed. He turned over to his side and picked up his phone, nervously shifting between applications.
Blythe’s eyes watered with frustration. “What the hell is your problem?”
Caius turned his head up to the sky, then looked down at her. “I can’t talk about this.”
“But—“
Caius rolled his eyes. “Yes, but you’re scared. But you’re hurt. But you’re offended that I don’t want to talk about my feelings… Yes I know.”
Blythe ground her teeth. “This isn’t about your fucking feelings. You’ve been acting weird. You’re hiding something.”
“Why are you so convinced someone is out to get you?” Caius glared at her.
Blythe glowered at him. “I’m not the one hiding something important from my wife.”
Caius shook his head. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“Don’t insult my intelligence.”
Caius flexed his jaw. “Look, I’m just so fucking tired. Okay. I’m stressed. I have a full time fucking job. A 400% job and I have a wedding and I just saw a carcass. So give me a fucking break.”
Blythe nodded, a humorless smile stretching across her face. She had known him over a decade. There was no way she would back down that easily. “This isn’t about your goddamn stress. What. Aren’t. You. Telling. Me?”
Caius stared at her long and hard before turning over and flipping the switch on the light.
“Aren’t you so fucking smart.”
Blythe could just barely hear it as darkness descended on the room.
VAMPIRE:Vampire Guardian Series: Paranormal Mystery Vampire Alpha Male Romance (New Adult Contemporary Paranormal Royalty Fantasy Romance Collection)) Page 50