by Simon Archer
Not that I was an expert on women or vampires, but our trip was the final nail in the coffin, so to speak, proving that she definitely liked me. And there’s no way she hadn’t felt that passion unlocked between us in the armory even though we hadn’t done more than kiss.
Still drenched in sweat and with my towel hanging over my neck, I made my way back through the castle halls to my own room, still lost in dreamy thoughts about Rozmarin.
I entered my room and threw my sack down before going into the bathing room to wash up. I splashed cold water on my face and looked at myself in the mirror. My happy face stared back at me, but that’s not what I noticed most.
Maybe it was just from the intense work out of dagger practice, but my skin held a faint glow, more than normal. My mother always used to tell me about my glow, and I assumed it was just from me always being out in the sun, but I couldn’t deny the noticeable radiance.
Sahar and I had been practicing more with my powers, so maybe that’s what caused it, but I thought it was entirely possible that it was a reflection of my feelings for Rozmarin and the experience we had just shared.
I finished washing all the sweat from me, and with only a towel wrapped around my waist, I walked back into my room toward the wardrobe when a sultry voice startled me.
“I sensed you might be in need of my services after your practice with the Queen,” the voice said.
I whipped around and saw Sahar standing in front of the closed door. The charmer wore a purple silken top that exposed most of her stomach and flowing silk pants that still showed off her alluring curves. She stood with one hip jutting out to the side, and both hands placed on each hip.
“Services?” I asked. “What? Like more training?”
Sahar slinked toward me, and her hips swayed back and forth in a mesmerizing way. She bit her bottom lip as she looked at my half-naked body up and down and approached me with that wicked grin of hers.
She placed a warm hand on my abdomen and whispered in my ear, “I was thinking about some... other services.”
Her arms wrapped around my neck, and she pressed her soft, luscious lips to mine. All that passion I had felt for Rozmarin in the armory returned and rushed into my body, almost making me dizzy, but it coursed through me in a frenzied fire. I put my hands on Sahar’s waist and pulled her up onto me. As the sorceress wrapped her legs around my waist, I spun her around and slammed her back into the wardrobe. There was no denying Sahar was a sensual being, and her kissing was more than lustful. This woman wanted to devour me, and I was more than ready to feel her body against mine.
With my hands grabbing at her fleshy bottom, I walked us over to the bed and threw her down. She giggled with that smirk on her face and burning desire in her eyes. Since our first intimate meeting, I saw Sahar almost every day as her alchemists continued to run tests on me and we practiced with my powers, and that meant the sorceress, and I had plenty of time to enjoy each other’s company... and bodies, but I still could not get enough of the dark-skinned, seductive woman. I thought maybe she had put some kind of spell on me to make me so attracted to her, but I let that stupid thought go. Sahar was simply gorgeous.
I unwrapped the towel from my waist, and a gleam passed through her dark eyes. The sorceress crawled toward me and looked up at me with big, dreamy eyes that drove me crazy. She grabbed my pulsing cock, sending shivers through my body, and then she wrapped her warm, velvety mouth over it. I reached a hand out and grabbed one of the poles of my four-poster bed to keep my balance as Sahar’s mouth and tongue massaged me.
One of her hands was still wrapped around my cock, and she worked it in tandem with her mouth, and the other played up and down my abs, which she apparently couldn't get enough of. After several satisfying minutes, I pulled myself out of her mouth, pushed her back on the bed, then eagerly crawled on top of her. She pulled her tiny blouse over her head, exposing perfect breasts, which I hungrily kissed as we pulled her pants off.
She grabbed my cock and guided me into her with a satisfying shudder, and then our bodies, glistening with sweat, moved so flawlessly together. She arched her back up, making me fill her even deeper, and as she clawed her long nails into my back, I thrust myself into her, harder, spurred on by the soft moans she breathed into my ear.
“Do you want it?” I asked.
“Yes,” she moaned.
Those moans turned to screams as I plunged myself into her, deeper, harder, faster, and she scratched at me and pulled my hair until she shrieked and squirmed beneath me. Sahar pushed herself up into me, full of desire and need for my body, for me to please her and fill her. I grabbed both her arms and held them above her head as I pressed into her until her brown eyes rolled back and she let out a scream of exhilaration. Her trembling body and pure pleasure made me explode, and my body wracked with its own satisfied shivers.
I rolled off of the sexy sorceress and lay beside her. We laughed through heavy breaths and linked our fingers together.
“That was just what I needed,” I panted.
“I know,” she replied.
After we laid there for a few minutes, feeling the pure ecstasy course its way through our tired limbs, Sahar sat up and adjusted her headpiece. She pulled her hair around over her shoulder and exposed her soft back. I drew my hand along her flawless, chocolatey skin. Everything about her was perfection.
She stood up and turned to smirk at me as she pulled on her pants and slid her shirt back over her head. “Until next time.”
17
Rachel
I didn’t understand my actions, just like I didn’t understand Rozmarin’s terrible obsession with Christoff, but I decided to pay him a visit, just to check up with him and see how he was doing. Rozmarin had told me they were going to the armory for dagger practice, so I figured I’d ask him how it went, and maybe offer him my expertise as well. I didn’t fight with a dagger all that much, but I still was an expert warrior that could offer him my knowledge.
After the two had returned from the East Village, I had asked Rozmarin about the trip. She smiled with that silly, cute smile of hers, and I think I even saw her blush as she talked about her day. Christoff had been the perfect gentleman which surprised me as much as it did her. I guess that sarcastic boy had enough manners to impress the Queen and to keep her sufficiently entertained the whole day.
“And guess what he likes,” Rozmarin had asked me with a gleaming smile across her lips as we walked around the castle grounds. “Chocolate!”
The Queen let out a loud, musical laugh, and I couldn’t help but join in with her. It was wonderful to see her so happy, almost back to her normal self, even with all the worrying news we seemed to receive daily now. I had to admit, having Christoff in the castle, even with all the mystery surrounding him, was a fun diversion for us all. Even the stoic Adriana couldn’t help smirking when we mentioned him.
I knew Rozmarin and Christoff were done with their practice because I had seen her leave the armory first. I wondered if something had happened because the Queen almost ran through the halls back to her royal chambers with a huge, childlike smile. I’d ask her about it tomorrow, but first, I watched Christoff wander out of the armory, back to his room. He also seemed to be lost in thought, so I decided to stay in the shadows of my hiding place for a little longer and give him some time before I visited.
I waited in a hallway near the armory, and as I gazed out a window into the now darkened sky, I wondered what the hell I was really doing. I knew Rozmarin stalked to Christoff’s door at night, standing outside sniffing in his intoxicating scent. Even though she wanted it to be one, her stalking wasn’t much of a secret anymore among the council, but why was I stalking him from the darkened hallways?
After I had visited his room earlier in the day after he and Rozmarin had left the castle, I couldn’t get his smell off my mind. I had other things to do while Rozmarin and Christoff messed around in the East Village, but even as I went about my various duties, filling in while Rozmarin was away
, the smell of cinnamon and roses kept wafting back into my mind as if Christoff were standing only a few feet away. No matter how many times I refocused myself, the scent swirled around me.
A light drizzle began to pelt the windowpane as I looked at my distorted reflection. Enough time had passed since Christoff had left the armory, so I slowly made my way through the dark and quiet halls, soon to be back at his door where I had been only a few hours earlier. Anyone I did pass in the halls steered clear of me, the brooding vampire which I was used to. They could love Rozmarin and fear me. I didn’t care.
As I ascended the stairs to his floor, I ran through a script of what I would say to Christoff, but even as I tried to sound nice and interested in my head, I knew I would come off sounding cold and uncaring like a normally did. It wasn’t that I meant to come off that way, I just did.
Hey, Christoff, how was the practice?
Was that too casual? We hadn’t really gotten to know each other outside of council meetings.
Good evening, Christoff. Rozmarin bid me check on you after your practice.
Shit. Too formal, and it was a lie, anyway. Why was I so bad at this? Why did I even care about the human, anyway?
“Ughhh,” I groaned out loud as I stepped onto the landing to his floor.
As I slowly approached that familiar doorway, a slight and strange nervousness vibrated through me that I wasn’t used to. As I got near his room, his smell hit me like a wall, and I almost staggered backward with how powerful it was. Roses and cinnamon floated around my head. It smelled nice. I breathed it all in as I moved closer to the door. But there was another scent mixed with his. What was it?
I sniffed some more and smelled incense and magic, the scent of Sahar.
I crept closer to the door and pressed my ear against it. Sahar’s muffled voice floated out. “I was thinking about some... other services.” Then I heard a loud bang and soon the unmistakable sounds of him and Sahar kissing and then… moaning. They were having sex.
Without understanding why, I stayed with my ear pressed against the door and listened to them. My skin started to crawl but in a good way. If I had a heart, it would have been loudly beating in my chest. I started to sweat and breathe heavier, and as I listened to Christoff and Sahar, I felt that burning passion awaken in me, something I hadn’t felt in some time.
It scared me and excited me. I ripped my ear from the door and stumbled away from his room, back through the hallways to my own room. I was more than roused. I was filled with a fiery lust for Christoff, and I wanted to devour that scent and him wholly. I wanted to be in that room with him, hell, even with Sahar, but I didn’t have the courage to enter. I barely even had the courage to speak to him or to admit to myself that I’d had these feelings for him, probably the same ones Rozmarin, and obviously, Sahar had for him.
Of course, the sorceress was confident enough to take what she wanted, and I realized how much time the two spent together every day and a knowing smirk spread across my face as I thought about Christoff and Sahar tangled up in each other’s arms. A satisfying shiver ran through my body even as I sat alone in my own dark room with the smell of cinnamon and roses rolling over me.
18
Rozmarin
After returning to my room from dagger practice with Christoff in the armory, I quickly bathed and then packed my travel bag. I had wasted enough time frolicking around with the human, and as pleasurable as it had been, I needed to catch up on the last-minute details of the trip before I left at dawn. I hadn’t told Christoff the true reason I would be flying to the east. In truth, when Aerywin returned from her trip to the eastern edge of the continent, she returned with news that the hordes were moving in on the kingdoms. Every day, they closed in further and further, and Aerywin anticipated an attack on the southernmost kingdom in the east. Soon. Anix insisted on accompanying me, claiming it was her honor and duty as the Queen’s general. Try as I did to talk her out of it, there was no changing the Doom Bringer’s mind once she’d made it up.
I packed only a couple of things, aiming to travel light. I would be flying after all. The stops of non-zombie infested land would be few and far between. I was packing the last of my minimal blood supply in the side pocket of my bag when a knock sounded at my bedroom door.
“You may enter,” I called, not bothering to scent who it might be. The door swung open hesitantly, and a worried-looking Aerywin in her preferred silks entered the room.
The shadows in my quarters darkened her pale eyes, and she had a crease between her perfectly groomed brows, betraying the stress she was feeling about me leaving for this trip. When my gaze fell to her delicate hands, I noticed the long, reddish-brown cylinder she held in them, a map holder.
“It’s the updated map of the numbers and zombie horde locations. I spent all day working on finishing it before your trip.”
Something in my chest tightened, and I looked up to meet her worried expression.
“Thank you, Aerywin,” I said, sincerely. It would make my travel much easier, knowing where to anticipate the hordes. “I will be sure to return with a further update on their numbers and locations.”
A long pause ensued while we stood there, and I got the feeling that she had something to say.
“What is it?” I asked, my head cocked ever so slightly to the side as I searched her face.
“Just promise me you’ll be careful,” she said, looking down at her hands. When she raised her head again to meet my eyes, I made sure that she could see the confidence in my gaze. I did not want her, or anyone that I would be leaving behind in the morning, to have a single shred of doubt that I would be coming back unharmed.
“I swear it.”
“Good.” She nodded once, then without another word, turned on her heel and strode out.
Soon, I was packed, cleaned, dressed, and fed. Hell, I’d even managed a few hours of restless sleep. I had tossed and turned until I finally gave up.
I was now standing in front of Christoff’s familiar doorway, drinking in his scent. I couldn’t explain the constant, ridiculous need to be close to him, but I knew that, besides the stress of leaving my kingdom to run without me, the anticipation of leaving and being away from Christoff for any amount of time was the cause of my restless sleep. The pull to be near him was only growing more and more every day. The thought of it stumped me. It was a completely unfamiliar experience.
I reluctantly backed away from Christoff’s door, savoring his scent, made for the eastern stairwell, and slowly made my descent to the floor below ground. I had one more stop to make before Anix and I met in the courtyard. When I got to the alchemist lab, Sahar sat in the lounging corner with a tea set laid out before her.
She stood up and offered me a curtsy. “Good morning, Your Highness,” Sahar’s dark eyes twinkled with a certain kind of mischief.
“You look as if you already know why I am here,” I said, ignoring her greeting and striding over to take the extra cup she had already poured. We both took our seats, lowering ourselves onto the plush velvet cushions with ease. The sorceress was so unnaturally graceful that she put even my own supernatural agility in question.
A single, delicate shoulder lifted in a half shrug, and she eyed me sternly. “I could feel your unease all the way from down here.”
I couldn’t stop the grimace that graced my face at her callout.
“My apologies, my lady,” I said, sincerely, with a small dip of my head.
She smiled at me, her eyes soft, and her straight, white teeth winked in the lantern light. “All is forgiven, Your Highness.”
The sun was far from rising, but she seemed completely lucid and awake. The eerily inhuman sorceress was nowhere in her eyes. It was all Sahar. I angled my head as I searched her kind eyes, a question suddenly rising to my tongue.
“Do you ever sleep, Sahar?”
She only gave me a look that said, ‘Why would you assume that?’ in return.
“I do not often see you away from the alchemy lab t
hese days, and I wager that if I chose an odd time of night, like right this moment, that I could find you down here, in this very room. Am I wrong?”
Sahar looked away at my rambling, and I knew I was on to something. “It is not that I do not sleep. I do.” She paused, seeming to mull over her next words, and I stayed silent, giving her the space to do so. When she met my eyes once again, I witnessed emotions warring within them. Fear. Grief. Kindness. Love. Wisdom. She knew something that she was not telling us, and it weighed on her. Heavily. “I fear that a war is near. I fear that… that we cannot stop the hordes this time.”
I sat up straighter at her words. While I knew that Sahar didn’t often divulge the information she gained through her abilities, something about keeping the balance, I could sense that she desperately wanted to tell me something.
“What can you tell me?”
“It would be better if you brought the council here,” she said after a long pause. “That way, I will not have to tell it twice.”
“Very well,” I said with a nod as I moved to summon the others.
It didn’t take long for Anix, Rachel, and Aerywin to join Sahar and me in the lounge corner of the alchemy lab. Sahar and I sat in our same seats, and Rachel and Aerywin had pulled up a couple of wooden chairs while Anix had opted to stand, to no one’s surprise.
The seer had warned me against leaving the kingdom for an extended amount of time like I had planned. She said that I was drawn to ‘the Light-Bearer’ for a reason and that, if I felt poorly about leaving the human, that I should listen to the feeling.
“The risk of leaving your kingdom without a ruler to protect it is too great. I have foreseen a great danger heading this way from the east,” she had said.
“I have only just returned from the east,” Aerywin said, still in her sleeping gown after being dragged out of bed by Rachel. The alchemists had yet to awaken and get to work. “The numbers were certainly growing at an alarming rate, but the eastern kingdoms could surely use assistance.”