by Cindy Mezni
My fist banged into Nathanael’s jaw. Even if I hadn’t wanted to do it, I didn’t pull my punch; black blood was coming from his lower lip. A lot of strength was needed to make a Nëphyr bleed with just an uppercut. Nathanael reacted almost right away, trying to prevent me from assaulting him again by firmly catching my wrists.
“Pull yourself together, Nemesis!” he said while my jaw changed against my will.
As my mind was trying to get back the control of my body, my face buried itself in Nathanael’s neck trying to tear into his jugular vein. As soon as my teeth grazed him, he violently shoved me away to not be bitten. I landed on one of the rare pieces of furniture in the room, which broke under the impact. My face was back to a normal appearance, the anger losing its intensity. I abruptly got back the control of my moves. I sat up with difficulty before grimacing with pain. What the . . .? I looked down and a metallic glint caught my eye. My dagger was stuck in my thigh.
“Shit!”
Obviously, Nathanael had noticed I was hurt, too.
“Look what you made me do,” he said, giving me a black look.
I was the one injured and he was complaining? That was a good one! Without further delay, I pulled out the blade from my flesh. A growl rang through the silence of the room. This damn thing hurt. I laid my weapon on one of the nightstands, removed the sheath that usually contained it and put it next to it.
I tried to analyze what had just taken place here. A bit earlier, when I was starved, I’d had the feeling I couldn’t control my body anymore. But my hunger had been satisfied, even if I hadn’t eaten much. All this made no sense. I’d never been in this state before. Yet it had happened twice in the same day. It didn’t augur anything good . . .
I wanted to give Nathanael some explanation, but as soon as I opened my mouth, he gave me a monumental slap. I grumbled before staring at him, irritated. I forgot my desire to tell him everything as fast as it’d come to me. Even if Nathanael was certainly the last one who would betray me, it was better to keep quiet. If the wrong people learned of it, my status of Queen would be challenged because nobody wanted a weak or uncontrollable sovereign. And in the name of the promise I’d made to Efflamm, I had to do my utmost to continue to reign over this clan.
“Why did you slap me?” I finally asked him.
“To get your head straight.”
I let out a bitter laugh.
“You know you’re totally nuts?”
“You know you’re totally dumb?” I retorted in the same sarcastic tone as his.
He rolled his eyes, then his gaze went to the place where the dagger had been stuck. The wound was already closing. In a few minutes, there would be no more trace of it, except for the ebony blood on my skin. We waited in silence for the injury to disappear. When it did, Nathanael’s fingers delicately wiped the blood off my thigh. I saw him about to put his fingers to his lips but I stopped him from doing it by catching his wrist.
“Don’t you dare, Nathanael,” I warned him curtly.
It wasn’t something just anybody did. Only a Creäria—a new Nëphyr—had the right to drink the blood of another Nëphyr when he’d just been created and needed some from his Creätoria—his creator—to finish his transformation. Or two Parinrä when they sealed their union or when they were in the strictest of privacy. Except in those cases, it was forbidden because drinking too much Nëphyrian blood would make you mad and could even kill you. And even if Nathanael wanted us to be Parinrä, we weren’t. I drew his fingers toward my mouth and licked what was mine. He smiled, his expression both mischievous and perverse.
“What you did was downright—”
“Get these ideas out of your head right now!” I told him when I understood that he’d done this just to talk about sex again.
He straightened up. I thought he finally was going to leave. I was wrong. He went to lay carelessly on my bed, hands behind his neck. I sighed and tried to keep calm in order for the episode that I just went through to not repeat itself.
“What are you doing?” I asked him as I stood up.
“Waiting.”
I went to my wardrobe in order to change again. I’d have been better off naked. My clothes obviously couldn’t survive this day.
“I don’t understand what you’re waiting for.”
I tore the dress from the front, took it off, and threw it in the fireplace where it joined the other one. I slipped on the red satin robe that our former Queen, Mischa, had offered me.
“There’s a rumor going around here . . .”
Intrigued, I whirled around while tying up the robe. His gaze followed my movements before his expression became impassive.
“That is?”
“Word is you ordered the execution of two Nëphyr this afternoon and that Venom is locked up in the basement for an unknown reason.”
“There was only one execution. The second Nëphyr . . . killed herself.”
“Come again?”
He seemed interested. All this had no importance but if it would encourage him to leave faster, so be it. I sat down on the bed to tell him the story.
“The first one fed on one of us. And the other one, his lover, couldn’t bear his execution. Regarding Venom, well, let just say she’s where she deserves to be.”
Nathanael frowned upon hearing my last sentence.
“What has she done?”
“She brought the blood slave of a vampire here. He probably kept in touch with his master and, thanks to Venom, was able to supply all the information the vampires needed to prepare the attack of the Reserve.”
“‘Probably?’” he repeated questioningly.
I gritted my teeth at his insistence. I was a bit annoyed at the idea of admitting my failure in front of him.
“I wasn’t able to get a confession from the human,” I admitted with reluctance.
“So how can you be sure of what you’re claiming?”
“Because the scars on his body and his mental state were sufficient proofs of his belonging to a vampire. Without taking into account the fact that his mind was programmed for him to be unable to answer any question about his master.”
“You’re certain of that?” he said, still not convinced.
“Any human having undergone the treatment I inflicted on him would have told me what I wanted to hear in order to make me stop. So, yes, I’m more than sure of what I’m claiming. And I’ve already seen mental compulsions. I know how to recognize somebody who is under the influence of one of them.”
He seemed about to ask me where I could have seen somebody in the grip of a compulsion but finally kept silent. He undoubtedly remembered that Ezekiel possessed the Spiritaë, power to control the acts of an other person against their will, which meant I knew what I was talking about. There was an oppressive silence between us. Nathanael ran his hand through his blond hair, his jaw clenched.
“The situation of the clan keeps getting worse,” he eventually said.
“Oh, you think so?” I retorted bitterly.
He sighed loudly, staring at me.
“The truth about Venom will soon spread among the clan and that, plus the lack of food, could cause a rebellion. But the most worrying thing is that the High Instances will inevitably hear about it and then, they’ll turn up. We have to find the vampire who organized the attack, and quickly, and also sort out the food supply problem. Or the High Instances may do a lot of cleaning upon their arrival.”
His little speech irritated me even more.
“Do you think that I don’t already know all this? That I don’t know that if I haven’t solved all our problems before their arrival—and they’ll come, I have no doubt about that—the clan will suffer the heavy consequences? I already know all this, Nathanael!”
He was in front of me in a flash. His hands took hold of my face, his gaze plunged into mine.
“I don’t give a shit about this clan or the number of dead people there could be,” he snapped back. “The majority of the Nëphyr here want to s
ee you dead just because you were created by Ezekiel. The rest of them don’t care about your fate. And here you are afraid of what the High Instances will do to them? It’s absurd. You’re the only one who counts, Nemesis. Everyone else can go burn in Hell for all I care.”
I looked away. I didn’t want to hear these kind of things. Particularly not today.
“Shut up.”
He took a few steps back, shaking his head. He closed his eyes and pinched his nose as if he were about to lose it.
“You have no trouble hearing or even believing lies, but you don’t want to hear a word about the truth! Ezekiel lied to you so much that any truth is now unbearable for you!”
“For pity’s sake, shut up,” I said, feeling my self-control getting away from me.
A disaster wasn’t far off. Of course, Nathanael, always so pig-headed, kept talking.
“You’re the only one here who matters to me, Nemesis. If you weren’t here and if I hadn’t made this promise to Efflamm, I would have already been gone a long time ago, leaving all these fools behind me without any regret.”
Something in his declaration picked on my curiosity.
“What promise?” I asked him.
He let out a sigh.
“The day before his death, Efflamm told me he’d named you as heiress to the throne. He asked me to promise him to serve you, help you, and protect you when you’d be Queen, and do this until the day I die.”
I was dumbfounded. Without our former King, he and I would have been free to leave and do as we would have thought best. I wondered why Efflamm had made Nathanael and I promise those things. We would never know . . .
“Why did you accept?” I suddenly asked him. “You—”
He sighed again and I interrupted myself. The answer suddenly appeared to me as plain as day. I read it in his gaze that was riveted to mine. My breath accelerated, my control slipping through my fingers like grains of sand. Since our first meeting, I’d understood he wasn’t insensible to my charms, but I’d never imagined he could really care for me. So far, I’d thought he wished for me to be his Parinrä because in his eyes I was simply the only one who could be, and because we knew each other since I’d been turned into a Nëphyr and we got along more than well, sexually. How the Devil was such a thing possible? I didn’t know. Yet, now that I knew the truth, I saw it in his eyes. He had feelings. Feelings for me different from desire, irritation or anger of which I was used to when I was in his presence. Still, if he was mysteriously capable of having feelings, I wasn’t. My human life had deeply messed me up in that respect; people I’d loved had been torn away from me, one after the other. And all the years I’d spent with Ezekiel had finished off making me insensible.
“Nemesis, I—”
I pounced on him and kissed him. I didn’t want him to finish his sentence, whatever he wanted to say. It would lead us nowhere . . . or end badly. I forced him to move back to the bed and lie down on it. He complied, but when he was about to speak, I put my hand over his mouth. He wanted to continue this conversation. I didn’t. It was the last thing in the world I wanted. I straddled him and took his belt off. I threw it somewhere and tore his shirt without any scruple. While gazing into his eyes, I slowly undid the knot of my robe. His look was only burning desire. And his cock, too, a thing I could only notice considering my position. Stupid discussion all but forgotten, I thought with satisfaction. A wicked smile appeared on my face. Very slowly, I revealed my shoulders but didn’t show him more, wanting to make him wait a little. His reaction wasn’t long in coming. He roared with ferocity before catching me brutally by the hips and drawing my mouth to his. As his tongue monopolized mine, and all of my thoughts with it, one of his hands brought my pelvis closer to his. I let a growl slip when I discovered the extent of his erection. We rolled along and I found myself under him, prisoner of his body.
“You didn’t really think you’d turn me on like that without facing the consequences,” he said with a voice more husky than usual.
His look lingered on my almost entirely revealed body, as the open bathrobe hid next to nothing. I felt him becoming harder against me and my excitement went up several notches. He let his fingers roam on my naked skin. A shiver of pleasure ran through me. Then, slowly, his hand reached my underwear, which he ripped.
“You certainly aren’t one for subtleties.”
“Indeed,” he answered me with a smile while throwing the rest of my black panties on the floor.
“You plan on taking your pants off one day or what?” I said, shamelessly staring at his crotch.
Nothing would have let us guess that our private talk was going to end this way. If anything, it proved that everything between us could change dramatically in a fraction of second.
“Impatient much?” he whispered in my ear before nipping it.
I clucked my tongue to let him know that I indeed was.
“Take these damned pants off, Nathanael, or I rip them apart with my teeth,” I said, almost grumbling.
And I was very inclined to do it if he didn’t hurry up.
“A tempting proposal,” he told me, a lecherous smirk on his lips. “But I’d prefer to get rid of them myself. Who knows what you could do to me if I let you do it?”
“Given my thoughts, certainly nothing that could displease you,” I admitted, licking my lips explicitly.
He let out a growl so loud that the walls were almost shaking before kissing my lips with fervor while removing his jeans. My hands caressed his back, enjoying the smoothness of his skin and the muscles I could feel under my fingertips. I let my nails lacerate into his skin. Nathanael took his mouth away from mine and stared at me with mischief. He knew my fondness for wild sex and I knew he liked it, too. He put his mouth on my jaw before coming down to my neck, my collarbone then my breast where he lingered for a long time. A very long time. I let out several lascivious sighs and moans. Hell was my witness, his mouth worked wonders! He suddenly stopped to look at me. At his expression, I figured that long foreplay were coming. I’d have liked that if I wasn’t so impatient to feel him inside me. I reversed our positions to find myself on top of him.
“What are you doing?” he said while his hands wandered over my curves.
With a sudden move, I put his hands over his head. He frowned.
“Don’t move,” I ordered him with a velvet voice.
He laid still. Seeing like that, at my mercy, I decided that extending the foreplay wasn’t such a bad idea in the end. I brushed his mouth with mine and nibbled on his lower lip. I began to buck my hips against him to torment him even more. Nathanael’s features indicated he was in agony. I had to admit his reaction utterly delighted me. I continued my little game by letting my hands wander over his chest, his perfectly sculptured abs, and the big scar on his stomach, mark of a sword that had pierced through him when he’d still been human. I kept exploring his skin until I reached his hips. Even if he’d taken his jeans off, he still had his boxers on. Touching the fabric with my fingers, I licked my lips with impatience. If Nathanael had been like Ezekiel, if he’d been the kind of man to go commando, I’d have lost control a long time ago and we’d have been done already.
I suddenly froze. Why was I even thinking of Ezekiel right now? I growled and found myself pinned to the mattress, Nathanael’s body pressing into me. I moaned. He just put his member, still held by the fabric of his boxers, against my pussy to torment me.
“I can be good while you torture me,” he murmured with a voice hoarse with desire, “but don’t expect me to not react when you touch me like that. You’re asking for too much.”
Exit Ezekiel. Only Nathanael was in my mind at the moment. I was out of breath, the tension between my thighs was at its peak and I had the sensation I was going to die any second now if he wasn’t inside me soon.
“Nathanael . . .”
He stared at me with attention.
“ . . .stop talking and act.”
With no hesitation, he tore off his boxers and s
ank into me. We both let out a bestial roar. I wrapped my legs around his waist as he fully withdrew from him before sliding back even deeper into me. His thrusts became faster and faster, then more and more erratic and violent. I rolled us over because I wanted to dominate him, but we fell on the floor instead. Nathanael hardly felt the shock. I took advantage of it to get the upper hand and put my hands on his hips but didn’t move. Neither did he.
“You plan to continue or what?” he said with sarcasm.
“Don’t steal my line, bastard,” I answered with a smile.
“You know I can’t resist you when you give me such pleasant nicknames.”
He changed our positions again. He completely pulled out and penetrated me again the following second. Automatically, I put my legs around him. His lips pressed against mine to kiss me languidly. In spite of myself, I rocked my hips, wanting more, and we were taken up by the frenzy again. Only more intense this time. His thrusts came one after another, always more powerful and relentless, and my moans grew louder and louder as I put my hand between my thighs to touch myself. The pleasure wasn’t long to overtake me and I came screaming. Nathanael followed suit soon after. He collapsed onto me while making a guttural sound that immediately revived my desire for him. And as usual, a few moments were enough for the fire between us to start up again with renewed vigor.
There was a second time. A third. Then a fourth. And I lost the count after that. We could have kept going again and again until dawn if Nathanael hadn’t lost control. As we were both coming, his teeth suddenly sank into my shoulder. I needed a few moments to realize what he was doing due to the pleasure intoxicating me, but my reaction was immediate when I finally did. I sharply pushed him away from me. So sharply he banged his head against the leg of a piece of furniture. He groaned as he stood up. From my place on the ground, I acknowledged that the sight of his body was mouth-watering. But his act had definitively dispelled any wish I could have had to keep fucking him. I got up too, his look lingering over my body as mine had done on his. I put on my robe. He had to have come to the conclusion that our little interlude was done because he eventually slipped on his jeans.