by Eve Newton
He grabs my hand as I grab my briefcase and we head to the elevators. As soon as we hit reception, we wave to Giulia.
He whispers, “Close your eyes.”
I do and he Teleports us out. We arrive at our mystery destination in under a second, but he asks me to keep my eyes closed a bit longer. I feel that I’m somewhere familiar, and it hits me like a bolt of lightning exactly where I am before he says, “Open your eyes.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
I open my eyes to find I’m standing in the massive stone floored Entrance Hall of Castello Ponte Sull’acqua.
I turn my eyes to him in delight. “You brought me here,” I exclaim.
“I have wanted you to come for a long time, Aefre. I was under the impression you didn’t want to return,” he says sadly.
“Why?” I ask, genuinely curious as to his reasons
“I will answer that question later, I promise. Right now, I want you to relax.” He takes my briefcase from me, effectively cutting me off from my phone as well as he places it on the table in the middle of the Hall.
“Follow me.” He leads me upstairs and I take in all the changes he has made since the last time I was here in 1773. I can’t believe it has been so long since I was here. Obviously, everything has been reconstructed and redecorated several times since he very first acquired this castle, but now there is electricity and plumbing and even though it looks almost exactly the same, the modernization is quite clear. Billions of dollars have been piled into this place over the centuries, but it is worth every cent. I look around in wonder and he is delighted at my response.
“It feels so good to be back here,” I say happily. “It almost looks exactly the same.”
“I tried to keep it as close to the original as possible,” he says. We are on the second floor now and I get lost in the memories of us being here together and happy as he leads me down the corridor. He opens a door and I step into a room that has been untouched by time. I gasp. My old room. “This I wanted to keep exactly as it was.”
Tears spring to my eyes as I see everything as it was hundreds of years ago. Worn and faded, but well kept.
“Oh, Constantine,” I say. “It’s…why did you keep it like this?”
“Because it was some place I could come, to be reminded of you,” he says simply.
Trying to sort out all the thoughts racing through my head, I know something else is going on here. I just can’t place it. I’m reminded again of his conversation with Cole and wonder if that has something to do with it.
“CK…”
“Don’t say anything. Not yet.”
He pulls me out of the room, and we head back down the corridor the way we came. I see that the wing on the right side has been sectioned off. “Are you rebuilding there?” I point at it and his face hardens. “No. I don’t go down there anymore.” Surprised by his adamant tone, I let it drop.
He is leading me to his bedroom now and I can’t wait to get into it and see what it looks like now. Pushing the door open, it still looks the same apart from the modernization and the inclusion of a bathroom, taking out a large chunk of the room I remember.
So many happy memories here. I pull away from him and spin in a circle, arms stretched wide and a big grin on my face. “I always did love this room.”
“So did I when you were in it,” he says, watching me, expression unreadable.
“Thank you. Thank you for bringing me here again.”
“I want you, Aefre. Let me have you any way I want. For as long as I want,” he murmurs suddenly.
My breath catches in my throat and I manage to get out, “Do you even have to ask?”
He swoops in on me, pulling me close, kissing me, his hands in my hair and I lose myself completely. He unbuttons my shirt with deft fingers, and he pushes it off my shoulders, his fingers finding my nipples. He pushes me towards the massive four-poster bed, his hands now unzipping my skirt and pushing it over my hips. I get rid of his shirt and tie as quickly as I can and I unbuckle his belt, which he pulls from his pants and throws on the bed. Shedding him of the remains of his clothes, I kick my shoes off, and he holds me to him as I lose a few inches in height.
He pulls away. “Oh, Aefre. Do you want me to punish you now?” he murmurs wickedly, pushing my hair out of my eyes.
I shiver and whisper, “Yes. I am defiant and frustrating, and I drive you crazy. I need to be punished.” I smirk at him and he laughs.
“Oh, you are all of those things and so much more.” He trails his hand down my left arm and grabs my hand. Pulling on my wedding and engagement rings, he tugs them off my finger and places them on the bedside table. “There’s no place for these here,” he says gruffly. I accept his terms for the moment as he kisses my finger where they used to be. “Turn around.” I do as I’m told, and he bends me over, placing my hands on the edge of the bed. He sighs. “I want more than anything to take that belt and beat some sense into you, but I just can’t, Aefre,” he says as if he can’t quite believe it.
“Mellowed with age have you, my sire?”
He snorts at my question. “Oh no, my love. I still have my…proclivities.”
“Well, as long as I don’t come across any Pets in the dungeons,” I say wryly, straightening up and turning back around.
He freezes.
Oh, fuck. There are Pets in the dungeons.
He quickly recovers his composure and grabs a fistful of my hair to pull me into a kiss to distract me. It works, as he knew it would and I forget all about the dungeons.
“Don’t be ridiculous. I can’t punish you because I am just so in love with you, I can’t bear to hurt you,” he murmurs.
His declaration of love, while not a complete surprise after my eavesdropping, is completely unexpected. I didn’t think I would hear him say it. At least not now. And certainly not in the way he said it.
He is staring at me, expecting a response of some kind, but I just have no idea what to say.
“Constantine. I…why now?” I ask in desperation.
“I have always been in love with you, Aefre. You have made it clear that you don’t love me in that way anymore. I tried for so many years to push it away, but these last few weeks, seeing you become who you were meant to be, in contrast to the girl I met, I can’t deny my feelings anymore. I won’t,” he says vehemently.
Stunned into silence by his sincerity and honesty, I shake my head to clear it. “I’m married,” I blurt out. “And not just to anyone, but to a man I turned to be with him because I love him, because he loves me…and Devon…”
He closes his eyes. “I know. The timing of this couldn’t be worse,” he says sardonically. “But I’m willing to wait for you. If you are willing to let us share you, only you, I will wait.”
Gaining now some of the information into his conversation with Cole, I probe further wanting the whole truth out of him. “Wait?”
“Do you love me, Aefre? Are you in love with me?” he asks instead.
“Yes,” I don’t hesitate to say. “I, too, have always been in love with you. I just couldn’t stand being hurt by you again. I had to force myself to move on and then…”
“And then you met Devon and then Fraser and everything went to Hell in a hand basket. I get it, my love. I do. Would you have me now if you weren’t already taken?” he asks, quietly leaning his forehead on mine.
“In a heartbeat,” I whisper, and he breathes a sigh of relief.
“Then I will wait. I will respect your marriage to Cole, as long as I get you these two days to myself. As soon as he leaves you, or you see fit to leave him. A hundred years from now, two hundred, it doesn’t matter. I will wait. I want you. I want to marry you,” he says huskily.
“For real this time?” I half joke as the tears start to well up.
He laughs and says, “Yes, for real this time. And to show you I mean it…” He leans over to the bedside table and opens the drawer. He pulls out a small box and my heart nearly stops. He opens it and I have to sit on
the bed as my knees give out. Putting my hand to my mouth, I am speechless. He drops to his knees. “It’s not an engagement ring,” he says. “Even I have more sense than that. Think of it as a promise to me, that you will be my wife. One day. In return, I will continue to want only you, my sweet.”
I stare at him, unable to form words.
“Accept the ring and wear it on your right hand if you can make this promise to me. But let me make this perfectly clear, Aefre, if you don’t accept it, then I will fight for you. I will fight for you, and I will rip your marriage apart at the seams to win you and you know that I can. One way or the other, I will make you mine. How I go about it is up to you.”
I smile inwardly. Even in the face of declarations of epic love, he has to show his dominance. I knew all along that I would accept it. It is all I ever wanted from him. I just wanted to see how much he would tell me if I stayed silent.
“I accept it,” I say with a shy smile and he returns my smile with that heart stopping made-just-for-me smile. He slips it onto my finger, a nine-carat square cut blue diamond with two emerald-cut clear diamonds nestled either side in a platinum setting. Not usually one to shower anyone with gifts, he has dropped about ten mil on jewelry for me in the last week. Oh yes, a girl is definitely used to this now.
With my three men by my side, I know that whatever comes next, I’ll be ready for it.
EPILOGUE
Pevensey, England, 1066 – Aefre
I learned of my sire’s proclivities soon after I met Eloise and she mentioned it. I didn’t understand what she meant, and it was playing on my mind, so I planned to asked him. He was furious with me for stowing away on William’s ship and putting myself in danger, but he accepted it when I told him I couldn’t bear to be apart from him and showed him how happy I could make him by being around. William was more than delighted to have me aboard, much to Constantine’s ire, although he told me in no uncertain terms to stay aboard once we reached the coast. Which I didn’t.
After pleasing my sire that night, I asked him about those proclivities as I lay on top of him.
He studied me closely for a few moments before he said, “It is nothing for you to worry about, my love.”
“Tell me. I want to know,” I demanded.
“Always so curious.” He smiled and kissed me to distract me, but I was burning with curiosity about something that horrible woman knew that I didn’t, about my sire, my love.
Pulling away, I said, “Constantine, tell me. What did she mean?”
He sighed, “Oh, Aefre, you are not ready to hear about such things.”
“I am,” I insisted. “I want to know everything about you.”
“I like certain things,” he said eventually. “From the women I am with.”
I started at the use of the plural. “Women?” I choked out.
He rubbed his face with his hand. “Yes, Aefre. I have told you about a Vampire’s nature.”
I flinched, yes, he has told me, but I didn’t like hearing about it.
“What things?” I whispered.
“I like to be in complete control of them. They are like slaves,” he said then, I thought to shock me.
“Slaves?”
“Yes, slaves. To do with as I wish, when I wish, only as I wish. To do with as I please.”
I must have looked shocked as he closed his eyes briefly. “I told you, you weren’t ready to hear of this.”
“You hurt them?” I asked, horrified.
“Sometimes, yes.”
“You beat them?”
“Yes,” he said shortly, “but not in the way you think, my love. It is all a game.”
“A game?”
“Aefre, that man who does those things, is the worst part of me. I have seen and done things, evil things. You have changed me, Aefre, you have made me see that life can be bright again. I am a better man for being with you. But I…I cannot change this,” he said.
“Do you want to do those things to me?” I asked, willing to do anything for him, even something as horrifying as letting him beat me.
He looked shocked and hurt that I should ask him such a thing. “No, Aefre! No, my love. I would never inflict any pain on you. I love you. Those women mean nothing to me, they are like Pets, chained up in the dungeon. You are the light of life. My sweet Aefre. The girl who saved me from walking this Earth in despair. I know when I look into your eyes, that the reason I became what I am, is so that I could live long enough to meet you.” After hearing those words, I forgot everything he said about the Pets in the dungeons.
I kissed him deeply and with such longing, which he returned before he pulled my hips down onto him and he took me again and again until I was spent and I fell asleep in his arms.
The End
Find out what happens with Liv and her lovers in the next book, Revelations
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REVELATIONS: THE FOREVER SERIES, BOOK 3
Revelations
The Forever Series, Book 3
BY EVE NEWTON
THIRD EDITION
Copyright © Eve Newton, 2012
Copyright © Eve Newton, 2017
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.
PROLOGUE
Nagyvárad, Kingdom of Hungary, 1250 - Lucretia
L ater that night there was a loud, insistent banging on the front doors that brought me out of the dungeons in a temper at being disturbed. Feeling a familiar tingle down my neck, I grinned cruelly as I opened the door expecting my sire’s return. Instead of Constantine, however, it was a stranger. Evil, pure black eyes met mine from a very tall Vampire with pitch black hair and the palest skin I had ever seen.
“Hello, Sister. How I have been dying to meet you,” he said.
Sister?
“Who are you?” I snapped.
“Aren’t you going to invite me in?” he inquired politely.
“Who are you?” I asked again. “Do I know you?” I did not recognize him, but the tingle down my neck said otherwise.
“I am Lance,” he said, holding out his hand. “Your brother.”
I took his hand suspiciously. “I don’t have a brother,” I said to him as though he had lost his mind.
“Yes, you do, Lucretia, or should I call you Aefre?” he replied.
I remained silent.
He sighed. “I am wounded that our father never told you about me. I know all about you.” His evil eyes glinted as he said that.
“Father? What are you talking about?” I asked, getting angry with this man.
I could see he was getting annoyed with me, but I was completely at a loss as to what he was saying.
“Our sire, Constantine,” he snapped. The realization dawned on me that this Vampire was another one of his charges.
Curious now, I stared at him in wonder. I had never met another of Constantine’s charges before. Brother. I had a brother.
“No, he hasn’t mentioned you, but then today is the first time I have seen him in over a hundred years. When did he turn you?” I asked eagerly.
I expected him to say sometime in the time after I left Tuscany in 1112, but he surprised me by saying, “350 BC. After Rome defeated the Gaul’s.”
I stared at him, mouth agape. I quickly did the math: that makes him one thousand, five hundred and ninety-nine years old.
He smiled slowly, registering my surprise. “Have I taken you by surprise, Sister?” he queried.
Recovering my composure, I shook my head and stepped back to invite him in.
He grabbed my arm in a vice-like grip that I was unable to get out of and said, “On second tho
ught, I think we will skip this part and you can come straight home with me.”
“Home with you?” I asked, only slightly alarmed. “I do not want to leave here.”
“Back to my castle. In Transylvania. I think it is time we got to know each other better.” His voice was like ice and a ripple of fear went through me.
He dragged me along to his waiting carriage, tightening his grip on me as I squirmed to get away.
“I don’t want to go with you,” I told him, but he was not listening.
“Father was right about you, pretty and with fire, he’d said. I think I am going to have a wonderful time with you. I do so hope that you will enjoy my company, Lucretia. Things will be better for you if you do.” He stroked my face. I felt a chill go through me as his black eyes grew wider and he murmured something in a language I had never heard before. I felt myself getting sleepy. I tried to keep my eyes open, but I could not. I drifted off, with his arm around me as he stroked my hair.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
Tuscany, Italy, 2012 – Liv/Aefre
L istening to CK do business on his phone is getting boring. I pluck the cigarette out of his hand and wander over to the dresser to pull on a black satin robe. My hand is feeling bare of my wedding rings. I frown and walk over to get them from the bedside table. I pick them up and replace them. I can’t help but admire the one that CK has given me in the process. It is absolutely priceless, a pure work of art and very ostentatious. I love it. But even if it had been a simple brass ring, I would still cherish it. It’s all I ever wanted from him and he decides that now is the best time to give it to me. I huff in exasperation. He is such a…man!
I stub out the cigarette and wander off, leaving him to his work. I want to have another look at my old bedroom. I can’t believe he left it exactly as I had. I push the door open and walk into the gloom, the heavy drapes still pulled over the windows. I pull one back an inch and peer through the dingy glass. The view is as breathtaking as ever, but it has changed. Quite a bit, I note with surprise.