by Eve Newton
“Yes,” she says quickly.
“Good.” I hold my hand out and several come up to help me out of the tub. I grab Cole’s and he smiles shyly at me as I alight gracefully. “Now if you wouldn’t mind, my husband,” I emphasize these words, needing to know I can say them now, “and I would like to be alone.”
“Aefre,” CK says to me. “We need to talk at some point. Very soon.”
“When I am ready, I will come and find you.”
He narrows his eyes at me, but I stand my ground. I am done being a pushover. Not even for him.
“Fine,” he says dismissively, and I want to smack him. Even now he has the capacity to make me feel subordinate and weak.
“Dawn?”
“Yes, Liv?” she says without hesitation.
“I have not forgotten our lessons. If you wish to continue, I will make time tomorrow before we head back to Toronto.”
“Yes, please,” she says eagerly. “I have been practicing what you have already taught me. I hope that you will be happy with me.”
I blink at those very submissive words but there again she is human, and I have clearly shown here tonight that I am not. “Très bien,” I say to her with a slight case of déjà vu as Sebastian said that to me earlier, but I don’t remember why. I cast a quick glance at him, but he has his impassive face in place and then I forget about it. It doesn’t really matter.
“Fine. You all may go,” I say in as superior a tone as I can muster but get nowhere near my sire’s effortless dismissal.
With varying degrees of annoyance, they all do leave and then it is just me and Cole.
“Hey,” he says to me with that half smile I love.
“Hey,” I say back, relaxing.
“You are pretty badass. You think we don’t respect you, but you are wrong.”
“I’m not so sure. But I don’t want to talk or think about that. I promised you a while ago that I would show you my safe room. I would like to do that now, if you want?” I hear the question in my voice, and I clear my throat. “I will show it to you now,” I say decisively, and he hides his smile behind his hand.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” he bows at me and I roll my eyes. He is making fun of me, but I will allow it…just this once.
I step into my closet and turn right. I disable the security and step inside.
“Hey, I have a question,” Cole says. “You have a biometric scanner and wards on here. How was it that Constantine was able to come here to get my ring?”
“His print is also in the scanner.”
“Oh. And yet, you haven’t added mine?”
“Cole. He is my sire. I trust him. If it weren’t for him, we would have had to wait until we got home for me to give it to you.”
“Do you trust me? I mean really trust me?”
“Of course. You are my husband. I love you. Please, can we not argue about this and I can show you the things that mean the most to me, that I have saved through the centuries, hard times and good times?”
“Yes, of course. I didn’t really mean anything by it. I’m sorry. I have been dying to see what else you have in here,” he says with a small smile.
“Then let me show you.” I lead him into the room that is the same size as my bathroom. Drawers and cupboards fill every wall, along with a few artifacts adorning the walls in the few open spots.
“Where will you start?” he asks, gazing at the portrait of me.
“Here.” I pull open a cupboard and take out a beautiful sword. Crafted to perfection and as sharp today as it was back then. Handmade to fit his towering height. “This is Fraser’s sword,” I say as I hand it to him shyly. His eyes land on mine in surprise. He hesitantly takes it from me, “You don’t mind?”
I shake my head. “No. Not for you.”
He looks at me adoringly and then admires the hilt. “Shit. This is beautiful. And, Christ, it’s heavy.” He jiggles it in his hand. “How did he manage it, being human?” I think it is more of a rhetorical question, so I don’t answer, until he looks at me actually expecting an answer.
“Skill and strength. And as you know he was…” I put my hands up high in the air.
“Large,” Cole says with a small smile.
I nod.
He hands it back to me and I return it to its rightful place. “Have a look. Anything that takes your interest I will tell you about.”
He points straight away to the mace on the wall and I smile. “The fall of Constantinople in 1453.”
“I think there is more to that story,” he says in question.
“If you are asking if it was founded by my sire, then yes. It was his city for a time until he had to disappear and move on.”
“That’s why you went to defend it?”
“Yes. CK, Dmitri, and I were there. Unfortunately, despite our obvious advantages, we were but three out of many and the defenses didn’t hold.”
“Wow,” he says, impressed. I leave him to have a poke about as I watch him admiring my belongings. He falls upon the Fabergé egg almost instantly and holds it up. “This one?”
“Yes.”
“It’s gorgeous. Why don’t you have it displayed somewhere?”
“It belongs in here, with everything else,” I say simply.
He nods and moves on, poking through all the drawers until he happens upon those that I knew he would. He stops and stares. “Your wedding rings. Yours and Frasers,” he says as he continues to just stare at them.
“Yes,” I say again. He breathes in deeply, accepting it.
“What went here?” he taps the small empty space next to them.
I step closer and take his left hand. I twirl his ring and he grins. “This. This was here, waiting for you,” I say quietly. He drops a light kiss to my lips and continues his perusal.
“What’s this?” he asks, picking up a small fist-sized rock and turning it around.
“A rock,” I say with a serious face.
“So I can see. What of?”
“A bell tower.”
“Where?”
“London.”
“Liv. Why are you being evasive? You said anything I wanted to know about you would tell me.”
“It is from the bell tower where CK and I first used to meet. He gave it to me after I woke up.”
“Oh,” he says.
“It’s a part of my history.”
“I know. I wish that I’d known you then.”
“You know me now.” I take his hand and lead him over to a set of drawers on the opposite wall. I gesture for him to open it and he does. He stares into the drawer and laughs. “Hardly seems to fit in with the general theme of the room.”
“The general theme of the room is items that mean enough to me for me to keep.”
He picks up the receipt from our first dinner date and fingers it. “I like that you kept it. I still have something you gave me,” he says and pulls out his wallet. He hands me the business card I gave him all those months ago. I giggle and place it next to the receipt.
He smiles. “Perfect,” he murmurs.
“You know. I wasn’t planning on attending that night. Devon dragged me at the last minute.”
“Remind me to thank him tomorrow,” Cole says with a laugh but then sobers. “God. I can’t imagine what it would be like if I hadn’t met you. I can’t think of not being with you. Not being a part of your world.”
“Our world,” I correct him. “But me either. If I hadn’t met you, things would have turned out so differently.”
“No kidding,” he says. “Sometimes I wonder if you would have been better off.”
“What?” I say incredulously. “Cole. Don’t say that. Yes, things have been mad since we got together but I would never, ever change any of it.”
He picks up the silver circlet that I wore to our wedding and he twirls it. “This is in the wrong place,” he says absently.
“No, it is where it should be.”
“That was the second time you wore it. It should in the d
rawer where you got it from that day.”
“No. It is exactly where I want it. A perfect circle that never ends, just like my love for you.” It’s corny but has the desired effect as he smiles at me.
“I want to add more to that. Take me to the hotel in Toronto.”
“What, now?”
“Yes, now.” He takes my hand and I Astral us to the bedroom at the Shangri-La, hoping and praying that housekeeping isn’t knocking about. Fortunately, it is empty. He lets go of my hand and crosses to the bedside cabinet. There is a photo of the two of us in a beautiful silver frame that is new. It was taken the night we went downstairs at the hotel bar last week by, I assume, a fan of Cole’s.
“This is kind of creepy, but it was left for me at Reception,” he says as he sees me notice it. “It’s a nice photo, seemed a waste to trash it.”
I chuckle. “Yes, it definitely falls into the creepy section, but I agree, it is a nice photo. This is what you wanted to bring?”
He shakes his head. “No. This.” He opens the drawer and takes out a little trinket I bought at Casa Loma. He hands it to me. “As dates go, I think it was pretty special. Hunter issues aside.”
“Yes, it was. I enjoyed it. It was…normal.”
“Normal isn’t what I was hoping you would say,” he says dryly.
“Normal is good!” I say emphatically. “Christ knows we have so much abnormal.”
“That is true,” he admits. “Will you put it in your drawer?”
“Our drawer. And yes.” I take his hand and Astral us back to the safe room. I hand it back to him. “You do it.”
He places the key ring carefully next to the receipt and business card. “We need to do more interesting things,” he muses, and I burst out laughing.
“Are you saying I’m not interesting?” To which he bursts out laughing.
“Christ, Liv. I’d prefer it if you were a bit less interesting.”
“I can’t help you there, I’m afraid.”
“I just meant that the things we do together should be more interesting. More, I don’t know… this,” he gestures expansively around the room.
“All in good time, my love.”
He closes the drawer and opens the one underneath just as something to do. It is jam packed with items. He spots a frayed blue ribbon and stares at it.
“I guess this is the Devon drawer,” he says.
I shrug, what can I say?
“This is what I am talking about.”
“Cole, Devon and I have half a millennium of memories. Our drawer will be packed out too in five hundred years. In fact, we will have two drawers,” I say, sliding my fingers into his jeans pocket to pull him closer to me.
“Two drawers? I like the sound of that, but I love the sound of you saying that we will still be together in five hundred years.”
“Of course, we will. We will always be connected as Devon and I are. More so because of our Holy union,” I say before I realize that he misinterpreted my earlier statement. Ah, crap on toast, I need a muzzle, I tell you. He steps back from me. “I see,” he says, which always means he is not happy with me.
“Cole,” I start, but he stops me with a finger to my lips.
“Don’t,” he says. “Whatever it is you want to say, just don’t.” He heaves a big sigh. “Just answer me this. How come you and Devon never got married? I mean it was your plan to begin with, why did you never follow through?”
I frown at him. I’m not happy with this line of questioning. I remember what I said to Devon right after he fed Jess his blood and that we still haven’t discussed. We are heading into dodgy territory here now and I don’t want to talk about it with Cole. Certainly, not before I have spoken with Devon about what I said.
“Does it matter?” I ask instead.
“Yes.”
I stay silent.
“The fact that you aren’t sharing makes it matter even more now.”
“I can’t honestly say,” I offer up eventually. “Yes, we had planned to be married but it kind of got lost in the ensuing events.”
“What ensuing events?”
Now, this I don’t mind discussing as it directs the questions away from the marriage that never happened.
“The murderous rampage we embarked upon.”
He blinks at me. “I remember you telling me about that in Monaco. It doesn’t sound like you to encourage it and it doesn’t sound like him to do it,” he says sadly. “So much history, so much time I didn’t have with you.”
“You wouldn’t have wanted me back then,” I say seriously.
“Perhaps,” he says and takes my hand. He leads us out of the room, and I close the door. “What I don’t get is you call the time after you left Constantine and before Lance took you as your ‘Evil Years.’ Isn’t a murderous rampage considered evil?”
Well, yes, obviously.
“And another thing,” he says before I can answer, “How is it that after what happened to you, you were still happy to kill?”
Wow. He is digging deep here. I lead him to our bed and sit, adjusting the towel I’m still wearing. I look down with a grimace and change into something a little less uncomfortable. Pleased with my choice, Cole’s eyes set ablaze as he stares at me, hair dry and straight, and a sexy black, lacy Victoria’s Secret baby doll. “You can try to distract me, but it won’t work,” he says but kisses me anyway, his hand slipping inside and onto my breast. He tweaks my nipple and pulls away with flashing eyes. “Spill, O’Dell.”
I laugh out loud in delight that he last named me, with our shared last name. “I love you.”
“I love you,” he says and waits.
“During my ‘Evil Years’ I was vicious and unfeeling. I tortured people for my own amusement.” I dive in at the deep end, “I hurt and killed so many people, I truly believe that I got what I deserved when Lance took me.”
“No, Liv, don’t say that,” he says desperately, taking my hands.
“Cole, I will spare you the gory details, but I was a terrible, terrible person. Look at what I did to Gustav.”
“You weren’t the one who trapped him in there.”
“No, I was just the one who turned him and locked him in a dungeon to begin with. Don’t defend my actions, Cole. You have asked me a question and I am trying to answer it.”
“Sorry,” he mumbles.
“I was evil. Plain and simple. I felt nothing except hatred and contempt. After Lance took me, he effectively got rid of all those feelings. He got rid of everything. I felt nothing but pain, physical pain. When CK rescued me, I had been starved of human blood for twelve years. I drained the human that was put in front of me and killed him. It made me ill, both in that I wasn’t used to human blood, only Vampire blood, and that I had killed him. I went another fifteen years not drinking from humans. When I came back, I was so weak, CK force-fed me human blood to try and regain my strength.”
“He force-fed you?” he asks in disbelief.
“It isn’t as bad as it sounds. Stop interrupting,” I admonish him gently. “After a while, I was used to it again. Needed it to thrive. I was getting stronger the more I continued to drink. I didn’t ever want to be weak again. It was a hundred years or so before I killed someone again. An accidental draining. But it didn’t feel wrong. I was strong, in control and happy. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t kill every time I fed, but every now again the urge took over.” I pause and wander over to get myself a drink, bringing one back for Cole as well.
“I know you won’t understand this, but it was considered acceptable back then to hunt and kill. We are predators. That hasn’t changed. We have just made a conscious choice to change, adapt. Blend in. When Devon woke, he was hungry, really hungry, and he wanted to kill. I encouraged him because I wanted to show him what he was. He was quite pious about the whole thing before I turned him,” I say, remembering his disapproval. “I wanted to see him, I wanted him to experience the Hunt and kill. I wanted to teach him everything and he needed to know it wa
s a choice. I didn’t want to stop him from being who he wanted to be. As soon as the cravings wore off, so did the rampaging. We killed, a lot, over the next few hundred years but never as part of a spree. So yes, a murderous rampage is wrong, but it wasn’t even close to what I did.”
He is looking at me intently. “Why have you never wanted me to do that, experience the Hunt and kill?” he asks, and I actually spit out the wine I had in my mouth in shock.
“I didn’t want that for you. It’s different now, it isn’t acceptable. We are all different now and you…” I take his face in my hands as I climb onto his lap. “You, my wonderful husband. It’s not who you are.”
“Maybe it is,” he says defiantly. “How do you know? I told you last week that I get that urge.”
“Do you want to go and hunt a person down and kill them by draining them dry?” I ask him.
“Maybe,” he says petulantly. “But the same consideration would be nice. You are not being an equal-opportunities sire,” he smiles softly at me.
“Oh, am I not? Bad me,” I say wickedly. “I should be punished.”
“Yes, I think you should,” he murmurs before he kisses me, pushing his hands up my thighs to my backside. “I’m going to enjoy this,” he says with a devilish grin as he whisks me off his lap, bending me over the bed. I know what is coming and brace myself for it as he gives me a resounding slap to my rear that hurts like a bitch. Didn’t hold back much there, did you? I yelp in surprise as he does it again and again. He rubs his hand gently over the spot and then drops to his knees to kiss me there.
“You are bold for a charge,” I say, standing upright and facing him. “You get away with that because you are my husband.”
He stands as well. “Is that right?” he says, looking down at me from his six feet. “What else can I get away with?”
“More than most,” I say as I pull his mouth to mine.