by Ana Calin
“You imagined me spread-eagled, submitted to your perversities,” I say huskily. “And you wanted me to submit you to mine. I think I’ll enjoy fulfilling that fantasy.”
He just leans against the tiled wall, naked and perfect. The idea of the cold tiles on his naked skin makes me cream harder.
“But before we start, there’s something I need to understand. How could you, Radek?” I just have to say it. “After everything we’ve been through together, after the exquisite emotional connection we had years ago, how could you just stop loving me and fall for someone else? One of your brother’s vampires, no less?”
I speak looking shamelessly at his beautiful body, hurting with every word. How could he take himself away from me?
“This body only exists in this form because of you,” he says quietly. He knows what I’m thinking beyond my words. His eyes are fixed on mine, while I ogle him from head to toes, admiring every inch of him as if it’s my birthright.
I slide down to my knees, closing my eyes and leaning with my hands on his thighs. His marble muscles flex under my palms, my nub throbbing at how strong I feel he is. I stick out my tongue, touching the crest of his cock, feeling its light ridges. He hisses and stiffens, his fingers drilling into the tiles behind him.
“Juliet....” My name is a caress on his tongue. Greedy for him, I close my lips around the base of his crest and slide down, taking him in to the balls, until I feel him deep down my throat. I never thought I’d be able to do this until I met Radek, but I crave this man so badly that I could swallow him whole.
“Oh, Juliet,” he says gruffly, caressing the side of my face, his fingers sliding lovingly under my jaw. I open my eyes up to him. I didn’t expect this. I expected him to want me so violently that he’d fist his hand in my hair, thrusting into my mouth like an animal. He is looking down at me with crazy desire, but there’s also affection, and endless longing that goes beyond sex.
I suck him hard and slow, moving from the tip to the root and then back again, but the moment he begins to move his hips into my mouth, I stop. I come back up to my feet, my fingers still caressing his painfully engorged cock.
I move backwards toward the bathtub, Radek reaching out to me instinctively, wanting more of my touch. I grin at first, enjoying that I have him where I wanted him, but then I notice the scar on his outstretched forearm. Knowing that his wounds heal very fast, that must be new. But Lazarus didn’t manage to hurt him while they fought, so....
“Where did you get that?” I point to the scar, his eyes following.
“Oh, a corkscrew, it’s—” He frowns at it. “It’s nothing.”
“A corkscrew?” I knit my eyebrows in suspicion. “How come? It doesn’t make any sense.” His skin becomes hard as diamond when he fights, he can flex it like muscle. Who in his retinue is so fast as to surprise him with a freaking corkscrew?
“It was a domestic accident.”
“Irina? After last night?”
He snorts as if that’s ridiculous. “No, not Irina. But yes, it was last night.”
“Who did it?”
“Forget about it, it was nothing.”
“Radek, Lazarus just threw a basin at your head, and it didn’t even scratch you. You mean to tell me you had some minor accident in the kitchen last night which left you with that?”
He fixes me with darkness in his eyes.
“Please let it go, Juliet.” There’s pain in his voice. Whatever that scar is hiding, it’s something that torments him. Speaking of torment....
“You know.” I begin to undress. “Forgetting you wasn’t easy. It took two years of grief, of not eating, of crying until I was just too tired to keep doing it. Whenever I’d start to cry, I’d fall asleep.” I climb into the bathtub. “Then the pain started to fade. I found a comfort zone inside of me, sort of. But I was always afraid that, if I saw you again, it would all come back to me.”
“Juliet—” He moves away from the tiled wall, wanting to walk to me, but I stop him holding up my hand.
“No. Stay there. You said I was the boss, I decide what happens between us and how, right?”
He presses his lips together, dropping his hand. “That was the deal.”
He struggles with himself not to come over and stick his cock inside of me, I can tell. His manhood is veined and hard, craving pussy. I know him well enough to know that.
I turn on the water and keep staring at him provokingly, washing my face and smearing the makeup smudge even more than before over my face. The water blurs my sight of him, but the main thing is that he gets a good view of me.
I rinse shower gel all over my body, and spend more time on massaging it into my breasts.
“Please,” he says, “let me do that.”
“No.” I look down at his cock. “But you can do yourself. I want to watch.”
His white hand with those long fingers that hide so much strength wraps around his cock, and he begins stroking himself. By God, the look on his face as he masturbates, watching me spread shower gel over my breasts. I keep one hand on them while the other snakes down between my legs, one finger slipping between my folds.
The sight of him doing himself, eyes on me, stimulates me more than I want him to know. Radek quivers with desire, close to coming at the same time as I do, but I stop him.
“Don’t you dare come until I tell you.”
“Please....”
“No.” I go down to my knees in the bathtub, holding my breasts with one arm, causing them to form a swell that makes him moan and tremble. His hand wraps hard on his cock, not moving anymore, struggling to keep from coming.
I come hard onto my hand, but the sight of him is more responsible for that than my fingers. I stick out my tongue as I come, as if I want his cock on it, pinching my own nipple like a dirty wanton.
“Please, Juliet,” he growls, shaking hard.
“Don’t you dare come, slave.” And I come harder, my cream slipping between my fingers along with the shower gel.
Radek falls to his knees, cracking the tiles, face screwed up as he loses the fight with his own orgasm, his seed squirting out on the tiles.
I grin, satisfied. This is exactly where I wanted him, and the butterflies in my core flutter with anticipation of what I’ll do to him soon.
“I’m afraid I will have to punish you for that,” I say.
He keeps his head down like a slave just used by his mistress, which delights me. On his knees, white and muscular, holding his still throbbing cock, he turns me on in forbidden ways.
I get up, starting to wash the shower gel off me.
“Get out,” I command him. “Get dressed and go to the dining room. Introduce yourself to my sister Isolde if she’s there, and tell her I’ll be with you all shortly.”
He comes slowly to his feet, raising his head just as slowly. As our gazes meet, the dark, intense and dangerous Radek is back. He grins, and I know he’s just as satisfied as I am.
“Yes, milady.”
I grin back, feeling the connection simmering between us.
“Could it be that the deadly Prince of Midnight is, at his core, a submissive?” I inquire in the tone I think a true lady would use.
“Only with you. You awaken a side of me that I never knew existed. And one that I can’t resist.”
“Same here.”
We look into each other’s eyes for another moment, then Radek holds out his arm, offering the scar on his forearm.
“This was for you.”
“What do you mean, for me?”
But he’s already out the door.
CHAPTER VII
Radek
The girl in the dining room, the one who turns around and stares at me with an open mouth, doesn’t look very much like Juliet. At least not the face. She does have the same white-blond hair, long, curly and impressive down her body, but her features are much more like a doll’s. I’m sure with the right makeup and outfits she’d get a rich husband looking for a trophy wife in no time.
But, if she’s anything like her sister, that’s the last thing she’s dreaming of.
She seems to recognize me the moment I walk in.
“God! You are—”
“Yes,” Lazarus says, walking into the dining room from the other hallway. “He is Prince Radek Basarab, the one who broke your sister’s heart five years ago.”
Isolde Jochs looks me up and down with both amazement and a drop of reproof.
“Well, he does look stunning. The pictures really don’t do you justice, Prince.” A line appears between her fine eyebrows as if she’s just realized something. “But why are you wearing Lazarus’ clothes?”
While the black long sleeve shirt is okay, this is the first time in six hundred years that I wear ripped jeans. I might look as awkward as I feel.
“He made an appearance in your sister’s room, I picked a fight, and your sister put the shower on us to calm the spirits. Then I loaned him my clothes, because we became such good friends.” Lazarus fishes a croissant off the neatly arranged table. There’s sarcasm not only in his voice, but also in his seemingly relaxed moves, as if this is all natural.
“But how, why, wait a minute.” Isolde sits down in the chair at the head of the table. She keeps looking at me, then holds out a hand as if asking for an explanation. “What do you want from her after everything you did?”
“Oh, I can tell you all about that, too,” Lazarus continues, taking a comfortable seat and pouring himself coffee. “You already know this Carpathian prince is one of the most powerful supernatural creatures out there. He promised to back us up in the fight against evil—against his own kind—if your sister accepted an affair with him. He doesn’t want an official relationship because he already has one. What he feels for your sister is—” He turns his head to me, knitted eyebrows as if he’s trying to remember my exact words. “What was that again? Sexual obsession, yes?”
“Have you been eavesdropping on Juliet and me?” I give him a calm smile. It’s not like I didn’t know he was there all along. My senses are sharper than his, and he knows it, which is why he glares at me now, chewing nervously. I sense Juliet approaching, and I move to the side, allowing her to walk in.
She’s wearing a black long sleeve top as well, and jogging pants, tight on her fuck-me legs, her rich curls in a ponytail fastened at the top of her head. My cock twitches. I must be mad, wanting her like this all the time. But I know I won’t have her again anytime soon. If I ask her for sex as often as I want to she’ll realize just how fucked-up I am. I think about the corkscrew again. It’s the only thing that will help me bear the pain of being away from her.
“I see you’ve met my famous Carpathian prince, Isolde.” Juliet stops by me, caressing my cheek. Is she aware of what she’s doing to me? I clench my teeth, probably looking aggressive, but I’m merely trying to contain my want for her.
“My secret lover,” she finishes, and I think I hear pleasure behind the sarcasm.
Like a good servant and a gentleman at the same time, I hold the seat at the end of the table for Juliet, opposite to her sister. They both sit across from each other like queens, except that the title suits Juliet the best. There’s something regal about her beauty, there’s power about her, while her sister is a softer kind of pretty.
I can feel the energy between them, the love they have for each other. Like they’re halves of the same person. An emotional flash hits me, of Vlad and me feeling the same way about each other; we were bound by blood and suffering, having put up with serious shit growing up, sharing the pain and rage. When did we become mortal enemies?
I take a seat at the breakfast table with Juliet, her sister, and her best friend Lazarus, saying nothing while she tells them about the orphanage. When Isolde looks at me with questions in her eyes, I set down my cup of coffee and stroke the side of it as I explain.
“As Juliet told you, what I’m looking for is what the Hidden World calls Dracula’s Grail. An elusive something that many people have tried to find throughout history. I believe one of the orphans was the Grail—Dracula’s The One.”
I glance at Lazarus, because I can sense he understands this instinctively. As a vampire, with Dracula practically being his ancestor, he has the Dark Lord’s needs imprinted in his blood.
“Yes,” I continue. “Dracula’s Grail is a person. This specific person’s blood can make Dracula invincible again. He is pretty powerful as it is, but The One’s blood would make him resistant to sunlight and immune to silver. If this happens, nothing will stand in his way. He’ll probably become the most powerful creature on Earth.”
Lazarus leans forward with his elbows on the table, interested.
“Wait a minute. If this person’s blood can make Dracula invincible, it can do the same for all vampires, isn’t it?”
I shake my head. “No. Every vampire has his or her own The One. You too, Lazarus. Your blood has to match your special someone’s blood in a certain way. Most people would call it chemistry. You would feel extremely attracted to your special someone. There is a The One for every single vampire.”
“Like soul mates,” Isolde concludes.
“Yes,” I reply, glancing furtively at Juliet. “Like soul mates.”
I remember how I offered Juliet to Dracula long ago, before I fell in love with her. The only mistake I ever made, and my only regret, though I’d done it for a good reason. Her blood was very close to what would make Dracula invincible, even though it wasn’t exactly The One. She wouldn’t have cured him of his weakness, but she would have strengthened him. Because I already liked her as a person, not understanding my deeper feelings, I wanted her to at least become a vampire and live forever after I’d have enough of her, instead of being consumed by my lust like all the other women before her.
Of course I thought about the sister’s blood as well. But she isn’t Dracula’s The One either. Like Juliet, she only comes close.
“But if Dracula’s The One lived in an orphanage, then she or he was only a child.” Isolde creases her nose. “Are you saying Dracula would feel attracted to them? Like a pedophile?”
“Things are more complicated than Dracula being attracted to a child,” I say in a fatherly tone. “Good or bad, he’s my brother, and I know him well enough to tell you he’s not that much of a monster. Unlike in the stories they tell about him, he never took the blood of a child, only of adults who challenged him one way or another. He never hurt a child in any way. Listen.”
I lean in.
“For centuries, people of the Hidden World have been looking for Dracula’s Grail. But think about it—when they started, Hitler hadn’t even been born. So the child in that orphanage was only a descendant from a long bloodline.” Now that I’ve reached the pivotal point, I think of how to put it. I run my tongue over my lips, pondering.
“All right, here it is. I believe what Hitler’s people were doing in that orphanage was to either investigate The One’s special abilities—the child must have had some intriguing powers—or....” This won’t be easy. “Or they were trying to replicate them.”
“Or both,” Lazarus says. Frowning, his eyes are fixed on a spot to the side as he lets things go through his head. Again, as a carrier of Dracula’s venom, he understands the connections instinctively. “Maybe they wanted to create clones.”
I shake my head. “Clones would have been too dangerous. Even if they had succeeded—which I’m sure they hadn’t, technology hadn’t gotten that far, it’s still problematic today—the risk that Dracula would get one of those clones and make himself invincible was too great. Vlad and I both fought against Nazis back then—they had supernaturals of their own. We opposed the ideology, set our conflicts aside, and worked together during that time. So if the Nazis discovered The One, they would have looked for a way to use him or her against Dracula. I think they might have used the blood to produce stronger soldiers, or tried to find a way to use it against him, which is exactly what I intend to do now.”
Lazarus’s eyes fix on me. He
knows I’ve reached the second pivotal point.
“If I manage to study the chemistry of The One’s blood, I might be able to reverse its effect in such a way that, instead of making him invincible, it would annihilate his powers, or even kill him.” The idea stings for a moment. In the end, Vlad is my brother. But it has to be done. If he becomes invincible, the entire world will be in danger from him.
“Wait a minute,” Lazarus says. “You could do this differently. You’re a master of dimensions, right? You can basically travel through time. Can’t you just....” He makes a gesture with his hand, signaling a general, ‘go back and do what must be done.’
“It doesn’t work like that. I can travel to places where I’ve already been, and interact with people I interacted with before. I’m not a time traveler per se, dimensions work a bit differently, even if I can bend time. But if I come into contact with this person in some other way, like touch their blood, feel their energy, maybe see their face, then maybe I can interact with them in the past. Or trace their relatives to the present. Or, if we get a sample of their blood, I could have one of my people reconstruct their genetic makeup.”
“Wow, technology has advanced that much?” Isolde says.
“Yes, but it’s expensive, and even if it weren’t, people who master it wouldn’t just use it for petty business, only when it’s of utmost importance.”
“Well, this sure seems a case of utmost importance to me,” Lazarus says with a grave expression. “Stopping Dracula from taking over the world is no minor business, I should say.”
Isolde looks at our faces like a stricken child. “Do you hear yourself, Lazarus? You sounded like a character in a cheesy vampire movie.”
“Those cheesy vampire movies express a reality more real than what we live every day, sister, I assure you,” Juliet says, then turns her attention to me. “All right. Like I said, I—we—want to be part of all this. So why don’t you tell us about how you planned to do this?”
“Well, Dracula thinks I’m doing all this in his favor, otherwise he would interfere.” I leave out the part with Dracula threatening Juliet’s life if I don’t help him. “I planned to buy the orphanage in order to work in it undisturbed. I would have gone in there with my people, searched the place, found traces of blood. Vampires are very useful at tracing even very old blood, for example.”