by Ana Calin
I’m left with no choice but suck him hard, stopping when I feel him throb and close to coming, but soon pleasure clouds my head, making me drop him from my mouth and moan hard, my eyes screwed shut, my mouth open.
Radek pushes one, then two fingers inside my butt, while he licks me like a man with a fetish, his moans muffled. His manhood throbs in my grip, which tightens on him more and more with the galloping orgasm that shoots from inside of me right on Radek’s face, making me convulse like a possessed woman, both of us moaning and snarling in a dance of the dirtiest but also the deepest intimacy possible.
Unable to control himself anymore, Radek picks me up and turns me around, placing me on my belly on the couch, my hands gripping to the back of it, my knees on the floor. He grabs one of my butt cheeks and squeezes, hissing. I’m soft and moldable in his hands, spent from the pleasure, my legs weak and trembling.
I see his arm with the rolled up sleeve go above my head to grab the back of the couch between my hands, the scars on his forearm that he’s caused himself showing. My pussy throbs with hunger and need at the sight of them—this man has hurt himself because he desired me so much he couldn’t bear it.
“I want you so bad, my lady,” Radek says in my ear, his breath on the side of my face, the heat of his body against my back. He slaps his wet cock on my butt. “Will you let me in?”
“Oh, Radek, fuck me now,” I cry.
He growls, and dips himself inside of me, his big manhood pushing my walls apart. He doesn’t stop when I whimper, but pushes harder, my hands clawing into the couch. My hair bounces sweaty around my head as Radek pounds me harder and harder, then pulls out and pushes himself inside my ass, emptying his seed and crying out my name.
He bends exhausted over me, breathing hard and brushing my hair away, kissing my nape with passion while he extracts himself from inside me.
“I’m obsessed with you,” he says in my ear, twisting his fist in my hair and tugging gently. “I can’t be away from you ever again, Juliet. I need you to marry me, soon, in front of God.”
I turn my face to him and open my mouth to let him kiss me deeply.
Radek
NEVER IN SIX HUNDRED years have I felt this relaxed bliss. I’m lying in a bathtub at the dead Nazi’s villa, naked and free, my arms spread on the edges of the tub, Juliet’s naked body resting on mine. We’re in the room next to Ruxandra’s, because Juliet wanted to be close enough to hear her if she wakes up. She’s been sleeping for hours.
“Where are we going to live?” she inquires, her fingers stroking my thighs under the water.
“We should probably move around. We’ll take a new last name because Vlad surely will track down Basarab, Jochs, even Hess.”
“I like Len. It was my favorite teacher’s last name,” she says dreamily, oblivious to how happy it makes me just to hear her voice and feel the light strokes of her fingertips on my thighs under the water.
“Then that’s what it’ll be.”
“How about Rux?” she says after a pause. “Does she get to keep her first name?”
I shrug. “I would say so. Vlad doesn’t know who the Grail is, maybe he even still thinks it’s a what, an object. Everything we talked about, I went discovering it as we went along, and kept most of it to myself. I made sure Irina got as little information as possible.”
Juliet pauses again, and I feel she’s lost in thoughts of the future.
“What bothers you?” I whisper, cupping her breasts under the water. I want to make her feel safe and happy. I want to keep my erection in check, give us some room for the soul. But it doesn’t work, and my cock grows big and hard, pushing between her buttocks.
I try to pull back against the enamel tub, feeling ashamed of myself, but Juliet wriggles herself into me. She cups my hand over her breast, pressing it to herself, her beloved flesh filling my palm, putting such a sensation in my groin that my eyelids flutter. This feeling inside is worth dying for, and thinking that I’ll have it forever makes my brain spin with pleasure.
“I’m a bit worried about taking on such responsibility towards Rux, to be completely honest with you,” she says sweetly. “Our plan, it includes us becoming—” She pauses like she respects the word too much to just say it. “Parents. It includes me becoming a mother.”
She shudders, her hand pressing against mine, and her other hand gripping my thigh harder, as though she’s deriving moral support from my closeness. I love the feeling.
Lying like this on my body, her white-blond curls spread over my chest, their tips snaking on the water surface, she drills deep into my heart. I want to be her everything, I want to be inside her every thought and every breath. But will she be able to put up with my permanent, uninterrupted attention for the rest of her life?
“The only man that I ever truly loved, the only man I advanced enough in a relationship with to think about marriage was you,” she continues calmly. “And yet I only thought about us having children in grief after our separation, wishing I would have trapped you with one. But we hadn’t—”
She stops abruptly like she just realized something. She turns to face me, disturbing the water, her weight lifting off my chest, leaving me cold and uncomfortable in a way beyond the physical. “You had turned cold to me long before that night when you went to see your brother Dracula. Now you tell me you made the decision of leaving me that night, but it had been longer that—”
“I was just trying to keep my hands off of you before the wedding,” I admit. “I wasn’t growing cold, I wanted our wedding night to be special. To you. It would have been special to me anyway, because....” I need to find the right way to put this, but she needs to know. “My love for you is obsessive and possessive, Juliet, I could never get enough of you. That wasn’t different back then. But you, I was afraid you might grow tired of me before we even came to our wedding night. I was afraid of losing you.”
She snorts as if I just said something preposterous, cupping my face. “I could never grow tired of you, Radek.” Her eyes fill with tears, and I know they’re tears of joy and love. Her irises move left and right as they’re reading into mine. “I’ve loved you for so long, and so much that it hurts. I managed to live without you only because I thought you didn’t feel the same way about me, it’s the only thing that gave me strength. The anger, the frustration, they fuelled me in my career, but deep down—”
A shadow creeps over the room, interrupting Juliet. Still holding my face between her hands she looks up as the lights flicker, as if a bad spirit has just infiltrated the walls. I scoop her up, the speed causing the water from the tub to splash onto the tiled floor, but in an instant I have her wrapped up in a blanket.
Pulling my pants on I hurry to Ruxandra’s room to find the little girl trembling in a corner, fisting her white dress, her big scary black eyes fixed on a spot.
“What’s happening?” Juliet shrieks behind me, frightened. “Did they find us?”
“I don’t think anyone can find us here,” I say calmly, crouching down, careful not to disturb the girl more than she already is. “Ruxandra can’t cope with her powers for much longer. The mercury kept them at a minimum in that grave. Luckily she could sense our presence, and she made it known to us by steering objects remotely, but now her powers are coming back fast, too strong, she won’t be able to contain them.” I look up at the shadow floating like a cloud, swallowing the ceiling and darkening the room.
“We need to take her to Magda, now.”
“But it’s dangerous, you said it yourself. Magda is right under Dracula’s nose, in Bran,” Juliet shrieks. “We’re not going to be able to keep her safe there.” She pauses, biting her lower lip, holding the blanket tightly around herself. “You won’t be safe from him either, Radek. Now that you’ve fulfilled your purpose and found what he wanted, he’ll surely see no reason to keep you alive.”
My lips draw in a grin. It may sound sick, but the prospect of fighting my own brother has always given me a kick. “Don’t worry,
my love, I’m a good match for Dracula, at least as long as he hasn’t yet drunk the Grail’s blood. Besides, we don’t have any other chance than go to Magda. If anyone can help Ruxandra, then her.”
Juliet nods. “Let me get dressed.”
She looks up at the shadow before she dares run into the room next door, but she’s back sooner than I expected. I scoop the girl up from the corner. She tries to resist at first, but I talk to her softly, and convince her.
We run out through the terrace door down in the drawing room, hurrying to the pond and leaving the manor behind us. The shadow spreads like a cloud of ink, threatening to swallow the house in which Ruxandra’s bloodline has had to suffer so much.
“She’s going to destroy the house,” Juliet calls, close behind me.
“Forget the house, her own power is going to destroy her,” I say over my shoulder, my pulse rising as Rux writhes in my arms like a skeleton with a panic attack.
I step onto the pond surface, but Juliet hovers behind me.
“Radek, I’m afraid,” she calls. Swinging Ruxandra unceremoniously onto my shoulder, I hold out my hand for Juliet.
“Trust me, my love.”
Her eyes fixed on me, I can see worry in her face. Still, she reaches out and takes my hand, stepping onto the pond. She shrieks when her feet sink in to her ankles, then the pond swallows us whole.
Bubbles and murk dampen my hearing. Juliet’s screams are muffled, her hands clawing to my waist as she sinks deeper into the pasty water, water that mingles with mud and twigs and the excrement of small animals. Ruxandra has lost consciousness, her long black hair floating like a black veil around me.
Flexing my inner senses, I channel us to the mirror inside Magda’s living room in Bran, the small town at the foot of Dracula’s castle. The dirty pasty water slowly turns into liquid metal, ever cleaner and colder, like a sea of silver coiling around us. It sucks us in, and spits us out on the bookseller’s carpet, between her cushioned sofas and armchairs.
I place Ruxandra carefully on the now soaked carpet, in such a way that the water can flow out of her mouth, then I turn to Juliet. She’s on all fours, her arms trembling and her blond curls hanging around her head, heavy and dripping water as she coughs.
I turn to attend to Ruxandra first, since she’s unconscious. I start pressing her chest when I hear steps, and the stairs creaking. The Book Master is on her way. The white haired witch appears within moments, her short and stocky frame clad in a grandma dress, but her bright hazel eyes fix us with the intensity and quick wit of a twenty-year old. She hurries over, her eyes widening with every step.
“Holy Mary mother of Christ,” she exclaims. “Dracula’s Grail!”
Yes, I thought the witch would sense her as well as a vampire would.
“Hush,” I whisper, grabbing her hand. The woman comes heavily to her knees by the girl’s side, now face to face with me. She bends over the girl, hands on her pale face, down her neck, then her chest.
“Poor thing, what happened to her?” she whispers back.
“She has very dark powers that she can’t control,” I summarize as I go to Juliet and help her over to Magda and the girl.
“We need you to shut them down, Magda,” Juliet manages, heaving. “Sorry we have to jump right to the point, but there’s no time. Being so close to Dracula, he can feel her. We thought of different ways to do this, but there’s no one other than you that can help her right now. We should probably take her down to the bunker immediately, before Dracula sniffs her presence.”
“You want me to take away her powers?” Magda whispers in surprise, then shakes her head. “But that’s not possible. What God gave, only God can take away.”
“We know,” Juliet says, her eyes now worried on the girl, her hands starting to touch her, scanning her body with her healer powers. “But you can block her access to her powers, right? I’m sure you can, I’ve seen books down in your bunker that talk about that. We need to shut out her access to her dark powers, as well as to her bloodline and her own past.”
Magda stares at Juliet in awe. “But why?”
“Let’s take her down to the bunker first, then we’ll talk,” I intervene. “Shielded by your spells, Dracula won’t sense her. I’ll tell you the whole story while Juliet heals Ruxandra’s body.”
“Ruxandra?” Magda whispers.
“Yes.” I scoop up the girl and start with her towards the basement where Magda keeps her magic books. “She comes from the bloodline of Dracula’s first wife.”
CHAPTER XI
Juliet
I’m exhausted. All my energy has flowed into Ruxandra’s body. Heaving her out of the dark pit where her vital force was sinking was a monumental effort. Usually I need the patient’s own energy in order to heal them, but Ruxandra’s energy, while powerful, can only drain her of life instead of helping her. So I had to give her my own strength, which works the same as a blood transfusion. In the end, the party who donated is tired and high as a kite.
Still, I don’t want to leave her side, stroking her hair and her face. She has beautiful features that make me think of Snow White. If she were healthy, her lips would be blood red on her snow-white face, her jet-black hair spread around her head as she sleeps peacefully.
“I will take care of you, Rux,” I whisper in her ear. This creature has been so hated and feared, and needs so much love in order for her emotional tanks to fill, that my soul showers it over her. I just can’t resist falling in motherly love with this child.
“Juliet,” Magda whispers from the doorstep, the door only slightly ajar. “Come upstairs.”
“No, I can’t leave her.”
“Come on, I can’t keep the door open for too long. The books, you know.”
I look around. “I’m afraid she won’t get enough oxygen in here. I know this is where we took Lazarus when he was turning into a vampire five years ago, but vampires don’t need air, while she is still fully human—”
“She isn’t fully human.” Magda steps in just enough to grab my hand and force me to my feet, leading me out. My eyes are still on the girl until the heavy door closes. “Plus, she won’t be here long. She needs to recover until I can do what must be done in order to close her access channels to her powers and to her past. Then you can take her away. You must, she can’t linger so close to Dracula for long.”
Radek is waiting in the kitchen, his face to the window and his back to me. My heart fills with pleasant familiarity and love when I see him. He turns around with a cup of tea in his hand, opening his arms to receive me when I run over to him.
I press my face to his chest, breathing in his scent of wet leaves and rain, feeling at home and immensely in love at the same time.
“I must say,” Magda begins as she takes a seat at the kitchen table in front of her own cup of steaming tea. Radek offers me his. “I’ve missed you, Juliet, but I never thought I’d see you back in my house with him.” Her hazel eyes measure Radek and me together. While his beauty still impresses her, as it impresses everyone, there’s reproach in her face.
“After everything he did to you. After he manipulated you into ending the relationship—”
“I did all that because I had to,” Radek cuts her off. “Believe me, I went through hell without her. I don’t think I grieved in over six centuries as much as I did these past five years away from the love of my life.” His hand sinks lovingly into my hair. “Juliet and I were born to be together.”
Magda scans us up and down. “That’s what you said the first time we met face to face, Prince. And then—”
He closes the distance between him and Magda’s table in a few determined strides, making her lean back with narrowed eyes. He spins a chair around and sits down, bringing his face close to hers. His jaw is ticking, his eyes unblinking.
“Look carefully into my face,” he slurs. “Look as I tell you that I adore this woman.” He points at me. “That I would die for her, that I’m willing to leave everything behind, absolutely
everything, and run away, hide from Dracula forever and raise that girl in the basement together with her, as husband and wife.”
Magda is speechless for moments, looking from Radek to me. “You want to do what?”
I approach slowly, and begin telling her our plan. By the time I’m done all three of us are sitting at the kitchen table, the tea cold. There’s a long silence until Magda processes all this.
“And you want to take Lazarus with you?” she eventually says to me. “You know he’s in love with you. It’s going to be excruciating, seeing you with Prince Radek, married to him.”
“Lazarus and I have grown—” Radek presses his lips together, thinking of a word. “We almost killed each other, and then we, I think we grew fond of each other. He accepts our relationship now, even though he’s not ecstatic about it.”
Magda looks long at him. “Well, you are full of surprises, Prince, but this time it’ll take a bit more than promises, you’ll have to prove yourself. I believed in your love for Juliet five years ago, and then boom. She lands on my doorstep with rivers of tears flowing down her face. How long until she comes collapsing on my doormat this time?”
“I want to raise a child with her, Magda,” Radek stresses, and a shudder runs through me. Both Magda and Radek notice it.
“Seems Juliet isn’t very comfortable with that idea,” Magda says.
Radek waits, turbid blue eyes on me, again opaque and impossible to read. He seems forbidding, closing his walls, but I know what he’s actually trying to do is not influence me.
“It will be her decision alone,” he says.
And indeed, I’m getting cold feet. I fell for the girl in a motherly way, yes, but when I think that I’m supposed to actually become her mother, it scares the daylights out of me.