Roaring

by Katie May

  “That’s not true,” I begin helplessly, but she whirls on me, eyes spewing anger.

  “Don’t play dumb, Violet, because I know you’re not. You’re beautiful and funny and smart, and you have half the guys at this school eating out of your hand. Even that cupid and boogeyman are in love with you, but you’re too dumb to see it.” She takes a step closer until we’re nose-to-nose. Hers is bent at an unnatural angle, and I wonder if it’s possible for me to buy her a new one. I’m pretty sure it’s not a gift I can get off of Amazon.

  “What about you?” I ask just as viciously. “What about Pete?”

  “Who the fuck is Pete?” she sputters.

  “Pete the Pumpkin? Sits at your lunch table? The man can’t stop fucking staring at you! Don’t you see?” I grab her hand—the opposite of the one I literally still hold—with mine and give it a squeeze. I can’t make her more confident, I can’t make her fall in love with Pete, but I can give her the push necessary. “You’re such an amazing person, Cynthia, and I’m sorry I screwed our friendship up. I wouldn’t blame you if you never forgive me. But just know, I’m here for you. Always. I’m sorry Mason doesn’t love you back… Actually? I’m not sorry. Maybe it makes me a selfish monster, but I can’t imagine my life without him in it. I can’t imagine my life without any of them in it. So go ahead, call me a slut or a whore. Tell me I’m a bitch. It doesn’t change the fact that I’m happy with my guys, and I just want you to be happy too. Maybe it works out with Pete…maybe it doesn’t. Maybe you’ll find yourself a nice hairy werewolf dick to trampoline on. All I know is that you won’t know unless you try. I never intended to hurt you, but you’re only hurting yourself by falling for a man who will never love you back.”

  By the time I finish my speech, I’m breathing heavily, my chest heaving. Cynthia stares down at me with an unreadable expression before she turns on her heel and stalks out the door.

  Leaving me with a severed arm that I awkwardly drop on her bed.

  Fuck! Did I just make this worse? I think the problem with friendships and relationships is that we always have an unrealistic expectation of the other person. When they don’t meet those standards, we deem them failed. It’s a never-ending, vicious cycle that ruins more relationships than it saves.

  “Are you ready?” a quiet voice inquires from the doorway, and I quickly compose myself.

  “Let’s do this.”

  CHAPTER 17

  FRANKIE

  My hands are sweaty, despite repeatedly rubbing them against my khaki pants. I’m…nervous. It’s not an emotion I’m used to dealing with.

  Actually, I’m not used to feeling any of these emotions. The sweating hands and rapidly thudding heart. The erratic breathing. The skitter of my pulse whenever she looks at me. I’m a monster—an experiment—and I was designed by Frankenstein himself not to develop emotional attachments. Quite literally, it’s not in my DNA. I’m created to do two things—experiment and be experimented on. You can imagine my surprise when I discovered Violet was my fated mate.

  I’ve read about it in books. Who hasn’t? The stars have chosen her, chosen her soul, to match perfectly with my own. Where I’m jagged, she’s smooth. Where I’m hard, she’s soft. We’re nothing but contradictions that somehow irrevocably belong together. I don’t know if I even believe in karma and all of that shit. Sure, I’ve sinned in the past, but I truly believe I have done good things as well. And though there’s darkness inside of me, it’s interwoven with swatches of light—a light that only Violet seems capable of evoking.

  “You look…stunning,” I say to her now as I pull the car into the crowded parking lot. She glances coyly at me out of the corner of her eye, but I notice a slight blush to her cheeks that hadn’t been there earlier.

  “You said that eleven times already,” she points out, swatting at my chest.

  “Then I’ll say it twelve times. You look beautiful.”

  And she does. Violet? If I didn’t know she was a vampire, I would believe her to be an angel. It’s not just her soft curves, accentuated in the skintight dress, and golden hair tumbling down her shoulders. It’s her. She embodies an inner light and warmth that surrounds me and steadily melts the ice around my heart. It sounds like a cliché, but it’s true. Before I knew her, I thought she was a witch sent to torment me. I’d never experienced such a strong reaction as I did when I first spotted Violet Dracula.

  But if she is a witch, I’ll willingly allow myself to be pulled under her thrall.

  “What are we doing here?” Violet asks curiously as she stares at the modernistic, four-story building directly in front of us. Flashing, colorful lights are visible through the numerous windows lining the length of the wall. At the front entrance, a long line of monsters and humans alike snake around the building, disappearing from view.

  “I thought you would want to go out,” I say sheepishly. I scrub a hand through my messy brown curls as panic vibrates through me.

  Oh, god. I fucked up, didn’t I? I should’ve stayed at home. I should’ve taken her to my lab and gifted her the perfume of Cheryl’s tears I made earlier today. I should’ve—

  “I do,” she declares, cutting off my internal rambling. “Thank you, Frankie. I appreciate this. A lot. It’s been…a stressful few weeks.” She laughs half-heartedly, but her gaze goes hazy and distant. No doubt, she’s thinking about her crazy half-sister, Ms. Stevens, who attempted to murder her. I don’t know what exactly transpired during those few minutes before Dimitri and I were able to reach her, and I don’t dare ask. I only know the truth about Ms. Stevens because Dimitri told me…and I have no fucking idea how he knows about that. Violet is surprisingly fragile for a monster. Vulnerable, almost. She wears her heart on her sleeve, which for most people, isn’t a bad thing. But for Dracula’s daughter? It can prove to be fatal.

  “I’ve never done this before,” I admit as I hurry around the car to open her door. When I spot the goosebumps on her arms, I make quick work of removing my tweed suit jacket and draping it over her frail shoulders.

  “Gone to a club?” she asks as we cross the busy street, her arm brushing my own.

  “Gone on a date,” I blurt out before I can lose my nerve. When she glances at me out of the corner of her eye, my cheeks heat. “I’ve never…been attracted to anyone like this before. I thought there was something wrong with me—”

  “There is nothing wrong with you,” Violet cuts in adamantly. She pauses in the middle of the congested street and takes my hand in hers. Mine are so much bigger than her dainty ones. It makes me feel even more protective of her. “You’re Frankie—my Frankie—and you’re amazing.”

  Heat blazes through my body at the compliment. More than that, at the sincerity behind the compliment. I sometimes think Violet is too pure for this world, too pure for me.

  “Let’s get inside,” I say at last, instead of blurting out all of the things I actually want to say.

  A crease appears in the skin between Violet’s brows as I guide her towards the front of the line. Someone behind us begins to scream obscenities, but I merely cast him a look capable of withering flowers. He shuts the hell up immediately.

  “Shouldn’t we wait in line?” Violet whispers, her smoky voice curling around me and settling at my dick.

  “Not if you’re me,” I retort cockily, stalking up to the bouncer. Pablo and I? We go way back.

  As in, I enhanced his dick by five inches.

  “Pablo,” I greet as soon as we are at the front entrance.

  “Paul,” he corrects, his bald head glinting in the strobe lighting. “Do you want to come in?” He doesn’t spare Violet a glance.

  At my look of annoyance, he steps away from the door—ignoring the mutterings of the other patrons—and allows me to pass. Before Violet can step through as well, he steps back in front, muscular arms folded over his chest.

  “She’s with me,” I say bluntly, glaring at the imbecile. He almost appears…disappointed? What the hell?

  Very reluctan
tly, Pablo—Paul—steps back and allows Violet to enter. Immediately, she intertwines her fingers with mine in a surprisingly possessive move.

  Paul brushes his fingers across my shoulders, a wistful expression on his face. “Do you think we can meet up later?”

  “I don’t take clients on weeknights,” I dismiss, pulling Violet in after me.

  Immediately, the scent of sweat and alcohol barrages my senses. Flashing strobe lights illuminate the concrete dance floor in hues of pink, blue, and green. Music blares from the speakers, almost obnoxiously loud.

  Shit, this was a bad idea. A very bad idea.

  “What the hell was that about?” Violet screams in my ear. Even this close, she has to raise her voice in order for me to hear her.

  “What?” I turn towards her in confusion, surprised to see jealousy swarming in her gaze.

  “Did you fuck that guy?” she queries, and my eyes widen comically.

  “Huh?”

  “Paul? Did you fuck him?”

  I think back to the earlier days of school. My numb days. For the longest time, I thought there was something wrong with me. I would seek out “pleasure” any way I knew how, but nothing worked. Girls, boys…it was all the same to me. I couldn’t get hard to save my fucking life. I even went so far as to ask Mikey, Merlin’s son, for solutions. I’ve never actually fucked a person, but I have engaged in sexual activities with members of both sexes. I wouldn’t be able to tell you what they looked like, let alone what their names were. So Paul? There’s a very real possibility I gave him a hand job and he attempted to give me one.

  “Are you…jealous?” I ask in amazement, staring at the tiny blonde temptress before me. What in the world does she have to be jealous over? Does she not know yet that she’s my stars and my moon? My sun? My entire world?

  “It’s stupid.” Flames engulf both of her cheeks as she ducks her head. “Come on. Let’s get something to drink.”

  “Wait…” I pull at her arm gently, and she immediately spins until she’s back in my embrace. I settle my hands on her thin waist as she wraps her arms around my neck. “Talk to me.”

  “It’s just that…” She leans forward until her lips are against my throat. My breath hitches at her close proximity. All I can smell is her; all I can feel is her. In that moment, the rest of the world doesn’t exist, my entire focus centered solely on the blonde vampire in my arms. “I thought you were a virgin. I thought I could be… Fuck, it’s really stupid. Don’t listen to me. I think it’s the whole ‘mate’ talk thing.”

  My heart skips a beat at hearing her so candidly address the mate bond. For the last few weeks, she has regarded it like an elusive entity. A ghost, almost. In her mind, if she doesn’t acknowledge it, then it doesn’t exist. She failed to realize that it’s constantly lurking just above her shoulder, waiting for the correct time to pounce.

  “I am.” I press my face to the top of her head and inhale her spicy scent. She must be wearing a new perfume. It reminds me vaguely of rose gardens and cinnamon. “A virgin, I mean. I am one.” My arms tighten imperceptibly around her as I lower my lips to her ear. “And I am your mate. You might not want to admit it yet, but I know it as surely as I know I’m a monster, an experiment. And, yours.” Her breath catches as I begin to sway us back and forth, right there in the middle of the walkway. “I don’t have a heart. Not technically.” I grip her hand and place it between our bodies, directly over my chest. “The thing you feel…the thing that beats…it’s not real. It’s an illusion, a machine. Something Frankenstein put inside of me to make me feel more…human. But if you rip it out of me, it won’t kill me, as you have seen firsthand.” She shudders delicately at the memory before tilting her head back up. “But losing you would kill me, because in the short time I have known you, you have become my heart.” I take another deep breath as we continue to sway.

  “I’m nothing but an illusion, Violet. I’m nothing but parts and wires and spells. I don’t technically have a heart, but that’s only proof that the heart doesn’t dictate who you can and can’t love. That responsibility is for the brain alone. That was the one thing my bastard father actually gave me. It’s yours, if you want it. I can’t give you the world like the others. I can’t lasso the moon for you. But I can give you the one thing I once treasured above all else—my mind. It’s the only real thing inside of me, and it tells me repeatedly that I was made for you. I can’t give you everything, but I can give you that. It’s the only true thing I have.”

  Her lips hover over mine as her pupils dilate. All I would need to do is lean forward an inch…

  A body jostles me from behind, effectively breaking the moment. Violet takes a step away from me, focusing intently on a button on my dress shirt. Fuck, I almost thought…

  Would it be crazy to say I almost thought she was going to kiss me?

  “Come on!” I yell into her ear, guiding her towards the bar. “Let me get you something to drink.”

  I don’t come here often—read as, at all—but the bartender is an old client of mine. I’d concocted a potion designed to make people fall out of love. He was still hung up on his ex, but she was engaged to marry a different guy. Normally, I don’t create potions that impact emotions, but he was a special case.

  “Frankie, my man!” he says enthusiastically as soon as I step up to the counter. He slaps me on the shoulder as I awkwardly stand there, shuffling from side to side.

  “Um…”

  Fuck, what is his name again?

  Before I can make an ass of myself, Violet sidles up beside me and smiles at the bartender.

  “Hi, I’m Violet, Frankie’s date. And you are…?”

  Thank the lord.

  “Benji,” he introduces, extending a hand. I can’t help but notice the way his eyes light up when he stares at her, as if she’s a tasty morsel he wants to devour. I suddenly understand Violet’s reaction with the bouncer.

  Because, fuck, I’m jealous. I don’t like the way he looks at her one fucking bit. The acid in my stomach churns like lava as I level a penetrating glare in Benji’s direction. I stop myself before I go all caveman and carry Violet over my shoulder, away from the handsome man’s intense, piercing gaze.

  Instead, I tangle our fingers together and bring our conjoined hands to my lips, kissing her knuckles affectionately.

  Benji’s eyes widen in understanding and something akin to awe. He knows that I don’t date, so I imagine this is freaky as fuck for him.

  “What can I get you two?”

  “Um…whatever she’s having!” Violet points towards a giggling female carrying a bright red drink with an umbrella inside of it.

  “Coming right up. And you?” He turns towards me expectantly.

  “I’ll have the same.”

  Alcohol and me? We don’t mix well. As in, it does nothing for me. I don’t experience the same high as other monsters do when they consume the heavy-duty fairy shit.

  Benji returns with our drinks a few minutes later, and I lead Violet to a somewhat secluded booth in the corner. She slides in, her dress riding up her thighs, but before I can make a move to sit opposite her, she grabs my hand and pulls me into the seat directly beside her. I stumble, nearly spilling the fruity drink on her lap, before I right myself and cast her a glare.

  “Violet…”

  “What?” she asks innocently, batting her lashes at me. Her lips part around the straw of her drink, and my cock twitches in my pants. I can’t help but imagine her lips wrapped around me instead. “This is nice,” she admits after a moment, placing her drink on the table. “I can’t remember the last time I’ve been out and had fun.”

  “Me either,” I confess. I’m pretty sure I’ve never been out before with the sole purpose of having fun. My “fun” consisted of a clean laboratory and a dozen patients demanding my services. Clearing my throat, I rub the pad of my thumb down the sides of my sticky glass. “I really like you, Violet.”

  “I really like you too.” She turns to face me fully, eye
s twinkling. “More than I want to admit.”

  “Why?” I place my hand on top of hers where it rests on her thigh. My pinkie brushes her silky-smooth skin, and I swear my eyes just about roll into the back of my head. Fuck.

  “Why what?” She stares at our joined hands with rapt fascination.

  “Why don’t you want to admit you have feelings for me?” I can’t ignore the pang of self-consciousness. Does she believe I’m not good enough for her? Does she wish I was thinner or more muscular? Does she want me to be a vampire? I try to hide my hurt behind a reinforced steel barricade, but it slips out unbidden. Her eyes immediately flicker back up to my face, wide with horror.

  “No! It’s not that.” She blows out a breath and squeezes her eyes shut. “It’s just weird, okay? To have strong feelings for more than one man.”

  “You have feelings for…the others?” I’m not surprised. I see the way she looks at them, and they, her. I imagine it’s similar to the way I do. “Violet, I told you before… I don’t care. And I’m pretty sure they don’t either. I don’t know how to explain it…”

  “But the thought of them touching me turns you on?” she fills in with a quirked brow. “And the thought of anyone else touching me makes you furious?”

  “How did you know?” She slips her hand out from underneath mine to cup my face. My own remains on her soft thigh, rubbing soothing circles into the skin there.

  “Because the other guys said the same,” she confesses with a shrug. “It doesn’t make any sense—”

  “Unless they’re your mates too,” I cut in, and the more I think about it, the more it makes sense.

  “You can’t have more than one mate,” she insists, but I’m already shaking my head vigorously.

  “Not normally, no. But when have you ever been normal?” Violet’s face instantly falls, and I mentally chastise my dumb self. Fuck. “What did I say?”