“You are a survivor,” he says gravely.
“And I’m yours. To the end of time. I told you we’d make it work, and we will. But I’m not going to face your father without having you with me like this. I need you to be the best I can be. You’re my strength. And I know I’m yours too.”
He seems to melt for a moment. “You are. You are, Lenore.”
Then a movement catches his eye and he looks up at Mathias behind us. “Fuck. I forgot all about him.”
“What happened to liking your feedings private?” I ask him playfully.
“Well,” he says with a small shrug, looking back down at me. “When in Rome.”
15
Lenore
I sleep like the dead.
Maybe it’s the jet lag, maybe it’s the fact that I fed yesterday, not just from Mathias, but from Solon as well, satisfying a hunger that had slowly been burning out of control. Or maybe it was the fact that my other hunger, the physical one for my lover, the one that burned the hottest and brightest, was finally put out.
I gave everything I had to Solon yesterday, over and over again, tempting fate, tempting that beast, each and every time we came. After we had sex in front of Mathias, we left the Red World and went back to the hotel where we fell into bed for hours on end, screwing each other silly, making up for all the lost time.
I’m sore and sated and…fuck, I’m happy. Happiest I’ve felt in a long time. I hang onto the feeling because I know that it will have to sustain me. The both of us are walking into a situation where we don’t have the upper hand, something we might not come back from.
Don’t even think about it, I tell myself. Hang on to what’s happening now.
I feel the bed move from beside me, and I open my eyes to darkness and my eyes quickly adjust. I have no idea what time it is, because of the jet lag and the blackout curtains, but it doesn’t really matter because Solon is reaching across and sliding his palm over my stomach, right between my legs. Despite having just woken up, I’m already wet as sin.
“Look at you,” Solon murmurs, his eyes coasting over my face, pausing at my mouth, before sliding over my breasts, to my pussy. “Look at how fucking perfect you are.” He removes his hand, admiring how shiny and slick his fingers are, before running his tongue over them, sucking them in his mouth. “I’ll never get my fill of you, my dear.”
“Good,” I say, grinning at him like the fool in love that I am.
He grins right back, a rare but beautiful smile that knocks the wind out of me, and then he’s climbing on top of me, his head sinking between my legs. He takes his time down there, licks me out, biting and feeding, until I’m coming a million times over. Then when I’m absolutely dizzy with my orgasms, he’s inside me again, working me like a tireless machine until the hotel room fills with our primal cries.
We repeat this all morning, until eventually we find ourselves in the shower. He shampoos and conditions my hair, which is incredibly sensual, and then I do the same to him before ending it with a well-deserved blow job.
There’s a knock at the door just as we’re stepping out of the shower. Solon frowns briefly as he slips on the fluffy hotel robe, and then relaxes. “It’s them.”
“Who is them?” I ask, toweling off.
“Kaleid, Natalia, and Valtu,” he says. He leaves the washroom, shutting the door behind him, and I slip on my robe, tying it tight. Yesterday might have been extremely voyeuristic, but I don’t feel like giving everyone a peep show. I then quickly put my wet hair in a towel and step out into the room.
Kaleid, Natalia, and Valtu are standing in the middle of it, talking with Solon. It’s jarring seeing Dracula in clothes, since the only impression I have of him is one where he’s completely naked and coming into some chick’s mouth. He’s a snappy dresser though, a crisp black shirt and white linen pants, brown loafers without socks, and his hair, which was wavy and wild yesterday, is now carefully groomed.
I stand there for a moment, watching the four of them, hit with the awestruck feeling that I’m staring at a big piece of history. Kaleid, Natalia, and Solon are practically ageless and all direct children of Skarde, and I’m sure Dracula has been around for centuries as well. They’re all well-oiled killing machines, powerful animals that could easily wipe humans out if they wanted to. Sure, they need them for sustenance, but who is to say vampires of their caliber, shaped and molded by hundreds of years of unique life experience as cunning and wealthy predators, couldn’t kill most of the humans on the planet and enslave the rest, farming them the same way that humans farm cattle?