Her Vampire Knight Page 4

  It was what Gaius called irony. Something or other to do with opposites that are funny. I laugh now as I run my fingers over my swollen lips. It was a wee cat who had taken a swing at me and landed me on my ass.

  I settle down on the uncomfortable cot. I slept on cobblestones as a boy. For centuries, I’ve had the luxury of feathers and down and memory foam beneath me. I don’t want to get used to the rickets of this poor excuse for a bed. Tomorrow, I’ll take Zahara back to the house and wrap her in silks.

  Though, she is a cat. She might prefer feathers.

  I lick my lips at the thought of her covered in feathers. The taste of her is still in the corner of my mouth. There’s even a hint of her blood on my tongue.

  She is O-positive; the most common blood type on the planet. On any other day, I would pass on that type. I always find it bitter and flat at the same time.

  Not so when it comes from Zahara’s veins. With just the drop of her lifeblood, I have a rush of sensation to my head. My teeth ache at the sweetness of it. My hunger grumbles for some more of it. I know from this moment on, from this taste, I will never drink anything else.

  Zahara wants me to lie with her, to fuck her? Oh, irony is having its fun with me today. That will not happen. Though the beast below begs to differ, I will keep my monster cock from her.

  I will be happy to kiss her senseless for the rest of her life. I will spend my nights scratching and petting her. Then I’ll sip my fill from her lips. And later, when she allows it, I’ll tap one of her veins for my sustenance.

  I close my eyes to wait for her return. In the silence of the cave, I hear her voice. She’s far away from the hovel she’s left me in. But I sense her distress. She feels cornered, trapped.

  My feet are on the floor before I have any conscious thought of moving. The closed and locked door isn’t even a thought. When it meets the thrust of my shoulder, it learns it was never an obstacle. Not if it stands between me and her.

  The voices are still faint, but they aren’t my guide. Zahara’s scent is. I can smell the agitation in it and that makes me move faster. I have to remind myself that she has a dagger. I saw her wield it the other day against males of her kind.

  My little kitten can hold her own in a fight. It made my cock stir to watch her take the larger males down. And then she turned that dagger on me. My heart had never beaten so wildly in my life.

  It thuds hard in my chest as I run to find her. The thuds ring in my ears because my blood supply is low. I haven’t eaten for nearly two days. But my blood lust will have to wait until I make sure that Zahara is safe.

  When I round a corner, I see her. She’s surrounded. But not by male shifters. She’s surrounded by women. All of them older. All of them with the smell of fur.

  Zahara has her back to a corner as the women close in around her. Not a single fist is raised. Only voices. It looks like they’re all in the middle of an argument.

  “Why should she wait?” says a woman who could only be described as a cougar. Her face is wizened with age, but her body is as supple as a coed’s. “She might as well fuck him now and be done with it.”

  “It has to be done on a full moon, in accordance with the prophecy,” says Itzel, the woman who came to fetch Zahara earlier.

  “This is biology,” says the cougar, “not magic. She is fertile now.”

  The arguing continues from both sides of the alcove. The only one not joining in is Zahara. She looks away from the shouting, as though she isn’t hearing any of it. The faraway look in her gaze reminds me of myself, of all the times I was chained to a wall or strapped down to a bed so that a rich, upper-class woman could use my body to fill Domitia’s coin purse or garner a favor.

  I never needed to be strapped down. The chain hasn’t been made that could hold me. The binds were an illusion for the human women who purchased my service. The reason I didn’t fight was a whole other game that my mistress liked to play.

  Domitia was known for her power plays. She’d had me mindfucked ever since I was a child. I always bent to her will. She got off on seeing the physical manifestation of my compliance.

  Is that why Zahara is standing there in the middle of this argument? Has she been mindfucked by one or all of these women? They’re talking about a prophecy. Didn’t she say something to me about a prophecy?

  I take a step towards her, ready to bulldoze my way through all of them to get to her. That’s when I feel the dagger at my throat.

  I only barely stop myself from taking the head of the person who threatens my life. Any other time during the last two centuries, I might not have cared that my life might end. It had all been a misery. But tonight I have known happiness, and I want another taste of it. I want another taste of Zahara.

  Therefore, I can’t kill the woman behind me. She smells like Zahara. She must be kin. I don’t think Zahara would like it if I decapitated her aunt or cousin.

  “Go back the way you came,” a feminine voice whispers into my ear. “Follow the passage and take the tunnel to the right. It will take you back to the surface.”

  “The surface?”

  “You are trying to leave, aren’t you? You are trying to escape?”

  Why would I leave? This is where Zahara is. When I don’t answer her immediately, she gives an irritated sigh.

  “We’d heard you weren’t right in the head.”

  That is what’s whispered about me. It’s likely true, though Gaius and Hadrian get pissed any time anyone dares to say it aloud. Which is why people never dare raise their voice above a whisper if they even dare to say it.

  “You know what they’re going to do to you?” the woman continues. “They’re going to breed you. They’re going to use your sperm to make a child. And then they’ll—”

  “Drop the knife, Pia.”

  I turn at the sound of Zahara’s voice. She still has her back against the wall. But even from this distance, I can see the tension in her limbs. She’s poised to pounce, like a jaguar scenting its prey.

  Her gaze flashes a bright yellow. Her skin bristles, like it’s not flesh, but fur. Her white teeth flash and I catch a bit of fang. It causes the beast below to stir with desire for her.

  “He’s trying to escape,” says Pia.

  And then there are more daggers, fangs, and fur. But when I look up, all I see is Zahara. There is a flash of hurt in her dark eyes before her features turn to steel.

  Chapter 8

  Zahara

  “I just want to make sure you understand what’s at stake here, child,” Itzel says, bringing my attention back to the lecture at hand.

  I had drifted off as the voices of the women rose up from both sides of me. Those standing on the right with Itzel are the purists. They believe that I should follow the letter of the prophecy and wait to give up the goods at the appointed time, which is the full moon in two nights’ time.

  Those prowling on the left are led by Zuma, who isn’t a jaguar. She was originally from my father’s tribe but moved down to Guatemala a generation ago. Though she is a cougar, the jaguar shifters accept her. What isn’t so acceptable is her disregard for the old ways of the Maya.

  “I just want to make sure she knows she can use his stake for a little fun before she has to get down to business,” says Zuma, giving me a wink.

  I don’t return the cheeky gesture. I purse my lips and let the air out through my nose. For all of my life, others have made decisions for me based on my destiny. I am supposed to birth a child to save our tribe. Yet even after I reached my maturity, everyone continued treating me like a child. If I mouthed off, I’d be treated as a child. If I held quiet, I’d be treated as a child.

  I’d thought that when I got rid of the males, things would change. The women trust me, but I’m still the youngest of the group. And so I’m still treated as a child.

  “It is her destiny to release us from the curse,” says Itzel.

  “I know,” says Zuma. “But that doesn’t mean she has to act like a sacrifice.”


  Oh, the irony. The women in our history were given as sacrifices to gods. But they also ruled. There were times of harmony before colonialism brought in the patriarchy and destroyed our matrilineal history.

  I tune them out again and let them lecture on. I’ve only ever wanted a lecture from an actual college professor. I want to sit in a lecture hall on an uncomfortable hardback chair and scribble down notes with different colored pens. But nope. I’m going to be changing the diapers of a supernatural baby instead.

  I know there are thousands of women who go to school and raise a family at the same time. I even pointed out that I will have a literal village of women to help me raise my child. But that didn’t sway them either. I’ll still be barefoot and pregnant.

  Well, not barefoot. Zuma did gift me with a nice pair of heels last month. Not that I’ll get to wear them anywhere except, maybe, the delivery room.

  Thoughts of the delivery room take me back to how this child will be made. With a man trapped in a room not too far from where I’m standing. I press my lips together, seeking any hint of Virius’s taste on my mouth.

  He’s there. Just at the center of my lower lip. I tug the flesh I find there into my mouth and pull at the skin.

  There is a note of the sweetness of the ripest grape. The robust smoke of wood. And a hint of iron, but there’s no metallic taste.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see a vision of him. He’s standing in that ridiculous shirt featuring a caricature of my culture. The jeans are off, but the chaps still hang around his thick thighs. Peeking out from the leather of the chaps is Frankie. He raises his head as though he’s looking for me. That single eye finds me, and a dollop of precum beads at the tip, as though Virius’s dick is salivating.

  Damn, I’m hard up. I should probably take Zuma’s advice and jump Virius tonight—if I can get him to let me ride him. He’ll probably be more amenable now that Pia has a dagger at his throat.

  Wait.

  What?

  I blink. Then I blink again. I’m not fantasizing.

  Virius stands on the other side of the cave. Pia is behind him with a dagger at his throat. A bead of his blood trickles down his thick neck.

  “Drop the knife, Pia.” I’m moving as I talk, but I falter at Pia’s next words.

  “He’s trying to escape.”

  My brain is beyond considering how Virius escaped the locked room. It focuses only on the one word: escape. He was trying to leave? He said he wouldn’t. He said he’d stay.

  Maybe I should let him go. If he’s not here, then he can’t impregnate me. If I’m not pregnant, then maybe I can go to college. And if he doesn’t fulfill the prophecy, then he can’t fulfill the part where he dies.

  I give the voice in my head a rough shake. Neither of us can escape this prophecy. Destiny always finds you.

  It doesn’t matter what he wants, just as it doesn’t matter what I want. Virius is going back under lock and key, and we are getting it on. He’s going to put a baby in me whether he likes it or not.

  All around me I hear feminine gasps. For a second, I worry that I’ve said that out loud. But I quickly realize that not a single eye, human or jaguar, is on me. Every female in this room is looking at the monster swaying between Virius’s thighs.

  Frankie is lifted high, with no hand from Virius. That cheeky snake leans a little to the right, and then to the left, as though he’s dancing to an unheard snake charmer’s tune. Then I realize Frankie is swaying in time to my beat as I march towards him and Virius.

  “I wasn’t going anywhere,” he says when I reach him. “I thought I heard you in distress.”

  Once again, I’m brought up short. The man is my captive, and he thought he was coming to save me? He has a real hero complex.

  “Now I see why she might want to anticipate the full moon.”

  I’m not sure I know who said it. But I know they all are thinking it now that they see what Virius is working with.

  “Are all vampires hung like that?”

  “I don’t know, but I want to find out.”

  I slap Pia’s hand away from Virius’s neck. I glare at her, flashing my eyes. She’s older than I am—all of them are. But she bows her head in deference.

  Unlike wolves, jaguars don’t have a hierarchal order. They are mostly loners. The only time they spend together as a pack is when they’re raising cubs. Otherwise, they’re highly territorial.

  Pia’s lucky I only slapped her hand and didn’t bite it off. I take Virius by the upper arm and turn him so all the others can see of him is his ass. I only barely hold myself back from dropping trow and peeing on his leg. Only barely.

  Now that they’ve all seen who he belongs to, I give him a tug to leave. Virius is larger and stronger than me. I know I would have no pull over him if he didn’t want to go with me. Luckily, he follows my lead and we head back to the bedroom.

  He doesn’t know he’s following me to his doom. I tell myself I don’t care. He is not my destiny. The child is. He is only a tool, and I plan to use him.

  Chapter 9

  Virius

  We walk in silence down the stony pathway. My bare feet slap against smooth rocks. Her boots crunch along, grinding small stones into sand.

  There is an itch at the center of my palm. I want to reach out and take her slight paw into mine like I’ve seen Hadrian do with Cari. I’ve never held a woman’s hand before. What if I do it wrong? What if I crush her slender fingers in mine?

  Looking down at her hand, I see that her fingers are not so slender. Her nails are short, not long and painted like Marechal’s. Zahara’s worked in the Durand vineyard for years. She knows the roughness of turning soil. She knows the prick of pruning shears. She undoubtedly can’t handle my cock, but perhaps she can handle my hand.

  Without a second thought, I reach for her.

  “Ouch.” I grimace, pulling my hand back from hers.

  A trail of crimson beads at the tip of my forefinger. It’s blood I can’t afford to lose. Pressing my finger to my mouth, I look back down at Zahara’s hand. How had I missed the gleam of the blade there?

  “Were you trying to disarm me?” she asks.

  “I was trying to hold your hand.”

  Zahara looks down at her hand; her fingers tighten on the hilt of her dagger. There isn’t suspicion in her gaze, only confusion. As though she questions my battle tactic.

  “Why?” she says.

  I shrug, too embarrassed to explain. I might be Roman, but I am clearly not cut out for these antics. I need to dispense with the attempts at romance from here on out.

  We have come to the end of the hall and can go no further. The mangled door blocks our path. Bending down, I pick it up as though the metal slab weighs nothing, because it doesn’t for me. I turn and wait for Zahara to go inside.

  She doesn’t move. She stands there, staring at the door, then at me. “You weren’t trying to escape?”

  There’s something in her voice. It’s not fear; I know what that smells like. It’s acrid on my tongue, bitter like hopelessness. But I can’t be sure. I’ve long since forgotten both of those emotions. I’ve had so few feelings for most of my life. My default setting is numb and detached.

  This night with her, I am drowning in awareness and sensation. I don’t care to come up for air if Zahara is the flood. I’m more than happy to exist as a piece of driftwood in the ocean of her.

  “I told you I’d stay,” I say.

  She narrows her eyes as she looks from me to the door in my hands.

  “I heard raised voices. I thought you were in trouble,” I add.

  Zahara rolls her eyes at that. Her shoulders slump, like a child who’s just had a reprimand. She walks into the room and plops down on the cot. “Close the door behind you, will you?” she says.

  I do as she bids me, fitting the door back into place. The knob will no longer work, which means the lock won’t engage. I doubt any of the shifters have the strength to remove the slab. So, we will have our privacy.

/>   Once I’m certain that we are isolated, I turn to her. Her gaze isn’t on my face. It dips to my waist. She’s looking down at the beast.

  I bend down and gather my jeans from the floor. I don’t bother to step either leg into the pants. Clearly, I’ll lose the battle of wrangling my cock into the cloth. Stepping out of the chaps, I then tear the fabric of the leather With a quick tie, I have a makeshift toga. My native garb is far more comfortable than the fashion of the day. Gaius always acts as though he’s got a pebble in his Italian loafers when I deign to walk around in this fashion.

  Zahara doesn’t complain. Which reminds me of something.

  “Why were you arguing?” I ask as I finish making the knot to hold the fabric and the beast in place.

  “Because of the prophecy. I told them you don’t want to fuck me. Even though we both know that isn’t true.”

  Her gaze is on my crotch. Though I’ve tied the beast up, it remains staunchly erect. Its fat head points directly at Zahara, as though asking her for a dance.

  “That can’t be comfortable,” she says.

  It’s not. My balls are starting to turn blue, since the monster has been erect for the better part of a couple of hours.

  “My sire used cock rings to keep her new bucks in order. If they displeased her, she’d yank out a valve of their hearts and lecture them as the wound healed. Or cut off their testicles if they fucked another without her permission.”

  Zahara gasps. Her gaze finally leaves my groin area and comes to my face.

  “Oh, those grow back,” I assure her. “There’s a vampire queen in Africa who makes eunuchs out of her human warriors. I hear that makes them obedient.”

  Domitia might have played with the testes but she never whacked off the penises of her sireds. I’ve always thought it would be better to be a eunuch. But my cock would grow back. I know that for a fact as well.

  “You weren’t trying to escape,” Zahara says. It’s not a question this time.