21. Alaric

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

ALARIC

Callista: Alaric, have you dealt with the husker yet? You know that the fiend has a taste for it now. If we do not bring them to justice, they will take another human life, risking exposing all of us.

There’s only one thing worse than husking to our people – creating a Dhampir.

Answer me. And don’t pretend that you’ve eschewed texting as inappropriate for our kind. If I’ve learned to text, so can you.

I’ll be packing my favourite sword. And I’m bringing you a gift. Perhaps you will appreciate it more than you do the gift of eternal life.

“ T his room presents us with some challenges,” Winnie says the following evening as we stand before the wall of ceramics. “Unlike the tapestries, we can’t display all of these mugs. Why do you make so many pots?”

“I’ll show you.” I drag a bag of clay from behind the potter’s wheel and tear it open.

“What are you doing?”

I’m trying to make you want to stay with me.

I grab a handful of clay and work it between my fingers, moulding it into a conical shape. It takes a long time for clay to warm in my cold grip. “I’m showing you how to throw a pot.”

Winnie frowns. “If we throw these pots, we’ll end up with a pile of shards to clean up.”

Reginald will attest to that.

“I think it would be better if?—”

“Throwing a pot means to make one. Come.” I beckon her with a clay-caked finger.

Winnie takes a step towards me. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. We’re supposed to be cleaning.”

“Isn’t your intention that you deserve to be happy? Would it make you happy if I showed you how I made these pots?”

Her lip wobbles. “I’m hopeless with art. I don’t like the mess of it.”

“There’s no such thing as being hopeless at art. Art is whatever you choose to create.”

“I don’t want to get my hands dirty.”

“Sit.”

I allow the weight of centuries to drip into my voice, but Winnie is impervious. She folds her arms. “Lord Valerian, we’re supposed to be cleaning up the mess, not making more.”

“If you let me show you how to make a pot, I promise that we will return to organising.”

“I don’t believe you for a second.”

I pat the seat at the potter’s wheel. A hundred emotions play across Winnie’s face, but she settles into a look of grim determination. She stalks across to me and swings her leg over, straddling the wheel, her skirt bunching up around her thighs in a way that makes my throat close up and my trousers grow tight.

I fill a bowl from the pitcher of water Reginald left for her and plate it beside the wheel. “Reach into the bag and pull out a handful of clay.”

Winnie makes the more adorable scrunched-up face as she breaks off a chunk of clay, and I show her how to work it into a cone shape. “I don’t understand what’s fun about squishing wet, slimy dirt between your fingers.”

“Place it into the centre of the bat – that’s the piece that turns – with the tip of the cone facing down. Now, wet your hands and get your clay a little damp. Can you feel the pedal by your foot? Give that a pump.”

Winnie squeals as the wheel begins to spin. I explain how she needs to press her wrists together, opening her fingers to push on the clay as she pumps the wheel fast. On her first attempt, she doesn’t pump fast enough and pushes her clay off the edge of the bat. On her second attempt, she pumps too fast and splatters wet clay across her face.

“Alaric, this is ridiculous, I can’t do it!”

“Nonsense. You need to get the feel for it. More forward in your seat.”

A pleasant fission shoots through my body as she obeys my command, shuffling forward and placing both feet flat on the ground. I slide in behind her, my breath catching as my body presses against hers, chest to her back, my legs framing hers.

I’m torturing myself with the heat of her touch and the closeness of her body and that damned summery, strawberry scent. I shift my position so that she can’t feel my hard length pressing into the curve of her arse, even though all I ache to do is bend her over and sheath myself inside her.

If Winnie’s right and I collect things around me as a way of being in control, then I didn’t even know what control was until I met her, because every moment that I’m close to her threatens to unravel me.

“What do I do now?”

“I’ll control the speed.” My voice comes out husky as my fangs slide down. I hate myself for my weakness, from being torn between what is right and what I long for whenever I close my coffin lid. “You use your hands the way I showed you. Anchor your elbows against your body and push against the clay.”

Winnie nods. Her golden hair in its tight, no-nonsense ponytail shifts against me, and I’m aware of every single detail of her.

Her hair tickling my chest through my thin silk shirt. Her fingers in mine, skin soft but her grip firm and determined. The way she sets her jaw when she concentrates on the pot, dedicating her whole self – body and heart and mind – to whatever task she’s trying to accomplish. The curve of her perfect plump arse between my thighs.

It takes me a moment to remember how to move my foot. I press lightly on the pedal, keeping the wheel moving at a fast but steady pace. Winnie pushes into the clay, and this time, the clay complies, forming a tall cone.

“That’s good. You’re doing well.”

I wrap my arms around her, slipping my hands in hers and showing her how to level off the top and smooth the edges as she flattens the cone. The hunger is a living thing inside me. My mind fills with such depraved, delicious thoughts that she bucks against me to get my attention, which she succeeds in doing in a very, very bad way.

“Earth to Alaric – what do I do next?”

Stop wriggling your derriere against me unless you want me to bury myself in it.

“Dig your fingers into the centre,” I explain, biting my fangs into my lip. This was a bad, bad idea . “This will create a hole.”

Winnie laughs as she presses her thumbs into the clay and it opens up, creating the hole for her pot. I wallow in the strawberry scent of her, drowning in the nearness of her, the feeling of her warm body against mine.

“I can’t believe I did it!” After a few minutes, Winnie pulls her fingers – and mine – away. Her pot immediately implodes. “Oh, no, I didn’t do it.”

“That happens sometimes. The wall was a little thin. The clay could have been more centred on the bat, or might you like to bring your elbows together for more control. Would you like to try again?” I ask, shifting behind her in an attempt to hide my arousal. “Or perhaps you’d like to return to work?”

Perhaps her idea about throwing all the pots against the wall would help burn off this need…

“I want to try again.” Winnie grabs a handful of clay. This time, she doesn’t make a face.

“Do you want to control the pedal?—”

“Please, stay with me.”

Winnie drops her clay cone on the bat. I pump the pedal as she shapes her pot and hollows it. This time, when she takes her hands away, it doesn’t fall.

“Alaric, look, I did it. I can’t believe it. You’re right, this is fun?—”

Her scent shifts, strawberries ripening into something darker. She twists her neck to look at me, presenting me with the tantalising virgin skin and the pulsing liquid heat beneath. Her golden eyes are nearly black with pupil.

When she looks like that, I am gone .

I rock forward, pressing myself hard against her as my lips meet hers. This kiss is nothing like the one we shared in the Rose & Wimple, when I sought only to protect her from Danny, when I had no idea how sweet the forbidden could taste.

This kiss is pure hunger .

I taste the softness of her mouth, flooding my tangled senses with ripe strawberries and pulsing, warm blood. My tongue devours her, and I can’t get close enough or deep enough to taste her the way I long to.

My fangs are still lowered. At any moment she could feel them or nick herself on them, and then she would know my secret. The edge of danger only makes me pull her closer. Part of me wants her to find them, to know me truly as I am and still to press her body to mine and moan her delicious little pleasures against my lips.

The dark, twisted part of me is ready to be vulnerable for her.

My shaft grinds against her arse, and I brace myself for her to pull away, to run, to declare me the monster that I am. Winnie moans into my mouth, her whole body clenching with need, unfolding against me as if she’s been waiting centuries for someone worthy to draw those sinful sounds from her body.

I think of her alone in the dark, facing her nightmares with the same grim determination that she brings to everything she does, and I don’t recognise myself through my rage.

I will find who hurt her and I will devour them .

I may be a monster, but if she would be mine, I would be her monster?—

“Alaric,” Winnie breathes. “Please…”

She fists my shirt, her tiny fingers grasping, searching, as her tongue meets mine. She murmurs my name over and over, and I am so enraptured by the sound of it and the feel of her that it takes me some moments to realise she might be begging me to stop.

My undead heart stutters. I pull back. “Did I hurt you? I shouldn’t have?—”

“Alaric, don’t stop. ”

She presses her body back against mine, her hand reaching up to tangle her fingers in my hair as I kiss a trail from her wanton mouth along her jaw and down her neck. The hunger shoots like pain down my spine, raw and hot.

“I have contraception,” she whispers. “In my toiletry bag. In my room.”

Contraception.

Dangerous.

Dangerous because I’m considering breaking the most sacred vampire taboo. Dangerous because my fangs scrape over her soft skin and she smells like the summer days I haven’t experienced in centuries, because I’m on the very edge of control and all I have to do is bite down and send us both into a frenzy of ecstasy?—

Dangerous, because I want her to feel my fangs slide into her skin, because I want her to know what I am and want me anyway, because no one has ever seen me the way Winnie Preston sees me, because when I’m with her I believe that I might be something more than a monster.

This woman makes me reckless.

Contraception…

I tear my lips from her neck, shoving her roughly over the wheel. Her pot slides off the bat and topples over in a misshapen lump.

She turns to me, eyes raw. She rises off the seat as if longing for me to run my hand over her perfect curves. Her face collapses when she sees my expression. “Alaric, wait, please?—”

“I cannot,” I manage to choke out, snapping my lips closed over my fangs as I flee the room.