41. Alaric

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

ALARIC

Callista: Perdita is concerned about her own position in court. She’s determined to go ahead with the marriage and fight together with you to change the vampire/human laws. She says that you can keep your human toy at court with you if you return as her husband.

It is a reasonable offer, Alaric. You and Perdita are well-suited. I was not being unkind when I chose her for you. If you reject her, nothing we do at this ball will mend the rift between the courts.

If you want this to go your way, you and your human toy will have to step up your efforts to convince Perdita to reject you.

“ W e could skip this part of the plan if you wish,” I tell Winnie as my hand closes around the handle of the dining room. Perdita’s tinkling laugh pierces the thick wood.

Winnie’s lip wobbles, but she squares her shoulders. “Part of the job of your fake-fiancée is scaring away the woman who wants to be your real fiancée, and I take pride in a job well done. We need Perdita to decide this marriage isn’t for her, and the only thing I can think of is to show her that you can’t be trusted to keep up appearances at court.”

“I won’t allow either of them to hurt you, and if at any time you wish to retreat, we can?—”

“Alaric, open the damn door.”

I push open the dining room door. It’s brightly lit by a row of long column candles resting on mismatched silver holders down the centre of the banquet table. My mother sits at the head, and Perdita at her side, her chair pushed back from the table and her long fingers wrapped around the neck of her cello as she draws the bow across the strings.

I recognise the song she plays – a mournful tune we wrote together when I first arrived in her court, many moons ago. A song that always makes me think of Hrodebert and all that I’ve lost. Her eyes flutter open, and she dares a thin smile as she draws her bow across the final note.

Perdita is still playing for keeps.

I don’t want to put her in an untenable position by rejecting her. I want her to come out of this with everything she wants as well. Perdita deserves that much for agreeing to my mother’s wild marriage scheme in the first place.

I pull Winnie towards the other end of the table. Their Thralls move around the room, lighting candles and trying in vain to stack the paintings and artefacts I hid from Winnie into the corner.

Perdita wrinkles her nose as she sees Winnie. “The human is still here?”

“Of course. She is to be my wife.” I lower myself into the chair, placing my sword on the table in front of me. Perdita must be reminded that she is a guest in my house, and I’m still a warrior of the Nightshade Court. “I thought Winnie might enjoying hearing the songs of my past .”

I hiss the final word, making certain she knows where I have consigned her. During my years at the Midnight Court, I considered Perdita a friend, although I’d been careful to keep my heart safe from her as I hadn’t with Hrodebert. I was her pupil in the ways of art and music and creativity, and in return I listened to her complaints about the machinations of court. She never wanted a husband, least of all a brutish outcast of the Nightshade Court. Her tastes run to her own sex. But she is the daughter of a queen – she has always known she will not marry for love, whereas I cannot entertain a union of convenience.

I want the whole world to know that Winnie belongs to me, and I to her, wholly and utterly.

“Play for us, Perdita,” my mother orders.

“I’m bored of music. It must be time for supper.” Perdita’s snaps her fingers, calling over her Thrall. Callista narrows her eyes, not pleased to be disobeyed.

Beside me, Winnie stiffens. Perdita smirks as she bids her Thrall to kneel beside her. He does this with the excited, stupefied look that all Midnight Court Thralls wear, a look that entranced me when I first arrived there but now makes me sick. Being in Thrall to pleasure is still a form of servitude.

Perdita obviously aims to frighten Winnie away, but I know my woman has strength within her Perdita cannot fathom.

And it’s good that Winnie sees this, because the other night it seemed as if she was…curious. I need her to know what a vampire bite can do to a human, how addictive it can become.

I need her to understand because if she asks me, I won’t be able to resist her…

Perdita lowers her lips to her Thrall’s neck. Her fangs drop, and she pricks his skin, sighing with pleasure as her fangs sink into his flesh.

The room bursts with the scent of fresh blood. My nails claw at the armrests of the chair. That hot, rich scent mingles with Winnie’s strawberries and sunshine, and it takes every ounce of strength I possess not to throw the chair aside, fold her into my arms, and drink until we’re both moaning with ecstasy.

Fresh blood…

It’s been so long, and I am so weak for her…

I dare a look at Winnie. She stands ramrod straight, her gaze fixed on the Thrall’s neck, where Perdita sucks with abandon, making little mewling noises in her throat. The Thrall’s eyes roll back in his head, and he lets out a low moan of pleasure that makes my toes curl inside my boots.

Winnie’s lips purse. She digs her nails into her palm. But is she afraid…or…

“A little supper sounds delightful.” Callista snaps her fingers, bidding her Thrall to kneel. She sinks her fangs roughly into his neck, her throat working as she sucks down her fill. The air is so thick with bloodscent that I’m grinding my fangs against my lower teeth.

Winnie lets out a low whimper that shoots through my body and into my shaft, which tents indecently in my breeches. I can’t move my hands to adjust myself or I will do something I regret.

The hunger is a beast tearing at my stomach, eating me from the inside.

My mother shoves her Thrall away and leans back with a happy sigh, not bothering to wipe the blood from her lips. She smirks at me as she holds her goblet beneath him while his blood flows freely from the wound, capturing every drop, knowing that each crimson tear falling from his neck drives me to the brink.

She wants to see me falter, to remind me of the monster I am inside. She still believes that Winnie could not love a monster. And as much as I hope otherwise, I truly expect Winnie to run for the door any moment now and never come back.

“Care to join us, son?” Callista holds up the goblet. “We can toast your unconventional engagement. Unless your little wife has changed her mind?”

I give Winnie another moment to make her choice. It’s all I can give her before the hunger becomes too much. But she doesn’t move from beside me.

A faint moan escapes her lips. The same moan she made the first time I kissed her.

And I am gone .

“Certainly, we will join you, Mother.”

I snap out my hand and wrap my fingers around Winnie’s small wrist, yanking her into my lap. She wriggles a little, settling her knees on either side of me. Her eyes widen as she feels the obscenity of me between her legs, with my mother and my arranged fiancée in the room with us.

Every brush of her against my needy skin is exquisite torture.

“Alaric—”

“Trust me,” I whisper, my voice hoarse with bloodlust.

I tilt her head towards me, wrapping my fingers against her neck. Every movement is agonising for all the things I want to do to her. A vein pulses beneath her skin, so hot and ripe and delicious. But I have made her a promise, so I must sate my hunger with whatever she can give me.

That is the plan, of course. For humans are food, and I need to show Perdita that Winnie is so much more to me. Winnie may still be pretending, but when I bend and capture her lips in mine, the white-hot need that courses through me is hopelessly real.

Her mouth tastes sweet, so sweet. It’s been centuries since I’ve tasted fresh strawberries bursting on my tongue, but she makes me remember. She makes me wish for things I cannot have with a hunger that is more than hunger.

I am floating, dizzy and drowning in sweetness, my hands roaming over her body in worship. The little moans she makes in my mouth are so needy that I almost believe she craves a monster.

But does Perdita believe it? Does she know this show is for her, to convince her that marrying me means wedding a vampire so saturated in sin and forbidden desire that she will never recover her reputation?

Winnie’s fingers twine in my hair, pulling me closer. She grinds down against me, pushing my head against her neck, her head falling back so that my fangs scrape her skin and I yearn, I want, I crave …

This woman will ruin me…

“I’ve lost my appetite.” Perdita kicks her Thrall away and storms from the room.

“Careful, son.” Callista sets the goblet down beside me, smirking as she stands to leave. “Remember how easily you can break your toys.”

The two Thralls crawl after her on their hands and knees, and the door clicks shut behind them.

The blood in the goblet and the scent of strawberries threaten to drive me over the abyss of my control. I drop my arms back to the chair, tearing the leather to ribbons.

“Winnie,” I breathe against her soft, warm skin. “You should leave. This was a mistake. I can’t control myself for long. The blood…”

“I want to know,” she whispers. “I want to know what it means to have all of you, Alaric. Because I don’t think you’re a monster. I don’t think anything about this is wrong.”

I try to push her off me, but she clings to me and I’m so weak for her. Her blood pulses beneath my lips and all I have to do to taste it is to lean forward and press my fangs against her. “I don’t want to take from you?—”

“It’s not taking if I give it freely. It’s what a good wife would do for her husband.”

I shove her again, but she crawls over my lap and I can’t deny her any longer, not when she calls me husband . I tear away from her neck and crush my lips to hers, giving her a final chance to leave because I no longer have the strength to force her away.

When her tongue caresses mine, a guttural groan escapes from deep in my throat.

One taste of her isn’t enough anymore.

Wrapping my arms around her waist, I pull her close, her body moulding against mine like two pieces of the same sculpture fitting together in perfect harmony.

My shaft presses against her belly button, and the little vixen teases me, wiggling against me, poking the monster who has lain dormant for so long.

A low growl forms in my throat as I topple into the void. The world shrinks away, my vision narrowing as her heartbeat thuds in my ears.

I lunge forward, crushing her against me, pushing her back against the table, crushing her body with mine as I crawl toward her neck, my tongue reaching out to taste…

…blood.

Just a drop and I’m roaring, bucking against her, brutal and beastly and lost in my hunger. But that one taste gives me strength, clarity. I remember that I didn’t bite her yet. I blink and Winnie comes into focus beneath me, her golden eyes hooded with lust and a streak of red soaking her shirt.

Inhaling the air, I try to still myself.

This isn’t her scent. That isn’t her blood.

My eyes follow the trail. I must have upset the chalice of blood when I flipped her onto the table.

Winnie’s eyes flicker to the blood on her shirt.

“Is this what you want?” she asks breathlessly.

My gaze narrows back to hers. Her chest heaves as she skims her fingers against the still warm blood now gliding down her neck.

She swipes the thick liquid down her chest, pulling her shirt further down to expose the expanse of her cleavage peeking out of her lacy bra.

“Do you want to bite me, Alaric?”

“Winnie, I want everything you have to give me,” I whisper, running my fingers down the swell of her breasts. “Your blood, your soul, your heart.”

“The second and third aren’t up for grabs, but tonight, you can have my blood.” She dares a tiny smile. “I consent. I want to know what it feels like. What I taste like to you.”

Keeping my eyes on hers, I bend down, running my tongue along her skin, lapping up the trail of drying blood.

It takes the edge off. It makes me groan and my shaft twitch.

But it doesn’t sate my hunger. It doesn’t taste like strawberries and sunshine.

I know how badly I want to taste her. How much pleasure we’ll both get from it.

But I also know how to make it even more worth the wait.

Winnie rolls her head to the side, exposing the exquisite curve of her neck and that tempting vein just above her collarbone. But I ignore it, licking a trail of blood from her breast, chasing it with little nips, careful not to break her skin with my fangs just yet. My fingers work open the buttons of her shirt as I continue my descent down her stomach.

“Aren’t you going to bite my neck?” she asks, goosebumps prickling her skin. “Don’t you want to?”

She actually sounds hurt, as if I’m rejecting her. As if I could ever deny her.

“Oh, Winnie, the things I want where it concerns you would terrify you. Yes, I am going to bite you. I have dreamed about biting you since the first moment I smelt you. I have imagined this night in such exquisite detail that I half wonder if I’ve dreamed you into being. So yes, I will bite you, but I wish to savour you like a fine wine, and that means you’re going to have to be a good girl and wait.”

I bow my head and continue my trail down her stomach, kissing the bare skin where her trousers are belted around her perfect waist.

“I…I don’t understand. I thought that…” Her voice catches as I unhook her leather belt and slowly pull her trousers over her voluptuous hips, torturing myself with the slow reveal of her body. Her petals are bare to me, and when the scent of her arousal fills the air, I let out another low growl of satisfaction.

“No panties, Winnie?”

“No,” she manages to gulp.

“You’re going to be the death of me,” I whisper as I slowly run my tongue down the centre of her.

“Too…too late, vampire.”

But her joke falls limp from her lips, replaced by a gasp as I dip my tongue against her, tasting the sweetness of her juices. How is it that I can no longer taste food and yet she is the finest feast?

I have to keep my fangs from piercing her delicate skin. To bite her here, on her first time, would be cruel. But now that I taste her, I wonder if perhaps I have that kind of cruelty in me.

Winnie whimpers as her thighs tremble around me.

I want to devour every part of her, but I take my time, licking just the sides of her mound then the softest swipe against her centre.

“Alaric, please,” she begs, bucking her hips, pushing herself closer to my lips.

“Please what, Bonne Vivante Winifred?” I trail my finger down her wet entrance, but not delving inside, prolonging the exquisite torture.

“Please let me come,” she pants.

“No, I don’t think so.” I run the tip of my finger around her entrance again, dragging it out.

Her eyes flutter closed as she leans her head back. “This is torture.”

“Torture, is it? Do you mean, in the same way you have tortured me since you arrived, strutting around my castle with your exquisite scent, driving me to such agonising hunger that I barely recognise myself? That kind of torture?”

“Y-y-yes…”

I smile as I blow a small breath just over her entrance.

Winnie’s hands go to my head, gripping the tendrils of my hair, trying in vain to push me down.

But I don’t give in that easy.

“Such a greedy little thing,” I tsk.

In a movement too quick for her to register, I grip her wrists, pinning them above her head with one hand. I lean her to the side, her hips at an angle so I can still hold her down while having access to her beautiful pussy.

She wriggles her hands against mine, trying to free herself, but I have five hundred years of supernatural strength and experience against her.

Laughing, I breathe against her mound. “Still so greedy.”

“Please, Alaric, please.”

“Since you asked so nicely, I’ll give you a little taste.”

I run my tongue down her slit. Her hands may be trapped, but her legs come up to wrap around me, trying to clamp my face against her. But I’m not giving her what she wants.

I press lightly on her stomach with my free hand, pinning her to the table. I slowly run my tongue up and down, just enough to get her worked up before pulling back and glaring sternly at her.

She whimpers, pushing her hips up again as if she can somehow pull an orgasm from the air.

“You’re so beautiful like this,” I murmur, hooking one finger inside her. She’s so soft, so unbelievably warm. So alive .

The vein in her neck bulges as she cries, arching her back to get closer to my digit, but I pull out again, licking her arousal from my fingers.

I could torment her all night like this, listening to those moans of frustration. But sucking sunshine from my fingers flares my hunger to the brink. I cannot hold back any longer.

Diving back into her pussy, I lap up every bit of her sweetness, feeling her thighs begin to shake around me.

Her moans begin to intensify and I know this is the moment.

While keeping my eyes locked on hers, I slowly lick up to her clit, circling it with my lips before piercing the very tip of the hardened bud with my fangs.

My mouth fills with her essence, sharp and sweet and more delicious than I could ever have imagined. She tastes of every good memory, every perfect day, every stolen happiness rushing me all at once. I could drown in her ambrosia and call it the sweetest death.

I have waited, I have wanted, but in all my darkest imaginings, I couldn’t have dreamed such perfection.

Winnie’s cries fill my ears as she comes hard around me, the mixture of her arousal and blood filling my lips the closest to heaven a monster like me will ever get.

She pushes her pussy closer, her thighs pulsing around me as she continues coming all over my face. More of her blood spills into my mouth, the pleasure of it nearly sending me over the edge of my own release.

I want nothing more than to keep tasting her forever.

To sup my fill of her nectar.

It takes everything I have to pull back, wiping her arousal and blood from my chin.

I’m sick. I’ve become everything I’ve long despised about my kin. Winnie should be running for the hills right now.

But I’m not certain I believe myself anymore, not when the woman I love is still writhing beneath me, lost in the throes of bloodthrall. Not when her lips fall open and she lets out those delicious little moans as she rides what is the greatest pleasure she’s ever experienced.

I could watch Winnie like this for hours. And I just might, one day, if she ever consents to this again. If I kept drinking from her, she’d sustain her release for hours. But I don’t want to scare her with that just yet.

Instead, I collapse into the ruined chair, my own arousal swollen and painful as I give her space to return to me. I lick every last morsel of her from my lips. There is a smear of blood on her inner thigh, which I lean in and clean for her, but otherwise, the tiny wound has already closed over thanks to the properties of my saliva.

“That was…” she breathes, her chest heaving.

“Mmmmm.”

“I don’t remember that on page sixty-four.”

My laugh is cut off as she lunges for me, sliding off the end of the table and straddling my hips on the chair as she crushes her lips to mine.

I shouldn’t give in, I know. Winnie needs time to rest, for her human body to recover from the blood loss and what she’s just experienced. But it’s impossible to say no to that hot mouth on mine, those perfect breasts pushing against my chest, and her heartbeat roaring in my ears.

I wrap my arms around her, pulling her naked body closer to mine.

She paws at my clothes, peeling off my shirt as she slides to the floor so I can shove off my pants and underwear.

Before I can protest, her mouth is on my hardened cock, swallowing the whole thing as she bobs her head up and down, those dark eyes never leaving mine.

“Fuck, Winnie,” I mutter, pumping my hips to fuck that beautiful face of hers.

But as close as I am, I don’t want to finish there.

“I want to be inside you, wife.”

The word wife slips from my lips unbidden, a secret wish that I long to stuff back inside me. Winnie cannot yet know how I intend our pretend betrothal be made real.

I am certain I’ve ruined everything, but Winnie doesn’t say a word as her golden eyes lock on mine. Candlelight sparkles in her golden irises. I reach for the golden packets I have carried in my pocket since our first night together, but she stays my hand.

“I have a gift for you,” she grins. “We don’t need a condom.”

I darken. “The risk of Dhampir?—”

“I know , Alaric. That’s why I had a copper IUD installed. It’s another type of contraception, and it’s even more effective. It’s a little device that stays inside me and makes sure I don’t get pregnant, and it will work for five years.”

I’m so shocked that I lean back in the chair, studying her. “You have a contraception inside you? But you told me that we are pretending?”

“I didn’t get it for you.” She bites her lip. “Maybe I did. I don’t know. Please don’t give me an existential crisis when I want you to fuck me?”

“The last thing I’m thinking about right now is our oath,” I growl. “This IUD means I can be inside you without a sheath?”

She nods, her body taut with desire.

She has a contraception inside her.

However much she is pretending, something about us is real to her.

I can barely speak through my hunger. “I can feel all of you, bare, without restraint?”

In response, Winnie stands and mounts me, inch by exquisite inch, sliding her wetness down my cock as she sheaths me inside her.

I grip hard onto her hips, guiding her. I know she wants fast by the way she slides against me, but I need it slow.

I need to take my time and feel every inch of her. I have only this night to give her the pleasures that I long to gift her for all eternity.

Winnie lets out a gasp as she rocks her hips and I slide home.

“You are exquisite.” I wrap my arms around her, pressing her against my chest, her racing human heart against my immortal one. “I wish I had eternity to worship every inch of you.”

“You do have all of eternity,” she huffs as she grinds down against me.

“True, but you don’t. And that’s as it should be. I have only a blink of an eye to hold you and pretend you’re mine, before we go back to being betrothed in name only.” I choke back the emotion swelling in my chest as she rides me hard, drawing me nearer release. “I have one blink to show you what you’re missing.”

“Alaric, you?—”

I sink my teeth into her neck.

The sensation is of falling. I fall through starlight as her blood rushes between my lips. I tumble like an autumn leaf, tossing on a crimson river, drenched in sunlight and the blush of summer’s first fruit.

Winnie quakes around me as the bloodthrall carries her along her own crimson river. Her screams fill my ears as my mouth fills with her blood.

Ecstasy.

I can’t hold it in anymore as I grip hard onto her hips, spilling myself into her as I suck as much blood as I dare to take from her.

It costs me my soul to pull away. I lick at her wound to seal it before I collapse against her, breathing in the fresh warmth of her flesh as she gasps and shudders against me, still suspended in her own pleasure.

Winnie clings to me as her cries quieten. The scent of her blood and arousal tickles my nostrils. Her heart rate slows until we are beating in sync, her chest rising and falling against mine.

I reach beneath the table for the cord to ring for Reginald. The bell tinkles deeper in the house.

“Why did you do that?” Her eyes widen, but she makes no move to grab her clothing. “He’ll see us like this?—”

“He’ll leave some food outside the doors. You need to eat something. You’ve lost blood.” I bow my head with remorse. “More blood than I should have taken, I’m so sorry. You tasted so good, I…I had to fight for control.”

“If tasting my blood feels like that, you can have more.”

“Don’t tempt me, human,” I growl, my fingers digging into her hips.

“Now that you mention it, food does sound good.” Winnie rests her head on my shoulder, her eyes fluttering closed. I stroke her hair, singing softly to her and listening for the sound of Reginald leaving a tray of food in the hall.

“That was…wow,” she murmurs, her body slackening against mine.

“We can do this every night,” I whisper back, twisting her golden hair in my fingers. “If you stay at Black Crag with me.”

“As your fake fiancée?”

“As my everything.”

But Winnie doesn’t answer. She’s sound asleep.

Everything about this night is perfect.

Even the exquisite torture of it – the night will end, and Winnie will return to being my fake fiancée, except that she has a contraception inside her, and that unless I can convince her otherwise, after the ball she will return to London and I’ll never see or taste her sunshine again.

But at least there are no secrets between us anymore…save one.

That I am hopelessly in love with Winnie Preston, and the monster in me wishes for an eternity that can never be.