6. ARA

I knew he'd be back. His scent lingered in the air. I'd followed to where it ended, and shortly after, it's where it began.

Nash appeared through an aberration of light that quickly stopped shimmering the moment he stepped out of it. He noticed me immediately.

"I hope you didn't think I was going to just leave," he said, adjusting the hat on his head, his fingers swiping around the brim. "But I don't usually frequent these places, so you got lucky."

"Me either," I told him, taking his hand the moment he was within grabbing distance. I squeezed his warmth between both hands, holding him still. "I had to get a map of all the new factions and parcels of land since it was divided."

He shrugged. "Yeah," he laughed. "I never pay attention to that. So, you wanna get out of here?"

"That's supposed to be my line," I said. "Do you have anywhere in mind?"

"Somewhere we can get a drink," he said, turning his wrist slightly to look at his watch. My hands still holding both of his hands together. "It's brunch. So, mimosas works. I know a brunch spot. It's usually busy though."

I pulled his hand to my lips. "Don't worry about busy. I get in wherever I want."

His palms were immediately slick with sweat. "Oh. Yeah. You can—you can get in."

We headed out of the underground market, using the elevator. I didn't want to stop holding his hands, even as they produced their own dew point. I just needed to be in constant contact with him. We eventually shifted to holding on hand side-by-side with each other.

"How was the rest of your party?" he asked.

"I left the moment you did. I've not been back. I just been—standing around, browsing, and getting reacquainted. You know, witches are rarely seen mingling with anyone other than their kind these days," I mused with him as we walked through the lobby of some building that the elevator had brought us up through.

"I do know that, but what's life without breaking the rules people force on you," he said. "It's why I prefer humans so much. They're clueless, and they don't care about whether you're an omega, or a witch."

"I care," I said. "Not in a—sorry, my words."

"Go on," he said, giggling. "What do you care about?"

"I meant it as, I care that you're an omega and a witch. Mostly because that means you're not a vampire trying to indebt themselves to me."

He shrugged. "You're gonna have to explain more about that to me. I really don't get supernatural politics. Explain it to me like I'm a human."

"Once we're at your brunch place," I said. "And I want to know more about that kiss last night. You've intoxicated me with thoughts. You are all I can muster at all times."

Nash didn't have an answer for me. I didn't want to suggest he didn't have control of his abilities as a witch, but something about the magic he was performing last night could've hinted to the idea that he wasn't in complete control.

We got to the brunch spot. It was a quaint place with a queue of people. Nash's hand in mine was getting even wetter, causing him to break free to wipe it down himself a couple times. I took him to the ma?tre d' at the front of the queue.

"A table for two," I said.

The ma?tre d' was a young man. He didn't speak. Only nod. It was nice to wield power again. And to know the elders were running on fumes meant repercussions seemed off the table.

A table was vacated for us by the window, a prime spot to see the light shine on Nash's gorgeous face.

"I can't believe you came to find me," he said as we accepted our first round of mimosas, light on the orange juice. "What did your niece have to say about it?"

"I told her I was not to be disturbed," I said. "She's probably assuming I'm catching up on world affairs still. And the party is probably still going. I have blackout curtains and fresh air pumped in through ventilation. That's the way they do it in Vegas casinos."

"Can I—can I ask why that list of people?"

"Sure. They were the famous people when I made that list," I admitted. Although, I was also using them as blood banks. Nash wasn't going to know that though, and also a good reason for him to have left when he did. "And while it was nice to have seen some of their faces, I think the only face that mattered, and stole the show was yours."

He radiated heat, his face turning a deeper shade of red. He grabbed the glass and nearly drank the entire thing in one. "Thank you," he said, inhaling a large breath afterwards. "That's nice of you to say."

"I wonder if this was meant to be," I mused. "Meeting you. Considering you're not the fraternizing type. I'm just drawn so completely to something in you, that you have to offer."

"Is it my blood?" he joked, flipping his hand over on the table to show his wrist. "Because if you give me warning, and if you promise to be gentle, I'll let you tap a vein."

I bit into my bottom lip, nicking my own skin just to sate the taste of blood. The temptation to drink from him was far too high. "You're gonna have to not offer that up," I said, hampering the moan in my mouth. "Please."

"Well, it's not like I offer it up to every vamp I meet," he said.

There was a distinct pump to the blue vein below his wrist, embedded in flesh and bone. His heart raced, his skin continued to flush. I slipped a leg between his leg under the table. "I'm not feeling hungry anymore," I said. "If you'd rather come back to my place with me, I can arrange for that."

"You—you wanna finish what we started last night?" he asked.

"I imagined it wasn't just a kiss you wanted," I said,pressing the bottom of my mimosa toward him. "Finish this. I'll get someone to pick us up."

He took my drink and downed it in one gulp it seemed. I was enamored.

Estefania had taught me the basics of this newfangled thing. I called her, trying to excuse myself from the table, but Nash was adamant I didn't leave him. I'd been taught it was rude to take a call around someone, but the times had changed.

From the call, I arranged one of my employees to pick me up.

I left a large bill on the table and with Nash on my arm, we waited on the sidewalk for my car. It wasn't until a window was rolled down and I saw, Toril, one of my staff in the driver seat. It was a town car, not one I recognized, but flashy.

"Wow," Nash said, clinging to my arm. "How much money do you have?"

"It's family money," I grumbled. And I was the last member of my family, with the exception of Estefania, who would no doubt inherit it all, unless Nash was destined to be my mate, and from the heat radiating off him and his cling to me, he was definitely trying to mate with me.

In the back of the town car, Toril pushed a divider up.

"Kiss me," Nash said once we were alone .

I looked into his dilated eyes and at the gloss of his freshly licked lips. "I want to do more than kiss you," I whispered, stroking a hand up his neck and chin. "I want to consume you." Nash strained his neck back slightly, giving me access to porcelain skin. I kissed his neck with a peck, my lips feeling the sweet throb of his artery pulse against it. Like I was operating a metal detector. I kept kissing and Nash moaned into it.

Finally, my lips met his again. And fireworks, like the ones from his creation in the champagne yesterday. I was fixed on shoving as much of my tongue in his mouth as possible. It wasn't even like we were wrestling. My tongue beat out his tongue every single time.

Our bodies were becoming one as my mouth was unable to detach itself from his, and my hands couldn't help but begin undressing him. My fingers plucking his shirt buttons free to open up and touch his soft, delicate torso.

"Oh my god," he exclaimed the moment my mouth travelled south to his chest.

I sucked on his nipples and gave the skin around them sweet, gentle bites, looking to him to see the open mouthed pleasure being expelled from his body in heavenly moans.

We didn't get any further than that, being edged into oblivion. I couldn't have my first time after such a deep slumber to be in such a cramped space. But before the kissing and skin sucking got too out of hand, we'd arrived at the apartment building.

"I could portal," he said.

"No, no, I'm going to need you to save that energy," I told him, giving him another kiss and plucking his bottom lip out with a bite.

There was underground parking at the apartment building. I carried Nash out of the car and into the elevator where I stood, staring at the reflection of me with him in my arms and his suit jacket draped over my shoulder. It was just the two of us.

"I've never done anything with a vampire before," he said.

After everything I'd heard over the last twenty hours, I'd have been more surprised to learn if he had been intimate with a vampire before. "I've been with witches, and shifters, and sometimes, witches and shifters and vampires, all at the same time."

"Oh."

"Don't worry. That was in the twenties. Or, my twenties. I don't recall it well enough," I told him.

Nash reached out to my face and pulled my bottom lip down. "How old are you?" he asked, running his warm thumb across the teeth ridges in my lip.

I licked his finger, forcing him to giggle and pull it away. "Old enough to be considered a vampire elder," I said. "That doesn't put you off me, does it?"

"I've always had a thing for older men," he said.

The elevator dinged and we were at my apartment.

Estefania was waiting for me, in a different set of clothing than yesterday. "Oh, you brought company."

"Hi," Nash said. "I would've said bye yesterday, but I was—"

"It's fine," she said. "Witches where I'm from are unpredictable too. Anyway, uncle. I can't believe you left and didn't tell me. I mean, I kinda knew because I didn't feel your presence anymore."

"We'll talk later," I said. "Nash was going to show me what I've been missing out on for the last twenty years."

"Be my guest," she laughed. "I'm going out to explore. I've been told dinner will be served in the late evening. Should I inform the staff to set a place for one more?"

Nash was too busy staring at me to notice she'd been talking about him. "I'm not sure," I said. "I think he'll be needed back home, but I'm not sure I'll be finished with you before then."

He nodded. "I don't wanna go home."

"You don't have to."

There was a particular scent to Nash now, sweet, almost floral. I carried him right to the bedroom as a fury enraged inside me. A mix between a panic attack and a drug-induced psychosis. Nash was in heat, and I was about to become the worst behaved Alpha this side of Manhattan had seen in years.

I threw Nash on my large, made bed. "You're mine," I told him, unable to contain the excitement in my fangs. They were hungry to pierce flesh and consider claiming it.

He popped the rest of his shirt buttons as he laid on his bed. "Come get me." He threw his hat across the room, landing perfectly on my dresser. "I'm all yours."

I tore the clothes from my skin, shredding them with sheer strength. Naked, I jumped onto the bed, landing perfectly over Nash's body. The wooden foundations of it broke, sending the bed down to the ground and the four small posts at the corners to collapse and hit the floor with it.

"I won't have control once I start," I told him, slipping a finger into the waist of his slacks. "It might hurt, are you ready?"

Nash's hands fumbled to meet mine at his waist. He nodded. "Please."

"Our fate's were sealed the second our lips touched," I whispered, planting my teeth with kisses across his smooth chest. His blood on my tongue matured with the taste of his sweet heat sweat. I didn't lick too much of the blood, just prodding it with my tongue.

He moaned as the blue bloom of bruises revealed how deep our bodily connection had blossomed. "Yes," he said softly in my ear. "Yes," he moaned, hands ruffling through my hair in an attempt to pin my face to his chest.

There was no stopping my hunger now that I'd gotten a singular taste of what made him so special, the magic in him, his blood, it was—I lifted my head, blood dripping down my chin. I looked him in the eyes, his heart beat faster, I knew I could look a little gnarly when I was feeding, and maybe I shouldn't have jumped right into bed after waking from a long sleep.

"How do I taste?" he asked, presenting me with his wrist.

"A cabernet with a deep fruity profile," I said, taking his hand and kissing the wrist. "And I feel your thoughts."

On his body, between his legs, I didn't need to read energy to know his was rocking an erection and producing enough slick to find himself ready to be bodied by a full football team. I continued to go down his torso, leaving kisses and tearing whatever fabric of clothing he had on him, getting to his naked body and embracing him.

"We've made a mess," he whispered, looking at the smeared drying blood wiped across the bedding. On his elbows, he glanced at my cock, eyes wide and blinking fast. "Oh. I—"

"I'm going to make a bigger mess," I warned him, tracing a hand down from his belly button to the base of his cock. It was throbbing against his thigh, leaving a precious precum trail of all the places I'd yet to kiss and make bloody. "Let me guess. You usually fuck humans."

He nodded. "It's safer," he said, sitting upright to meet me. "But you're different." He reached out to my cock, and grabbed it with two hands. Neither of them connected finger to palm. I was thick in that department.

"You're never going with another human again," I told him. "Or anyone else for that matter. You've done something to me, Nash. And I need you to know that I'm a little possessive, you could say it's my nature."

I let him tug on my cock for a couple more moments before pushing him back on the bed. I flipped him over and raised his ass in the air. He'd made a little mess on the bedding, producing sticky slick. I parted his cheeks, the warm, inviting pinkness of his hairless hole stared back at me. I met it with my lips, devouring him inside and out.

As Nash laid there, slowly dipping his hips to the bed in an effort to rub his cock down against the fabric of the bedding, I was keeping it from happening. My mouth devoured his ass until my ravenous thirst took over.

Without any warning, other than my mouth coming away from his ass with his slick dripping down my chin, I jammed my cock deep in his ass. There was no resistance. It went deep on the first thrust.

He yelped and slowly turned to a cooing moan, begging me to do it again.

Laid on his back, I was a little more gentle now. Giving him kisses at the nape of his neck and inhaling the sweetly scented hair products on his scalp. There wasn't a single part of him I didn't want to leave untouched and unfucked.

For the first time in twenty years, I was rock solid, and life had a renewed sense of meaning to it.

I pulled out and turned him over on the bed. "I need to look you deep in your eyes," I told him, hiking his legs up over my shoulders and pushing them back against his body. Naturally, they slipped to the side of me as he didn't possess an acrobats level of flexibility. My cock buried itself inside him again, instinctively.

"You've ruined me," he whimpered with a smile.

"I've only just started," I told him. "Can I—" My jaw clenched as I gulped hard in my throat. "Can I take a drink from your neck?"

He tilted his head slightly, showing off the gorgeous structure to his neck. "Yes."

I latched onto him. There was no removing me once I had my hold. I was akin to a leech, lapping up life source.

Nash lasted seconds before orgasm, his body semi-convulsing on my cock while he was shooting ribbons of cum between our torsos, mixing with the blood residue still on his skin. I didn't blame him, it was euphoric to drink and be drank from.

My cock knotted nice and hard inside him. I was a key to his lock, and there was no removing this key with any amount of force.

As I pulled out of him, his blood dripping from my lips into his mouth, I felt his pleasure run through me right before I came, filling him up with cum, and forcing his belly to bulge slightly against mine.

"Fuck," I let out, dipping my head to kiss him and lick the blood from his face. My ass continued to jolt slightly as I wasn't done unloading.

Nash had the biggest smile on his face. "I never wanna go back home," he said.

Sliding my hands under his body, I held him and kissed his torso. "I hope you never do." I knew it was wishful thinking, but I wasn't going to start a war and kidnap this sweet omega witch. Although wars had started for less, and he was worth it.