Arm in arm I led my father’s chosen stud through the city’s finest five-star hotel, down halls meant for employees, round corners no patron should see. Escorting him out the side exit where the kitchens tossed their garbage.
A stinking alley infused with rats.
Stiffening, the male seemed to catch on to my game. But it was too late. I had already slighted him and shown the stranger exactly what my father meant when he offered me up for the night.
Dumpster to my right, some poor soul’s vomit to my left, I hiked up my skirt and placed my forehead against aged brick. “I’m ready.”
No panties. Dry as a desert.
Ass up like a cheap whore, I waited for the inevitable complaint.
“I earned this right! There is a room upstairs where you will serve me.”
This old speech I’d heard thousands of times. “You were told you had the right to seed me. That you’d been honored with the opportunity to potentially father the next in my bloodline.” And that was a fucking fact. “Not that I was to entertain your pleasure or cum. Get to it. I have laundry to do.”
He wasn’t the first to enact violence when I failed to live up to the fantasy.
Sexy daywalker reeking of bad perfume and the heat of sunshine. A poor vampire weakling who failed to thrive within the hive and bedded down with humans.
How lucky I was to be granted their old cocks.
It was the nose that always broke first. Smashed into my chosen wall as they hissed and tore down their flies.
Not once had my father ordered they be gentle with his weakling offspring. After all, I was immortal. It might take my body time to stitch itself back together, but very few things could actually kill me.
A violent lover certainly wouldn’t.
And if he truly wanted the honor of fathering my child, no vampire male would take it too far. The womb must remain intact, after all. Otherwise, where would their little spawn implant?
But before my father’s chosen might get underway, the air rippled with the chill of magic. Cursing at the interruption, the man dropped fang and hissed.
A portal opened in our special space.
Fuck.
At my back, my paramour stiffened, but wisely withheld acting out further once he beheld who walked through the gate.
“She’s been summoned. Finish your business and go.” Melodic, wondrous. I hated that voice with a passion.
The blunt head of a half-hard cock prodded my entrance. “I slaved for this honor!”
Blasé, cold, the perfect soldier… my despised guardian folded his arms over his chest. “Enter her, seed the womb, and make offerings to our god. Perhaps he will deem you worthy to try her again.”
Under the Viking’s breath the slander, “Bastard,” paired with a forward thrust.
I didn’t recognize entry, or pay any attention to the animal rutting. It’s not as if this situation were unique. All vampire-kind were consistently ordered to fuck in an effort to keep the bloodlines strong. Even the pretty asshole trying to spend his cum in me must have been forced to mate hundreds of times, considering his age.
But I? Over and over, those who didn’t know better assumed my pussy was some prize worth having. It wasn’t.
A sleeve to slake lust within. A potential garden for the next life.
Not that I had ever conceived.
Every single day since I’d reached maturity I had obeyed the order to try.
Miss a turn of the sun and be beaten. My father’s creative concepts for torture were so extreme that I’d only refused to mate once.
More daywalkers were needed to be his perfect spies. Daywalkers he could flaunt when visiting aristocracy graced the Cathedral.
And his troublesome embarrassment of a daughter would become instantly disposable the next time I inevitably pissed him off.
I’d often wondered if I’d even be allowed the honor of holding my future child before I was murdered. Would I be granted the honor of choosing their name?
Jade was such a common stone, as unremarkable and easy to find as a pearl.
I’d hated that name long before I’d heard others laughing behind their hands at how little my father cared to choose something so commonplace.
At my back, the man picked up speed.
A grunt, a hiss, a grunt, and a rougher thrust shoved my slack body fully against the wall. Wafting stench of garbage, steam rising from cooling vomit, the scratch of vermin. He came.
No single apology for breaking my nose was offered when he pulled out and cursed.
“Darius will be notified that you received your honor, Calder.” Chanting preceded the opening of another portal gate, our observer expending his magic to expedite the Viking’s departure. “You’ve done us all an honor.”
Without so much as a farewell, my horrendous lover obeyed.
Moments later, the air stilled, my paramour gone. But my handler remained.
Turning so my sex could be covered by falling silk, I pressed my shoulder blades to the brick and wiped blood from my healing nose. “I’ll be careful of your fragile state, he’d said. Dick.”
Edging closer, close enough that my stomach rumbled at his scent, the inevitable chastising began. “Jade, you wouldn’t be so physically weak if you’d feed as you should. More importantly, starvation clouds your judgment. It makes you unreasonable.”
“Malcom.” I parroted his demeaning tone. “Despite my submission to having cameras all over my home, I do not enjoy having an audience while I’m being fucked.” Angry, hating that this man had stood witness to another session of my degradation, I snapped. “You could have at least turned around!”
Faster than I by far, exponentially stronger, one moment Malcom was a comfortable distance away, the next his fingers carded through my fallen hair. “You need to feed.”
How I hated that I jumped.
Against the undead, I was a piss-poor fighter. That didn’t stop me from instantly shoving him so hard the wall he flew into cracked from the force.
“Don’t touch me!”
He’d rebounded to his feet in a blur, completely unharmed by my outburst. Brushing dust from tailored black slacks, he had the audacity to smirk. “Pathetic, really. You can do better.”
And then his fingers were playing with my hair again.
I couldn’t effectively retaliate, because he was right. I was starving, and weakened, and so fucking tempted to tear into his flesh that behind my lips my fangs punched downward.
Embarrassing.
So I turned my head away instead, eyes locking on the dumpster as if failing to acknowledge him would make him disappear.
Lips at my ear, a willing throat far too close to my salivating mouth, Malcom murmured, “Give me your word that you’ll feed tonight, and I’ll leave you in peace.”
Grinding my teeth, refusing to concede to such a blatant taunt, I hissed, “I’ll eat.”
Oh, I’d eat. I’d eat and I’d disgust the bane of my existence in a single swoop.
With the pitter patter of rats already creaking under the dumpster, as soon as one might skitter by, I’d snap it up and tear in.
Right there where he could see.
I’d suck that vermin dry and then grab another. Who cared that feeding from animals was forbidden, lowly? Agitated as I was, I didn’t even care that I would most certainly be punished once my father found a hint of my action staining my memory.
He backed away at my agreement.
Once my eyes darted to where skittering was the loudest, Malcom knew what I was about. Silvery golden hair wafting about his shoulders like he was some goddamn phantom, he barked, “Jade, don’t.”
But I had already reached out. Fur filled my palm, and almost my mouth, before I realized that I held no rat.
A mewling kitten, dropped before I might scream.
Blood drained from my face. Vampire pale, I stared in horror as the feline scampered back to its hiding place, and I felt a thing I was forbidden from feeling.
“Look at me, Jade.” Why did he dare sound so sympathetic? “The cat’s gone. Look at me.”
Gowned in Chanel couture, prettied, and coiffed, with cum running down my thigh, I didn’t even attempt to pretend that we both didn’t know why I trembled.
“It’s gone. It’s okay.”
Before his fingertips might ghost over my shoulder, before I might have embarrassed myself further, I snapped. “I told you not to touch me!”
Hand hovering, still as the corpse he was, Malcom obeyed. He even took two steps back. Only then did I make my eyes track from that sliver of dark under the dumpster to look at his face.
Like a carved marble statue, beautiful in the same unearthly way all undead were beautiful. It was like staring at God's favorite angel. Outranking almost every last withered soul in the hive, he’d never fallen into the habit of outlandish costumes.
Slacks, a fitted sweater. Utilitarian yet impeccably tailored.
And pity.
He was wearing pity on his impossibly attractive face. “It’s ten minutes to midnight. I’ll count this last mating towards your debt for tomorrow.”
I would not let my wet eyes spill. “Fuck off, Malcom. If you think I’m falling for that, you’re going to be disappointed.”
His face returned to its normal state of smugness. “You’re due home at sundown.”
Wiping my nose on the back of my hand, I sighed at the ruin this evening had made of my dress. “And you’re reminding me of a standing appointment why?”
“It is my duty to inform you when you have been summoned.”
The exact thing he’d announced when he’d intruded on the Viking’s interlude. “I see.”
He’d interrupted on purpose. Technically he had not broken any rules. I hated when he did that.
Eyes like starlight, jaw flexing, Malcom dared another modicum of emotion. “Do you recall the exact reason why you dislike me, because I can’t?”
I had no intention of playing this game with him.
But he muttered on, running a hand through his hair. “I remember that day. Why you grew upset when you saw a cat. I remember that you were wearing a blue dress with a red bow.”
If his reason for existence was to torment me, he was doing a phenomenal job. “Funny that you remember that dress but don’t remember why you sicken me.”
“Funny that we remember anything…” The anger on his face washed away into deep consideration. Crossing his arms over his chest, my custodian sighed. “You haven’t even reached a century in age, Jade. You’re still such a blind, inexperienced child. Acting out without thinking. Refusing to eat. Pouting.”
The light in his eyes, it was as if he thought I were cute. There was no reason I had to stand there and bear it. Brushing past, I made to exit the alley.
“I’ll throw you a portal, Jade.”
The very thought of taking Malcom’s magical charity made me want to scream. “I’ll walk. Thanks.”
Despite my rejection, he cast a gate at the mouth of the alley, leaving me no other option. “If you’d have eaten, you’d have been able to summon your own.”
Fucking prick.