Here Be Sexist Vampires

Chapter Five

(Sam)

“Who’s here?” asked Jared. I didn’t realise he’d followed me.

“Sam’s Sire.” Sebastian sighed as he looked at me. “He appealed against your leave of his hold on the grounds that your request to be free of him was not made in person. Antonio had him brought here some twenty minutes or so ago, hoping to have this over with once and for all. We suspected that he would not let you go easily. He has requested an audience with you, and that Antonio be present as he seems to be confident that you will return with him and wants Antonio to witness your decision to leave here.”

“Where is he?” My voice dripped with agitation.

“With Antonio in one of his parlour rooms.”

“Why would he think you’d go with him?” asked Jared.

I puffed. “Victor’s a master at manipulation.”

“He will not be allowed to threaten you,” Sebastian assured me. “You can refuse to see him if you wish, but I suspect that he will only press the matter until you agree to see him.”

I nodded in agreement and inhaled deeply. “Alright, take me to the bugger.”

“I’m coming.” Jared’s tone left no room for negotiation.

As much as moral support was nice, I didn’t want Jared there. I didn’t want him to see the weak person that Victor had the power to reduce me to. “No.”

“Why?”

“If a bloke walks in there with me it’ll piss him right off. He never liked other blokes round me, it got him paranoid. He’ll think me and you are together and he’ll be even more difficult.”

Jared shrugged. “That’s a good thing. If he loses it, Antonio’s got an excuse to throw him out, no conversations necessary.”

“He has a point,” said Sebastian.

Before I could speak, Jared added, “I’m Antonio’s Heir and you’re my co-worker -”

“Co-worker?” I asked with a smile.

“Yeah, co-worker. I’ve a right to be there, and I’m going with you – end of discussion.”

“If I can’t even get you off my back how in the hell am I going to stand up against Victor?” I grumbled.

Jared grabbed my lower arm gently. “Look, all you have to do is go in there and tell him you don’t want to go back to him.”

Sounded easy enough. But it wasn’t. “Victor’s power...He can gauge and alter your emotions.”

“Alter your emotions?”

“In other words, if he wants you to feel something or want something it can be very hard to resist it. I’ve had plenty of practice, and I reckon I can block him better than most. But not for long. It has this crushing effect on you until you feel like your head will explode.”

“He’ll try to make you want him.”

I nodded. “Won’t this be fun.”

“So then we need to get you in and out the room as quick as possible.”

Jared had made it sound so simple. Maybe it could be. Maybe I was fretting for nothing. It hadn’t been long since I’d left Victor and already I felt like a different person. For the first time since becoming a vampire I’d experienced freedom, friendship, passion, and the feel of having a life of my own with my own job, my own home, my own money, my own belongings. Just the very idea of Victor wanting to make me lose all that was enough to make me inflate with resentment.

“Let’s get this over with.”

With each step I made nearer to the parlour that cold draft within me got chillier. Victor was well and truly pissed, I sensed. Vampires always had close emotional links to their Sires whether they wanted them or not. Being a mixture of both eager to get it over with and tempted to procrastinate, I had that dreamy feeling of walking on the spot but not actually getting anywhere. Determined to be strong or else I’d never resist Victor’s influence, I squashed the sense of panic and focused on the graceful, elegant, leisurely stroll of Sebastian as he led Jared and I to the parlour.

He’s already trying to reach your emotions, isn’t he? said Jared as Sebastian opened the parlour room door. I can feel the weight of his power in the air.

My head’s pounding already.

I’ll get you out quick, I promise.

This parlour was much the same as the one Antonio had taken me to that time he had offered me the job, except that there was no piano in here. Antonio was sitting on a beige sofa with Luther beside him and his guards on either side.

Startling me, both Nero and Achilles dashed over to me protectively. The snarls they hurled at the very unwanted visitor were silent. Victor was stood between the two sofas in a smart black trouser suit and stared at me as if we were the only people in the room. Several emotions flashed in his squinty gray eyes. Relief. Pleasure. Desire. Betrayal. Fury.

Instantly I had the feeling of being hit hard with a heavy object, but it wasn’t an object. It was pressure. A pressurizing sense of guilt.

“Sam,” he drawled, his thin lips forming a warm smile. “You don’t know how much I’ve missed you, luv.” He had a way of being able to always sound friendly, polite, reasonable and compassionate. His eyes scanned my appearance. He didn’t look too happy about the tight clothing. The clenching and unclenching of his fists was expected. “Looking well.”

I didn’t speak. I was afraid of what I’d say. One part of me had an instinct to yell a string of profanities at him and tell him to go jump up his own arse. But another part of me wanted to run to him and beg him to forgive me for leaving him and ask him to take me home – thanks to the weight of the guilt that he was throwing at me. The more I tried to fight it the more my head hurt.

Knowing that the closer I physically was to him the easier it would be for him to rule my emotional state, I stopped about five feet away from him. Jared halted beside me. It seemed that it was only then that Victor noticed him. I watched as Victor read Jared’s emotions. A smile appeared, which surprised me.

“Aren’t you going to come and give your old hubby a hug?” he asked me.

The strength and sharpness in my voice surprised me. “You’re not my husband.”

“There’s no need to lie.”

But I wasn’t lying. And Victor knew that. Just like he knew that I hated being called something that I wasn’t, especially a liar. “I know what you’re trying to do,” I told him. “Trying to piss me off so my composure will crack and you can control my emotions easier.” I shook my head. “It won’t work.”

Suddenly the force of the guilt was overwhelming, and there was a new emotion too: self-loathing. I had the sensation of being stuck in a pit with emotions that weren’t my own clinging to me and trying to devour me.

“You agreed not to manipulate her emotions,” warned Antonio.

“And I’m not.” Victor was utterly unaffected by Antonio’s air of authority, I realised. That was probably a lot to do with the fact that he was a fruitcake. “You must have noticed by now that my Sam can be temperamental. One minute she’s furious, the next minute she’s calm, and then all of a sudden she develops a sense of humour.”

As usual, he was coming across as reasonable and fair while making me out to be the pain in the backside. Planting the seed of suspicion was a specialty of his. Plus, he knew that falsely accusing me of doing things or being things was likely to crack me.

“She did a runner because she was angry with me, not because she doesn’t love me or want to be with me. Isn’t that right, Sam, luv?”

God I wanted to smack him. I wanted to scream out to Antonio that Victor was a lying, manipulative twat and not to listen to a word he said. Victor knew this. But I didn’t do those things, because I knew that the more energy I spent trying to defend myself the weaker I would be to his power. “What is it you want?”

Victor’s smile disappeared but his friendly, caring tone remained. “I just want you to come home, luv. What else would I want?”

“No.” The word was no more than a whisper. It had hurt to get out, especially since a part of me hated myself for saying something so awful. Self-loathing.

Good girl. I could almost feel Jared’s pride.

“No?” giggled Victor. He took a few steps toward me.

Simultaneously another emotion came crashing down on me. Desire. It stirred low in my stomach. My thighs instantly clenched and I had to swallow back a moan.

“Don’t be daft, luv. Come to me.” He opened his arms and I almost did go.

What’s he trying to make you feel now?

He wants me to want him.

A second later Victor’s head whipped to face Jared and I felt a million times lighter as the saddle of emotions slipped away from me. I could only guess that Jared must have sent a telepathic thought to Victor that he really didn’t like.

I spoke quickly, “You’ve come to hear it from me so here it is: I’m not going back with you, Victor. I’m asking you to free me from your hold.”

Victor snickered. “I bet you’re very pleased with yourself, aren’t you; getting picked for the legion tryouts and then getting hired by Antonio as a Commander. You just remember that I’m the one who made you and I’m the one who taught you how to use your gift -”

“Taught isn’t the word I’d use,” I spat.

“- and every single strength you have you owe to me. You wouldn’t be where you are now if it weren’t for me.”

I smiled. “Then you only have yourself to blame for Antonio offering me a position then, don’t you?”

His snarl was loud and feral, making Nero and Achilles bark.

“Victor, will you release me from your hold?”

“Never,” he growled. No surprise there. “You’re mine.”

I turned my attention to the Latino-looking bloke on the sofa. “Antonio, you’ve witnessed me say I don’t want to leave with him, will you grant me release from his hold?”

Victor pivoted on the spot and bore his teeth at Antonio. “She’s mine.” The guards were beside their Grand High Master in less than a second.

Antonio, completely unfazed by Victor’s behaviour, said calmly, “Samantha Parker, I release you from your Sire’s hold with immediate effect.”

No one else felt it but me. That surge of black, bottomless hatred, that seething need to cause pain. It was coursing through Victor, I could sense it. Then there was a snap within him, I felt that too. Antonio’s guards were quick and would have easily apprehended Victor before he reached Antonio, but I didn’t think about that when I saw him ready to pounce. All I thought about was defending Antonio.

Soaking up the energy around me, I felt it swirl in my grasp and I blasted it out of my palm in the form of a thermal beam; a long, silver ray of hot energy that buried itself into Victor’s abdomen and burned him from the inside out: his favourite thing for me to do to his marks.

He cried and writhed and fell to his knees, and I felt that same pain...Like being torn open and sliced by a boiling hot knife while heat shot through my body, singing my extremities. And then he disappeared in the flame and disintegrated completely. It was my turn to cry out.

(Jared)

I couldn’t believe she’d done it. Not many vampires would kill their Sires. It was the same feeling of killing a parent; even if they were a total ass you respected that they created you and you had a special link with them – in most cases, anyway. Plus, the physical pain of destroying that link and killing your Sire was, from everything I’d heard, unbearable. It could even make vampires ill, it was the only thing that could.

So there Sam was on her knees, gritting her teeth against an agony that I could only imagine.

I was the first to react. It was pure instinct to kneel beside her and pull her to me and envelope her with my arms. I half-expected her to push me away – what with her being as stubborn as she was. But instead she buried her face in my chest while her hands clamped down tightly on my arms. An ear-piercing whine still escaped her mouth despite how much she ground her teeth together. She was shaking so hard she was more or less convulsing. I couldn’t even tell where the pain was coming from.

“What hurts?” I asked Luther and Antonio as they rushed over to her. The dogs where making slight howling sounds. “Will it be her stomach, her head – what?”

Luther gazed down at her with sympathy. “The pain supposedly hits every single part of your body.”

I sighed out of my nose. I wanted to punch something. “How long will it last?”

“She could be like this for minutes or hours,” replied Antonio, running a hand over her hair but she didn’t seem to feel it. I wasn’t even sure if she knew who was holding her.

Sam? Sam?

It BURNS! The pain was obvious in her mental voice.

Where?

EVERYWHERE!

“Brave little thing, isn’t she,” said one of the guards.

“A very extraordinary young lady,” commented Luther.

Just then her body shook hard and blood poured out of her mouth and drenched my t-shirt.

I glanced up at Antonio and Luther. “Is there anything that’ll make it stop?” I already knew the answer would be no.

“You have to think of it as her body grieving,” said Luther. “As vampires, our links with our Sires are based on the exchange of blood that occurred during the creation process. Victor drank her to near death and then fed her his own blood. Her body no longer has a living, breathing blood-link and it is grieving it. Grieving is a process – painful, draining, overbearing. It must run its course. For vampires who have ended the life of their own Sire, the agony will be no less than excruciating. I’m told that the pain is bad enough that it makes you want to die.”

Jared? She sounded weak but there was something else in her mental voice. Hope, maybe? Hold me still.

What?

Just hold me still.

So I did. I tightened my arms around her until she was as still as I could get her. Then I watched, completely baffled, as she moved one of her hands from my arm to her chest. A slight zing went through her body and then she was limp in my arms mere seconds later.

“What’s wrong with her?” Seized by panic, I set her back slightly and examined her body with my eyes. The hand she had against her chest flopped down to her lap, revealing something small lodged there. Holding her securely with one arm, I used my free hand to pluck the little thing out from between her breasts.

“Is that a thorn?” asked Antonio.

I laughed a little. “I would never have thought of that.”

“What is it?”

“When she was coaching the guys she absorbed Chico’s power to exhale poisonous thorns. Thorns that knock you unconscious for a couple of hours.”

“Smart,” said Luther. “By the time she wakes up the effects of severing the link may well have worn off.”

“Perhaps you should teleport her to her apartment,” suggested Antonio. “I think it will be better for her to wake in her own bed. Oh and leave her a note to the effect that she should avoid work for the remainder of the night.”

Standing upright with her in my arms, I nodded.

In a blink we were in the centre of the living area in her apartment. I’d been curious to know what it was like inside; whether she’d tried to put her own mark on it or whether she’d left it to look like a show-home. With books stacked on the shelves, a bowl of glass sweets on the little table and a throw hanging over the sofa, it had a homey feel to it.

I noticed the tiny, pink, decorate cushions on the sofa and suspected that Fletcher may have had something to do with them. Sam just didn’t seem that girly. It was impossible to not also notice, as I walked en-route to her bedroom, that she wasn’t the type that had a specific place for everything. The apartment wasn’t disorderly or cluttered, but it wasn’t obsessively and freakishly tidy; it was lived in. Like mine.

Unfortunately there was no underwear lying around. Whoa, did I really just wonder about that? Shaking off my perverted thoughts, I laid her carefully down onto her bed and covered her with the satin bedspread.

And now I should probably leave. I really should. I really, really should. Especially since she’d be absolutely irate to wake up and see me sitting here next to her. Yes, I was now sitting next to her. I could stay for a while and then just teleport out the second she woke up though, right? She’d never know I was here.

Tentatively – I know, since when was I tentative? – I brushed that gorgeous curtain of dark hair away from her face and ran my knuckles from her temple to her jaw. I’m pretty sure that I’ve never done that to a woman before. Not in my eighteen years as a vampire or in my twenty-four years as a human. But, then, there’d never been anyone like Sam around me in all those years. She intrigued me on every level.

I saw then that I had dried blood on my finger. Her blood. It was all over my shirt too from when she’d had some sort of coughing fit. Well that explained why subconsciously my eyes kept dancing to her throat and why I’d gotten so incredibly thirsty out of nowhere. It was that enchanting scent. Christ, even the potent scent of her blood all over me hadn’t been enough to distract me from how worried I was about her.

But as much as I was yearning to taste that blood on my finger right now and had almost brought it to my mouth, I didn’t want to taste her until she wanted me to. And she would want me to, I’d make sure of that.

At least now I had a good enough reason that would motivate me to leave; I needed to change out of this shirt that was soaked in her blood before I lost it. Tentatively – again the tentativeness! – I kissed her forehead and ran my hand through her hair one last time.

It was when I stood upright that I heard her.

Jared.

Of course I had to question whether I’d only heard it because I’d wanted to. And I’d have to question my sanity if things were so bad that I wanted to hear her voice in my head for no good reason.

Jared.

I smiled down on her. They say that when you’re unconscious you can still hear and stuff, right? Maybe on some level she’d sensed me around her. Or maybe she was dreaming about me. If it was the second, then I’d be interested to know just what was going on in that dream.

And now, just because I’d heard that husky voice saying my name in my head, I couldn’t leave. Sighing in defeat, I shrugged off my leather jacket – which I knew she loved a little too much so I wore it all the more – and hung it over the wardrobe door that was wide open. A lot of skin-tight stuff in there. Good. Definitely pushed on her by Fletcher though.

I peeled off the bloody t-shirt, wiped my hands with it, and balled it up before plonking it in the kitchen bin. Then I lay next to her. Yeah, she was going to crack every one of my ribs for this. It was a good thing that I healed instantly. Keeping a respectable distance between us seemed like the decent thing to do considering that she was unconscious and my hands wanted to wander just like they always did when she was around. So I positioned myself on my back with my arms behind my head, and just watched her sleep...wondering if she’d say my name again.

(Sam)

I was in that hazy, faraway state that was one stop away from being awake when I felt the body beside me. A chest that was firm and hard, covered in the softest skin. The scent that flavoured it was spicy and masculine. A scent that I’d know anywhere and happily inhale all day long. So what I did next I did without any real thought; I snuggled into him, laying my head on his shoulder and draping my arm over his chest. God this was comfortable. And right.

A hand then appeared on my arm, fingers tickling my skin soothingly. Another hand was then in my hair, stroking through a patch of it ever so gently. I sighed, content. The skin-to-skin contact was interesting. A kiss would be nice. Really, really nice.

Opening my eyes, I began to raise my head...and that’s when I left the faraway land and found myself totally awake and realised my little predicament. My body immediately tensed. Oh shit.

There was rumbling in the chest underneath me and a laugh came soon after. I sat up with the bed sheet more or less glued to me. A second later I registered that I was fully clothed but didn’t release the sheet. Gaping, I looked down at a laughing, bare-chested Jared. It was a strain to keep my eyes away from the chest but I did it.

He laughed out the words: “Ah, I wondered how long it’d take before you woke all the way up and realised what you were doing. I bet you hate yourself now. Shame I didn’t get a kiss.”

“What’re you doing in my bed?! In my apartment, for that matter?”

“Relax.” He was still laughing.

“And why are you half naked?”

“You got blood all over my shirt, remember?” He sobered up then. “I guess you probably don’t. How you feeling? Pain gone?”

“Um, yeah.” The words came out quiet. Wow, I’d really killed him. My own Sire.

“After you put yourself unconscious – which was good thinking, by the way – I brought you here.”

“And stayed with me half-naked because...?”

He rolled his eyes. “I was going to go to my room and change but...”

“But, what?”

“You don’t wanna know.”

I tensed again. “Why don’t I want to know? What don’t I want to know?”

“Seriously, you’ll get embarrassed, you don’t want to know.”

“No, I really, really do. Cough up.”

He sighed and sat up. “I stayed because...you said my name.”

“I was unconscious. Unconscious people don’t gab.”

“Not with their mouths. You must have been dreaming about me or something. Was it a good dream? Kinky? I’ll bet it was kinky. Tell me about it, I’ll analyse it.” His smile and arched brow gave him the most impish look ever.

I knew my cheeks were an unattractive beetroot shade at this point, which just made me even more embarrassed. A change of subject was urgently required. “How long was I out?”

He shrugged. “A couple of hours. Not as long as I’d expected.”

“So, what, you just lay there all that time?”

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone in that much pain. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who killed their Sire either.”

A little guilt nipped at me then. My Sire. I’d killed my own Sire. Victor had been right about one thing; he’d made me...And I’d just gone and killed my maker.

“Hey,” said Jared as he gently pinched my chin with his thumb and forefinger. “Don’t go feeling bad about it. He deserved it. I know they say not to speak ill of the dead but that Victor was one evil son of a bitch. Did he really try to make you want him? As in, like, desire him?” I nodded. “So he could make you horny, make you want to have sex with him?”

“It’s his idea of foreplay. Was. But it was the only way he could ever get me in that bed.”

“That’s sick. It’s basically psychological rape.”

Now I didn’t feel so guilty. But I was still surprised at myself. I hadn’t hesitated in killing my own Sire. Antonio didn’t need my protection. He had enough by the way of guards and two Pit Bulls. But it had been like a reflex to protect him. I hadn’t even realised I liked the bloke all that much. I tended to get along best with outgoing people, and Antonio wasn’t exactly the life and soul of the party.

But he’d freed me from a crazy, cruel, psychological rapist. To think I’d come so close to folding under all the pressurizing emotions... “By the way, what did you say to Victor? I was almost about to snap, and you said something to him telepathically that made him lose all focus on me.”

“Oh I, um, told him that I didn’t want him to take you back because I wanted to screw you a couple more times first.”

My jaw dropped. “You made him think you’d been shagging me?”

“It distracted him, didn’t it?”

I sighed, conceding that he was right. “God, I’m thirsty.” In the time I’d taken to sling the bedspread off me, Jared had moved with vampire speed to the fridge and back again; now sitting beside me with a red grape flavoured NST. “Thanks,” I muttered, a little taken aback. Feeling unbelievably drained, I gulped down the drink. My stomach felt better within seconds but my body had the enthusiasm of a decaying leaf.

“Antonio said to tell you to take the rest of the night off. And I really think you should, you look half dead.”

“But then the squad will end up having another evening of lounging around.”

“I won’t let them lounge, I’ll have them repeat the training they were doing with me earlier. Then tomorrow you can blast them into the railings again if they don’t turn up at the arena.”

“They’d better.”

His chuckle was silent. He stared at me for a minute. Not as though he had something to say, but as though it was perfectly normal to just stare at someone. I didn’t know how he could be so at ease about it. Before I could comment, he bounced off the bed and retrieved his leather jacket that was hanging over the wardrobe door. My treacherous set of eyes scrolled down from his face to get an eyeful of the lines, curves and sinews of his chest.

Jared – I couldn’t have expected him to not notice really, could I? – raised a brow.

There was really no point in trying to deny it or letting myself fall into a pit of embarrassment, especially when ogling was a favourite past-time of his too. “You look.”

“Hey, I don’t mind you looking. When you’re ready to stop pretending you don’t want to do more than that, let me know.”

“Will do,” I said sarcastically.

Losing his light-hearted air, he sighed as he gazed down at me. “You really don’t look great.”

“Thanks.”

“Take some energy from me.”

“What?”

He sat on the bed and repeated, “Take some energy from me. I know you can easy absorb the natural energy around you but it can’t be as good for your body as energy from a living thing.” He was right. The human body was like a battery. “Come on, the process of severing the link between you and Victor probably sapped nearly every last bit of your energy.”

Shaking my head, I told him, “It’s okay, but thanks.”

“You must have done it before to someone.”

I nodded. “Yeah...but it’s weird.”

“Weird how?”

“Well...you know when you’re really thirsty, for any fluid, and you start swigging down a drink but you keep going even when you’re not really thirsty anymore just because it feels so good and soothing against your throat?”

“Yeah. Don’t tell me you get, like, an energy-lust?” He smiled at that.

“I’ve been known to take more than I need to. I could wipe you out, you’d be just as exhausted as I am now.”

“I won’t let you wipe me out.”

“You won’t stop me, you won’t want me to stop. It’s almost like when you’re drinking blood... It won’t make you horny, but it’ll make you feel a bit high.”

“Really? Go for it then. I’m way too intrigued to let this go. How do you do it?”

“Well, you don’t have much excess energy around you so the best and quickest way to do it would be for me to put my hands on your head, but that’ll probably make you dizzy.”

“That’s okay.”

I didn’t like the idea of repaying him by sending him off all wobbly. “You sure you want to do this?”

“Sam, just do it.”

“Hands.” I held out mine, palms facing upwards, and he took them. “Right. You don’t have to do anything, but it’ll work better if you don’t resist when you feel the pull.”

“I won’t,” he assured me in a whisper as he twined his fingers in mine and shuffled closer to me.

“When I say stop, you have to pull away or the connection won’t totally break.” I didn’t actually need to close my eyes, but I did. It was just too distracting to look at him when he was doing that obvious staring thing. It felt as though my entire body was a lung as it sucked in his energy as if it was vapour. Instantly Jared shuddered, but he didn’t resist.

Sam. It was a gasp of pleasant surprise; it felt good to him already.

Hungry for more of that force, my body drew in more and more. I felt Jared’s hands tighten on my fingers and then his forehead was suddenly pressed against mine. I opened my eyes to find that his own were closed. I could feel what he was feeling; that he was outside of reality, that he was at peace, that nothing else mattered but this moment. Well he was certainly enjoying himself.

It was as my body began to grow desperate for more of his energy that I knew I had to stop – it was like heading toward a cliff at high speed, knowing that if you stopped now you’d be okay but if you kept upping that speed... “Stop.”

I tried to pull my hands away but Jared held them even tighter. “No, don’t stop.”

“I have to.” But his hold was unyielding. “Jared, you have to let go.” But he didn’t, he wasn’t even having some sort of inner struggle about whether to release my hands or not. He was completely caught up in the feeling. I thought about butting him but in his state of bliss the pain wouldn’t even register.

Jared!?!

If he didn’t let go of my hands now I’d fall off that cliff.

An idea came to mind; something that was sure to snap him out of it. I kissed him. A firm, greedy kiss. His eyelids shot open and, sure enough, he kissed me back. His hands instantly went to my face and held it to his as if he was expecting me to pull away any second now. I should pull away. But that was easier thought about than done. That blast of heat that I’d felt last time circulated through me again.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t enjoying his tongue exploring the crevice of my mouth, or if I said that my hands were clutching the skin of his back of their own accord. Just like I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t wanted him since first meeting him, or that him being misogynistic had made me want him any less. That was why when he dragged me onto his lap, his lips still mashed with mine, I curled my legs around his waist instead of pulling away. He grinded me against his erection, groaning, as he intensified the kiss ten-fold; it was raw and primal and drugging. Then he was skating his hands over me, kneading my breasts and clutching my arse, and then he was plucking my nipples with his teeth.

Suddenly my head hit a hard surface and there was a strong smell of earth. Jared released my mouth and looked around us just as I did. Then he laughed.

“Why are we in the arena?” I asked, spooked.

“You must have teleported us here.”

“Say again?”

“When you took some of my energy you must have absorbed a little of my power.”

“But I didn’t try to teleport us. I certainly wasn’t thinking about the arena.” Thank God it was empty of people.

“It can be a little temperamental until you get used to it. The arena’s been on your mind the past couple of days, right? So here we are.”

Yes, here we were; bodies pressed together, my legs tangled around his waist, hearts hammering away.

“Um...” I had no idea what to say. Whatever Jared saw on my face made him release an aggravated sigh and move from above me. I, too, stood, and as we stared at each other wearing dubious expressions it made me think of last night after we had broke away from each other.

“I know you only kissed me because you couldn’t get through to me before. I know that. But you didn’t stop, Sam. You could have, because sure enough the kiss served its purpose. Not only did you not stop, but you got that carried away that you teleported us without trying to. So I’m thinking maybe you want me a lot more than what you’re letting on.”

I honestly didn’t know what he wanted from me. Yeah, a shag. But I didn’t get why a shag was all so important. “Jared, why are you pushing this? What is it you want to hear?”

“I just need to understand why you pull away from me.”

Oh – he’s not used to rejection. The idea of someone not wanting him was just incomprehensible to him. Blokes and their egos!

“I know you said that you find me having three consorts a bit weird...But, I mean, what is it that you’re saying exactly? Is it that you want me to get rid of them? That you want to be my only consort? That you want more from me than just sex? What?”

I held up my index finger. “Alright, first of all, I’ll never be anyone’s consort ever again in my life. I thought I made that clear. And I don’t want some fairytale relationship; I couldn’t give that much of myself anyway when I’ve only just got me back.”

“I don’t want a relationship either, so what’s the problem?”

“Jared, I can’t sleep with someone who sees women as possessions. I’ve been doing that for the past three years.”

“I see women as possessions?”

“You have three constantly tucked in a little apartment awaiting your pleasure.”

He sighed and shook his head, still confused. “So...you’re saying that you ignore that you want me because I’ve got consorts? So then you do want me to get rid of them.”

“You’re not listening to me. You see women as possessions – that is the problem.”

He started pacing in front of me. “Why are you being so judgemental about this? I’m not the only one who has consorts. Antonio has them, do you judge him?”

“Antonio isn’t asking me to sleep with him.”

“Half the Commanders have them, most of the security guards have them.”

“Yeah, and a lot of them don’t. Sebastian doesn’t either. Your brother doesn’t.”

He halted his pacing and his irises glowed red. “Whoa, wait a minute, what does my brother have to do with this?”

“I’m just saying -”

“Comparing me to my brother? Who’s scoring the most points so far?”

“Oh don’t be a dick.”

He glared at me for a minute like he was studying me, like he was trying to see through me. And then a smile – it wasn’t a nice one – crept onto his face. “Know what I think, Sam?” He walked toward me stealthily, his eyes narrowed. “I think it’s just been that long for you since your body and your mind responded to someone without any manipulating involved from anybody else that you don’t know what to do. It scares the hell out of you, doesn’t it?”

He was right up close to me now. I’d never seen him angry before. He was unnerving, to be truthful. At the same time as wanting to reach out and calm him, I also wanted to slap him for making me see something about myself that I hadn’t really wanted to see. I was – human years and vampire years added together – twenty-three years old...and I didn’t know how to handle something as basic as desire anymore.

“Maybe,” I allowed. It didn’t seem worth denying it. “Can you honestly blame me for that? Can you blame me for not wanting to feel like someone’s possession anymore? Every single time he touched me I felt sick, dirty, and sometimes I wanted to die. So excuse me if I don’t want to sleep with someone who sees women as nothing but sexual outlets just the same way that he did!”

Jared pointed hard at me and spoke through his teeth. “Hey, I am nothing like him. Don’t ever compare me to him again, or to my brother. I’ll tell you what, Sam” – he said my name with animosity – “I’ll make things easy for you: right now is the last time we’ll ever talk about this. I’ll never come onto you ever again. The bet’s off. You can just get on with your celibate lifestyle and I’ll get on with shagging my sexual outlets.”

He then teleported away, leaving me alone with thoughts that I didn’t want at the forefront of my mind and feelings that I didn’t want to feel. If I – a vampire, a creature that was naturally sensual – couldn’t even cope with desire then I was basically broken, wasn’t I? I hated Victor so much right now. And Jared. Actually, no, I didn’t hate him. I hated that he was so infuriated with me. I hated that he was somewhere thinking bad of me. I hated that I’d hurt him. How could I have compared him to Victor? I hadn’t been comparing him to Evan, or at least not in the way that he was thinking; I wasn’t weighing up who was the better brother to be with. I didn’t want to be with either of them. I honestly just wanted to belong only to myself and not have to be concerned with pleasing other people.

Well, I got what I wanted. So why didn’t it feel as liberating and comforting as it should?