The Night Finally Passes
I passed out after Gracen sunk his teeth into my neck. He gulped it down so fast and fiercely that my heroin-esque blood barely had time to take effect and knock him out before he killed me.
When I finally wake, it’s to a most familiar, nostalgic sight. I’m in Luc’s bedroom, in a white nightgown so short and sheer I might as well be nude, and Luc’s seated at the bedside with shirt open and feet bare. There’s even the same set-up of IV drip carrying fresh blood into my veins, so I can ‘get a flush back in my cheeks.’
“We should be sitting on a moonlit beach in the Riviera, not holed up in a ruined refuge turned makeshift hospital room,” Luc laments, trailing his fingers around my palm in goose-bump raising play.
“Where’s Gracen?” I instantly demand, another all too familiar question.
Luc turns his eyes up to the heavens, slumping back in his chair. “Where I should be: with Julian. Probably getting a dedicated portrait of how gorgeous and tragic he is while he’s passed out all…” He waves his hand, disgusted.
I try to sit up, only to sag back against the pillows an instant later. “Bring him to me,” I command, and Luc arches an eyebrow.
“Just because you forced me into matrimony does not mean I am now a puppet to your every, entitled order--”
“Bring him to me, please,” I offer, sliding my fingers around his wrist in return of his earlier tease. “And then later I will give you a long and lovely treat,” I imitate his tone, “and Julian can paint whatever pose you pick. If we can keep ourselves from distracting him that is…”
He kisses me, and I melt right into it, allowing him to climb right over ontop of me, before reminding him firmly, “Gracen first. I need to see him.”
“I really did want to blow his head off,” Luc sighs, pushing back my hair. “If I hadn’t been there, he would have killed you. You realize that, right? Drank nearly four pints within the first three seconds, he was so uncontrolled, truly, pathetically desperate.”
“Just as desperate and needy as you were, during our first dance,” I remind him dryly, feeling a familiar clenching of my leg muscles as his hands continue their distracting, wicked work. “Now stop stroking at my tits and just give me what I want already. You always do.”
“They are so appealing plump,” he praises, squeezing at them all the harder and causing a line of wetness to swell from the tips, as I give a breathy gasp. “And more sensitive than ever… Shame they’re going to sag soon.”
I bat away his hands. “You asshole!”
“Let me turn you, and they’ll perk right up again,” he whispers enticingly. Then he heads for the door with an airy, “but I’ll let you say your farewells to your other, far inferior suitor first, of course, because I am just that gracious--”
“Do shut up.”
“No. And you are in firm need of a spanking later for daring speak to your master in such an insolent tone.”
“You are not my fucking--”
“Missus literally means belonging of the master,” he informs me smugly. Then he closes the door before I can get in a retort.
Gracen is still unconscious, staring dreamily off at nothing, when Julian and Luc’s sole surviving enforcer, Antonio, lug him over to that bedroom. Luc doesn’t lend a hand of course, asking me wearily, “And now I suppose you desire some alone time with the dangerous lump of--?”
“Where the hell is Ben?!” I snap. I left him with Julian, so seeing him come here empty handed is more than a little alarming. “Who is watching him?!”
“Kate,” Julian assures me. “She was here to… check on someone. He… He didn’t make it, and she was so… She was devastated. Then she saw Ben, and she cheered right up though, and well… She is his godmother.”
“And she’s insane, with zero self control, and she is going to eat him!” I worry, voice breaking.
“She is not,” Luc mutters, holding up his phone and showing me footage of Kate, in her nursing scrubs, bouncing baby Ben on her lap and cooing at him, as he giggles and chews on her hair. “I had a locked vault of preserved blood bags in the lowest level of this coven. My prael-prepared pool of donations, kept on hand for hard times. That’s where you got the fuel for that transfusion you’re getting right now, dearest. All us surviving vampires are all nice and full now. I assure you.”
“Leave me the baby cam,” I command, and he leaves the live footage playing, as he passes the phone into my outstretched hand.
“Fine. I am in no need of video diversions anyhow, since I am about to be treated to hours of vigorous, physical engagement.” He brushes his hand over Antonio’s ass cheek, and the enforcer clears his throat, shooting me a glance and seeming to hate the fact I saw that. “Come along, Antonius. Jules.” Antonio’s prudish grumpiness turns to an instant glowing smile with the utterance of that name.
His eyes are burning into the painter with clear excitement, but Julian shoots me a nervous glance. “Luc. We are married. We can’t just…”
“Sure he can,” I uncaringly offer, and Julian’s brow raises. “He’s a sex addict, Jules. I can’t keep up with all that – what is it? Six times a day?”
Luc shrugs. “Three to ten, depending how busy I am, would be the more accurate range.”
“And nonstop, all night, every night?”
He nods, trailing his fingers up the ridge of Julian’s spine with a wicked, lurid grin.
“Great. I will pass. I’m tired, in postpartum, and in need of a serious break. So go at it with whoever, you mad stallion. I’m good.”
“God, I love you,” Luc beams. Then he pulls Julian’s head over to his own and kisses him long and deep. “And you, of course, I never command to anything,” he leaves open the offer, finally pulling away.
“If Leah’s… good. I… good,” Julian gasps, his brains apparently scrambled from the power of that kiss.
Luc’s smile grows all the broader, and he seizes both Julian and Antonio’s wrists, leading them out of the room.
“And the number one candidate who is never getting on babysitting duty… You guessed right. It’s Luc,” I mutter to myself, lowering my eyes to Gracen, laid out crosswise on my bed. “Doesn’t matter how old Ben is, Luc will eternally be nothing but the world’s worst influence. I guess that’s why… you probably still want me to stop seeing them, right?” I whisper to my comatose friend, smoothing a hand through his hair. His face is so relaxed and content looking now, in sharp contrast to the agonized, traumatized shell of a person I last glimpsed in Roman’s former rooms. “I would do it too. I won’t tell you about the marriage, and I can just give them a little bit of blood every now and again, so they can keep their humanity. I don’t need the sex. Not if it’s going to break you.”
I feel my eyes flood with tears, and I pull his head over onto my lap, holding him tight.
We stay that way for hours, until his eyes finally find focus. “Leah?” That voice is still broken, and that name is still laden with pain and regret coming out of that most tragic yet kissable mouth.
“I’m here,” is all I answer, and he buries his face in my lap, staying curled up there for as long as he needs, until the night finally passes.