77. The Wonderful New Status Quo is About to Turn Hellish
I’ve given up hope that Julian is ever going to read this or answer a single one of my messages, even though Leah has been kind enough to agree to mediate once Antonio tracks him down.
I’m going to think of these last few letters like a sort of journal instead. The memories won’t leave my mind unless I can get them out on paper, then burn them to a crisp, exorcising them like demonic spirits.
Though… not every memory haunting me right now is something I wish to forget. The wonderful times with Jules…
It wasn’t all sex. Sure, after I turned him, the dates by the poolside always turned to underwater drilling, and dancing in the club turned to fucking in my office within an hour of initiating grinding. But after he started to get a handle on that newborn appetite, we would spend hours of the night just talking. Well… I would talk, and he would listen to me. He seemed to love listening to me, even about the most trivial things. Of course, I make even the trivial things like fashion and cooking engaging and interesting.
I would read him poetry or classic plays, and he would draw little doodles of the characters. That made me smile so wide, and that made him smile in turn. Even his absentminded doodling produced such wonderfully detailed works. They often had their own wordless sense of humor to them, giving silent comment on the scene. I told him just how funny he was, how talented, and absolutely flawless – not just his body, but the person behind those shining eyes. I never used to criticize him, not back then. Why would I? I had everything I wanted, always there beside me, sharing my every mood and craving. If we didn’t need to feed, I might never have even called in the praels to interrupt our nights together. When we fucked with other vampires to treat them and maintain equilibrium in my coven – those partners were nothing but sex toys to us, extra hands and mouths that Jules hardly even looked at while he engaged with them. He had eyes for only me, and he never needed to say a word to express how deep his feelings.
He spent entire days not saying more than a word or two sometimes, but it was seldom painful silence and brooding, not back then. I liked his quiet, because that was when he was enjoying himself the most, lost in his art, or in the feel of my caress. I never asked him what was wrong when he would get that hollow look in his eyes, because if he gave an answer… It would just be an accusation. He wasn’t happy that I turned him. He felt ‘trapped in the dark’ from day one, he claims. He wasn’t happy that even after six months, he could never leave the coven, not even at night, but with how uncontrolled his appetite was in those early years, he most definitely would have killed someone if I was not right there beside him to hold him back. I explained that to him patiently and honestly, and he should have understood it.
He thought it was all some trick, a manipulation. He said he could never trust me again, not after I had ‘killed’ him.
“If you were dead, could your dick do this?” I’d counter, and pulsating blood beneath that most sensitive membrane throbbing against my palm would swiftly put an end to all gloomy conversation. Either that, or I’d remind him pointedly that most people had to beg for the gift of being made into an immortal, and wasn’t he enjoying his every hour of time as my true equal and partner? Didn’t he want to stay by my side forever and for always?
He did, but he still wasn’t happy, far from it. He said he wasn’t himself, and he hated that he couldn’t even remember the names of my praels – the women he had been fucking and orally pleasuring on steady rotation for months. All he could remember was their scent and how they tasted.
“Get to know them if you want, but most are really not that interesting,” I dismissed, rubbing my hand up his thigh. “You’d rather be talking with me than taking them out on little dates, now don’t deny it.”
He couldn’t. He still made an effort with them though, to be gentler with their fragile human bodies and to take a genuine interest in facts beyond their triggers and sexual preferences. I didn’t discourage it. It made them giddy and even better in bed between us.
The only thing I discouraged were his repeated, periodic requests to leave my coven. I’d already explained he wasn’t ready to do that, especially since the main reason he wanted to leave was to check in with his parents, to have a tedious, uncomfortable, one-on-one dinner I could not at all be present for.
“They think you live in Paris, Jules,” I reminded him for the millionth time, exasperated. “They’re not expecting you to pop in for regular brunch anymore. Hell, they know who you live with, so your father is never going to speak to you again, and let’s be honest, you prefer it that way.” I kissed his cheek. “This is your home now. You don’t need them anymore.”
He agreed with me for a time. He settled for a quick phone call to his mother, and he did not return to that judging household for even a single meal that Christmas, but in the end, I wish he had. I wish there would have been a way to get him out of my coven for a few days without it having deadly consequences. Hell, I wish I’d let him stay a human and sent him overseas. Then Roman would never have found out about him. He would have stayed my secret side piece, not my sire’s promised entertainment for the New Year.