Cherishing Destiny (A Dangerous Destiny) Read online

  Like Aurora, Alex had removed his shoes earlier, and he was able to step out of his pants and kick them aside. He kneeled before her and thought it appropriate as she was truly a goddess to him. He smiled a little as he proceeded to worship his goddess.

  He found her true rosebud nestled in the beautiful flower between her creamy thighs. It glistened with dew, and he licked the moist petals that opened to his tongue. He took the tiny bud between his lips and gently sucked it into his mouth where his seeking tongue was waiting to explore it.

  Her knees trembled and with his hands on her hips, he guided her gently back into the chair he had lifted her out of. He kept her at the edge of the cushion and continued to delve into the soft folds that could not hide what he sought. He let his tongue flick and play over the little bud until she was damp and panting, then he pulled it back into his hot mouth, sucking it and letting his tongue and teeth rub it as he slid it in and out of his moist lips. She shuddered and cried out her climax as he slid two fingers into her.

  He could wait no longer. He lifted her and lowered her onto his huge, straining rod, entering her in one long stroke. She was so tight around him that he dared not move for a moment. Then he stood, lifting her with him, and carried her to the plush rug before the fireplace. He lowered her on her back and slowly began a long stroke in and out of her wet, silky depths.

  Aurora was still riding the wave of her orgasm when he laid her down. She ached for him to fill her when he was still playing her body like a virtuoso. She was his instrument, and he made beautiful music on her. Sometimes it was wild and dangerous, but sometimes it was achingly sweet, like tonight.

  He filled her to bursting, and his strokes were long and rhythmic. His eyes were closed as he concentrated on the sensations. She looked up into his face and even as she felt the tide rising in her again, wanting him to move faster, stroke harder, she also felt a tender love for him.

  He opened his eyes and saw her gazing at him. He read so much in that look. He saw her love for him, just as he loved her, and he knew that they would always be together. But he also saw the lust in her Vampire eyes and knew her greed and hunger.

  His thrusts grew faster and harder, and her breath came hot and rapid. He knew she was close when her breaths became audible cries. When she called out his name and trembled in her pleasure, he let go, thrusting as deeply as he could and riding the lightning of his own orgasm as he filled her with his seed.

  He had a flash of regret as he knew that it was only what he liked to call dead Vampire seed. But the thought was fleeting. He’d had so many years to come to terms with that fact of life or, more appropriately, afterlife that he did not dwell on it. Aurora was everything he ever wanted, and while older Vampires tended to melancholia at times, he did not often indulge. He was truly happy.

  They lay together, quietly entwined for a while until he finally pulled gently away. He knew that Aurora’s bath would be cooling soon, so he rose and lifted her with him.“It’s time for your bath, young lady,” he said playfully taking on the tone of a stern father.

  She groaned a small protest, but she was smiling all the same. “Young lady is it? I’ll have you know I am over 1400 years old,” she replied and stuck her tongue out at him.

  “Well I should have known from your maturity level,” he said, sticking his own tongue out.

  She laughed, and her face lit up.

  Maybe I love her so much because she is like sunshine and I haven’t seen the sun in over one and a half millennia, he thought lightly.

  He swept her off her feet and held her close in his arms for a moment. She wrapped her arms around his neck and nuzzled her face into his shoulder. He kissed the top of her head.

  Vampires were not shy or self conscious, and he carried her naked through the house to her bath. As he climbed up the winding stair with her in his arms, he didn’t care a bit if any of the staff saw them.

  four

  Sara knew that he didn’t care who saw them. She watched him climb the stairs with Aurora in his arms, not without a measure of appreciation. He was gorgeous, and she was only twenty seven after all. She also knew that, to them, she was a nameless, faceless servant. She had lived in their home for eight years working as a housekeeper, and they might not even know her name. They hadn’t even looked at her when she brought them their drinks.

  Yeah right! Drinks, huh? She thought. But that is how she liked to think of the blood they consumed every day. Just like drinking a decent scotch or a glass of wine, she told herself. It was a little harder to think like that when they brought home a live one. That’s what her brother, Ryan used to call the people who let the Vampires drink from them, the live ones.

  “So what if people want to volunteer to be bitten?” She had argued with him when he got on one of his judgmental rants. “Trust me, they are paid well, and they always leave on their feet.”

  “They use them,” he insisted. “They drink from them. They hypnotize them. They even fuck them. Is that not exploitation? Because, you know as well as I do that they don’t need to feed on live humans to get the blood.”

  She shook her head, a little confused by her brother’s words. They sounded reasonable, maybe even righteous but sometimes when she looked at Alex, she was not sure that she wouldn’t want to have him take her, bite her, and drink from her, anything as long as he saw and touched her. She had even pictured Aurora biting her neck with her long, beautiful fingers running down Sara’s arms and then lacing her fingers in Sara’s with their bodies touching. She was not even into women that way, but just the thought of Aurora made a little sweat pop out on her upper lip and between her breasts.

  “I heard that it feels good to be bitten by a Vampire,” she answered back.

  “It feels good to shoot your veins full of heroin too, but that doesn’t mean you should go out and become a junkie.” He rolled his eyes at her and walked away, effectively dropping the subject.

  That was almost the last time she had spoken to Ryan. It had been nearly two years since he left. She had helped him get a job working in the garage at the estate. He wasn’t the driver, but he washed cars, took care of minor maintenance, and drove them to be fully serviced as needed. Ryan was Sara’s step-brother, and they were close in age. Her mother had been married to his father for only a few years when Ryan’s father died in an accident. Ryan was only eight and Sara seven. Ryan’s father had always told them that Ryan’s mother died and that he had no other family. So, Ryan stayed with Sara and her mother, and they were remarkably close growing up.

  But, something changed in Ryan when he was a teenager. He grew quiet and kept to himself. He sometimes lost his temper over the smallest things, and Sara learned to keep a little distance from him. When he was fifteen, he went out one night and didn’t come back. He didn’t take his phone, and none of his friends had seen him. They all said that he hadn’t been around in months, and they didn’t know what he had been doing. Sara and her mother reported him missing, but gave up hope after a while with no word.

  Then a few years later Sara’s mother passed away. It was cancer, and it had taken her fast. Sara was finalizing the arrangements at the funeral home. She did what needed to be done and was spending a quiet moment gazing at her mother’s body. They had tried to make her look not so gaunt with their make-up. Sara thought that it was ironic that her mother should look healthier in death than she had in life during this last couple of weeks.

  The funeral home had done a nice job, but her mother had never been one to wear much make-up, so while she looked better, she didn’t really look like herself. It all made her mother seem even further away, and she began to cry softly. A familiar voice called to her from the doorway of the room.

  “Sara?” He spoke very quietly, just above a whisper. It seemed that to speak too loudly would be sinful in this place or that a loud voice would break some sort of spell. It just seemed wrong here, in the presence of his dead step-mother and grieving sister.

  Sara turned to him. “Rya
n? Oh, my God. What—?” She lost her words in that moment and started sobbing harder.

  He moved to her and put his arms around her, pulling her to his chest and rocking her gently. “It’s okay, baby. Everything is going to be okay,” he whispered into her hair.

  Her tears were soaking through his shirt as he held her damp face to his muscled chest until her sobs became hitching breaths. She finally pushed away from him just enough to look up at him.

  He had grown even taller since he left. He towered over her at 6’5”. She couldn’t help but notice the new hardness under his shirt as she pushed against him.

  To him, she still seemed like a tiny girl. Her tear streaked face, looking at him in confusion, was enough to break his heart. He genuinely loved his little sister even if they didn’t share the same blood.

  He gazed at the casket. He had also loved the only mother he had ever known, and now she was gone, and this shell, that didn’t really look like her, was all that was left. He had finally come back to them, but it was too late.

  “Where have you been?” Sara asked him. Tears were still welling in her eyes, and her voice broke a little when she said, “I thought you must be dead.”

  It pained him to see that hurt look on her face, so he pulled her to his chest again, avoiding her eyes and holding her tightly.

  “I’m so sorry, Sara. Oh, Baby, I’m so very sorry.” His own voice began to break. “It was just… I couldn’t…I had to… I had to go, baby. I didn’t want to, but I had to go.”

  “I don’t understand.” Her voice was muffled against his chest, but she didn’t pull away this time. “Why?”

  He started swaying with her again. “I can’t explain, little one. I missed you so much, and I am here now. Please, let that be enough.”

  “I don’t know what’s going on, but I missed you too, every day.” She squeezed him tighter when she said it.

  “I love you, you know, little one.” He said, brushing her forehead with his lips.

  “I love you too, and, by the way, I am 20 years old and not so little anymore,” she added indignantly, but she didn’t let go of him and she stayed like that, feeling safe in the arms of her big brother, for a while.

  ∞∞∞

  Sara took a deep breath and shook her head as if to clear away the memory. She hadn’t thought of that time in ages. It was bittersweet, losing her mother, but getting her brother back. That had been seven years ago, and this time he had been gone again for nearly two years, but sometimes she got a call or text from him out of the blue. At least she knew he was alive. Still, she wished he hadn’t gone away again.

  After that day in the funeral home, he came and went, sometimes staying away for a month or more at a time. He said that he couldn’t tell her where he was going but that he would always stay in touch and come back when he could. It was all very cryptic but she’d grown used to it.

  She went into the den and gathered the scattered clothing and shoes from the floor. Alex’s shirt was clearly ruined, but she thought the spot on the dress could be removed. She didn’t mind picking up after the Lakes. They were so beautiful and mysterious.

  Nate, the old groundskeeper on the estate, once told her that they were over a thousand years old. He barked out a throaty laugh when he said that they must know the real secret of a good marriage.

  It was around that time that Sara had decided that her brother, Ryan, might stay around more if she got him a job on the estate. It worked for a while, and he had stayed for almost a year. He was working in the garage and helping out on the grounds, but he clearly had some misgivings about Vampires in general. He had been hired by the household manager and had never even met Alex or Aurora Lake. A fact Sara pointed out to him on the day they argued about human exploitation.

  “He looks at me like a steak dinner.” Ryan told his little sister.

  “It’s your imagination,” she said. “They never notice any of us. I don’t think they even know our names.”

  “I didn’t say he knew my name, just that he looks at me like he might like to have me for dinner, and I don’t mean as a guest if you get my meaning.”

  “That’s just paranoid. Vampires don’t kill people, and they don’t take blood from anyone against their will.” She felt like she was lecturing him, and that is what had started their little debate.

  “Paranoid is it?” he responded. “You are too old to be this naive, Sara. I know the party line, Vampires and humans living in harmony, but you should know that there are groups out there who don’t buy it.” Now he was lecturing her. “I’m not saying I believe in everything they say or do, but some of it is very interesting, and it makes a person think.”

  “Ryan, those groups are dangerous terrorists. They preach hate and commit violence. Please, tell me, you are not involved with them.” Her eyes were wide and scared, and it was clear she was seeking his reassurance.

  “No, baby girl, I am not at all involved with those people.” If you only knew why that would never be possible, he thought as he assured her of his sincerity. I know that’s why Lake stares at me the way he does, Ryan reasoned to himself. I’m sure he knows what those terrorist creeps only suspect.

  He thought about the night he had been making a circuit of the grounds after dark in order to find and replace any landscape lights that were burned out. As he worked in the private garden just outside the terrace leading to the Lake’s bedroom suite, he suddenly felt that he was being watched. The hair on his arms bristled and his spine tingled with the sense of being stalked. His instincts were on full alert, and he felt a low growl rising in his throat before he could think about where he was and what he was doing. He calmed himself enough to take a deep, shaky breath and look around.

  In a small grove of walnut trees at the far end of the garden, he saw a shadow beneath the nearest tree. He sensed the presence of a predator. The shadow moved and the shape of a man appeared, stepping forward into the dim moonlight. There was only a sliver of a moon that night, and it was still low on the horizon. He saw a golden glow in the eyes of the man shadow. His own eyes closed, dilated and adjusted for the dim conditions, and when he opened them, he could see that the man shadow was, in fact, a tall, tawny haired, Alexander Lake.

  Ryan realized his mistake immediately when he saw Lake’s brow pull together in a frown and his eyes start to glow red instead of gold. Lake must have seen Ryan’s eyes glowing back at him in the moonlight. Not Vampire eyes, but still he knew that his eyes would be reflecting brightly even in the dim conditions. He immediately lowered his gaze, an instinctive gesture of submission. Lake did not move any closer, and Ryan backed slowly toward the path that led around to the garages. When he reached the corner that would take him out of the Vampire’s line of sight, he turned and walked quickly back to the garages and his room above them.

  For two days afterwards he waited for something to happen. Maybe he would be let go on some pretense that was believable.

  “Sorry, things are just not working out,” or “We don’t really need the extra help anymore,” he imagined the House Manager would say. But no one came to fire him, and he began to think that he had imagined the animosity he saw on the face of the Vampire.

  I didn’t imagine the red eyes, he reminded himself silently, and so he continued to be wary. Then came the disagreement with Sara, and he began to think it might be an opportune time to leave for a while, find the others, and relax a bit.

  On the following night, while he was replacing the last burned-out bulb, a light next to the driveway, he heard footsteps casually walking toward him. Alexander Lake strolled out of the shadows across the pavement further along the length of the drive. He made as if to pass by Ryan, who was still kneeling at the edge of the pavement with the light bulb in his hand, but then he paused and turned back.

  “Your name is Ryan?” He made it an inquiry, and from his tone he clearly expected an answer.

  Ryan swallowed and answered, “yes, sir.”

  He chanced a quick glance at th
e face of Vampire, but then looked quickly away again, maintaining the submissive posture he had adopted the night in the garden.

  “You’re Sara’s brother, are you not?” His questions remained casual, and he showed no malice. He gave every appearance of mild curiosity and no more.

  “Yes, sir…Stepbrother,” he added, wanting to make sure that Lake did not think that Sara shared his blood.

  “That makes sense,” Lake commented without explanation. “That is the last light that was out on the property, isn’t it?” He gestured toward the light at Ryan’s feet.

  “It is,” Ryan answered. There were hundreds of lights on the estate, but he knew that he should not be surprised that Lake knew exactly when he was replacing the last one.

  “Good. Aurora loves her lights. She misses the sun, and she can’t get enough artificial light to replace it.” He turned to walk on, but over his shoulder he said flatly “I’ll be seeing you, Ryan.”

  When he was gone, Ryan let out the breath he was holding. Ryan was a big man, but he knew he was no match for a Vampire over a thousand years old.

  “Oh, he knows our names, Sara,” he muttered under his breath. “And he notices a lot more than you think.” He would not be underestimating Alexander Lake again anytime soon.

  He packed his bags that night and left in the morning. He told Sara he would be back, but he knew she would be safer if he stayed away, at least as long as she was living among Vampires.

  five

  Alex walked on down the drive leaving the young man behind him. He was not concerned about showing him his back. He knew that Ryan would not do anything foolish. Besides, he could still sense exactly where he was and smell Ryan’s submission.

  A Were on his estate! He shook his head. The man was clearly not aggressive and seemed to be mostly interested in looking out for his sister. Stepsister, he corrected. She was not a Were, and she obviously did not know anything about Ryan either. He doubted she even suspected the existence of such creatures. Weres were much more secretive than Vampires, especially over the last couple of centuries. Most humans did not know and would not believe that they even existed.