Chapter 6

(-:-)

The pale beauty jumped as he awoke from his trance-like slumber. He growled impatiently and rubbed his cool hands over his equally cool face in aggravation. That was the second time he had been thrown out of her mind that like. That was the second time he never got to finish what he started. He wondered about his master’s plans; wondered if they will work, wondered if it was really worth all this physical pain, for entering ones mind from this distance hurts his body, weakens his own defenses.

He got up and walked out of the side room he was in and entered into an enormous study. Books of every size and genre cluttered the walls from floor to ceiling, over twenty feet above the floor. The silver dome was shallow and from the peak hung a large silver ornament that was suspended with a chain. The large upside-down cross sported a coiling snake with a fist-sized sapphire as the eye.

The boy looked up to it and sighed, feeling weaker then ever after his failed mission.

“Do not fret; we will have her in time.” The man behind the large pinewood desk, stained dark and polished to shine, said. He was just as pale and just as beautiful as the one who stood near the far wall from where he had exited the anti-room. The younger of the men glided over to the man’s side as he sat and reviewed the papers strewn on his desk. Under the different documents was a world map, little red dots were clustered on different continents and countries, the bulk of the red being in the United States and central Europe.

The one still standing sat himself upon the edge of the desk, deliberately placing himself on a document the older man was about to reach for. He looked up to the deep blue eyes as the younger smirked down at him, playfulness emanating from him. The older man returned the smirk.

“How far did you manage to get?” he asked.

“I bit her,” the younger purred. “But she forced herself from the dream. Duncan, I want her blood. Dreams don’t give me the satisfactory flavor of a victim. When do we strike?”

Duncan stood up and leaned close to the boy on his desk. His hand reached up and caressed the boy’s smooth cheek.

“Patience, love, patience. You will have her blood soon enough, but we must continue to get into her. It is vital we chip away at her defenses for when you reveal yourself to her…” Duncan looked at his beautiful fledgling, though it was not the beauty he liked. “I’m not quite fond of your choice of skin.” The boy reached up and brushed his fingers agains Duncan’s hand.

“You commanded me to wear his skin until the plan is complete. I can do this…” Closing his eyes, he concentrated for a moment. Opening them, Duncan met eyes of the brightest ruby rather than the cool cobalt. “My dear Brother will catch on.”

“He will later, though… much later.”

(-:-)

My breathing was erratic but Justin had complete control of his. After only several minutes, my body trembled from head to toe.

“We can stop,” he said.

“No!” I gasped. “Keep going… give me all you got.”

We continued for another brutal five minutes. He was hard and strong, something I wasn’t really anticipating when I accepted his offer of this game. He was good, even against me.

I cried out in frustration and jerked my hand out of his and jumped up from the kitchen table. I shook my hand and my arm, the feeling slowly returning and tingling my nerves. I glared at my opponent, his face smug, as he leaned back in his chair in victory.

“I win.”

“You suck.”

“I do that too.”

It was about three in the morning and I was too scared to go back to sleep after what happened in my dream. I refused to do so, to go back and possibly be killed. So Justin offered me an arm wrestle to distract my mind, to try and ease it back into the way I was before these dreams started.

“You owe me an egg wrap,” he said triumphantly. “I won fair and square.”

I looked at him and moved to his side of the table. I pulled his chair out and straddled his lap. His arms went to my hips and he looked up at me, rubbing his fingers against the material of my pajamas.

“Awe, babe…” he pouted. “We just got into the relationship. I don’t want to tire of you.”

Back up in my room before the challenge I sort went a little nuts on him. I kissed him several more times after I had apologized and he gladly returned them all with as much ferocity as I was giving them. I’d pushed him down on the floor and that’s when he told me something I never thought I’d hear from him.

He’d told me about the crush he’d had on me since we were little. Over the years he’d grown more in love with me, but was afraid to say anything about it because of our friendship. He was scared it’d put undue stress on it and he couldn’t risk losing me.

That’s how I’d felt when he walked away from me on the stairs earlier than that. So he asked me to be his. While I interpreted those words differently than what he meant, I responded with a gentle kiss and said, “How about I just be your girlfriend?”

And now I’m on his lap and considering things I’d never dreamed of considering… all because I’m a sore loser at arm wrestling. But it was working, my mind was distracted and that’s what we aimed to accomplish. I leaned down and rubbed my lips against his in a lustful kiss and I could feel his turn upward into a grin, his eyes at half mast.

“I should be worried about how much you like kissing me,” he said. I kissed him again.

“You should be thrilled that I love kissing you,” I replied. He smirked and kissed me, his lips lingering on mine.

“I’m ecstatic, really.” We kissed passionately and his arms wound around my hips to pull me closer. As it was, there was no more room for me to get any closer. He broke from my lips and trailed his teeth down my chin and licked my neck. It made me shiver.

“Is this for all the years of me beating on you and dropping my books on the table?” I asked, doing my best to keep my voice steady.

“No… this is for all the years of built up lust I had for you...” -He nipped at my collarbone and I gasped.- “And this is for all the dreams I had of you…” –He traced his tongue around my other collarbone.- “And now I feel more sated and complete than I have in years.”

I leaned my head forward and rested my forehead on his, looking into his gorgeous green eyes. He closed his eyes and shuddered. “Damn.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I can sense my aunt coming. She’s freaking out again.” He looked at me apologetically and pecked his lips once more before sliding off of him. He moaned loudly and allowed his head to fall back. All of that brought a very pleased smile to my lips just as the pounding of my door began. He groaned and pushed himself up and headed into the living room. Opening the door, his aunt burst in muttering something in her native language of… something. I don’t even know what she was saying was a language.

Meave turned on her heeled ever couple of feet and paced the floor in the living room. At the speed she was going, she was either going to trip on the long gypsy-styled skirt she was wearing or she’d tread a hole in the floor. Considering my mother just replaced those rugs, she’d better not, so tripping would keep things good for the rug.

Despite her constant – no, chronic – anxiety, Meave Garret was a tall and slightly built woman. Her skin was tanned and her hair was a sandy blonde and fell down just a little ways past her shoulders. A bright red scarf held her hair from her face and large golden hoops graced her ears. The way she dressed now (like a gypsy from the 1600s) is how she always dressed. She was in her mid to late forties but she looked much younger than she seemed. The way she moved, the way she acted, it was like she never aged past twenty. And the look she gave me scared the shit out of me.

Meave pointed and looked at Justin. I looked to him too, wonder what hell she was point at me for. Justin looked between us and nodded to his aunt.

“You mean to say that she is the target?”

Target? What target? I didn’t like where this was going.

“She’s been the one with the dreams.”

Now, I wasn’t good with languages, but I swear to God up above that Justin just spoke in Gaelic. I had no fucking idea what he said.

“Are you absolutely positive she’s the one I’ve been sensing?”

“Yes, she woke up screaming and thrashing all over her room about an hour ago. He bit her, according to what she said.”

Meave looked to me at that point and I took an involuntary step back into the kitchen. That rough dialect of theirs scared me, and the urgency of the tone they used scared me even more when Meave looked at me the way she did. I closed my eyes and slid down the wall to sit on the hard linoleum floor. I felt cold suddenly and it was something that happened when I had a gut feeling that something bad was about to happen, or had already happened. Whichever it was, I didn’t like either.

I needed a distraction… and Justin wasn’t available for one right then. So I turned to the next best thing and counted the black specks in the floor. I think I got up to about eighty-two when Justin’s black pant leg appeared in my line of vision. I turned my head and looked up into his eyes. There was something there, something like an “I’m sorry, but…”

“You’re really not going to like this.”

No, I thought, I wasn’t.

A/N: Well, this will be the last chapter for this for a while. I'm putting this on Hiatus until I can collect my ideas together. Until then, I'll be working on another story for a little while. My friend Oyoa knows this.