Chapter Sixteen
“So, tell me about enthralling.” She lay on her back on one end of her bed, and Ramsey lay facing the other way with the sheet tangled around their legs. She had no idea how they ended up like that, but instead of righting themselves, they rubbed each other’s feet.
“That’s the one thing that the movies got right.”
“Really?” She thought about an old vampire movie that she’d seen when she was little. The vampire had enthralled the woman to get up and open the window so that he could bite her. In the movie the lady had been a mindless drone, on her way to her death. “You guys can really control someone’s mind?”
“Yup.”
“Do you read their thoughts or what?”
“Or what.”
She ran a finger lightly across the bottom of his foot, and he jerked away. Who knew vampires were so ticklish? “I’m being for real. What’s it like?”
“We don’t read anyone’s mind, because we don’t need to. If I wanted you to do my bidding all I have to do is direct a thought specifically to you.”
“Well, that sounds really simple.” What would she do if she had that special kind of super power? She’d probably command all of her patients to lay off their call lights for the night and for once would have a carefree shift at work.
“It is.”
“Have you done that to me? Enthralled me?” She asked the question even though she knew the answer. She’d never felt like a drone around Ramsey. In fact, he had the opposite effect on her. When she was with them everything felt, good, alive and so full of life.
“Well, there was that time that I made you drop to your knees…”
She bolted upright. “Are you freaking kidding me?”
He chuckled. “Yes, yes, I’m kidding you.”
She glared at him.
“Seriously.” He lifted his right hand. “I swear that I have never, ever enthralled you.”
She gave him a look before she lay back down. “That’s just not right.”
“No, it isn’t. That’s why I don’t do it unless I have to.”
“And when do you have to?”
“Do you really want to hear this?”
She maneuvered to face him and settled her head into the crook of his armpit. “Yes, I do.”
He let out a heavy sigh. “I enthrall my blood donors.”
“First of all, can you call them by their names? ‘Blood donors’ sounds so impersonal.”
“Fine. I enthrall Nadine, Krista, and Celine when I feed from them.”
All women. She pushed down the jealousy that reared its ugly head. “Why? Because you don’t want them to remember what’s happening?”
He rubbed his hand down her arm. “No, I give them good thoughts. If I don’t, the experience can … hurt.”
“Uh, yeah.”
He pulled her to lay across his chest and kissed her forehead. “Sorry about that. I was all types of messed up that night.”
She pinched his nipple. “Well, you were dying. I guess I can let it slide that one time.”
“It wasn’t just that. There was something else.”
She snuggled against his chest. He had a body as hard as stone, but he sure was comfortable. The hairs on his chest tickled her cheek as her head rode the rise and fall of his breaths. His breathing was for her benefit. There wasn’t a reason for it. The silence in his chest reminded her of that. It should have scared her, freaked her out, but being with him created a calmness. “Hm? What?”
“When I was drinking from you I had a vision. It was … weird.”
“So, drinking my blood weirded you out?”
“It was something different. Not anything that I’ve ever experienced before.”
“Okay, I’m curious now. What was this vision of yours?”
He traced his hand down the side of her stomach and to her hip where he made small circles. “It was of us. You on top of me. We were having sex.”
She moaned and ran her hand across his flat stomach. “I like this vision already. Tell me more.”
“It was like I was there. I could feel you. Touch you. It was so damn real.”
She lifted her leg over his waist and pushed herself to sit on top of him. She cupped his chest muscles with her hands. “So, I guess we have to make that dream a reality.”
His eyes, hooded, took her in, raking across her breasts and down to her pussy. He pulled his bottom lip into his mouth and ran his hands over her waist. “It wasn’t a dream. Or at least it hadn’t felt like it. That was the weird part.”
She wiggled her hips, and his cock responded. Hardening under her. Good lord, she could ride him all night long. “Okay, so let’s make this vision come true.”
He lowered his gaze. “That’s never going to happen.”
Confused she looked down at crotch. “Me on top of you. Yeah, this can happen.”
While he caressed her hips lazily, she could feel the tension radiating from him. “Not this vision. We weren’t here. We were in my room.”
She lifted a brow. “So I can ride you here and there. What’s the big deal?”
“We weren’t in my room. We were in my room-room. The one I sleep in.”
She dropped, bringing her nose inches from his. “Oh, you mean your lair?” He hadn’t mentioned anything about sleeping in a separate room before, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to guess that he didn’t sleep in a room full of windows all day.
He let out a snort. “I guess if you want to call it that.”
“And the vision was weird because…”
“Because I would never take a human to my lair.”
She stuck out her bottom lip in jest. “Not even me?”
He ran a thumb across her mouth. “Especially not you. My lair isn’t a safe place for humans. It’s too cold, and if I woke up before I should, it could be dangerous—deadly.”
She crinkled her nose. “Well, yeah, I can see how your vision was weird then. I hate cold places.”
He nodded. “And I knew your name when you hadn’t told me yet. I knew that you went by Dani.”
“Hm, you’re right. That’s a little spooky.”
“And you called me by my name.”
She gave his nose a playful tap and stretched out across his body. “Well, it would stand to reason that I would know your name. It’s your vision.”
“You called me my birth name. No one calls me that anymore.”
“Your name really isn’t Ramsey?”
“No.” He stroked her hair.
“Well? Are you going to enlighten me?”
“No. That would just make it one step closer to being real, and…” He blew out a hard breath. “It’s just a little nerve-wracking.”
“Well, it was just a vision-dream. No sense dwelling on it.”
“Yeah, but it distracted me so much that I almost killed you. I kept drinking long after I should’ve stopped.”
“I’m fine now.”
“I know. It’s just that I think about how close I came to … killing you, and it makes me sick.” He wrapped his arms around her, clasping them on her back. “You don’t understand how much meeting you has changed my life.”
“Really? You aren’t just saying that to get me into bed? Because I’m already here—willingly. You don’t need to feed me a line or anything.” She trailed her hand to cup his face.
“Dani, I don’t have a need for any lines. Before you, life was mundane. Dismal. I’d been thinking about my own mortality.”
“And now?” she asked softly.
“I haven’t felt this way in a long time.”
She wanted to believe that he felt the same as she did. That being without him was unimaginable. But how could she mean so much to a being who’d lived hundreds of lifetimes? “What makes being with me so special?” She held her breath.
“A very long time ago—before I was turned into what I am now. I had three beautiful daughters. Melliandra, Annama, and Litua.” She felt the curve of his smile on her hand.
Warmth overtook her. She hadn’t thought about it before, but at that moment she could easily see him with children. Doting and loving. “You must’ve been a good papa.”
“Yes, yes, I was.”
She angled her face to watch him and found his eyes closed. When he reopened them, they were filled with remorse and regret.
“But they did not have a good mother.”
She stroked the side of his face. “Ramsey, I’m so sorry.”
He shook his head. “Their mother didn’t have it in her to love anyone more than she loved herself. It just wasn’t possible. I did everything I could to make it up to them, for picking a bad mother. They wanted her to love them so badly, but she … she couldn’t.”
She inhaled a sharp breath. “But the children, who raised them after you were turned?”
“I did,” he said with pride. “I was twenty-five when I was turned, and my oldest was only nine years old at the time. I couldn’t leave my girls with a mother who would’ve sent them away to fend for themselves or sold them off as slaves to the highest bidders.” He clenched his jaw. The tendons in his cheeks protruded. “I don’t know of any new vampire who could’ve stayed with his family, but I did. I had to protect them at all costs. I was their father first.”
“You raised your children when you were a vampire? H-how was that even possible?”
His features softened. “It was very hard. I told them that I had a job that took me away from sun-up to sundown. I made sure that I fed every night before I went home. I didn’t want any accidents. I didn’t want them to see me as a monster. I was their father. I was there to cook them dinner, bathe them, and put them to bed with a bedtime story. I didn’t tell the girls what I was until they were older. They accepted me as I was. Covered up why I wasn’t growing old and even moved to a new village to protect me.”
She clasped her arms around his neck, holding him tight. The emotion rolled off of him.
A tear formed in the corner of her eye. She couldn’t imagine having children and knowing that one day that she would watch them grow old and die. From the moment he’d been turned he knew that he would plan their funerals. “D-did they have any children?”
“Many.” Loneliness dripped from him. “Marcos is the very last of my line.”
It didn’t come as a shock that Marcos was his descendant. Their relationship was built off of something more than employee-employer. There was real love between the two. She’d seen that from the very beginning.
“And who does Marcos descend from?”
Ramsey didn’t smile, but his chest swelled with pride. “Litua, my baby. She lived well into her eighties, but she was still my little girl.” He gave a short nod. “I promised my girls that I would look after their children, and I did. Down to the very last descendant.”
“But … but you still have some years left with Marcos, don’t you?” She hoped for him.
Ramsey gave a tight shake of his head. “His time is almost up. The cancer that’s ravishing his body is spreading and growing immune to my blood. When he’s gone, I’ll be all alone.”
“Can’t you make him a vampire so that he won’t die?”
“Marcos doesn’t want my life. If he did want to be changed, I would do it for him. But I understand why he doesn’t want my life. I shouldn’t have had to bury my children, their children and their children. I shouldn’t have ever met Marcos, only to bury him, too.”
Sadness overwhelmed her. “You love him very much.”
“Marcos came to live with me when he was fifteen years old. The plague had wiped out everyone in his family save for him. The disease rendered him sterile.”
A tear fell down the side of her eye. “Oh, Ramsey, I know I’ve said it before, but I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. I’ve made a very long life, and it was a good one.”
She lifted to watch him. “I don’t like where this conversation is going.”
He met her eyes. The sadness that he’d held there just a few moments before was gone. “I had planned to leave this world after Marcos died. There wasn’t a reason for me to stay after my promise to my girls was complete.”
She stared at him in disbelief. “Suicide?”
“Don’t sound so surprised. That’s how most of us older vampires go. Besides, I said, ‘had planned’.”
She pulled her brows together, watching him intently. “So, you’re sticking around?”
He tilted her hips, making her sit up more. “You, my dear, have given me something to live for.”
Her hair fell across her breasts, and he pushed the dark locks out of the way.
“And what is that?”
“Love.”
She froze. The world stopped moving. She held her breath. “Y-you love me?”
He rubbed his hand up her back. “I. Love. You.”
Those three words sent her heart fluttering. She smiled to herself and buried her face against his chest. “I love you, too.”
“Well, that’s good to hear. Any other answer and I would’ve been sitting on the roof meeting the sun in the morning.”
She punched him on the chest and chuckled, her heart feeling lighter than it had ever felt before. “So, tell me about this vision of yours again. I was on top of you…” She pushed herself upright again, straddling him.
He gave her a wicked smile. “And there was a chair involved.”
“Oh, chair.” She rolled off and took his hand, pulling him to stand.
“Where are we going?”
“To the recliner.”
He chuckled and followed her. “Wait. I almost forgot. There was a blowjob, too.”
She glanced at him over her shoulder as she led him to the living room. “For some reason I think you’re lying about that.”
He wiggled his fingers at her. “Danya, I enthrall you to service me in every way,” he said in a deep sing-songy voice.
She clutched her head with her free hand. “I—I feel your magic working on me.” She dropped to her knees in a fit of giggles.