Chapter Five
"So, do you have any family besides Larrin?" Young asked, arms folded behind his head, his body stretched out on the bed, the light sheet barely covering his dick as he lay there like a bronzed god, perfect body on full display.
He'd finally roused a few minutes before as I used a rag to clean the cum from his body. He'd smiled immediately, stretching like he'd just woken from the best nap he'd ever had.
"I claim Laramie," I said huskily, unable to keep from reaching out and following the groove down the center of his stomach with my index finger while I lay beside him my head propped in my hand as I leaned slightly over him. "I didn't always. We were betrothed before she was born. I was about three. We met a few times before the ceremony. Pretty much wanted nothing to do with each other. She tried to run me over with a horse once. It was great."
His body shuddered and I watched transfixed as the sheet twitched.
I swallowed, letting my eyes roam him again, but always coming back to the ever-growing evidence of his lust. "By the time we got married, the bitterness had set in for both of us. And we were too young and immature to blame anyone but each other. We never even consummated the wedding. I mean, can you imagine fucking someone you absolutely hated?"
I wouldn't deny the thrill that went through me when his focus narrowed and pure jealousy gleamed in his eyes as he glared at me, just from the mention of me having sex with anyone else.
Clearing my throat, I hid my smile. "By the time my father passed, we'd been living our own lives, growing up mentally. She came up to tell me she was sorry for my loss and we started talking. Turns out, we had a lot in common. She became one of my closest friends, but we both agreed we weren't meant to be married. Eventually, I wanted a kid. I asked her because we were so close. She agreed to be inseminated. Bam! Larrin."
"Larrin always talks about his mom like she's a distant relative." Young pulled one arm from behind his head, reaching up to brush the side of my face. "I think I've only met her once."
"Yeah." I nodded, leaning into the sweet touch. "They aren't close like a mother and son. She's more like an aunt. It works well for all of us actually."
"How so?"
"Laramie is…uh." I bit my lip, trying not to cringe.
"Oh, you mean how she's blood thirsty? Cold? Fucking evil as hell?"
I smiled, again nodding. "All of those."
"What about Cagney? That's her brother, right?"
"Yeah. I'm probably even closer to him than I am Laramie." I pulled the hand that was tracing the ridges of his abs up, trapping my hand against his face. "When my family would go visit theirs, we'd always sneak off and get into stuff we shouldn't." I shrugged, smiling. "They're like the siblings I never had."
"I have two siblings." The happiness fell away from Young's face, coldness seeping in. "They're just like my parents. I'm the black sheep. My mother calls me the vegan."
"Vegan?"
"Yeah." He pinned me with his sad gaze. "You know, because I refuse to have blood slaves or go on their annual hunts."
"Hunts?" I wasn't sure I wanted to know this part.
"They literally hunt people," he whispered a crease popping up between his eyebrows, making me want to smooth the perfect skin. "They say their being humane because they only get a few of the prisoners on death row and set them free in the woods." His face pinched hard like he was thinking of something unpleasant. "Then they hunt them. Whoever catches them gets to choose how they die."
That was barbaric. And honestly, shouldn't be allowed. "And they get away with it?"
He cringed, giving me a sad smile. "They have an immunity because they're old blood. I guess the vampire equivalent of your Regilapis, but it matters more in vampire culture than it does in gargoyle culture."
I sighed, hating the still lingering rules of some of the immortal races. "I think we still have immunity in certain areas." I said dryly, dropping to the bed next to him, admiring his beautiful profile.
"I only went that first year, when I turned eighteen." He swallowed, looking sick. "I threw up when I saw what my brother did to his prisoner. That's when they started calling me the vegan. And when I decided I couldn't continue to live with them anymore."
"I've never told you this. In fact, I didn't even realize the connection until about the fourth or fifth time I met you. But I met your parents once." He rolled his head on his pillow, looking at me, his eyes roaming my face. "It was about two hundred years ago. Around the time they mated. They were cold and nearly soulless even then."
I nodded, having dealt with them every day for the first eighteen years of my life. "They were so proud of my brother. It was disgusting. Like they didn't care that the man he'd done all that to before he died was a human and that his last moments in this world were agonizing. How could they hear his screams and not feel the want to scream themselves?" His eyes looked haunted when he whispered, "I think they were giddy from them. It was almost like a haze came over them. A strange high."
"Do you ever speak to them anymore?" I pulled him close, pressing his chest against mine.
His head shook against my chest. "No. They've only reached out to me a few times and that was within the first month or so. I know I should be hurt, but all I can be is thankful. I'm terrified I'll end up like them if I have to spend time with them. I'm just blown away that I grew up in that household and didn't realize just how far their cruelty went."
He sighed. "At home they were cold and I never liked the idea of blood slaves, but seeing them like that. Crazed and wild. Evil." He paused, clearly lost in thought. "I packed that night and left. That's how I ended up in Texas."
"What about money? You don't work." None of them did, but I knew most of them except Karney had trust funds.
"My aunt left me all of her money when she died. I got access to it when I was eighteen." He shrugged, and there was a smile in his voice when he spoke again. "She was the only one who was ever on the same page as me about blood slaves. I was really the only other vampire in our little town that she liked.
"Nobody even questioned it when she left me her money. There's just too much money floating through the old blood families. What she left is enough to support me plus some for the rest of my life, but to them it wasn't even enough to justify a confrontation. Plus they think they're too good for stuff like that."
"Well, at least that means a clean break, right?"
He nodded. When he was quiet too long, I pulled back wanting to see his face. He immediately blinked up at me, something in his eyes.
"What's wrong, baby?" I asked, running my fingers through his hair and down to tug gently at his beard.
"My biggest fear is becoming like them." His forehead creased, genuine worry in his face. "I'm almost always in control. But there are days I worry. Days when the beast in me really wants to come out."
"You're nothing like them, Young. Absolutely nothing." I tilted his head back, leaning forward to kiss his mouth softly. "If you think they ever sat around and worried about being evil, you're crazy. They welcomed it, and you know it. You might be an anomaly in your family, but you aren't the only one. You had your aunt. She shared the same views as you. It's not genetics that caused that behavior, it's choices."
Sighing, he smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes and I knew he wasn't convinced in the least.
The alarm on my phone went off, startling me. I groaned, shutting the thing off and pressing my forehead against Young's. "I guess we should get dressed and go to this meeting," I grumbled, wishing more than anything that we could just spend the rest of the night in bed together, getting to know each other and each other's bodies. "But then you're coming back here. Where you belong."
"Deal."