Destiny Calls by Lydia Michaels
“I don’t understand.” Her heart hurt. So much suddenly made sense, but it would be impossible to ever explain this to her friends. All she knew was that she never wanted to forget him again. Her body shook with an overload of emotion. He was what had been missing. Cain. “But I…” she mumbled, looking around for people eavesdropping on their conversation. “I mean…I’m just a regular person.”
“You are so much more than regular.” He stepped close, and her body reacted immediately. Her belly tightened, and her pulse fluttered. Her mind may not have recognized him right away, but her body had a very long memory. “Are you sure?”
“I have never been surer of anything before in my entire life.”
Destiny threw herself at him, and he scooped her into his arms. She wrapped her legs around his hips. He kissed her thoroughly, and she kissed him back with all the love and passion she had.
He carried her to the door, and she spotted her three friends shoving at each other to get out of the booth, practically falling on top of one another.
“Destiny, wait! Where are you going?”
Her cheeks stretched as she grinned. “Girls, this is Cain. He’s Amish and madly in love with me. I’m going home to have lots and lots of sex with him, and then we’re getting married.”
Cain licked at the side of her neck, purred, and she giggled as they left the three girls standing there clutching their purses with their jaws open wide.
They didn’t make it very far. Cain staggered around the side of the bar and pressed her into the brick wall. His hands gripped her ass, and their mouths twisted over the others. “God, I have missed you,” Cain said over her lips.
“I feel like I just left you, but the whole time I knew something was missing. It’s the weirdest feeling to miss something and not know what it is.” Her fingers pulled at the buttons of her shirt. “You have too many clothes on!”
“We need to find a bed,” he practically growled, and his large hand fit in the back pocket of her jeans.
“My house?”
“Yes. Where?”
“We need to take my car,” she said as he bit at her neck. Her nipples punched through the thin fabric of her shirt. She wanted him to bite her. They needed privacy. “It’s the little silver one.”
His face pressed into her breasts. She could come just from that. She was so overwhelmed at the moment. Cain growled, and she grabbed him by the ears and wrenched his face from her cleavage. His eyes were crazy looking, bright and feline like. Definitely time to go.
“Cain, focus! We need to go to my place. Come on, my car’s that way.” She slid out of his arms and they ran across the lot. She stilled halfway there and looked up. “What the hell?” They were under a meteor shower.
Stars rained across the sky. Wind blew in the trees, and her hair twirled wildly around her head. Something was going on. She thought about Eric, who believed the world was going to end.
People stopped to look up. She had never seen anything like it before. Destiny turned to Cain who was…purring? Yes, purring and completely unaffected by the change in weather. He looked at her as though he wanted to devour her. Yes please!
Screw the stars. She grabbed his hand and tugged him to her car. The ride home was an accomplishment in crime. She sped the entire way and blew nearly every light. Her little stick shift was wheezing by the time she pulled into her driveway.
Cain was on her before she even slipped the key in the door. Her feet left the ground, and her back was suddenly on the arm of her couch. Cain fumbled with her zipper. “You and your damn male clothing. Dresses, Destiny, I want you in dresses!”
“Here,” she said, turning and yanking down her jeans. Her breasts hung over the arm of the couch, and he pressed into her from behind in one hard thrust. They both cried out. He filled her like no one ever had.
Cain retreated and slammed back inside of her. His thrusts were so hard the couch skipped across the wood floor with each stroke. It only took a few and she was coming. He held her hips and plowed into her, nailing her to the upholstery. When he came he roared.
Once the edge was taken off, they caught their breath. Destiny turned. Her front door was wide open. She laughed. When they found their bearings, they disentangled their limbs.
Cain shut the front door and stared at her hard. A jolt of excitement skittered up her spine. They were far from finished.
She had questions, but they could wait. Slowly, but without hesitation, Destiny peeled off her clothes. Cain stared intently as every bit of flesh was exposed. His eyes were so blue they glowed.
Once she stood before him completely naked, he growled, “Bed.”
She pointed to the door of her bedroom, and he growled again, this time coming at her like a linebacker. He ducked low and grabbed her by the hips, banding his strong arm around her bare thighs and hoisting her over his shoulder.
The world flipped upside-down, and then she was being tossed onto her mattress. He removed his clothing. There was the brief sound of fabric tearing, and then he gripped her by the ankles and tugged her to the edge of the bed. His mouth latched onto her sex, and he began the most extreme attack on her senses she had ever experienced.
Fingers probed between her folds. His lips bit at her clit. She thrashed beneath him as her pleasure rose to uncontainable heights. Every so often, he nipped at her thigh, and she again wished he would bite her. Destiny had entertained some serious vampyre fantasies in the past. The idea of Cain sinking his fangs in her was the hottest one yet.
Her orgasm took her by surprise. Her back arched off the bed as he strummed her sex and forced it on, never letting the pleasure fade. She was out of breath and panting when he finally released her.
He climbed over her, but didn’t stop at her sex. Straddling her ribs, he cupped her large breasts and pinched down on her nipples. Destiny cried out in pleasure, and he smiled. He played with her breasts for a while, twirling and pinching the tips. Then he slid his cock into her cleavage and held her breasts tight, forming a snug little pocket in which he thrust in and out.
Her arousal never waned. Watching Cain take his pleasure was erotic as hell. She was beyond happy to be the woman he took it from. He leaned forward and, as if he read her mind, she opened her mouth, and he slid his cock past her lips. She sucked him deep as his hips thrust over her.
He moaned when she dug her nails into the firm flesh of his ass. She took him over and over again to the back of her throat until she felt him twitch over her tongue. When she tried to hold him there he growled and pulled himself out of her mouth with a pop. She frowned at him.
“Not there,” he said, scooting back down her body. “Here.” He lined himself up with her sex and thrust deep. “I want to give you children, Destiny. Lots and lots of children, and I will enjoy making every single one with you.”
Their sex was again uncontained and rough, but Destiny would have it no other way. He bent her and held her in ways other women would shy away from, but not her. She loved it. She loved him.
She loved how fiercely he took her as if his survival depended on it. She loved the way he pinned her to the bed and gripped her shoulders, wrists, ankles, and hair. Every slap he landed on her ass sent a thrill of excitement through her blood and a surge of arousal to her pussy. This was the way sex was supposed to be.
When they finished, they did so together. Cain called out her name and declared his love once more. It was the most intense sex she had ever had, yet somehow it also felt like making love.
Afterward they slept for a bit. When she awakened her body was cool and sticky. Cain slept with a grin.
Quietly, she slipped out of bed and grabbed the towel hanging on the back of her door.
When she returned from the shower, he was still sleeping. She climbed back under the covers, and he stirred.
“Did you bathe?”
“Yes. I needed to after that last time.”
He smiled and nuzzled closer, slipping a kiss onto her shoulder.
“Cain?”
&
nbsp; “Ah, and here come the questions,” he teased.
His hand moved over her and he pinched her nipple.
She jumped and smacked him away. “Sorry, but I need to know. What changed?”
“Nothing changed, Destiny. I love you. The past year has been the most miserable year of my life. It took me a while, but I finally got it.”
“Got it?”
“Mm-hmm.” He pulled her more into the curve of his body. “I thought just knowing you were happy would be enough, but turns out I am a very self-centered male.”
She gasped. “No!”
“Yes,” he said dryly. “Don’t tell the others.” They laughed.
“So you don’t want me happy?”
“Of course I want you to be happy, but I want you to be happy with me. Just knowing that your heart beats is not enough. If I can’t hear every heartbeat, you are too far away. Living has become nothing but an unending string of lonely days since you left, and I don’t want to spend another one without you.”
Destiny knew people said sweet crap all the time. There was movie romance, book romance, and real romance, but she had never even had a man express a fraction of the adoration for her that Cain had just proclaimed. Her eyes blurred with tears.
“Thank you, Cain.” She kissed him, and he kissed her softly for several long minutes. It wasn’t just about the sex. It was about the closeness, emotionally and physically.
“I want to marry you, Destiny,” he said quietly as she rested against his shoulder. “Tell me you will have me as your husband.”
“What about later, when I’m old and ugly?”
He pinched her and she squeaked. “You could never be ugly.” Then he hesitated.
“What? There’s something you want to tell me, Cain. I can feel it.”
He sighed. “A lot has happened since you were at the farm. Do you remember Dane?”
Dane was the little mute girl’s brother. He wasn’t Amish and wasn’t like the rest of them. “Yes, I remember him.”
“Turns out his parents were not who he believed them to be.”
“You mean he was adopted?” She wasn’t sure what this had to do with Cain.
“Yes, but that’s not what matters. What matters is who his father is.”
“So he’s found family? Are he and his sister still on the farm?” She hoped they left. After that little girl attacked her, she never wanted to see her again.
“No, Cybil is still there. She is…confined and still very ill. They’re both there, but Dane is building his own house. He plans on staying. He’s like us, Destiny, he and his sister.”
“Cain, I saw that girl. She attacked me, remember? She’s nothing like you.”
“That’s because you cannot transition someone who is not your true mate. Cybil is not my mate, and her body rejected my blood. It was either that or let her die after the bull pillaged her. What I’m trying to say is they’re immortal.”
He wanted her to connect the dots, but she couldn’t draw the line. Hearing that those kids were immortal only pissed her off. She wanted to be immortal.
“Why are you telling me this, Cain?”
“Can I show you something?”
She sighed. “Okay, but I wish you would just tell me.”
“It will be easier to show you.” He sat up and reached for a book on her nightstand. “You have to trust me. Do you trust me?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Give me your hand.”
She gave him her hand and he curled all of her fingers into her palm but one. He opened the book and slid her finger across the coarse edge of the page. The pain didn’t register until her flesh opened and the air hit the cut. Blood rushed to the surface and she yanked her hand away. “Ouch!” She sucked the digit into her mouth.
“I’m sorry. It was the easiest way I could do it.”
“Do what?”
Rather than answer, his mouth opened. The quick flash of his fangs had her jerking back and then he bit into his wrist. She gasped.
“Drink,” he said, holding his arm out. Twin rivulets formed from the punctures he had left.
“What?” After everything that he had just said about Cybil, she wasn’t going to let him turn her.
“Drink. If you trust me, drink. My blood is safe. There is nothing I can give you.”
“But I don’t want to be like Cybil.”
“You won’t. This is different.”
She swallowed. Being a product of the new millennium, it had been drilled into her head that blood was not something to be exchanged. She didn’t know how that worked with other species. Reluctantly, she leaned forward and licked at the trail of red dripping down his arm. She forced herself to swallow and then looked at him expectantly.
“Let me see your finger.”
“Are you planning on giving me another paper cut?”
He rolled his eyes and grabbed her hand. He looked at her cut. “What are we looking at, Cain?”
“Just give it a moment.”
She did. They sat there several minutes watching her finger bleed.
“Come on,” Cain mumbled.
She didn’t know what he was waiting for, but he was growing more agitated by the second.
He gasped. “Yes! Look!”
She looked down and gasped. Her skin was knitting back together right before her eyes. “How is it doing that?”
He smiled and then toppled her to the bed and kissed her.
“I knew it!” he said, smiling against her mouth. “I knew it would work.”
She shoved at his shoulders. “What worked? Cain, explain what’s going on.”
He sat back, his happiness transforming his face. “You’re like us, Destiny. Like them. Dane and Cybil and Magdalene.”
“Who’s Magdalene?”
“Not important. Do you understand what this means?”
Exasperated, she snapped, “Not really!”
He took a deep breath and pulled them so that they were both sitting up on the bed. Destiny pulled a pillow over her lap.
“You are immortal, Destiny. The mark on the back of your neck, your stork bite, it is a mark of a half-breed. You have immortal blood running through your veins.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do. Otherwise you would not be able to heal from my blood the way you just did. Your body would not process it. In a mortal, the blood would just go through the digestive track like food and turn to waste. Immortals are different. It goes into our veins.”
“If I’m immortal then why have I been touching up gray hair since I turned thirty? My hair dresser would disagree.”
He frowned. “I think it is because you don’t feed. Magdalene said she started to feed around adulthood when lethargy set in.”
“Oh, this Magdalene has all the answers. What about my parents? There’s no way I’m someone else’s kid. And trust me. They are not vampyres.” She frowned. “Although my Portuguese relatives do think chicken blood is a delicacy.”
He ignored her joke. “Why not? You and Vito look nothing alike.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. I look just like my mom and my aunts.”
He nodded. “Your aunts, see. And they all live in Portugal, right? Do you know how many of our kind are still in Europe? It isn’t like America. Here we hide and live in seclusion. Europe is freer.”
“Are you trying to say my aunt is a vampyre?”
“I am not saying anything for certain. I am saying that it is there if we look for it. Blood tests would be necessary. Perhaps your entire family is mortal, but your sire was not.”
“My sire?”
“Father,” he corrected. “Or perhaps it was your mother.”
It was too much. Her parents were her parents, and that was that. “Cain, I don’t want to know this stuff.”
He suddenly looked insecure, all his happiness melting away. “Do you not want eawichkeit with me?”
“I don’t even know what that is.”
“Eternity, Destiny
,” he whispered, suddenly seeming vulnerable. “It is eternity. I didn’t think I had a destiny, but I do. It’s you. You are my Destiny.”
“But how will this work?”
“If you feed regularly, your body will regenerate and you will stay young.”
“But I don’t want to lose my parents.”
“Then don’t. They live far enough away that they are not a threat to us. If you are not like Dane and don’t need to know your genealogy, then leave it to be a mystery. All I care about is you being with me, for eawichkeit.”
“I would have to feed? Like, drink blood?”
“Yes, but your body wants it. I promise any revulsion you have to the act is completely in your head.”
“Will my body change?”
“I hope not too much.”
She could kiss him for that answer. Yeah, she definitely wanted to spend eternity or ewich-ya-whatever-you-call-it with this man. She rubbed her palms together and sat up straighter. “Okay, let’s do this!”
“Yes?”
She nodded. “Yes. Let’s see what happens.”
Chapter 37
They started out with kissing. Cain told Destiny it would be best that way. She was never a big fan of food fetishes where sex was involved, but she figured he knew more than her when it came to all things immortal.
Their bodies glided over one another, and it wasn’t long before she was fighting to get him inside of her. “Patience, Destiny,” he gently scolded and pressed her hands into the pillows.
She arched into him and pressed her heels into his thighs. He laughed at her ridiculous attempts to get what she wanted. Once they were each too impatient to wait any longer, he rose up on his knees.
His nails extended, seeming more brittle than they normally were. He scraped his thumb over his heart and rolled to his back, pulling her on top of him. “Drink from me, Destiny.”
She hesitated only a moment before leaning down and licking over the gash of crimson. She tried not to focus on the flavor, but as her mouth suctioned over the wound, it became so potent, it was impossible to ignore.
Cain’s blood didn’t have the same coppery taste as her own. His was richer, sweeter. It ran down her throat like a thick red wine, and she breathed a little deeper, tasted a little stronger, and saw a little clearer.
“You are so much more than regular.” He stepped close, and her body reacted immediately. Her belly tightened, and her pulse fluttered. Her mind may not have recognized him right away, but her body had a very long memory. “Are you sure?”
“I have never been surer of anything before in my entire life.”
Destiny threw herself at him, and he scooped her into his arms. She wrapped her legs around his hips. He kissed her thoroughly, and she kissed him back with all the love and passion she had.
He carried her to the door, and she spotted her three friends shoving at each other to get out of the booth, practically falling on top of one another.
“Destiny, wait! Where are you going?”
Her cheeks stretched as she grinned. “Girls, this is Cain. He’s Amish and madly in love with me. I’m going home to have lots and lots of sex with him, and then we’re getting married.”
Cain licked at the side of her neck, purred, and she giggled as they left the three girls standing there clutching their purses with their jaws open wide.
They didn’t make it very far. Cain staggered around the side of the bar and pressed her into the brick wall. His hands gripped her ass, and their mouths twisted over the others. “God, I have missed you,” Cain said over her lips.
“I feel like I just left you, but the whole time I knew something was missing. It’s the weirdest feeling to miss something and not know what it is.” Her fingers pulled at the buttons of her shirt. “You have too many clothes on!”
“We need to find a bed,” he practically growled, and his large hand fit in the back pocket of her jeans.
“My house?”
“Yes. Where?”
“We need to take my car,” she said as he bit at her neck. Her nipples punched through the thin fabric of her shirt. She wanted him to bite her. They needed privacy. “It’s the little silver one.”
His face pressed into her breasts. She could come just from that. She was so overwhelmed at the moment. Cain growled, and she grabbed him by the ears and wrenched his face from her cleavage. His eyes were crazy looking, bright and feline like. Definitely time to go.
“Cain, focus! We need to go to my place. Come on, my car’s that way.” She slid out of his arms and they ran across the lot. She stilled halfway there and looked up. “What the hell?” They were under a meteor shower.
Stars rained across the sky. Wind blew in the trees, and her hair twirled wildly around her head. Something was going on. She thought about Eric, who believed the world was going to end.
People stopped to look up. She had never seen anything like it before. Destiny turned to Cain who was…purring? Yes, purring and completely unaffected by the change in weather. He looked at her as though he wanted to devour her. Yes please!
Screw the stars. She grabbed his hand and tugged him to her car. The ride home was an accomplishment in crime. She sped the entire way and blew nearly every light. Her little stick shift was wheezing by the time she pulled into her driveway.
Cain was on her before she even slipped the key in the door. Her feet left the ground, and her back was suddenly on the arm of her couch. Cain fumbled with her zipper. “You and your damn male clothing. Dresses, Destiny, I want you in dresses!”
“Here,” she said, turning and yanking down her jeans. Her breasts hung over the arm of the couch, and he pressed into her from behind in one hard thrust. They both cried out. He filled her like no one ever had.
Cain retreated and slammed back inside of her. His thrusts were so hard the couch skipped across the wood floor with each stroke. It only took a few and she was coming. He held her hips and plowed into her, nailing her to the upholstery. When he came he roared.
Once the edge was taken off, they caught their breath. Destiny turned. Her front door was wide open. She laughed. When they found their bearings, they disentangled their limbs.
Cain shut the front door and stared at her hard. A jolt of excitement skittered up her spine. They were far from finished.
She had questions, but they could wait. Slowly, but without hesitation, Destiny peeled off her clothes. Cain stared intently as every bit of flesh was exposed. His eyes were so blue they glowed.
Once she stood before him completely naked, he growled, “Bed.”
She pointed to the door of her bedroom, and he growled again, this time coming at her like a linebacker. He ducked low and grabbed her by the hips, banding his strong arm around her bare thighs and hoisting her over his shoulder.
The world flipped upside-down, and then she was being tossed onto her mattress. He removed his clothing. There was the brief sound of fabric tearing, and then he gripped her by the ankles and tugged her to the edge of the bed. His mouth latched onto her sex, and he began the most extreme attack on her senses she had ever experienced.
Fingers probed between her folds. His lips bit at her clit. She thrashed beneath him as her pleasure rose to uncontainable heights. Every so often, he nipped at her thigh, and she again wished he would bite her. Destiny had entertained some serious vampyre fantasies in the past. The idea of Cain sinking his fangs in her was the hottest one yet.
Her orgasm took her by surprise. Her back arched off the bed as he strummed her sex and forced it on, never letting the pleasure fade. She was out of breath and panting when he finally released her.
He climbed over her, but didn’t stop at her sex. Straddling her ribs, he cupped her large breasts and pinched down on her nipples. Destiny cried out in pleasure, and he smiled. He played with her breasts for a while, twirling and pinching the tips. Then he slid his cock into her cleavage and held her breasts tight, forming a snug little pocket in which he thrust in and out.
Her arousal never waned. Watching Cain take his pleasure was erotic as hell. She was beyond happy to be the woman he took it from. He leaned forward and, as if he read her mind, she opened her mouth, and he slid his cock past her lips. She sucked him deep as his hips thrust over her.
He moaned when she dug her nails into the firm flesh of his ass. She took him over and over again to the back of her throat until she felt him twitch over her tongue. When she tried to hold him there he growled and pulled himself out of her mouth with a pop. She frowned at him.
“Not there,” he said, scooting back down her body. “Here.” He lined himself up with her sex and thrust deep. “I want to give you children, Destiny. Lots and lots of children, and I will enjoy making every single one with you.”
Their sex was again uncontained and rough, but Destiny would have it no other way. He bent her and held her in ways other women would shy away from, but not her. She loved it. She loved him.
She loved how fiercely he took her as if his survival depended on it. She loved the way he pinned her to the bed and gripped her shoulders, wrists, ankles, and hair. Every slap he landed on her ass sent a thrill of excitement through her blood and a surge of arousal to her pussy. This was the way sex was supposed to be.
When they finished, they did so together. Cain called out her name and declared his love once more. It was the most intense sex she had ever had, yet somehow it also felt like making love.
Afterward they slept for a bit. When she awakened her body was cool and sticky. Cain slept with a grin.
Quietly, she slipped out of bed and grabbed the towel hanging on the back of her door.
When she returned from the shower, he was still sleeping. She climbed back under the covers, and he stirred.
“Did you bathe?”
“Yes. I needed to after that last time.”
He smiled and nuzzled closer, slipping a kiss onto her shoulder.
“Cain?”
&
His hand moved over her and he pinched her nipple.
She jumped and smacked him away. “Sorry, but I need to know. What changed?”
“Nothing changed, Destiny. I love you. The past year has been the most miserable year of my life. It took me a while, but I finally got it.”
“Got it?”
“Mm-hmm.” He pulled her more into the curve of his body. “I thought just knowing you were happy would be enough, but turns out I am a very self-centered male.”
She gasped. “No!”
“Yes,” he said dryly. “Don’t tell the others.” They laughed.
“So you don’t want me happy?”
“Of course I want you to be happy, but I want you to be happy with me. Just knowing that your heart beats is not enough. If I can’t hear every heartbeat, you are too far away. Living has become nothing but an unending string of lonely days since you left, and I don’t want to spend another one without you.”
Destiny knew people said sweet crap all the time. There was movie romance, book romance, and real romance, but she had never even had a man express a fraction of the adoration for her that Cain had just proclaimed. Her eyes blurred with tears.
“Thank you, Cain.” She kissed him, and he kissed her softly for several long minutes. It wasn’t just about the sex. It was about the closeness, emotionally and physically.
“I want to marry you, Destiny,” he said quietly as she rested against his shoulder. “Tell me you will have me as your husband.”
“What about later, when I’m old and ugly?”
He pinched her and she squeaked. “You could never be ugly.” Then he hesitated.
“What? There’s something you want to tell me, Cain. I can feel it.”
He sighed. “A lot has happened since you were at the farm. Do you remember Dane?”
Dane was the little mute girl’s brother. He wasn’t Amish and wasn’t like the rest of them. “Yes, I remember him.”
“Turns out his parents were not who he believed them to be.”
“You mean he was adopted?” She wasn’t sure what this had to do with Cain.
“Yes, but that’s not what matters. What matters is who his father is.”
“So he’s found family? Are he and his sister still on the farm?” She hoped they left. After that little girl attacked her, she never wanted to see her again.
“No, Cybil is still there. She is…confined and still very ill. They’re both there, but Dane is building his own house. He plans on staying. He’s like us, Destiny, he and his sister.”
“Cain, I saw that girl. She attacked me, remember? She’s nothing like you.”
“That’s because you cannot transition someone who is not your true mate. Cybil is not my mate, and her body rejected my blood. It was either that or let her die after the bull pillaged her. What I’m trying to say is they’re immortal.”
He wanted her to connect the dots, but she couldn’t draw the line. Hearing that those kids were immortal only pissed her off. She wanted to be immortal.
“Why are you telling me this, Cain?”
“Can I show you something?”
She sighed. “Okay, but I wish you would just tell me.”
“It will be easier to show you.” He sat up and reached for a book on her nightstand. “You have to trust me. Do you trust me?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Give me your hand.”
She gave him her hand and he curled all of her fingers into her palm but one. He opened the book and slid her finger across the coarse edge of the page. The pain didn’t register until her flesh opened and the air hit the cut. Blood rushed to the surface and she yanked her hand away. “Ouch!” She sucked the digit into her mouth.
“I’m sorry. It was the easiest way I could do it.”
“Do what?”
Rather than answer, his mouth opened. The quick flash of his fangs had her jerking back and then he bit into his wrist. She gasped.
“Drink,” he said, holding his arm out. Twin rivulets formed from the punctures he had left.
“What?” After everything that he had just said about Cybil, she wasn’t going to let him turn her.
“Drink. If you trust me, drink. My blood is safe. There is nothing I can give you.”
“But I don’t want to be like Cybil.”
“You won’t. This is different.”
She swallowed. Being a product of the new millennium, it had been drilled into her head that blood was not something to be exchanged. She didn’t know how that worked with other species. Reluctantly, she leaned forward and licked at the trail of red dripping down his arm. She forced herself to swallow and then looked at him expectantly.
“Let me see your finger.”
“Are you planning on giving me another paper cut?”
He rolled his eyes and grabbed her hand. He looked at her cut. “What are we looking at, Cain?”
“Just give it a moment.”
She did. They sat there several minutes watching her finger bleed.
“Come on,” Cain mumbled.
She didn’t know what he was waiting for, but he was growing more agitated by the second.
He gasped. “Yes! Look!”
She looked down and gasped. Her skin was knitting back together right before her eyes. “How is it doing that?”
He smiled and then toppled her to the bed and kissed her.
“I knew it!” he said, smiling against her mouth. “I knew it would work.”
She shoved at his shoulders. “What worked? Cain, explain what’s going on.”
He sat back, his happiness transforming his face. “You’re like us, Destiny. Like them. Dane and Cybil and Magdalene.”
“Who’s Magdalene?”
“Not important. Do you understand what this means?”
Exasperated, she snapped, “Not really!”
He took a deep breath and pulled them so that they were both sitting up on the bed. Destiny pulled a pillow over her lap.
“You are immortal, Destiny. The mark on the back of your neck, your stork bite, it is a mark of a half-breed. You have immortal blood running through your veins.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do. Otherwise you would not be able to heal from my blood the way you just did. Your body would not process it. In a mortal, the blood would just go through the digestive track like food and turn to waste. Immortals are different. It goes into our veins.”
“If I’m immortal then why have I been touching up gray hair since I turned thirty? My hair dresser would disagree.”
He frowned. “I think it is because you don’t feed. Magdalene said she started to feed around adulthood when lethargy set in.”
“Oh, this Magdalene has all the answers. What about my parents? There’s no way I’m someone else’s kid. And trust me. They are not vampyres.” She frowned. “Although my Portuguese relatives do think chicken blood is a delicacy.”
He ignored her joke. “Why not? You and Vito look nothing alike.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. I look just like my mom and my aunts.”
He nodded. “Your aunts, see. And they all live in Portugal, right? Do you know how many of our kind are still in Europe? It isn’t like America. Here we hide and live in seclusion. Europe is freer.”
“Are you trying to say my aunt is a vampyre?”
“I am not saying anything for certain. I am saying that it is there if we look for it. Blood tests would be necessary. Perhaps your entire family is mortal, but your sire was not.”
“My sire?”
“Father,” he corrected. “Or perhaps it was your mother.”
It was too much. Her parents were her parents, and that was that. “Cain, I don’t want to know this stuff.”
He suddenly looked insecure, all his happiness melting away. “Do you not want eawichkeit with me?”
“I don’t even know what that is.”
“Eternity, Destiny
“But how will this work?”
“If you feed regularly, your body will regenerate and you will stay young.”
“But I don’t want to lose my parents.”
“Then don’t. They live far enough away that they are not a threat to us. If you are not like Dane and don’t need to know your genealogy, then leave it to be a mystery. All I care about is you being with me, for eawichkeit.”
“I would have to feed? Like, drink blood?”
“Yes, but your body wants it. I promise any revulsion you have to the act is completely in your head.”
“Will my body change?”
“I hope not too much.”
She could kiss him for that answer. Yeah, she definitely wanted to spend eternity or ewich-ya-whatever-you-call-it with this man. She rubbed her palms together and sat up straighter. “Okay, let’s do this!”
“Yes?”
She nodded. “Yes. Let’s see what happens.”
Chapter 37
They started out with kissing. Cain told Destiny it would be best that way. She was never a big fan of food fetishes where sex was involved, but she figured he knew more than her when it came to all things immortal.
Their bodies glided over one another, and it wasn’t long before she was fighting to get him inside of her. “Patience, Destiny,” he gently scolded and pressed her hands into the pillows.
She arched into him and pressed her heels into his thighs. He laughed at her ridiculous attempts to get what she wanted. Once they were each too impatient to wait any longer, he rose up on his knees.
His nails extended, seeming more brittle than they normally were. He scraped his thumb over his heart and rolled to his back, pulling her on top of him. “Drink from me, Destiny.”
She hesitated only a moment before leaning down and licking over the gash of crimson. She tried not to focus on the flavor, but as her mouth suctioned over the wound, it became so potent, it was impossible to ignore.
Cain’s blood didn’t have the same coppery taste as her own. His was richer, sweeter. It ran down her throat like a thick red wine, and she breathed a little deeper, tasted a little stronger, and saw a little clearer.