Sloane Briallen

“Sloane?”

I blinked, looking up.

It was Devlin.  Sitting on the same parapet where I had left him earlier.  My brow furrowed and I looked around me.  When had I gotten here?  How long had I been wandering the castle?

I reached for my back pocket to find that the box of cigarettes I had was empty.  When did that happen?

Fuck.  I dissociated again.

“Here.”

I looked up to see Devlin holding out a box of L&Ms to me.  I took it and pulled out a cigarette. 

The first inhale was harsh and bit through my chest, but it made me feel sane again.  The familiar taste and burn of cheap cigarettes.

“I would kill to have a box of L&Ms,” I said around the cigarette, handing the box back to Devlin.

“Keep it,” he said.  “I have three cartons in my room.”

I stared at him with wide eyes.  “Where the fuck do you get them?  Aren’t we in the middle of nowhere?”

“We get supplies brought in every other day.  I ask for them.”

I exhaled again, letting the smoke rise above me into the night air.  “Thanks,” I murmured.

“You okay?”

I shrugged, sitting down next to him.  “Prince Dickhead wanted to go a round with me, and Cailean stopped him before he could take me out.”

He grimaced.

“Broke the fucker’s jaw, though.”

He snorted.  “Asshole deserves it.”

“Why do you hate him?” I asked.  I just needed to listen to someone talk and drown out the screaming inside of me trying to claw its way out.

“He did everything in his power to fuck up Cyly and Alice’s relationship, including lying about her cheating on Cyly and threatening to kill her.”

Another reason to hate him.  Not that I really needed it.  “Lovely man.”

“From what I’ve heard, he wasn’t always such an asshole.  He was stubborn and haughty, but not whatever this insufferable version of him is.”  He shrugged.  “I think being an heir just finally got to him.”

“He’s the crown prince, then?”

“Yes, but he’s not the sole heir.  All three of them have always been set up to succeed Hazel and Matadi.  A triumvirate or something.”

“Like Ancient Rome.”

“Yeah.”  Devlin tilted his head to the side pensively.  “I don’t know.  At least he’ll be gone after the new year.”

“He lives with his parents in Ireland?”

“Yeah.  Usually the king and queen don’t come here unless Cyly needs something.  He basically runs the living vampire kingdom in the Americas.  He—”

“Do you think becoming a vampire was a mistake?” I blurted out.

His mouth snapped shut and he looked at me like I had grown an extra head.  “What?”

“Uh . . . sorry.”  I shook my head.  I thought I was drowning out the screaming in my head, but it had just come out in another way. “Never mind.”  I stuck the cigarette in my mouth to give it something to do other than be traitorous.  Only then did I realize the cigarette was done.  I flicked it off the edge of the castle, too wound up to feel bad about littering.

“What do you mean?  Did you make the choice to become a vampire?”  There was something strange in his expression that I couldn’t identify.

I bit the inside of my cheek.  “Kinda?  I think?”

“You think?”

“I wasn’t in a good place when I met my sire.  I was really drunk.  I think, maybe, I goaded him into it?  Well, I guess not goaded, but . . .”  I trailed off.  I had no idea where I was going with this. 

“I didn’t get a choice.”

I shook my head, remembering what Amara had said.  “Right, sorry.  Your turning was traumatic.  It has to be fucked to not even know who your sire is.”

He paused, brow furrowing in confusion.  “How did you know that?”

I suddenly remembered that I had overheard that information.  No one told me.  I had been creeping on top of the breezeway.  “Right,” I said.  I pulled out another cigarette to stick in my mouth.  “Uh, when you, your boyfriend, and Alice were walking around in the snow the other day, I was sitting on top of the breezeway.  I overheard you guys talking about why I’m here.”  I flicked the lighter open and lit the cigarette.  The smoke wasn’t as calming as it had been before.

His eyebrows went up in surprise, but he didn’t seem mad.  “Really?”

“Needed a break from being inside of the constant magic in the castle.  Makes me feel like things are crawling on my skin.  Sat up there, heard a lot of hot gossip and then overheard you guys.”  I shrugged.  “I shouldn’t have brought it up.  Sorry.”  I looked back out to the mountains.  The crawling of magic against me was nothing compared to my own self-inflicted discomfort currently trying to bury itself into my intestines.

It was quiet.  The distant sound of wind through branches and leaves was a whisper, and the occasional call of someone inside the castle walls was far from us.  It was not a good enough distraction.

“My parents were killed when I was a teenager.  We went in.”

I looked at Devlin to see his gaze was towards the door into the castle, thoughts far from here.

What he said caught up and I winced.  We.  I’d known those types of foster kids.  They lost everything—including what survived.  “Brother or sister?”

“My little sister.  We were separated. When I was eighteen, I got out to get a job.  I was trying to get her out.”  His hands were opening and closing at his sides anxiously.  I held out the box of cigarettes back to him, and he took one.  I lit it for him, and he inhaled.  His free hand stilled, but he started to bounce his leg against the parapet wall.  His next words were barely more than a murmur.  “The last thing I remember before I got turned is that I was getting ready to see her.  After that, my first memory is a month later when the patrol around the castle found me half naked here, covered in animal blood.  I was a thousand miles away from home in Oakland.”  He looked down.  “I have no idea what happened to her.  Or me.”

“Fuck,” I whispered.

He took a long drag on his cigarette, still jiggling his knee.

“Who have you told about this?” I asked.

“Aoife knows because she had a truthseeker interrogate me.”

I hissed through my teeth.  “Those motherfuckers.”

He shrugged on shoulder.  “It wasn’t as bad as what I heard happened to you.  And they did get some useful information, thought it was just bits and pieces.  I guess I was attacked by original vampires, but I have no idea where, or even when.”

“And that’s not even what you were turned into.”

He nodded, tapping his cigarette against the wall to get off the ash.

“Have you told anyone else about what happened?  About your sister?”

“I asked Aoife if she could find her.  Nothing.  She stopped showing up to school the day after we were supposed to meet.  Her foster parents were also killed that same day, by vampires.  Aoife couldn’t find anything about where we met, either.  She still has feelers out there, but if it wasn’t for me being here, and a report somewhere of her being missing, it would be like we never existed as anything more than records on paper.”

I grimaced.  “You haven’t talked to your boyfriend or Alice?”

He shrugged one shoulder.  “I try really hard not to think about it.  It’s not like talking about it will change anything.”

That hit me like a train in my chest.

I knew so many foster kids like that, me included.  We didn’t talk about it because what did it matter?  It wasn’t going to change that our lives were shit, and our families were dead or had abandoned us.  We did everything we could not to think about it.  Annie boxed.  Mikko did cocaine.  I threw myself whole hog into taking care of my family to keep myself too busy to think about everything I had lost.

“What happened to you?” he asked.

“My mom died.  No father to speak of.”

“Is that how you know the White Psychic?”

“Yeah.  Her grandma kind of took me in.”

“How old?”

“Nine.”

He winced.   “In the system until you were eighteen?”

“Adopted out at sixteen.  My best friends growing up.  Their parents adopted me.”  I stubbed out my cigarette and wrapped my arms around myself.  The buzz from the cigarette had quieted the screaming in my head just a bit.  “I think you need to tell someone,” I said.

“I told you.”

I didn’t have a reply to that.

“Where are they now?  Your adoptive brothers?”

I shrugged one shoulder.  “Probably somewhere in the Cascade mountains, running around with their wolf pack.”  I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my voice.  I didn’t really want to.

He raised an eyebrow.  I didn’t meet his eye, but I saw it in my peripheries.

I shook my head.  “It is such a long, long story.  I don’t want to get into it.”

“Are they alive?”

I paused.

“Yes?”

I nodded once.

“From where I’m standing, that seems a whole hell of a lot better than what I have.”

I stood up suddenly, surprising Devlin.  I surprised myself, even.  My throat ached when I turned to face him.  “You don’t know shit,” I snarled.  His eyes went wide with surprise at the sudden hostility.

I left before I could say anything else to him or he could argue with me.  Everything in my head was screaming so much louder than before.

NSFW scene

I didn’t know where I was heading until I found myself knocking on Amara’s door.  My head was a jumble of thoughts and feelings, and I couldn’t settle on anything long enough to focus on it.  Everything was so loud and bright.

The door opened a couple minutes later, which was disconcerting.  I was used to hearing humans walking before a door opened.

Right.  Vampire soundproofing.

Amara blinked up at me blearily.  Her hair was wild around her face and her lips were chapped from sleep.  She had a black robe on over a set of matching blue pajamas.  The top had a brown teddy bear printed in the center, and the bottoms had smaller teddy bears printed all over them.

“Sloane?” she croaked, yawning.  Her jaw cracked.  “What’s going—mmf!”  She squeaked when I grabbed her and pressed my mouth to hers.  Her lips were rough against mine, her breath sour, but I needed to quiet the screaming.  Doing something that forced my body to feel good might stop it.

After the initial shock, Amara responded.  She met the force of my kiss with equal hunger.  She put both of her hands on my hips and pulled me inside.  The door was barely shut before I had her against it, trailing kisses from her mouth to her ear.  One of her hands moved from my hip up to the middle of my back.  She dug her nails in, and I growled, pressing one knee between her legs.

She whined as I nipped at her ear lobe, the hand on my hip slipping beneath the hem of my jeans to grab my ass.  Arousal pooled in my abdomen, and I trailed more kisses down her neck.  I pulled aside her shirt gently, mouthing down below her collar bone to suck a harsh bruise there.  I wasn’t going to embarrass her in front of her bosses by leaving her covered in hickeys.

But all of her hidden skin was fair game.

She let out a breathy moan, her head dropping to my shoulder as I continued to line the area below her collarbones with kisses and bruises.  Her breath was ragged, harsh exhales laced with desire and half-formed whines.  Her hands were everywhere, roving along my sides, up my back, through my hair.

I nudged one of her legs to the side, pinning it so that her knee hinged over mine.  It gave me enough room to slide my fingers into her pajamas.  She mewled when I found my destination. 

She was wet beneath my fingers.  I wasted no time pressing my middle and ring fingers inside of her.  She rewarded me by biting down hard on my shoulder.  I moaned where I had moved back up to her neck, leaving a trail of open-mouthed kisses.  Warmth spread between my legs, and I pressed harder into her, eager to hear the noises she would make.

I was not disappointed.  I beckoned my fingers, pressing into the soft flesh inside of her that would turn her into putty in my hands.  Her whines turned to full moans, muffled by where her mouth was on my shoulder.

Making her feel good was all I focused on.  I drank the whimpers and moans that came out of her mouth like it would keep me alive.  The screaming in my head was almost gone, replaced with the harsh breaths coming out of my mouth and the sensation of Amara around my fingers.

She pressed her forehead into my shoulder, moaning with every movement I made inside of her.  Her hands had given up in their movements, one tight in my hair, the other clamped to my hip.  She rocked with me, the leg on my knee hiking up higher to give me more access.  I pressed my knee up to give her more support every time she moved.

“Sloane,” she rasped, her grip in my hair tightening.  The feeling was a dull pain that only fed the desire that shot between my legs like fireworks.

I finally pulled away from where I was working another hickey onto the edge of her shoulder.  With my free hand, I tilted her head up to look at me.  Her eyes met mine, glassy and dark with intensity.  Her face was flushed, her lips wet.

“I need you to look at me when you come,” I whispered.

That was enough.  She spasmed around me, muscles clenching against my fingers.  She screamed, writhing against me as I continued to rock my fingers into her, riding her through it.  She kept her eyes locked on mine, even as her back arched into the feeling, her hips bucking into my hand.

When all that was left was shudders of her against me, I slipped my fingers out of her.  Her breathing was uneven and hitching with every inhale and exhale.

“Fuck,” she whispered.

I smiled at her, putting my fingers into my mouth.  She tasted salty and floral and just a little sweet.  It was pleasant.

As I pulled my fingers out of my mouth, she grabbed my face and kissed me so hard that our teeth crashed together.  I tasted blood and immediately pulled back.

The arousal inside of me abated at the sudden crashing reality that I was a vampire having sex with a human who had just bit her own tongue.

I took my hands off of her and took a step back.  “Are you okay?” I asked, eyes wide.

She nodded, huffing out a laugh.  “I’m such a fucking clutz.  Give it a minute, and it’ll heal up.  We’ll make sure you’re taken care of.”

“I mean . . .” I said.  The screaming was finally gone.  I could hear myself think, and I felt so much fucking better.  And I hadn’t even come close to orgasming.  The sounds she had made and the way she had moved against me had made me feel good enough.

She raised an eyebrow.  “I’ve never come from someone fingering me against a door.  No one has ever been strong enough to hold up so much of my weight like that.  You practically had half of my weight on your thigh.”

I laughed sheepishly.  “Vampire strength.”

“Yeah,” she said, eyebrows raising up suggestively.  “Exactly.  So, I’m not letting you leave unsatisfied.  And I think we could spend the night figuring out how else we can make that strength work.”

My eyes rounded.   “Yeah?”

She nodded, a smile like sunshine spreading across her face.  “Yeah.”

She squeaked as I swept her up into my arms.  “Where next, captain?” I asked.

“I think you should sit there and relax,” she said, pointing to the couch in the living room.  “Let me take care of you.”

That sounded amazing.

“Alright,” I said.  “Let’s do it.”

I soon learned that Amara’s head game was absolutely fantastic.  She did this thing with her tongue that had me seeing stars.  And then it turned out she had toys.  And she knew a lot of different ways to use those toys. 

I had no trouble keeping Amara up all night, and vice versa.  She sent me into oblivion enough that I left thoughts behind.  The sharp corners in my mind dulled and any screaming I heard came from Amara or me.  When we were done exploring each other, it was almost light out.  Amara ached and I was exhausted.

We fell asleep on her bed, tangled in each other.  Everything was finally quiet.