Immortal Beloved: Chapter Twenty-three (NC-17)
“Vicki, how are you?” Dr. Sagara greeted upon opening her door. “What brings you by?”
“Is this a bad time?” Vicki asked, jamming her hands in her pockets.
“No, no, not at all. Come in. It’s chilly out.”
Entering Dr. Sagara’s home, Vicki smirked. “Is it? I wouldn’t know.”
Dr. Sagara smiled and waved off the comment. “Will Henry be along?”
Vicki shook her head. “No, he won’t.”
“Oh,” Dr. Sagara said softly and bit her bottom lip. “Is everything all right with you two?”
Vicki nodded slowly, remembering the sex they’d had the night before as she followed Dr. Sagara into her kitchen. “Yeah, they’re fine.”
Putting her teakettle on, Dr. Sagara turned and regarded Vicki thoughtfully. “Something’s troubling you. What is it?”
Frowning, Vicki looked away for a minute. “I just saw Mike.”
“And?”
“He still managed to make me feel like…”
“A monster?”
“Yes and no,” Vicki answered. “That’s the thing. I knew he was wrong and that he was just being ignorant and narrow-minded, but…”
“But?”
“He got me so angry I wanted to bite him!”
Dr. Sagara’s eyes widened. “I take it you didn’t?”
“No, I walked away before I gave into the urge. Does that make me a monster?”
The older woman laughed. “Oh God no! I would imagine that when it comes to Detective Celluci, there are a lot of people that would like to bite him and something tells me they don’t have to be vampires to have the urge too!”
“He just…he told me he didn’t believe in the supernatural and there I am, standing right in front of him. Then he asked me if it was what I really wanted, basically telling me he preferred I was in the ground than…” she gestured to herself, “this.”
“He’s a meat and potatoes kind of man. The black and white with no room for gray kind. Despite what’s he’s seen over the past few months, he still wants everything to fit into a tidy little box. When it doesn’t, he still tries to find ways to make it so. Weren’t you a bit of the same before Henry?”
Vicki chuckled. “It’s hard to remember my pre-Henry days now, but yeah, I guess I was. Bad guys were bad guys and good guys were good guys, end of story.”
“Now you’re seeing there is gray in this world.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean the bad guys should just go free,” Vicki pointed out.
“Of course not, but I think you understand what it is that I mean.”
“Yes,” Vicki agreed, nodding. “I do.”
“You loved Detective Celluci at one time.”
Vicki nodded. “I did, do…” shaking her head, she rubbed her eyes. “I don’t know anymore.”
Dr. Sagara raised a brow. “You don’t?”
Vicki shot her a look. “Don’t say it like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you know the answer and you’re just waiting for me to figure it out or say it out loud or whatever. I hate that crap.”
Dr. Sagara merely smiled and turned her back to Vicki to attend to her teakettle that had started to scream.
“He was a part of my life for a long time,” Vicki said defensively. “And he was my partner in almost…everything. So yeah, his rejection of me now stings.”
Dr. Sagara said nothing, just continued to make her tea while Vicki watched.
“I care about him, I probably always will and somewhere underneath all this garbage, he cares about me too,” Vicki continued. “It’s true we’ve grown apart and in some ways moved on…”
“Have you?”
“Of course!” Vicki exclaimed. “How could we not? Our lives went on different paths as often happens when you’re no longer partners and find other business to attend to and…”
“And?”
Vicki pursed her lips together and glared at the woman. “You’re just waiting for me to say I’m in love with Henry, aren’t you?”
“Actually,” Dr. Sagara said thoughtfully, “I was waiting for you to say that what Mike Celluci thinks doesn’t matter because you know that things have changed and he hasn’t changed with them. I do find it interesting that you landed on being in love with Henry. So, tell me dear, are you?”
*********
“She’s a mental Ninja,” Vicki muttered later, pushing Henry’s door open, still pondering her conversation with Dr. Sagara. While she had admitted to nothing, the older woman had still managed to plant the seed and get her mind turning over the ‘Do I love Henry?’ question over and over. As if she hadn’t been doing enough of that already since she started sleeping with him…or since they’d started working together…
“Who’s a mental Ninja?”
Looking up, Vicki found the man in question, standing in front of his large window, his hands in his pockets and still dressed in his black pants and bluish-purple button down. Standing there watching her, he looked regal, handsome…sexy.
It was maddening how automatic her desire for him was. Had it always been that way? Sure she’d always found him attractive, had always felt drawn to him and wondered what it would be like…
Though in life, she’d never given in. Partly due to her own hang-ups, partly due to Mike, and partly due to the fact that Henry was immortal and she was not. But now the playing field had changed. She was immortal right along with him. He was her Sire and she was his Childe. He’d made her.
Was that the pull now? Was it purely Sire/Childe bonding? Or was it deeper than that - something she’d repressed? Had all that attraction and wondering, all the connecting they’d done before she was turned just exploded onto her now that she was one of his kind - and his Childe? Or was what was happening between them just been waiting for the right moment, and eventually it would have happened, no matter if she’d been turned or not? Perhaps her turning had just pushed the inevitable forward.
If vampires could get headaches, she was sure she’d have one at the moment.
“Are you all right?” he asked her crisply.
“I’m…fine. You didn’t kill Mike after did you?”
He smirked. “No. Mainly because I know how much you wouldn’t like it.”
She smiled wanly. “That’s a small consolation, but a consolation nonetheless.”
“Besides, I’d rather not have his blood tainting my system.”
“Blood snob,” she teased.
He shrugged. “Where did you go?”
“I…went for a walk.”
“To…?” he encouraged.
“I went to see Dr. Sagara.”
“Oh?” he said, quirking a brow. “For anything in particular or just because?”
“I like her. I trust her. She seems to have conquered that whole wisdom thing that I’ve never been able to grasp. She’s a smart lady…if not a little crafty.”
“I take it she’s the mental ninja?”
“Anyone ever tell you that you should be listening in on someone else’s conversations? Even if it is with themselves.”
Henry smiled. “Blame it on the vampire hearing.”
“Likely excuse,” she joked.
He regarded her thoughtfully. “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
“You don’t need to know everything,” she admonished him. “No matter how much you’d like to.”
“Anything you could talk to me about?”
She frowned, studied him. “I don’t know. I’m still working things out in here,” she replied, pointing to her head.
Before she could even blink, he was standing before her, playing with a strand of her hair. “Anything I could help with?” he murmured huskily.
Vicki gulped and tried hard not to meet his eyes. If she made contact, she’d lose all sense…
“Vicki,” he whispered. “Look at me.”
[i]Sneaky little bugger,[/i] she thought.
When still she didn’t look up at him, he wrapped one arm around her waist and drew her close. “Vicki,” he whispered against the shell of her ear, causing her to shiver. “Look at me…”
“I can’t think when you…” she trailed off softly.
“Do what?”
“Seduce me. You’re…seducing me.”
Bending his head, he snaked his tongue out and licked across her bite marks causing her to moan. “Am I?” he murmured.
“Yes,” she breathed and grabbed his face. She glared at him for a minute before crashing her lips to his. “You don’t play fair,” she muttered, tugging at his shirt, pulling it out of his pants.
His hands were under her shirt, his hands over her breasts while he nipped at her lips. “You like it,” he countered.
“No, I really don’t,” she argued, pulling him down to the couch behind her and unzipping his pants. Hastily, she pushed his pants and black silk boxers down and grasped his cock in her hands, pumping him steadily.
He hissed, his eyes shutting briefly before making quick work of her jeans, nearly ripping them off in his haste to get them out of the way. Once they were gone, he moved her hands off him and kicked off his pants and boxers and sat down, pulling her on top of him. “Ride me,” he ordered.
Vicki complied willingly, sinking herself down on him and starting a steady rhythm.
“You could stop me,” he whispered to her, continuing their debate as she lifted up.
“Would you let me?” she asked.
He grinned, grabbed her hips and slammed her down on him. “No.”
“You’re impossible,” she sighed, placing her hands on his shoulders for leverage.
“You want me.”
Snapping her eyes open, she met his eyes finally and moved faster, riding him hard and fast until they both came, and came hard.
Finally, she spoke and it was in answer - even if it hadn’t been a question. “Yes.”