Love's Challenge (Pearl Vampire Chronicles #5) Page 14

  After a few minutes of silence, I heard his voice for the first time since he had grabbed me, and what he said shocked the hell out of me. “Better?” he said.

  My mouth fell open. I started to feel uncontrollable anger. I could feel myself shaking in the water. My hands were clenched into fists. “Are you fucking kidding me? You speak English?” I spat.

  “Enough,” he said as he smiled.

  “Enough to understand what I’m saying right now, asshole? Enough to understand when I say that you raped me, you son of a bitch. You raped me and got me pregnant and now I’m going to die when this things rips out of my belly.”

  “Please try to calm yourself. It can feel anger. If it believes you hate it or if it believes you are weak, then, yes, it will kill you when it’s ready to come out. If you are strong and you show it love, it will let you live. And I didn’t rape you. There’s no such thing in my species. I chose you to be my mate. I chose you to bear my child. It’s as simple as that,” he said as his hand began stroking his shaft… again.

  “It’s as simple as that, he says. Fuck you, Aquila. It’s not as simple as that. It is most definitely not as simple as that. And love this thing? How am I supposed to do that when I didn’t want it? You forced this thing on me. I do hate it,” I whispered.

  “You need to learn to love it or it will kill you,” he said then he grunted through another orgasm.

  “Do you have to keep doing that in front of me?” I spat.

  “Doing what?” he said as he wiped his hand on the floor of the cave and then climbed into the water with me.

  “Masturbate.”

  He looked annoyed with my question. “My kind requires release at least four or five times a day or we will die – after going insane and becoming incredibly violent first. Since I figured that you’re not an option to help me with that release then I need to do it myself. I didn’t realize that your species were so repressed. It bothers you?”

  “We’re not repressed, it’s just not something that we do so freely in front of each other.”

  “But you need release too, yes?”

  “Well, yes, but…”

  “But, what? I don’t understand the problem. If you’re body needs it then why hide it? If you need release and can’t reach because of your belly, I can help you if you’d like. I’m quite good at pleasing the females with my fingers. And your release will help alleviate the pain.”

  “By release, you mean my, um, orgasm?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.”

  Suddenly I grabbed my head. “More pain?” he said, and he started to move toward me.

  “Stop! It’s not more pain. It’s my friends trying to talk to me again.”

  “So you don’t want my help with your release?”

  “No. Um, I’m fine right now, thanks,” I said, blushing as Carlos was trying to get into my head. I had kept him out the last few days, just giving him short bursts of, ‘I’m okay but can’t talk now.’ Enough to keep Carlos from panicking, but not enough to satisfy him apparently. This was the second time today that he was trying to come in. I had to talk to him now, but I couldn’t let him know what was happening. I closed my eyes and leaned my head back, trying to relax in the soothing, warm water. ‘I’m here, Carlos.’

  ‘Jesus, Sarah. You are scaring the shit out of me. I’m leaving tonight to search for you, I have to.’

  ‘Is he out of danger yet, Carlos? Did he wake up from the coma?’

  ‘Well, no. But Sarah, this is too dangerous for you. He could hurt you. He could, he could…’

  ‘Yeah, I know he could,’ I thought as I tried to choke back my sobs. How the hell am I going to tell him what happened? How is he not going to know?

  ‘Sarah?’ Uh-oh, too much silence.

  ‘Look, Carlos. We’re in a cave. See?’ I quickly opened my eyes and looked around, avoiding Aquila, the hot springs, and myself. ‘I have no idea where this cave is. I can’t see outside at all. I can’t give you landmarks. I can’t hear anything. I don’t know how I can help you find me.’

  ‘But, what is he doing with you? Has he hurt you Sarah? Has he touched you? Do you know what he wants?’

  ‘I don’t know what he wants or what he’s doing with me, Carlos. He hasn’t told me yet.’ I was afraid to answer his other two questions. He knew me so well that I was afraid that he would hear the lie in my voice. There was a slight hesitation before he spoke again. Crap, he knows something is wrong. ‘Sarah? You’d tell me if something was wrong, wouldn’t you? You know you can tell me anything, honey, right?’

  I swallowed hard, trying to get rid of the lump in my throat. ‘I know, Carlos. Look, he chains my ankle so I can’t move around much when he leaves to get blood. But the next time he’s gone, I’ll test the chain again to see if I can get close enough to the mouth of the cave to see out, okay?’ Hopefully that will throw him off of what he was thinking.

  ‘You’re sure you’re okay, kiddo?’

  I couldn’t help it, a small sob escaped when he called me by my favorite nickname.

  ‘What was that? You’re not okay, are you? Something’s wrong.’

  ‘Chill out, damn it. Nothing’s wrong, other than the fact that I’m on a hard floor and it’s a little uncomfortable. I was just shifting and it hurt a little but now I’m fine, got it? I’m perfectly fine.’ Silence again. Damn it. I completely suck at lying. I tried to change the subject. ‘Tell me more about how Matt’s doing, please?’

  ‘His wounds are healing fine. Cameron’s flying with him back to Peru tomorrow. He’ll keep watching him. He thinks he should wake up from the coma soon.’

  ‘You’re going with him, right?’

  ‘What? No, I’m not going with him. I’m going to stay here and look for you.’

  ‘Carlos, please listen to me. Until I can give you some sort of landmark or something, there’s no point in searching for me. You’ll exhaust yourself. You’ll get hurt. Matt needs you right now. People in comas need to hear the voices of their friends and family to help them wake up. I’ll try to get into his head to talk to him, but I’m not sure he’ll hear me that way. He will hear your voice if you’re in the room with him. Please, Carlos. I love you so much and I need you to do this for me. Please stay with him, Carlos. Please? For me?’

  ‘God damn it, Sarah,’ he whispered in my head. ‘Please don’t do this to me.’

  I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. I could only hope that he’d say yes.

  ‘I’ll do on one condition,’ he finally thought. I grabbed my chest. This was hurting too much already. And I was pretty sure I knew what he was going to ask now. Not yet, please, not yet.

  ‘What’s that?’ I whispered.

  ‘Tell me when it’s due, Sarah. Tell me how long I have to find you before that thing tears you apart. Tell me that, and I’ll stay with him, for now.’

  I cried out. I couldn’t help it. Aquila moved toward me, but I held my hand up and shook my head. I pointed to my head to let him know that’s where my pain was coming from. I tried to get control of my sobbing. ‘Damn it, Carlos. Why do you have to be so fucking smart?’

  ‘I think that’s the first time a woman has ever said that to me. But, Sarah, why couldn’t you tell me, baby? You’ve always come to me whenever something is wrong. Why didn’t you feel it was okay now?’

  ‘I knew it was okay to tell you, Carlos. I just wasn’t ready to tell you. I just wasn’t ready for you to know.’

  ‘Ahhh, baby. Please don’t. Let me help you Sarah. Please. When is it due?’

  I took a deep breath before I lied to him. I didn’t want him to panic while trying to find me. I knew he hadn’t heard Bahiti tell me before. And I knew, in my heart, that he wouldn’t get to me in time. ‘Bahiti told me these things have a gestational period of seventy five days. So that gives me about sixty one days.’

  ‘Okay sweetheart. I’m marking it on my calendar. I’ll find you within fifty five, I promise. I’ll find you and then Cameron can get that thing out
of you. I promise, Sarah. Did he, did he hurt you, hun?’

  ‘Carlos, don’t. Not now. Don’t make me do this now. Look, I’ll tell you this much. I wasn’t conscious for it. At least he spared me that much.’

  ‘I’m going to fucking kill him.’

  I smiled and let out a little laugh, I couldn’t help it. ‘I love you when you get tough.’

  ‘Oh fuck, Sarah. I feel so god damn helpless. How can I help you from Peru? What can I fucking do to help you from there?’

  ‘How can you help me from there? You can make sure Matt recovers. You can make sure you don’t do anything stupid. And you can make damn sure that you keep loving me and keep making me laugh, Carlos. That’s what you can do from there.’

  ‘I love you so much, Sarah. I always have and I always will.’

  ‘I love you too, Carlos. Now, go get some sleep and let me know when you’ve got him home safe tomorrow, okay?’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Sarah.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For not protecting you. For not keeping you safe. One of us is always supposed to be there for you. We weren’t this time and now you’re suffering.’

  ‘Carlos. We all got hurt in this one. We’re all suffering. You have nothing to be sorry for.’

  ‘Yes I do. Matt was unconscious. You were my responsibility and I blew it.’

  ‘Carlos. I need you to listen very carefully to what I’m about to say. You’re not helping me right now. Right now what I need is your love, your support and your humor. What I don’t need is your guilt. So please figure out a way to give me what I need and don’t talk to me until you do.’

  ‘You’re right, Sarah. I’m sorry. Tomorrow, I promise I’ll bring my A game. I love you, kiddo.’

  ‘I love you too.’ As he left, I brought my head up and looked at Aquila. He was studying me. “

  We can’t do that,” he said

  “What? Link minds and have conversations in your heads?” I said.

  He nodded.

  “Why didn’t you want everyone to know you spoke English?” I asked.

  He grinned. “Because it gave me the upper hand. My hearing is better than yours. I could hear you planning your trip to the old country. Unfortunately I didn’t get there soon enough.” He dropped his eyes.

  “Is that why you did this to me, Aquila? Because we killed your father?”

  He surprised me by shaking his head. “No. Father wasn’t being helpful anymore. His time had come. The things he was doing to your species were too cruel. I tried to reason with him. I told him that I could help some of the females survive the pregnancies but he wouldn’t let me. No, I did this because I refuse to be the last one of my kind. And I did this because I want to be a father. Because I want an offspring to raise and teach.”

  “But why me, Aquila? I told you how much this would hurt my heart. Why did you do this to me?”

  “Because you are strong enough to survive. I decided when I was in your prison that maybe your kind do have the right to exist, as do mine. I’m tired of death. This won’t kill you, of this I am certain.”

  “No, you just don’t understand, Aquila.”

  “I understand more than you think. One of those that you killed in there was my son.”

  “I’m sorry for that. I didn’t know. But you have to understand that those vampires were my friends. I had to do everything I could to save them.”

  “I know that. You took my son and now you’re giving me a son. I would say we’re even.”

  “How, how do you know it’s a boy?”

  “I’m fairly certain you don’t want me to explain that, but it has to do with how the sperm is injected into the mate.”

  I turned around and started to climb out of the water. “You’re right, I don’t want to hear it. I want to go to sleep now.” I stopped and turned around. “Do I have to be naked all the time? I’m really not comfortable like this.”

  “Yes. I have to watch the changes in your body to make sure they’re happening on time.”

  “Well, can I at least get a blanket or something softer to sleep on? Please? The floor of the cave really hurts me.”

  “As you wish. I will find something when I’m getting food tonight.”

  Another week or so passed. My eyes flew open. Time to feed! It must be time to feed! I frantically glanced around the pitch black cave. I was alone. Aquila must be out gathering more blood. Blood! My mind scream. More good blood! Shit, Sarah, calm down. I squeezed my eyes shut for a second and tried to relax. I glanced at the tic marks on the wall. Thirty-three. I’d been on this shit for thirty-three fucking days. Matt was still in a coma and I was pregnant and strung out, fucking marvelous. I lay back down on the blanket to wait for my food. I closed my eyes, but I knew that sleep was impossible right now. Between the need to feed and the creature doing somersaults in my belly, there wasn’t much room for sleep anymore. ‘You alone?’ Carlos thought.

  ‘Yes’

  ‘Can you move? Can you see outside?’ he thought. He was sounding more and more desperate by the day.

  ‘Yeah, I can see outside. I can fucking see that it’s fucking dark.’

  ‘Sarah? What’s wrong? You don’t sound like yourself, baby. Are you in pain? Did he hurt you again? Honey, please talk to me.’

  Shit. I didn’t want him to know that I was acting like this because I was strung out – I was an addict. ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m just tired. This pregnancy doesn’t let me sleep very much. No, I can’t see out of the mouth of the cave, other than to see a few pine trees, which means we could be just about anywhere. I’m sorry. I’m trying to talk him into letting me walk around outside a bit to get some exercise, but no luck yet.’

  ‘Sarah, can I please come and look for you a bit? Matt’s vitals are completely stable. In fact, he’s pretty much healed, he just won’t wake up. I think he needs to hear your voice, I mean really hear it, not just in his head. He needs to know you’re there. He needs to feel your presence. He needs to smell you. Which means, he needs me to find you. So, please, can I come look for you for a bit?’

  ‘Where, Carlos? Where are you going to look?’

  ‘In Siberia. The Altai mountain range.’

  ‘Do you promise to be safe? Do you promise to not exhaust yourself? Do you promise to return home and rest if I ask you to?’

  ‘Yes, Sarah. I promise.’

  ‘Okay then. If you promise, then you can come. And Carlos? I miss you. I’m scared and I miss you.’

  ‘Baby, I miss you so much too. I’m going to find you Sarah. I’m going to find you and get that fucking thing out of you before it hurts you. I promise. I love you, Sarah.’

  ‘I love you too.’

  ‘I’ll let you know when I land in Moscow. Try to get some sleep,’ he thought and then he was gone. I exhaled. I had been holding my breath for most of that conversation. I didn’t want him to hear my lies. And there had been a few, in what I had said, and what I hadn’t. Chances were not good that he was going to find me. Aquila had known about the tracking device and sliced it out of my arm a month ago, so that wasn’t going to help. I really couldn’t see outside at all, that wasn’t a lie, so I couldn’t help. And this thing inside me wasn’t a fucking thing, and it wasn’t going to hurt me. I knew that, I felt that. Aquila had convinced me of that. Every time it hurt me when it was moving, Aquila would place a gentle hand on my bump, and it (he) would stop moving. He already loved his father; of that much I was certain.

  I heard his wings beating the air several minutes before he landed outside the cave. “Hunger or offspring keeping you awake?” he said as he walked inside. As angry as I was at Aquila, I couldn’t help but notice just how beautiful a creature that he was as his huge wings tucked themselves in at his back and every muscle in his always naked body flexed as he strode towards me.

  “Both.”

  I licked my lips as he walked past me with the blood and went to the hot spring. He placed two of the pints in a basket that he kept in the water th
en he walked over to me and unlocked my leg iron. I rubbed my ankle then struggled to stand up. My belly was a lot bigger and heavier than I thought. Aquila stuck out a hand. I grabbed it and he easily pulled me to my feet. “It really would be nice to walk around and keep a little of my strength. Any possibility you could find a way for me to get some exercise? I’m going to need my strength when it’s time, right?”

  “Yes. I’ll see what I can do, tomorrow.”

  I had to clasp my hands together to keep from lunging for the blood, something I had learned quickly not to do. Feeding time was on his terms only: “You will speed up gestation if you feed too quickly, female,” he would tell me. He still adamantly refused to use my name. To him I was just the “carrier of the offspring”. And he still took care of his voracious sex drive whenever he felt the urge – usually in full view of me. I had learned to live with it (sort of) but the longer I went without a release of my own the more I was tempted to take him up on his offer to help me. He gestured for me to climb into the water and he climbed in after me. He made me wait what felt like an agonizingly long time. Finally he glanced toward the mouth of the cave. I looked too and saw that it was getting light out. The sun was coming up. He nodded his head and reached into the basket, handing me the two warm pints. I tried not to moan when I drank, but a small one escaped anyway. “Why do you do that?” he said.