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  Cathedral

  A Cradle of Darkness Novella

  By Addison Cain

  Chapter One

  I have a taste for fine red wine.

  Elusive, decadent. It pours down one’s throat with all the richness of desire. It can even be thick on the tongue. But it’s nothing to the drenched, pervasive cream that smeared over my lips.

  Blue-blooded and smug as smog, Ethan knew this as he stood beside my bed, stroking his cock while I hummed appreciation at my surprise.

  He wanted me to taste him… dripping from another.

  And that’s how I found myself awoken from slumber. The smoothly waxed lower lips of a pretty female, caressing my smile.

  The slip and glide as she performed exactly as Ethan must have instructed, teased me to take a lick. Labia puffy from a recent fucking, the tang of female lubrication churned creamy by male ejaculate.

  She smelled like life that I was only too happy to let pour down my throat.

  Opening my mouth, I dragged the flat of my tongue through the mess. Hooking it so I might catch his cum all in a glob for Ethan’s unwavering stare to absorb as he rubbed new life into his recently spent cock.

  Salty, an exclusively human bleach-like tang. I knew his taste well.

  One might consider me a sexual deviant, the way I rolled his flavor around on my tongue. How I swallowed before grabbing the globes of the offered treat’s ass to move her where I would.

  Though she enjoyed my exuberance, this act was not about her pleasure. It was about mine. Twisting my tongue through her folds as her legs shook from the pleasure, seeking flavor and lingering juices, I devoured.

  As if I never need come up for air.

  I didn’t.

  I could hold my breath for hours. Days even.

  Which gave me all the time in the world to dig my tongue into her cunt and scoop out the remainder of my prize. Her toned ass, clenched in my hands, bore the sharper edges of my nails, as I took so much more than I gave.

  Even so, even though the sensation was too much, rubbing her clit on my nose, she came.

  The noises, the squeaks and squawks, the honesty of them, excited me.

  So I spread my thighs so Ethan might see.

  Thinking he was king of the world, Ethan climbed between them, his heartbeat fast and loud. “God, Jade, you two are fucking hot together!”

  It must have been near noon, for I could feel the sun cut through the floor to ceiling windows my penthouse afforded, overlooking the city’s most exclusive view. The weight of that direct light danced on my pale skin, the unseen pain I was an expert at concealing bleeding together with the impatient stab of a cockhead through my slit.

  I sleeved him, wrapped around his turgid length, and bore down in a way the delicious snack riding my face never could. He fought me to remain seated, jerking his meat through the clamp of a satin-coated cunt.

  Knees braced to black silk, a bruising grip on my parted thigh, I didn’t need to see him to know the vision before me. Sweat dampening his blond hair, leaving it to hang in his eyes as his lips parted in a blissed-out groan, Ethan strained. He strained to fuck a hole so tight I’d forced him out before his balls might slap my ass.

  “God damn…” Equal parts frustration and awe, he bullied his way back inside. Half-seated, he landed a slap on my clit as if to punish the teasing cunt he did so love to conquer. The sting did its work. My muscles jumped just enough that he gained an inch.

  The throaty noise of victory made me smile against the woman too sensitive and no longer interested in my mouth. Not that she would ever say so aloud. Whoever might have the fun of playing third to our duet knew that they had a body and it was here for our use.

  Complain, and be easily replaced by the next pretty blonde who caught Ethan’s eye.

  So she tolerated my nips and licks, how I gasped against her when my lover’s thumbs pulled the pretty hood of skin away from my clitoris. Threatening me with excessive pleasure, Ethan hissed, “Let me in, Jade.”

  I softened just enough for him to sink another inch, rippling around his girth in an ancient tease.

  The pad of his pointer finger rubbed my exposed clit with the perfect pleasure to trick my body into surrender. Just like that, straining and bucking manic hips between creamy thighs, I was fucked for breakfast.

  When I’d tossed the girl away, forgetting she panted at my side while I made manic love to Ethan, I couldn’t say. One moment we played with her, the next we did not.

  Because it was never about whoever else we brought into our bed. They were a garnish, unmemorable.

  That wasn’t because we were cruel. Ethan for all his failings, was a nice guy. I, despite my heritage, never hurt them.

  “I love you, Jade.” Delivered with perfect timing, Ethan believing his proclamation was true, got what he wanted.

  Eye’s rolling back, his cock expanding with imminent release, my lover enjoyed his second orgasm of the day. One my own release drove past the pale as my internal muscles twisted tight, released, cramped, and fought to expel him.

  “Oh my god! Oh my god!” Face the very image of ruin, Ethan threw back his head. The following animal whine, the way he swayed as if on the brink of a faint, it led me to be merciful.

  Again I opened, the seed I’d choked off from bursting down its tube allowed to splash against my womb.

  Falling to his hands, forehead to mine, he panted through the following waves of euphoria, while I cooed in his ear and ran a comforting caress down his spine.

  “I fucking love you, Jade.”

  Melting into the mattress, my mind wandered through ecstasy and pain. The sun had climbed higher, soon I’d be forced to move. But for now, the hidden cameras needed to see.

  I had done my duty for the day.

  Though it was permitted, there was no expectation that I cum. My orders were only to be seeded.

  Daily.

  Which made it doubly lovely that I had gotten this reproductive requirement out of the way so early in my schedule. Perhaps I’d even partake again later instead of leaving Ethan to play with his latest toy, should the mood strike him to get his dick wet.

  Warm weight of toned male flesh sliding off my body, Ethan stood with a sheepish smile. After taking my fingers to kiss with adoration, he sauntered off to the bathroom to shower.

  Eventually his father would require him to show up at corporate HQ and make an official appearance. Dashing smile, suit immaculate, and model beautiful, he’d be expected to do nothing more than saunter in and fuck around at his computer for an hour or two. I imagine he spent it playing candy crush or dallying with the prettier girls in the building.

  Entitlement at its polished finest. That was my darling Ethan Rothschild.

  “I’m going to join him.” Despite the aneurism inducing orgasm I’d given her, it seemed the girl at my side had collected herself. Standing on shapely tan legs, she meandered towards the ensuite’s steaming shower and the man whistling inside it.

  Arms stretched overhead, I enjoyed the zippering pops of my spine. “You do that.”

  Throwing me a smile over her shoulder, she blew me a kiss.

  What was her name? Polly?

  Vaguely remembering some Polly wants a cracker reference, I couldn’t recall if this blonde was Polly or if the last blonde had been Polly. Jenny?

  Sam?

  No, not Sam. Sam had been the curly-haired Venus from last winter.

  They all ran together. They all giggled the same, pouted the same, and sported the large gravity defying breasts Ethan had an eye for.

  God bless the surgeons who gave those pretty, carefree girls such perfect tits...

  For God sure as fuck never blessed me.

  And I’m not t
alking about breasts. My breasts were lovely.

  I was stunning, in fact. Dark hair, porcelain skin, designed to draw adoration and attention.

  Wealth? I had more money than any man could spend in a lifetime.

  But I was not favored by God, and never would be.

  After all, I was the child of Lucifer.

  Chapter Two

  Perfume.

  The scent of good taste and deep pockets. Specially blended to my precise specifications.

  Over the multitude of years, only one distinctive blend has graced my throat. The ritual of application, the slip of cut crystal chilling a scented trail down my skin—I found it comforting, even if I have never enjoyed the smell.

  With the inevitable passage of time, everything changes. Trends, styles, freedoms… but this concoction, the way it alters the air around me, what it signifies, is as ageless as I am.

  In the modern, more sophisticated era, several of the ingredients sloshing within the crystal vial gracing my vanity are extremely illegal. Some so rare, their acquisition cost a greater sum than the annual rent on our metropolis’ finest penthouses. Humans of a certain cut, whether it was ingrained in them from high birth, or because they conquered the upper echelon and elbowed their way in, need only take a sniff to know precisely what the cloud of scent signifies.

  Affluence. Reverence.

  Souls feel me linger in the air long after I’ve left a room.

  Their brains tickle and twitch over a ghost of memory they can’t pin down.

  As if they’ve known me all their lives.

  They have. They just can’t remember.

  “Uncle Randal wants to know if your father will be joining us at his birthday soirée tonight.” Attention locked on his phone, Ethan scrolled through his messages, as if what he asked was nothing.

  I stopped humming.

  No breath entered my lungs; my heart shuddered to a stop. Still as a corpse, no longer musing over frivolous perfume, my eyes rose in the mirror, waiting for Ethan to glance away from his phone.

  I cannot imagine what he saw on my face, but I knew it was not the shattered glass panic scratching at my veins.

  To him, that flippant remark and the assumption behind it was… innocent.

  To me, it felt as if the room was a dead thing rising from the grave.

  Speak of the devil and he will appear.

  Though Ethan was about as deep as a puddle, even he took note of my brief lapse from flawless composure. “Darling, it’s just that—”

  Hasty words fell from my lips before he might make this worse. “Has Papa reached out to the senator?”

  Blond brows lifting with ingrained snobbery, Ethan pressed. “Senator Rothschild would really like him to come.”

  No. He wouldn’t. My father likes to play with his food.

  Stupid, selfish, silly, happy Ethan whose antics offered me the sensation of normal… by the time my father was done with him, he wouldn’t even know my name.

  He wouldn’t remember dancing with me in the moonlight, or laughing as we jumped on the bed like children. There would be no naughty smirks when his prick engorged at thoughts of what I’d willingly do to him.

  I’d be nothing but a whiff of familiar perfume when I strolled by, gracing the arm of another prominent man.

  Hand shaking, so subtle a betrayal of my feelings that no human eye would catch it, I set the crystal stopper back in the bottle.

  And I felt… bereft.

  Because I’d grown too attached, and I had known better.

  Someday, this game of playing house would all end.

  Blue eyes falling to my inlaid Louis the XV vanity, I hated that perfume bottle of revolting honesty glinting in the scorching sun.

  How sad to be reduced to something so fleeting—crafted, expensive stink.

  Knowing full well that Ethan could never grasp the fate he tempted, I let spite make pretty words ugly. “Next time I see Papa, I’ll mention how much the senator is looking forward to the attention of his favorite benefactor.”

  Waving off my fake smile as if it were real and inconsequential, Ethan rolled his eyes. “When you put it like that, it sounds tasteless, Jade.”

  Because it was. The Rothschilds were extravagantly affluent in their own right, but it was nothing to the wealth the father of darkness wielded. And, after all, it was an election year… and campaigns were expensive.

  Lifting up a tube of Chanel Shanghai Red lipstick, I ended the topic. “He’s not coming tonight.” Perhaps it was true, perhaps not. One thing I knew was to never anticipate the moves of the devil. “But I promise I will mention it to Daddy tomorrow.”

  Another lie.

  Tucking his phone in his pocket, Ethan bent down to press a kiss to my shoulder. “You sure you don’t want to call him? It’s going to be a fun party, you’ll see. The president’s coming.”

  And that was disgusting for a very different reason.

  Not all of my former companions had been as sweet or as horribly selfish as Ethan.

  He was a treat compared to men I was duty-bound to air kiss upon greeting. Aging men who had no memory of our long-ago, fumbling trysts, their tempers rattling my ear, or their slaps to my cheek.

  One could write off such behavior as belonging to a different time with different rules, but I’d lived long enough to know better. Some men were just lesser than their gentler peers.

  The current leader of this great nation, for example, had been just as disgusting, insecure, and chauvinistic in the 1980s as he was sitting on his fat ass in the oval office scarfing down Big Macs.

  In less than an hour I’d float past him; I’d stomach the feel of his paunch pressing against my body as he leaned forward to smear his fleshy lips across my cheek. A shudder would run through him at a whiff of my perfume, and somewhere deep down, ugly old feelings would stir.

  Desire, covetousness… fear.

  I looked so young, so fresh, how could shadow memories of my face flicker in the darker corners of his mind? The sensation of someone walking over his grave would be brushed off, ego stepping in to answer with an affable, “I knew your mother,” or “I loved you in that film.”

  Though I’d graciously say thank you, I’m not an actress.

  Not of the paid variety, anyhow.

  And I don’t have a mother.

  But the human mind had to reconcile; it had to bend.

  Weaker intellects made up the best stories.

  So I would smile, I would laugh, I would make him feel important. And then I would drift away on the night air.

  “It’s past five o’clock. You know it’s too late for me to call Papa, Ethan. He’s very old. He’s already in bed, and I can’t imagine his night nurse would be willing to poke the viper. He needs his rest.” And the sun was still up. Even if my father was awake during daylight hours, he’d be feeding at the trough of captives stored in the Cathedral, not pulling on a tux to mingle with cattle. If I were to even mention such a thing, his laughter would rail down the phone line until my ears bled.

  That is not an exaggeration.

  Puppy dog eyes in a face that had graced GQ, Ethan begged. “For me?”

  Smiling as if I’d fallen for his charm, my freshly painted red lips smiled back. “I’m happy to write a check on his behalf. How much would the senator like?”

  Before Ethan might do the unthinkable and mention a figure out loud, the pouting spectator who sat naked on the corner of my sex-mussed bed piped in. “I don’t understand why I can’t go.”

  Ethan’s latest bleached blonde’s timing was both perfect and awful.

  Adjusting his bowtie, Ethan colored. I sighed—both of us having forgotten she was in the room.

  And there was pity to be had for her. It was never pleasant to be excluded—knowing one was lesser than their peers, cut—that I understood intimately. But the three of us going through the paces knew why she couldn’t attend Senator Rothschild’s birthday pa
rty. Not that I, or Ethan, or even she would say so.

  Low class mistresses were condoned only behind closed doors, more of a light joke than treated as living flesh and bone. They were not tolerated, or heaven forbid, acknowledged publicly. Even with MTV and feminism.

  It was a mercy when we left her home.

  Where we might give her gifts and pleasure, others would eat her alive.

  Speaking of food, my stomach rumbled.

  But I refused to dine tonight; habit led me to wait, the need to feed ignored as long as my body might comply.

  I still had two days.

  Forty-nine hours to be exact.

  So, now was the time for perfume, and parties, and stolen moments with old friends who had no true recollection who I’d been in their lives.

  Now was the time to mock terrible presidents with artfully applied smiles, and know, for a fact, that they had the world’s truly smallest, most pathetic penis.

  Artfully applying a final sweep of black mascara, eyes currently a shade of blue, unlike my father’s glowing red, stared back at me. Lids dusted gold, painted to entice.

  From my bed, our blonde wrinkled her nose at our refusal to acknowledge her complaint.

  Ignoring her huff, Ethan—exactly how his grandfather Gerard had done decades before—placed his hands on my shoulders, smiling over me while I completed my toilette. In the soft light of the vanity, it seemed a tender moment, the way his thumb caressed the side of my throat sweetly as he chided, “We’re going to be late.”

  “You look very handsome in your tux.”

  How he fed on praise. That grin, those dimples, I could eat him alive.

  Not literally. Humans were vile on the tongue.

  And vampires shouldn’t be able to walk in the sun.

  Those two anomalies in my life were the very reason there were hidden cameras catching every angle of my perfectly applied smoky eye. They caught the facets of metal glinting off extremely expensive Agent Provocateur underthings. Why the gown draped over my massive bed, picked at by our resident pet, was flawless as she pouted and whined that she was not included… again.

  Lips painted the perfect shade of red. Eyes blue as the Mediterranean Sea. Skin pale but carrying the undercurrent of a long-ago bronzed people. I was alluring enough to reel any hapless mortal to an early grave.