The Relic (Cradle of Darkness Book 2) Read online

  Gathering up the underthings to match the 1920s costume, Vladislov said, “It will be very modern. I think the word might be risqué.”

  “Women in the 1920s were very modern. They could vote!” And indeed that had made me very worried in that age. For so much violence was brought down upon those females who wanted a voice. And I had not agreed, as women were God’s flawed creation. But then I’d seen a cultural renaissance… a phrase I overheard from a guest at the Supper Club and had looked up at the library.

  So why not watch this movie? Why not wear the clothes?

  But no trousers!

  Even in my era, those looked improper.

  “How brave you are, my soul!” Laughing, Vladislov wrapped an arm around me. “All of this will be removed and replaced. No need to look at me that way. It will be saved for parties or your whim. Yet I will contradict one fashion statement from the years you’re considering. Bras are overrated. I’ll cover you in lace, in satin, in silk, but please, I beg you, my darling, do not confine such perfect breasts in a bra.”

  Nipples tightening at their mere mention, I pulled the house coat tighter around my chest. “What do women sleep in?”

  His eyebrows bounced. “In the nude, of course.”

  “You’re lying…”

  “Fine…” He sighed as if I were extremely troublesome for failing to take the bait. “Nightgowns, teddies, lingerie, pajamas. And yes, some do prefer to sleep naked. If I have a vote, I vote naked. You’d glow wearing nothing but moonlight.”

  “You’re too forward.” I would have never said that to a patron as I sold cigarettes. I would have let him slather me with innuendo and grab my breast or rump. But I said it now, because I was no longer a cigarette girl. I was to be a modern woman of a new century. “It makes me uncomfortable.”

  Grinning, he leaned close enough to take a deep breath of me. “Uncomfortable is not the right word. It makes you nervous, because it excites you.”

  Heart pounding, strange fluttery feelings in my belly, I closed my eyes and collected my thoughts. Warmed where his heat poured into me. Oddly breathless when he ran his nose over my hair.

  Full-on shivering when he whispered at my ear, “I would be very gentle, immensely careful, if you would only let me kiss you.”

  A kiss? Was there really any harm? My lips already felt plump, tingled with the thought of it.

  It was all I could do not to touch them.

  Yet he pulled away, eyes warm and smile soft. “But not yet. First, let's watch this film and see just what makes the modern woman tick.”

  Hand going to the tie of my robe, he pulled the knot before I might react. Off went my robe, followed with a flourish of my cotton nightgown until I was naked, gaping, and reaching out for anything to cover myself.

  Chin in his hand, he cocked his head and considered. “Perfect breasts. Perfect sex. Please don’t have your pubic hair ripped out the way women do these days. I love those beautifully scented, soft curls just as they are.”

  Already stepping into my underthings, red up to my ears, I tripped once I grasped what he said. “Women remove… that hair? Why?”

  “Cunnilingus. Though the fashion fluctuates decade to decade, in these times, many men complain when their partner likes to be licked between her thighs and the lady’s sex is in the natural state. Call me old fashioned, but I disagree. I want to smell and feel all of you.”

  My breasts were covered in thin satin, and after I snatched the pink dress from my tormentor, my body was reasonably concealed. But I felt the oddest pulsating warmth between my legs. And by the way Vladislov winked and took another deep breath, I realized he could smell it.

  “I can, and your arousal smells divine. I bet you taste like honey.”

  And I was growing offended to be so outmatched. “Such talk is for husbands and wives!”

  “As we are married, I knew you’d like it.” Hooking my arm through his, he led me stumbling from the closet. “But enough verbal foreplay. Let’s go watch this film the female population is aflutter over.”

  “I don’t trust you one bit. I’ve changed my mind about the movie.”

  “Too late!” As if playfully offended, he mimicked a wound to his heart. “Besides, I do not decide what women like. Look on social media and see the unrelenting posts about this film. You want to immerse yourself in the modern woman’s psyche, there is no better jumping off point.”

  Waltzed through the rooms, spun until my legs caught the sofa, I plopped down on the cushion. Vladislov stretching out at my side, remote in hand.

  His fingers moved faster than the program might load, which I could sense annoyed him, as he was trying so hard to play cool and not pin me in place.

  The film began, looking so real compared to films from the 50s—like standing right there with the actors. The sound of waves crashing was so fresh that I was enraptured with this magic.

  A girl taken captive by a handsome, evil man. One who swears she will fall in love with him.

  I don’t think my jaw closed the entire rest of the film. Every moral part of me knew I needed to look away, but they were naked! How could I have known the brazen filth that women relished in these days?

  So beyond what I had anticipated… the beautiful woman seduced the man who caught her in his web. She took his member into her mouth!

  Oh lord! He licked her between her legs!

  Cunnilingus Vladislov had teased me about, though she was hairless—as he had also mentioned.

  And when they made love—if the violence in which they took one another’s body could be called that—she enjoyed it.

  Women enjoyed sex?

  “Very much so, Pearl. Modern women have taken sexual control of their bodies and enjoy the act even more than the man in many instances.”

  “I don’t understand this.”

  How the villain showered the wanton captive with praise.

  How she adored him, despite the fact that he kidnapped… stolen her away.

  I’d been stolen and locked in a crypt.

  I’d felt a cock thrust in me, known the tearing of delicate tissues. Hated all of it.

  I had climaxed with a scream just as the actress continued to do.

  But her cries were of joy.

  I had never been sated in such a way.

  And seeing this…

  It made me sad.

  Frustrated.

  Angry.

  Disgustingly eager.

  Did women really like these things?

  On a couch, in a room I had never seen, I sat beside a character from all human nightmares and grew confused at the pulse growing between my legs each time the actors coupled.

  “I don’t understand.” But I understood enough to grasp why Vladislov moved to kneel before me. Why he was gently pushing up my skirt, inserting his frame between my weakening knees.

  Parting me so the slit in my step-in might be found and dark curls exposed.

  And I could not wrap my mind around the fact that I was allowing it.

  Holding my eyes, his touch slowly moving up my inner thigh, he said, “That gentle kiss I promised. I’d like to give it to you now.”

  “I won’t like it.” Not the way the woman did on screen. Never like that.

  His fingertips reached my undergarment’s opening, pulling it wide to expose even more of me. “Then I’ll stop.”

  One could say the first touch of his lips in that forbidden place was indeed chaste. Soft pressure at the apex of my sex, right where I tingled the most.

  Pressing my head back into the couch cushions, I gasped. Hips rocking so I might know more, just like the woman on the screen had done.

  And more, I was given.

  I don’t know if his tongue was forked, but it was evil through and through as the demon sluiced through my juices to flick at my lower lips. To strum a delicious knot of pleasure above my hungry opening.

  There was nothing shy or modest in how he kissed me. Nothing innocent. Nose, chin, mouth, tongue, even te
eth played me like a song.

  And I did scream, bucking and wild and someone else entirely, climaxing with shaking legs within minutes.

  It was as if I had finally been exorcised of a demon.

  Breathless as he redoubled his efforts and pierced me with a tongue I knew was black, fat, and far longer than any human tongue. Undulating that thing within me, his nose nudging the bead where all sensation centered, I screamed again.

  And again.

  And again.

  I was kissed until the sun rose. Until my voice was gone and my senses were muddled by pleasure.

  And then the man pulled back, licking his smiling lips with a tongue more dangerous than sin. Climbing over where I was spent, where I realized I had been brazenly clutching at my own breast and pinching the aching nipple.

  He murmured, “Better than honey,” kissing me to share the flavor of what he dined on throughout an entire night.

  I tasted nothing like honey, but I found his tongue in my mouth delicious. His weight on my body divine.

  Nipping his way across my jaw, he whispered the ultimate temptation, “We could make love in the sunlight. Gentle and slow.”

  Perhaps we could….

  My final thought before exhaustion and an unnatural sense of relaxation took me away.

  Chapter Ten

  Vladislov

  Laying her in her new bed, in this new country, in this fresh start, I knew my soul wouldn’t wake until sunset. Not after the progress we had made… a dozen times or more.

  She had not believed she would enjoy my tongue between her legs in her past life either. The first time had been quite a violent tussle. This time, all it required was some sensational media.

  Bless the makers of softcore porn for women. I’d have them all changed so more movies of that nature might be produced and I might get the pleasure of eating pussy from dusk to daybreak again.

  A vampire armada of smut makers! Ha!

  Just wait until my queen viewed a real-life orgy. I bet she’d bob up and down my cock all night after furious blushing and five minutes of pretending not to look.

  Was it too soon to throw her that style of party?

  Yes.

  I sighed, willing to press progress even if I couldn’t have my orgy. It was not too soon to strip her out of those clothes and let her know the glory of soft sheets on bare skin. Which would get me in a bit of trouble when she woke, especially as I would be just as naked and pressed flush against her.

  There was no helping my dripping erection, so that too she would experience and muse over.

  How delicious her musings were.

  What a pity I had not been able to read her thoughts in her past life. Had I been able to, I could have been far more cunning and much less violent with my jewel. She might have loved me even more.

  I might not have had to threaten the life of the very baby whose delivery had drained her to the point of death. I might not have threatened to kill it if she had not made the oath that would bring her back to me.

  A child I could not bear to look at as it grew. Who outlived all his brothers and took my throne when I wandered off to make the world bleed for leaving me soulless and desolate—the great, great, great, great, many more greats grandfather of Darius.

  In whom, after a thousand years, I’d tried to make amends.

  Considering Darius’ head was now on a pike and my soul was afraid of the pleasure due her, I should have killed that baby after all—horrible thing that tore its way out of the only creature in existence worth anything.

  I supposed my love’s rebirth was a boon in the fact that she would remember none of this. And it would be thousands of years before she might gain the ability to pry into my thoughts and see what I’d done. By then she would be hopelessly tied to me, utterly in love. Devoted as I was to her.

  Just lying near her made me ache.

  I would give her physical pleasure for a thousand years and seek none for myself if only to please her. Though it might make my pants fit a bit oddly walking around with a constant erection. Perhaps codpieces might come back into style?

  Nestling said erection between the warm buttocks of a sex-addled, drowsing daywalker, I covered us both with one wing. This too she would grow accustomed to, for I could not resist the need to do it.

  The need.

  Holding her in such a way fed me more than thoughts of fucking her. Though, there was no question I very much longed to plow her into oblivion. I could come all over her beautiful backside right now if I just let my mind wander into fun thoughts.

  But waking up with dried semen on her back, already naked and in my arms, would absolutely make her mad. She might slap me.

  I might like it.

  And… it was too late. Like an untried boy, I had just spurt where I may or may not have been rocking myself against soft buttocks.

  If I were to just… rub the come in, what was the harm in that?

  Massages were very popular in this era. If she woke, I’d simply tell her I was trying to keep up with the times.

  And still, she’d slap me.

  It would be worth it.

  Considering I was already hard again, I could keep this massage tactic up all night. Imagine how rested she would be when she woke. If I had a bath prepared, she would hop right to it in her modesty before really analyzing the situation.

  Filling it with bubbles like the scene in the movie might even show her how adept I am in noticing what intrigues her.

  Perhaps no bubbles, but a tub full of warm, immortal blood?

  There were plenty of vampires in my prisons who were unworthy to pass her lips, but good as a blood bag to be tapped to luxuriate her skin. It would be a very vampire-y thing to do. Her first step into embracing her other half.

  I’d be her servant, properly clothed with a toga around my hips, feeding her grapes and sips of blood straight from the vein while she soaked.

  Three spurts of come on my sleeping wife’s back was probably the limit I might get away with before the sheets turned crusty. Hand to my cock, pulling forth the greatest release of the night, I did my best to angle more of it at me than at the sweet globes of her pale ass.

  I really was such a liar.

  What man in his right mind would not come all over so plump an ass?

  Absolutely sane, I lifted my wing enough to see the creamy globs dripping toward her more intimate area, salivating to lick her clean, and groaned.

  Heaven was Hell, and in my arms slept the true ruler of the underworld. Tormenting me with her beauty, her goodness, her scrumptious tits and ass. I was Hades, and she was Persephone, except in the real tale, there was no Demeter to steal her away from me for half the seasons. And now death could not touch her.

  She was mine!

  Skin black and burning, talons lengthening as my hands grew and my body bulged with strength, I cupped her flesh and seared my seed into soft skin. A bit frenzied in the art of manipulating muscle into bliss.

  Many hours had already passed, the tub of blood had been prepared at my mental bidding, and beautiful blue eyes opened, wide with shock to see that, no, I did not cradle her and have her covered in my wing. I knelt over her, massive wingspan possessively closing out the setting sun, my touch kneading her body as yet another throbbing erection dripped onto her belly.

  Balls tight to my shaft, they churned to release, yet I ignored them to wish her good evening. “How did you rest, my love?”

  Speechless from my attention, or maybe from the wide-eyed stare at my bobbing cock, Pearl failed to reply.

  “There is no need to be frightened of your husband’s body.” The arm I had been stroking, I drew my kneading grip down her limb and brought her hand to hover over my erection. “You can touch me if you want to. Explore me and know you are safe. I will not have sex with you until you ask me to.”

  Had that been too similar to the line in yesterday’s film?

  There was something new in her at that moment. Terror, yes, but also bite. “An
d when you do, what happens then?”

  That one stumped me. “I suppose it depends on what you’re in the mood for next.”

  “Will you make me put my mouth on you like—” She swallowed, flushed skin going pale. Thoughts of Darius and his debauchery were in her mind, but it was the film she referred to. “—like the man in the movie did to his wife.”

  This, I could work with.

  Flipping her over before she might scream or fight back, I put her in the exact position the actor had first fucked his captive. Draping my body over her back, I settled my wings to embrace us and took the lobe of her ear in my teeth. “He did this to her as well. Fucked her while her hands were chained to the headboard.”

  I did not penetrate, but I did let my organ smooth through her folds in a long, slow stroke I hoped would entice arousal and not screams.

  “My love, is it not better to jump into the water and swim? Toeing the shore will drive you mad.”

  Shaking so hard I could hear her teeth chatter, Pearl stopped me in my tracks. “Don’t.”

  But this was not the time for retreat. There was a reason I had conquered the known world time and again. I would conquer this too. “I’m asking for you to trust me.”

  And I scythed the long, aching length of my penis again between her folds. And again. As I cooed and stroked her, as my wings warmed her from her fear-inspired chill.

  I mimicked the act of fucking without actually penetrating my darling one. Offering us both a taste of pleasure until she began to pant and the muscles I worked to caress all night began to relax. Her head to the mattress, her ass in the air. My breath at her ear, and my cock stroking her clit, I took my time. And in time, she took her pleasure.

  But it would not be enough to send her to bliss.

  If she wanted that, she’d have to ask.

  And I could hump her gorgeous ass for all eternity. Suffer with her.

  The sun rose, and though her hips had begun to squirm in an attempt to get the friction her body desperately needed for release, she didn’t ask.