Maybe this is why.
The lines on his skin swoop and dip romantically, carving out scene after scene of battle scars that litter his body. They’re barely noticeable, nothing more than a silver glint, but I can see them. They’re similar to the ones on his hands. There are lines from Arabic scripts along his rib cage that stretch into ancient Bedouin tribal marks. I’ve seen similar markings in books in my father’s library at home.
Each scene on his back tells a story, but it’s one only he knows. To anyone else looking at the art transcribed on his skin, it’s simply lines and foreign words. There’s something about them that feels familiar. Especially the runes that run down the arm currently keeping me from getting up from the bed.
Like his aura, they have a distinct color. They are pitch black and look wrong against the blaze of his amber essence. Legends say that vampires don’t have souls, but if that was the case, why can I see the sheen of color surrounding him like I do for everyone else?
“I got them during the Crusades,” Drystan murmurs roughly, his voice thick with sleep. I startle, but his hand on my stomach keeps me from bolting.
“You were human then?”
His thumb caresses my soft skin, sending butterflies fluttering inside me.
“No,” he tells me. “My time was long before the Crusades, when the man they called Messiah walked the earth.”
He was alive during the time of Jesus? Wait…does that mean the bible is real? Drystan chuckles.
“He was just a man, kharuf fuduliun. Nothing more.”
“So says the vampire,” I snark, still reeling from the fact that he’s been around since biblical times. Drystan huffs but keeps his eyes closed. After a beat of silence, I ask, “How does a vampire get tattoos?”
I would have thought it was impossible for his kind to get them after they’ve been turned, due to the near invulnerability of their bodies as well as their enhanced healing abilities.
“Diamond needles and ink made with willow ash.”
Willow ash?
“Most supernatural beings are sensitive to the leaves of willow trees.” He answers my unasked question. “Hunters will burn willow trees and use the ash to make weapons against our kind. It’s been used to trap and kill.”
“That’s horrible,” I gasp. He nods. “Did you get any markings before you were turned?”
Drystan opens his eyes, his gaze dark, the lines on his forehead deepening.
“One.” I’m surprised he tells me. Hell, I’m shocked he’s even talking to me at all. This has got to be one of the longest conversations I’ve had with any of the Kings, other than Weylen’s game of twenty questions. “But those markings have been covered up for a long time.”
Maybe that’s why the runes on his arm are black instead of amber like the rest of him.
“When were you turned?” I ask curiously.
Drystan smirks. “Around two thousand years ago.”
Well, that definitely counts as an age gap romance, then.
Ugh, bad brain, this is not a romance.
This is war…
Against my vagina, because it wants him so bad. Even now, with this simple conversation, it clenches around nothing. Embarrassing, really.
Shifting away from my perverted thoughts, I shake my head at the marvel that is Drystan. He’s been alive since the time of the Christian messiah. He’s lived through every major battle across history. Seen the rise and fall of countries and monarchs. My mind becomes foggy at just how much a part of history he has been.
How much a part of history they have all been.
And how many women they’ve all been with…
Does the capacity to love or cherish something lessen the longer one is alive? A human’s life must be so fleeting to them, like that of a fly. Nothing particularly special. They all make me feel pleasure now, but I have a feeling it isn’t the same for them as it is for me. To them, it’s no doubt nothing. Something they’ve been doing for hundreds of years, or, in Drystan’s case, thousands.
Once again, an emptiness fills me. Even when they make me feel like I’m the only one in the room, I’m not. I’m just a number to them. Another human who’s succumbed to their charms. They’re using me. Breaking me down. But there’s still a sliver of hope that maybe, just maybe, I’m worth more to them than what they have planned.