Page 72 of Ruthlessly Mated
Afterward, when I am soaked in his seed, I fall asleep in his arms, in the cell, in the heart of the lair of the vampire who wishes only evil for all of us. Being left alive by Alexander is not a mercy. It is a prelude to pain.
CHAPTER 14
Conroy
The sound of the cell being unlocked is slight, but impossible to ignore when you sleep with an ear pricked.
I turn over, and to my absolute surprise, I see Tailor standing there. For a moment, I am almost certain I am losing my mind, either still asleep, or seeing a ghost, but then he steps inside and lifts his voice just slightly above a whisper.
“Are the two of you coming?”
“Tailor! You’re dead?”
“Not that I noticed. I thought you were dead, though. Vamp said you were.”
The vampire lied. Of course he lied. He is entirely untrustworthy. He is an evil, manipulative beast. Kita picked up the lying part. I have to hope that the rest did not rub off on her.
He might not be dead, but there is blood all over Tailor’s chest. He’s wearing tattered pants that must have belonged to someother unfortunate dungeon inhabitant at some point in the past. He has been hurt. He has been hurt terribly.
“What happened to you after we were picked up?”
“He took me into a room and he told me you were dead. Then he beat the shit out of me and told me I wouldn’t get to breed Kita because he didn’t like my genes. Then he left. Then I picked the lock, because it’s as old as he is, and I came to find Kita.”
“Is he really this inept?”
“He’s not stupid. He’s arrogant. Which makes him a little stupid. We need to get out of here,” Kita whispers, having woken up beside me. “Follow me. I know this place like the back of my hand. Or, like I would know the back of my hand if it was a prison from which I had escaped many times.”
Escaping the vampire’s lair is relatively easy. Kita is right. He is arrogant, and that makes him make the same mistake we did. He assumes he’s got us trapped even though we’re already escaping.
This feels a little too easy. A little too slick. We head out of the mansion via the servant’s entrance and head around to…
Beep.
Alexander is standing outside on his driveway with a stopwatch in his hand.
“Three hours. A little longer than I imagined,” Alexander says. “You’re going to have to work a lot faster than that to retrieve the relic. I suggest, when you retrieve the relic, you don’t stop to have sex and nap first.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Kita curses at him.
“I have been dead for over a thousand years,” he says, as if that is an explanation.
Judging by Kita’s reaction, it is about as close to an explanation as any of us are going to get. He has been dead a long time, and he does things like this to amuse himself. It’s all a sick little test, a fucked-up game.
“Right. Okay. Why did you tell this one that the other one was dead?”
“I wanted to see if he had the mental and emotional fortitude to continue on in the face of death. He did.”
He’s toying with us. He’s a sick eternal creature and he is bored and we are his playthings.
“What are you doing? Why are you doing this? You could be doing anything. Anywhere. You have more money than god. You’ve dragged us all over an ocean, thousands of miles from home,” Kita says.
“This isourhome. This isyourhome. It has been your home for a very long time, until you decided to steal my most precious thing and take it away.”
“Your maker’s heart isn’t your most precious thing.”
“No. You’re right. It’s not,” Alexander says, his tone intense.
There’s a long pause. “Don’t say you’re talking about me,” she says. “Don’t you fucking dare pretend you care, you manipulative fucking…”
