Page 15 of A Love So Deadly
Lucian
“That wasn’t very smart, Lucian.”
I don’t need the soft vicious edged gloat in Vittoria’s words.
Or is it that I don’t want it but need it? I know I went too fucking far.
Now I want to hunt. Wild and free blood. Blood earned is the sweetest. Drinking from the carefully picked farmed blood makes us nothing more than domesticated cats.
I don’t often give in to that hunting urge. I’ve done it enough. I’ve even rampaged and painted my corner of the world in blood before. I know what it’s like. I know that taste. Just like what I now know what one Elliot Montague tastes like.
The difference between me and the less disciplined of our kind is that I know the best way forward. It’s the way to not just create a world where we can survive but thrive in and that means conquering the baser instincts.
As much as we can.
But I needed to know her taste. Since she wouldn’t drink the spiked drink, I had to glamor her and make her drop the glass instead. That allowed me to drink a few fragrant, delicious drops of her blood.
“You turned my office camera on?” I ask, as I pour two drinks and hold one out to her. I’m both annoyed and amused. “Really?”
She sniffs the drink. “Of course I did. You’d do the same with me.”
I have done the same. “I’m your maker.”
“We’re partners.”
“To a point.” I know this argument, so I’m not bothered by it, only intrigued. She’s been like this a few times over the many years since turning her. But only when she’s felt threatened. So I say the same thing to her I always do. “You could leave any time. Others have. Built their own lives, empires…”
Not empires, never that, but in whatever place they go to, they rule it or die. Depending on how stupid they are, or how greedy or reckless.
The one thing Vittoria is not is stupid. The rest? She tempers it.
She could have branched out, been an ally to me in another city. Fuck she could have taken the position of CEO in another part of the country of the local VMR. But Vittoria’s not interested in running any part of the conglomerate. She doesn’t want to be big fish in any small pond.
Vittoria’s still with me for the precise reasons why I turned her, the precise reasons she stayed true to the human version of her.
She wants the power our partnership brings her. She understands we’re better together. And she doesn’t want anyone ousting her.
No fucking little human could ever do that.
I don’t turn humans anymore.
“Are you telling me to go, Lucian?”
I sip my drink. “No. We’ve had lovers before. We’ll have them again. You might even fall in love.”
Vittoria laughs.
“But,” I say, “unless you allow that to oust yourself from my life, we’ll be fine.”
“And you?”
“What about me?” I ask. “I’ve been in love. It has never changed a thing.”
The look she gives me would whither lesser men.
“With us, I mean.” She doesn’t blink as I speak. “But I don’t plan on doing that again.”
“Not even if it doesn’t change a thing?” Vittoria asks.
