“So…I can ask you questions and you’ll tell me what I want to know?” I look at him hopefully.
“Within reason,” Aiden says, frowning. “But yes, ask away.”
Questions rise to my lips so fast they almost choke me but what comes out first is, “Tell me about Katherine.”
A look of intense pain passes over Aiden’s chiseled features and he closes his eyes briefly. “Ah, you would ask me that. Not that I blame you—doubtless you’ve heard of her untimely demise.”
“Not really,” I say honestly. “I mean, I heard that she was a witch and that she died but not…not exactly how.”
Aiden sighs. “Very well. But in order to explain her death, I’ll need to tell you about her life. She was an extraordinary woman and I loved her with all that was in me.” He hands me a plate with scrambled eggs and toast just the way I like it—no butter but plenty of strawberry jam. “You’d best eat. This is a long tale and your food will be cold if you wait until I’m done.”
Obediently I pick up a piece of toast and begin to nibble. Aiden puts the tray to one side and takes a sip from his tea mug, gathering his thoughts. His gray eyes go silver, as though remembering something from long, long ago. Something buried in the past. And then he begins.
“I found Katherine in the woods to the north of here over a hundred years ago. In those days Tampa was little more than an overgrown town. Florida was the least populous state in the union for years, you know. It was too hot and swampy here for most people. As a vampire, the heat and humidity didn’t bother me, especially since I was, at that time, confined to the night as most of my kind are.”
Hmm, interesting I eye the heavy gold-and-onyx ring on his hand again but say nothing. Aiden takes another sip of tea and continues.
“When I came upon Katherine, she was being assaulted.”
I frown. “Assaulted…how?”
“Raped.” A look of pain passes over his face again. “She was being raped.”
“What?” I spill my tea on my leg in agitation and have to wipe it up hastily with a linen napkin. “I mean, really?”
“Really.” He nods grimly. “I was out hunting in the woods and I heard her screams. A group of human men had her—they had discovered she was a witch and decided that was reason enough to brutalize her.”
“Oh no.” I put a hand to my mouth. “Could you…did you stop them?”
Aiden closes his eyes briefly. “Regrettably, by the time I got there considerable damage had already been done. I pulled them off her and dispatched them—”
“Dispatched?” I ask softly.
“I killed them.” Aiden bares his fangs in a display I’m glad isn’t meant for me. “I ripped their throats out and drank their blood. There were five of them and I was alone but all the same, it only took a matter of minutes.”
I’ve seen how fast he can move and I know how strong he is so this comes as no surprise. I have to shiver anyway, though. This is the first time Aiden has ever talked about hunting and killing humans around me.
“Was she all right?” I whisper, and then realize what a stupid question that is. “I mean, was she badly hurt?”
“She had some bruises and contusions—some inner trauma.” He glances between my legs and I cross them hastily, understanding his meaning. “But her mind was more broken than her body.” Aiden sighs deeply. “I went to her and she tried to fight me off at first. Not because I was a vampire but because I was male. I didn’t blame her, of course.” He runs a hand through his hair. “When I finally made her believe that I had no intention of continuing the brutality the human bastards had been inflicting on her, she begged me to kill her.”
“Goddess,” I whisper, my breakfast forgotten.
He nods. “Yes. She wanted to die after what had been done to her. Virginity was much more important back then, even among witches, and hers had been taken from her in the most brutal way possible. There wasn’t as much freedom to do as you pleased and marry or not as you chose. Most women, even witches, found a husband. There was no other way to fit into the human community.”
I nod thoughtfully. “And of course, she would have a hard time finding one after…that.”
“I swore to her that no one else had seen—that I had killed all the men who hurt her,” Aiden says softly. “But she told me there were others—two who had left before I got there.” His eyes burn silver for an instant. “I took care of them later. But at that moment, my whole focus was on Katherine. There was something about her that drew me. As a vampire—a predator—I should have wanted nothing more than to finish her off. She was wounded prey—my natural instinct should have been to kill.”
“But you couldn’t, could you?” I whisper.
“No.” He shakes his head. “I don’t know if it was her magic or some of my old human instincts coming back. I was still a fairly new vampire, having just recently left she-who-made-me. All of my training before my vampire life began had instilled in me the necessity of being careful and gentle with the fairer sex. My human mother, especially, emphasized self-control and gentlemanly conduct. So consideration for ladies was ever uppermost in my mind.” He laughs softly. “She’s been dead well over a hundred years but the things I learned at her knee are still some of the only parts of my human past I recall vividly.”
“She’d be proud of you, I’m sure,” I say softly.
“Would she?” Aiden looks at me steadily. “After seeing what I have become? I doubt it, my darling. But I do have few fleeting moments in my past I can look back on without shame. My treatment of Katherine is one of those.”
“What did you do with her?” I ask, fascinated by the story of my Master’s long-lost love.
“I took her back with me to my house. It was a much smaller, wooden structure but it was built right here, on this site.” He indicates the house around us. “This land has belonged to my family for generations. It’s where I go to ground. Where I feel most comfortable.”
I can’t help looking around me, imaging what it must have been like. I can almost picture Aiden carrying the injured, weeping girl in his arms and laying her gently on the bed. Comforting her as he comforted me last night. “What happened then?” I ask.
“I put her in a sleep trance,” he says. “It’s not magic—we can’t do magic, as you know. It’s more like the technique a cobra uses to fascinate a mouse. We usually use it for hunting and capturing prey. In Katherine’s case, I did it to give her time to heal.”
“And did she?”
“In time.” He frowns. “Her body was young and strong but her mind…” He shakes his head. “I’m afraid she was never completely free of what had been done to her. It made her sexual tastes…peculiar, when they finally emerged.”
I raise an eyebrow at him. “Peculiar?”
He laughs briefly. “Well, no more peculiar than what you and I have been doing for the past month, I suppose. But back then, the erotic practice of Domination and submission wasn’t nearly so well-known or widespread.”
“I imagine not. But…” I hesitate, trying to think how to phrase my question delicately. “I don’t understand how Katherine could want to be…to be dominated after what she’d been through.”
“Oh she didn’t,” Aiden says blandly. “It was she who did the dominating. I submitted to her.”
“What?” I can’t help staring at him in disbelief. There is nothing he could have said that would have surprised me more. Just the thought of my tall, dark, vampire Master wearing a collar and being punished is…well damn, actually it’s hot. But still extremely surprising.
“You needn’t look so shocked, darling.” Aiden sounds amused. “It wasn’t the first time I had been on the receiving end of the whip—she-who-made-me was French and notoriously hedonistic, even among my kind.”
“Is, uh…” I clear my throat. “Is that what you prefer?”
He shakes his head. “I am a Dominant by nature. But Katherine was frightened. She had deep sexual desires—urges that tormented her. Ho
wever, she needed to be in control.” He shrugs. “So I let her.”
“You let her what, exactly?” I can’t get the picture of him, naked and wearing the same kind of collar he has put on me, out of my head.
“I let her whip me, bind me…” He looks me in the eyes. “Fuck me.”
My breath falls out of me in a long sigh. “She…you let her…”
Aiden nods. “You can rest assured, darling, that nothing I have done to you has not been done to me many, many times over.” He looks briefly troubled. “The only thing I would not let her do was bleed me. I never gave her my blood…not until the end. But by then, it was too late.”
“Too late? Too late for what?” I’m caught up in the story now, not caring that my eggs and tea and toast have all gone cold.
“Too late to save her life,” Aiden says somberly. “You see, though our love was passionate, it was also forbidden. The other creatures in the supernatural community didn’t like a vampire consorting with a witch. They felt there was too much power concentrated in one place—too much potential to draw the humans’ attention and wrath down upon us.”
“But that’s silly,” I say. “We’re much stronger and safer when we stick together inside our own community—all of the supes together.”
Aiden nods. “Exactly so. Which is what Katherine tried to tell the other witches of her coven and what I tried to tell the vampires of the Council. But no one wanted to listen.” He takes a sip of tea. “So we made plans to move away from here. Katherine made me a ring,” he holds up his hand, the gold and onyx glinting, “which enabled me to withstand sunlight and eat human food again. The plan was to move to someplace far away and live as humans. No one would be the wiser and we could keep our love.”
“It sounds perfect,” I say.
“It would have been.” Aiden looks troubled. “I was even making plans to form a life-bond with her. She didn’t want me to—she worried about me cutting my lifespan in half. I told her I didn’t care. I was planning to convince her once we moved and started our new life… Unfortunately, I never got the chance.”
“What happened?” I ask softly, dreading the worst but unable to help wondering.
“Word of our departure leaked out. I don’t know how but Katherine was captured. She was brought before the Vampire Council. Then, as now, they were the most powerful supernatural force in our area—a power to be reckoned with.”
I think of asking him about what Lexy said—that the same Council forced him to serve as the Sovereign—but I don’t want to interrupt his story. “Go on. Where were you when this happened?”
“I was making last-minute travel arrangements—we were to have left the next day. We were that close to getting away.” He closes his eyes briefly and then opens them to continue. “When I got back to my old house and found Katherine gone, I knew something was wrong. There were signs of a struggle and I could smell that other supernatural creatures had invaded my territory. I followed their scent and Katherine’s but by the time I reached her, it was too late.”
“But…you said…you told me her secrets killed her,” I say softly.
“And so they did. Katherine always wanted to plan for every contingency. Unbeknownst to me, she had been working on a binding spell—one so vast and complicated its web would encompass every supernatural race in the entire Tampa Bay Area.”
“What?” I frown at him. “But…I thought it was the Vampire Council’s idea to bring all the supes together under one rule and break down the barriers between us.”
“Yes, that’s because they want you and everyone else the spell affects to think so,” Aiden says darkly. “But it isn’t so. My Katherine was the witch who wove the spell. She did it so that we could always be together one way or another. But she had already used so much of herself and her magic to make me this.” He holds up the ring again. “She poured herself into it—body, soul and magic. By the time she was brought before the Council, she had almost nothing left to give to complete the great spell she had started.” He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “And so she gave her blood.”
My heart seems to stop in my chest. The sacrifice of blood—of life—is a last resort for any witch. When all of your magic is used, the life force in your blood can compensate—but at a price. And usually that price is your life.
I can’t help thinking that it’s the same way my mother gave herself for me. She spent all her magic holding back the fire and when there was nothing left, she gave herself in order to get me out of the house and keep me safe.
“What are you thinking?” Aiden looks at me intently.
“Just…how sad it is.” I swallow hard. “My mother…when I was eight, she died in a house fire. But what most people don’t know is that she died saving me. The way Katherine gave herself to her spell so that you two could be together—my mother gave herself to the fire to keep me safe.”
“Yes, I know,” he says gently, surprising me yet again. “I know all about that dreadful night.”
“You do? But how—”
“I know a great deal about you, my darling Emma,” he says softly. “Do you really think I would choose just anyone for my Sacrifice?” He sighs and shakes his head. “Katherine was the first Sacrifice, you know. That is why the girl chosen to serve is called so—although now it’s little more than an honorary title.”
I can’t help being glad about that. Being bled out to complete a binding spell isn’t my idea of a good time. Of course, it couldn’t have been for Katherine either. “What happened to her?” I can’t help asking. “Katherine, I mean. Did she really think she could complete the spell and still live to spend her life with you?”
“I like to think that was what she thought.” Aiden sounds sad. “Sometimes I can make myself believe it. Other times…” He shakes his head. “I don’t know. She never really got over what had been done to her that night I found her. There was no such thing as therapy, no medication for depression. She had periods of black despair when even I could not reach her. There were times when she railed at me, told me that I should have let her die or killed her the moment I found her.”
“How terrible,” I whisper. “How sad.”
“Yes.” Aiden looks at me somberly. “Her fate has tormented me for over a hundred years. I always think if only I could have gotten to her sooner, I might have saved her. But by the time I reached her side, she was bled white and beyond even the healing power of my own blood.”
“Oh, Aiden…” I put my plate of cold eggs and toast to the side and put a hand on his knee. He covers it with his own and squeezes lightly.
“Never mind.” He takes a breath and sits up straighter. “Of course, once the spell took hold, the Council saw that Katherine had been right all along—the supernatural community is much stronger and safer united than it is divided into squabbling, segregated groups. So they took the credit for Katherine’s spell and set up an overlord—a Sovereign—to symbolically rule over the entire community.”
I think again of Lexy’s gossip. “And how do they decide who’s going to be Sovereign?”
“It’s a title passed among the oldest and most powerful of us every ten years or so.” Aiden frowns. “This year it devolved upon me though I did not want the burden or responsibility.”
“But if you hadn’t taken it on, you never would have met me,” I point out.
Aiden looks at me seriously. “I knew about you long before this office was thrust upon me. Although I admit you were…off my radar, so to speak, until I walked into your shop and saw you standing there, looking so beautiful.”
“How?” I ask, wondering if he’s been checking into my background. He must have been to know about what happened to my mother when I was eight. “How do you know about me?”
But Aiden only shakes his head. “That’s a tale for another time.” He lifts my hand and kisses the inside of my palm, his warm breath tickling my flesh in a way that makes me hot and cold all over.
Impulsively I throw my arms aroun
d his neck and hug him tightly, my towel falling down to pool around my hips. “Thank you,” I whisper. “I know it wasn’t easy for you to share Katherine’s story with me. But, well, I feel like I know you so much better now.”
“Oh, Emma…” He strokes my hair gently and holds me close so that my nipples rub against his bare chest, sending little sparks of pleasure through my body. “There is still so much you don’t know,” he murmurs. “I wonder if you’d be so affectionate if you knew everything I have to tell.”
“I’m sure I would. I think you’re too hard on yourself,” I say, stubbornly. “But you’ve always been a kind and patient Master to me…even when I disobey.” I frown. “Speaking of which, you’ve told me several times that my submission is important to you, not just because you want it, but because you need it for some other reason. Why is that?”
Aiden pulls back from me, a little frown on his face. “I’m afraid I’m not ready to talk to you about that yet. You’ll simply have to trust me, my darling. It’s very, very important that you give yourself to me completely and submit to me in all things.”
I bite my lip. “Even when you want to…to do things to me in public?”
“Especially then.” Aiden’s voice is soft and stern—his Master voice. It makes me shiver with a strange combination of fear and desire. “I was very disappointed in you the other night at Bern’s, you know.”
“I know,” I whisper. “And…I don’t like disappointing you. I just…I was so embarrassed.”
“You should never be embarrassed to show yourself when I want you to.” Aiden cups one of my breasts and thumbs the nipple gently, making me gasp. “You’re beautiful, Emma. You may not know it but there’s a light all around you. Sometimes I need to share that light.”
I don’t understand his need to share me but all my other questions seem to have melted away in the heat of his gaze. “Yes Master,” I whisper, nestling against him so that my head fits under his chin.
“I still owe you a punishment, you know,” he murmurs, his deep voice rumbling through me as I press against his chest. “For taking off your harness. And for giving yourself a sexual release when I had forbidden you to come.”