Eternal Kiss (New Orleans Vampire King)

Chapter Seven

Lukas – Four Months Later

“Dinah?”

I called upstairs.

We were supposed to be meeting Laurent at The Limelight to check out the new saxophone player he had hired.

After a long discussion, she and I decided to sell the club.

It didn’t hold any appeal to her, and for me? The memories of all the nights Doug and I shared there were still raw.

Like with Doug’s house, my brother asked if he could take the club off our hands.

When I asked about his territory, he said his second had it under control.

I think he was just lonely and wanted to be around family.

“Sweetheart?”

I called again.

When she didn’t answer, I strode up the stairs to find my beloved.

Dinah had done remarkably well with her blood thirst.

We had been able to travel to Nashville and pack up her apartment two weeks after she’d been turned.

I paid to get her out of the lease early, and other than her clothes, she donated the rest of her things to a local homeless charity.

In those same two weeks, she and I spent most of our time in bed, making love, feeding from the other, and just being.

It was an amazing fourteen days.

In all my time on earth, I had never felt as alive as I did when I was balls deep in my beloved.

Each time we came together was different as our bond became stronger.

Each time, I learned something new about the woman I couldn’t get enough of.

Like anytime I wore a suit, it was coming off quickly if Dinah had a say in the matter.

She called it suit porn. It was a good thing I was wealthy and could afford to replace the ones she shredded with her claws.

When I reached our bedroom, Dinah was sitting on the side of the bed in her lacy underwear, staring at nothing. I crossed the room and knelt in front of her, taking her hands in mine. “Sweetheart?”

“It just hit me. I’ll never have children,”

she whispered. In the four months we’d been together, she’d never mentioned wanting kids.

“You can’t give birth, no, but if you want a child, I’ll get you one.”

She morphed from sad to mortified. “You’d steal a baby for me?”

I chuckled and tucked a long, dark lock of hair behind her ear. “No, but I would adopt one for you.”

“Really?”

Her eyes filled with pink-tinged tears.

“I would give you anything your heart desired, My Beloved. You should know that.”

Using my thumbs, I wiped away the wetness.

“I do know, and I am so thankful to be yours.”

“Should we start the process?”

Dinah bit her lip and shook her head. “Not yet. Now that I know it’s an option, I’m no longer sad.”

She stood, pushing me back against the dresser, gripping the lapels of my jacket. “Do you know what I am, Mr. Benoit?”

Her fangs extended, and she scraped them along the edge of my jaw.

I grasped her plump ass with both hands and angled my head, giving her access to my neck. “Tell me, Mrs. Benoit.”

“I’m starving,”

she hissed before she struck. Did I mention how erotic it was when Dinah drank from me? Needless to say, my suit was ruined, and we were late meeting Laurent.

When we did arrive, me in a fresh suit and Dinah in a sexy black dress that accentuated her ample curves, Laurent rolled his eyes.

He was used to us never arriving on time, but as much as he complained about it, there was a longing behind his teasing.

I often found him staring at Dinah.

Not in a way that raised my hackles, but such that I knew he wanted what I had.

When you lived for an eternity, bedding strangers lost its appeal after a while.

He greeted Dinah with a kiss to her cheek, then he took my hand, pulling me into a tight embrace.

My coven was still unaware that we were Ancients, and I saw no need to change that.

Speaking of my coven, I had thrown a gala to announce my queen.

She was received with equal amounts of awe and respect as the female who caught and held my attention.

It didn’t hurt that Dinah was just as fiercely protective of me as I was her, and after she staked several vamps for disrespecting me, my coven had felt my power flowing through her veins.

No, she wasn’t an Ancient, but she came as close as possible without having been created.

The Limelight hadn’t reopened as planned after I originally met with Dinah.

Arabella failed to contact the employees.

When Laurent mentioned taking over, Dinah handed him the reins and told him to do with the club as he wished.

He took a few weeks to remodel the interior while continuing to pay the employees, meeting with each one to get to know them.

I joined him for the first meeting, officially retiring as manager, and reassuring my former coworkers they would enjoy working for my brother.

If possible, the club was even more popular under Laurent’s guidance.

He led us to our reserved four-top, and we enjoyed a night of drinks and excellent music.

The new saxophonist was on par with Doug, and the crowd sat enthralled as he played.

I looked around at familiar faces as well as new ones, proud of what Doug and I had started all those years ago.

My beloved had never been a fan of jazz, and that was due to her father’s abandonment.

She felt he chose his music over his family, and even though she knew better now, it had tainted her view.

She was softening to my favorite genre after realizing why Doug had disappeared.

I shared stories of her father so she could know the man he had been. I often found her talking to the urn that held a place of honor in our home.

Before meeting Dinah, if someone had asked me would I miss tending bar every night, the answer would have been an unequivocal yes.

But now? Now my nights were filled with music of a different kind.

Dinah and I danced in the kitchen to whatever song she queued up on her phone while she cooked our favorite foods.

If she hadn’t been the beloved of an Ancient, eating wouldn’t be possible.

Still, she could only manage small quantities.

We drove around our city with the radio playing softly from the car’s surround sound while checking on our coven members.

We stopped off at the casino where my woman played blackjack for hours while I cheered her on. We snuggled on the sofa in front of a fire, sipping wine, while the stereo provided background noise.

Dinah excused herself to go to the restroom.

My eyes followed the sway of her wide hips as she strode away.

Hips I loved to dig my fingers into as she rode my cock.

My beloved was a wildcat in bed.

It really was too bad she couldn’t have children.

I would love nothing more than to see her belly swelled, her breasts even larger as they readied to feed her babe.

My skin prickled and I looked around the club.

Dinah’s mood changed from content to pissed off, and I was on my feet in a heartbeat.

When I reached the hallway where the restrooms were located, my beloved had a male by the neck, his back pressed to the wall.

His eyes were red, and his fangs extended.

My power flowed through my queen as she silently compelled the humans in the vicinity, clearing the hallway.

That left the three of us.

Through our blood bond, Dinah showed me with her mind what happened.

This vamp who I had never seen before thought he had a right to put his hands on my female.

He had grabbed her wrist, attempting to drag her off to the back exit. Big mistake.

Before I could permanently end the fucker, Dinah instructed him to go outside.

With her compulsion net surrounding her, she followed him out the back door.

Once outside, she lifted her dress and removed a stake she had strapped to her thigh, then drove it deep into his heart.

Ashes fell amidst his clothing to the ground.

Dinah let out a shrill whistle, and a familiar vagrant came running.

Dinah had offered George money for a place to live, but he declined, stating having new-to-him clothes and the small fee she paid him to take the clothes after a kill was enough.

Granted, he didn’t know she was killing vamps, but their little enterprise was a win for them both.

George inclined his head to my queen, picked up the clothes, and shuffled off down the alley.

Once he was out of sight, she replaced the stake and turned to me.

“Fancy a dance, Mr. Benoit?”

“I would love to dance with you, Mrs. Benoit.”

We returned inside where I gathered my beloved in my arms and swayed to a sensuous jazz number. I was still one of the deadliest beings in the southeast, but Dinah gave me a run for my money.