On The Run With A Vampire

17. Lucien

CHAPTER 17

LUCIEN

The world. The room. Even the offensively small bed we’re currently lying on. It all fades into nothingness as I lose myself in the taste of Raven’s lips.

Raven .

Her name echoes in my mind like a beautiful mantra.

Raven. Raven. Raven.

It’s been years since I've felt this kind of passion, this raw and unbridled hunger that courses through my veins like molten fire. Raven’s skin is a canvas waiting to be painted with my desire, and I quickly find myself trailing kisses down her neck.

Her pulse quickens beneath my lips, a rhythmic drumbeat that threatens to drive me mad. But I can't lose control. Can’t submit to the bloodlust.

Not now.

Not with her.

So instead, I let my fangs graze against the tender skin of her throat and enjoy the feel of her body quaking in response. She arches beneath me, hands fumbling to tangle in my hair as she pulls me closer, urging me on with a desperation that mirrors my own.

You deserve to live too, Lucien.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt more alive than I do in this moment.

I move lower, pressing hot kisses along the curve of her neck, down to her collarbone, tasting the salt-sweetness of her skin. Soft, heady moans spill from her lips, and the sound sends a jolt of arousal straight to my cock.

I continue my descent, trailing a path of fiery kisses along her chest, feeling the rapid rise and fall of her breath beneath me.

I murmur her name between kisses. “Raven. Raven. Raven.” Her name rolls off my lips with a kind of reverence I didn't know I had the capability to possess. It’s a sweet melody I want to repeat over and over until it’s engraved in my mind. A beautiful song that makes the space where my heart should be ache with a kind of joy I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced before.

Raven .

She sighs as my hands roam over every inch of her with a possessiveness I don’t think I’ve ever felt before. “Yes,” she whispers as I sculpt the softness of her body, committing every dip and curve to memory.

“Exquisite,” I murmur against the soft, warm skin on her stomach before I go lower, bunching up the fluffy fabric of her shorts as I go.

She lets out a soft gasp as my lips trail a searing path along the sensitive skin of her inner thigh. I can’t help but revel in the way her body twists towards me, a silent plea for more.

I can give you more , I think. I can give you so much more. I can give you everything I have to offer and more if you’ll let me.

The pulse of her heartbeat thrums against my lips, practically begging me to lose myself in the taste of her. Unable to resist any longer, I press a lingering kiss against her thigh before nipping gently at the tender flesh.

Her sharp intake of breath is like music to my ears. The metallic tang of her blood fills my senses, but I don't take more than a small taste—just enough to feel the flutter of her heartbeat against my tongue. And what a heartbeat it is.

Thud.

…

…

…

…

…

Thud.

Thud. Thud. ThudThudThud.

Wait .

Thud.

…

…

Thud.Thud.

…

…

Thud.

That’s not right.

Alarm shoots through me, dousing any and all arousal I’m currently feeling.

“Are you okay?” I ask, immediately pulling away to scan her for any sign of danger or threat.

Her eyes are dark and hooded, lips parted and wet, chest heaving, back arched, nipples erect and straining against the thin fabric of her vest. She looks divine. I want to dive back in and continue my journey to the apex of her thighs, but there are more pressing issues at hand here.

Namely that Raven’s irregular heartbeat is even more irregular than it should be.

I lean back onto my haunches and frown. “Your heart?—”

“I’m fine,” she says quickly. Too quickly. “I’m just—It’s—Ah. It’s been a while, and—” Her cheeks darken slightly and she glances downwards, averting her gaze. “And—and don’t let this go to your head or anything—I don’t think it’s ever felt that good before and—” She pauses again, clears her throat, and then forces herself to look up at me again. “Maybe we slow it down a little?”

“I can do slow,” I say, crawling back up her body to lie beside her. I gently brush an errant curl away from her face, my fingers lingering on her skin.

Her lips curl into a shy smile. “Good. Because I think having someone tell my mother that I died during sex is quite possibly my worst nightmare. Second only to being accused of being a serial killer, and I’ve already ticked that one off the list, sadly.”

“Noted,” I murmur before tilting her chin upwards so I can capture her lips in a slow, lazy kiss.

“Though I suppose,” Raven says once we pull apart, her eyes twinkling with the promise of mischief. “If my heart did stop and I kicked the bucket during the act, you could just bite me and turn me into a vampire. Wouldn’t solve every problem, but at least I’d be…” Raven trails off and peers at me curiously. “What’s wrong?”

I’ve stiffened beside her. “I would never turn you. Never .”

“It was just a joke, Lucien,” she says with a slightly nervous laugh. “Obviously I don’t want to become a vampire. I was just saying if I happened to die in your presence, it wouldn’t be the end of the wor?—”

“It would,” I say flatly. “It would unequivocally be the end of the world for you.”

“And why’s that?”

“I’ve only ever turned one person,” I start, wincing as the feelings of guilt and shame are dredged from the inner cage I’d created for them in my mind. “It was a long time ago, and, as I’m sure you’ve gathered, it didn’t go well.”

“What happened?” she asks softly. She curls up beside my side, and I instinctively wrap an arm around her shoulders, pulling her in close.

“Not everyone is suited to becoming a vampire, I know that now. But I didn’t back when I first came across Warren.”

“Warren?” Raven repeats. “You mean your friend who isn’t currently your friend?”

I huff out a dry laugh. “One and the same.”

“You’re the one who turned him? You’re Warren’s Sire?”

“He wouldn’t like it if he heard you referring to me as such,” I say with a wince, remembering the rage Warren had flown into the last time we saw each other. “But yes. I am.”

“And you regret it?”

I nod. “More than anything.”

Raven places her hand against my chest, right above where my heart should be, and starts tracing lazy circles. It’s a gesture so gentle, so tender, it triggers a fleeting feeling of comfort and peace.

For one selfish moment I allow myself to forget who I am—what I am—and indulge the delusion that this could be normal for me.

And then she whispers, “What happened?” and the delusion promptly shatters.

I take a deep, and entirely unnecessary, breath to give me a few seconds to choose the right words. “I mentioned the odd, lost hiker that wanders onto our land, didn’t I?”

Raven nods.

“Warren was one of them. I came across him one winter nearly forty years ago. He was lost, disoriented, and terribly injured.”

I flinch, remembering the sound of Warren’s desperate, pained wails echoing throughout the woodlands that surround the estate.

“I found him, legs broken, bleeding profusely, and fully intended to put him out of his misery, as it were. He’d lost a lot of blood, but there was still enough to get a full feed out of him, and some spare to bring back to Mother and Blaine.”

I pause and wait to see if Raven will react to that unsavoury piece of information.

She doesn’t even wince.

“But as I approached him, his cries turned into full sentences, and I realised he was begging for his life. I’m not sure who he was talking to—his God perhaps, or maybe he was in such a state of shock from his injuries that he was grasping at any form of hope he could find. Either way, it made me pause.”

“I was already in the earlier stages of my, shall we say, disillusionment with the life Mother had created for me, and I thought that maybe this was a way out of it. A way to feel something again. I thought that perhaps I could become for Warren what Mother was to me.”

The words taste bitter on my tongue as I force them out.

“A guiding force. A friend. A confidant. Someone to endure this eternal existence with. It was selfish, I know that now. I didn’t stop to consider that it isn’t simply a matter of a bite and a transformation. All I heard were Warren’s pleas, begging someone—anyone—to save him and not let him die, and I thought, ‘Well, okay then.’ And I did it.”

Raven’s hand stills against my chest, but she doesn’t attempt to pull away. “And?” she says.

“And it wasn’t what either of us hoped it would be,” I continue, my voice heavy with decades of unspoken regret. “To put it simply, Warren struggled with the change. He couldn’t adjust to his new life as a vampire and everything that comes with it. He refused to feed. The sight of blood actually made him sick, and I think he believed it made him a monster to take a life in the way we do.”

“I tried, you have to believe me when I say I tried. Mother and Blaine too. We all did. We all wanted it to work for him. But it was like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. I couldn’t help him in the way I thought I could. In the end, it was a disaster.”

“Where is he now?” Raven asks.

“I’m not sure. We had an—ah, an altercation a few decades back, and Warren officially cut ties with us. He keeps in touch with Mother, mostly to let her know that he is still alive, but that’s all I know.”

Silence follows the end of my admission.

I wait for Raven to say something. To say anything. But she doesn’t stir.

Anxiety gnaws at me. A lump forms in the back of my throat. The sudden urge to fling myself out of the nearest window is overwhelming.

Although it’s excruciating, Raven’s silence doesn’t surprise me. I’m acutely aware of how my confession must seem to her, and I can’t help but brace for her inevitable judgement and the cold clarity of her disappointment dousing any hope for something more between us.

But then, to my surprise, Raven shifts slightly until she’s propped up on one elbow and looking me directly in the eye. “Oh, Lucien,” she says softly.

I shake my head and move to push her away. She doesn’t budge. “Your sympathy is misplaced. I am not the victim in this story.”

“I can feel sorry for both you and Warren,” she says, rolling her eyes slightly. “And Warren’s not here right now, so you’re the priority.”

“I shouldn’t be,” I say roughly.

Why doesn’t she understand that I’m not the hero in this story? Or in any story, for that matter.

“Well, you are,” she says with an unmistakably stubborn edge. “You can’t keep blaming yourself, Lucien. You tried your best and it didn’t work out. You have to let yourself accept that.”

She still doesn’t understand.

“I’m a monster, Raven,” I say. “Not just because my survival is dependent on an endless cycle of bloodlust and carnage, that much is a given I’ve already reconciled with. But also because of what I did to Warren.”

“You didn’t?—”

“I took away his humanity,” I cut across her. “And there’s nothing—absolutely nothing—more monstrous than that.”

Raven sighs and cups my face in her hands. “You’re not a monster, Lucien. You’re someone who made a mistake, who learned from it, and who still has a heart, even figuratively, that’s capable of feeling guilt and remorse.”

She leans in until her lips are brushing against mine and then whispers five words that change the entire trajectory of my pitiful existence.

“That’s not monstrous. That’s human.”