“Alyssa?” the man asked.
“What?” I asked before backing up a little. Hearing the name that sounded slightly familiar caught me off guard. It had been years since I heard it. Regan no longer called me by my Christian name, only his pet name for me. We moved from the town he found me in after we had taken Simon’s life. He was worried someone would see me and know who I was, so moving to another state was the only way to prevent it. We had been on our third state and, while it had been the one I grew up in, I was sure no one would recognize me.
“Don’t you know who I am?” he asked.
“Should I?”
“It’s me. Brian. Your fiancé.”
“She doesn’t have a fiancé anymore. She belongs to me now,” Regan said stepping in between us. I caught the look on his face though. This was a test of my loyalty to him. He wanted to see if I remembered my past or if I would let it all go to be with him forever.
I knew my answer a long time ago.
“I don’t have a fiancé so you must be mistaken. I knew a Brian, but he was only after a slave. How much he must have ended up paying my mother for me. Too bad I wasn’t going to stick around to see what their plans for my life were. I can promise you, I am in a better spot and I am more powerful than you could have ever imagined.” I sunk my teeth into him and locked eyes with my maker. As Brian’s life drained into me, I saw the look of pleasure on Regan’s face and that was all I lived for.
I was his and he was mine. It was written in the stars years ago that we would be together. I was home and nothing would take that away from me. Brian’s blood wasn’t as good as I hoped it would be, but the fact Regan hunted down the man who could have ruined me, that was the best present of all. The only thing that could have topped it was if he would have found my mother.
“I tried to, my love. Someone said she died a few years ago. When I asked about him,” he said and pointed to the piece of trash that lay cluttering our floor, “they said to find him at the whore house. He wasn’t hard to track down and now you’ve had your revenge.”
“You looked for her? For me?”
“Yes. I told you I would do anything for you, and I meant it. You are my world and I live to make you happy.”
“I live to make you happy too. This has been the best exchange day ever.”
I was still on the floor next to the two corpses looking up at the man I needed that I never knew I had. He was my everything, and the two of us together took on the world. Every day we would sleep in each other’s arms and at night, there weren’t too many times we were apart. He showed me all I needed to know to survive as a vampire and in return, I gave him all of me.
“My love,” he said and met me on the floor next to Brian’s lifeless body. Both still naked, we collapsed once more into each other and became one.
It was different that time. There was more passion between us than even the first time we made love. He played my body like it was a fiddle and he was a master. I let him take me and consume me however he wanted that night. There was no holding back for the first time, and he took me to heights I never knew existed.
When we were done, as he held me, I looked at the man before me and smiled. He was perfect for me and I wanted to be perfect for him. Each day we were together, that longing grew. I knew he felt it too because the passion reached new levels for us the longer we were together.
CHAPTER FOUR
A hundred and four years later
It was getting closer to the time we would exchange our gifts to each other. We would spend the next six months picking out and seducing them before bringing them home to play with in front of each other. It was one of the times I loved and hated all at once.
Regan wanted to switch it up a while back, and now we hunted our own kills. We still did it in front of the other person and he was right about one thing, them seeing you coming after them after being so sweet to them for months before did make it even more thrilling. They also tasted better and our love making took on a whole new feel. I loved that part and I loved watching him take the woman who took so much time away from me and kill her.
That was the part I hated. We used to find mates for each other to toy with and that took nothing more than one night. His new way, while it was thrilling, took him away from me for months at a time. I hated that.
Regan said it wasn’t a huge deal because we had eternity to spend with each other. I knew that part, but what if he fell for one of them? He could toss me out on my own and choose another mate if he wanted to. It was his choice since he was the one who turned me.
I didn’t have the same option. The only way I could go on my own was if he tossed me out or if I killed him for another mate. There were rules to that game too. If I chose another mate and tried to kill Regan, he had to be a vampire. There was also the rule that if I didn’t succeed in killing Regan, he would have to kill me for thinking about leaving, along with whoever I was leaving him for.
For those rules alone, most turned mates never tried to leave their makers. It was a deadly game no matter what way you tried to spin it. We had only heard of a handful of makers turn their mate out too. The bond between mated vampires was as strong as a human parent and child. Most humans couldn’t understand that because they went through mates like most people switched up their choice of dinners.
It made me sick to think of them moving from one mate to another without any thought to the one they were leaving behind. They said we were the monsters, but we didn’t treat our partners that way. It wasn’t in us to move around like that.
I’m not saying there weren’t special situations where we didn’t switch out partners, but to stay with them after one night was unheard of in our community. It was celebrated when a new vampire was turned, and the parties could get wild.
Regan was more old school since he was turned over two hundred years ago, and I wasn’t much into the big party scenes either. We had been together for over a hundred years and I wasn’t looking to add anything more to us than we already had. Our hunt nights were all the foreplay we needed to keep our relationship spicy.
It was on one of those nights that everything seemed to go wrong. Social media was a great tool for us to use and Regan had me become an expert at it. We could easily find where the major hangouts for the night were going to be and we could lure our victims in without ever having to see them in real life. We could be anyone or anything we wanted to be, and they had no way of proving us wrong until it was too late.
Last hunt I was a lawyer who fought for male rights against females looking to take everything from them. I was able to seduce a big shot who thought he was better than every woman out there. For months he told me about all the women he had duped into sleeping with him. We both laughed at them all, but secretly, Regan and I couldn’t wait to watch him suffer.
Regan was a male model that year. Not that he couldn’t have been, but the picture he picked out for his profile was eerily close to how he really looked. He found a skinny, blonde haired, brown eyed European woman to bring to the party. Watching the big-time sleaze and the bulimic hold on to each other while begging for their lives still turned me on. I let Regan go first that night so Mr. Dick could get a full-on view of what was coming for him. We made love after Regan killed Barbie, so Mr. Dick had a little longer to think about what he had done. As I climaxed, I locked eyes with him and smiled. He begged for his life for minutes before I couldn’t take the sound of his voice any longer. Regan couldn’t either and I knew what he wanted.