Chapter 05.

POV; Lenora Aveyard.

I wasn’t sore when I woke, unlike the last time I’d had my husband spanking my skin and f*****g me from behind. That’s what he did to me; f**k me relentlessly until I take no more and there was nothing left in him to give. There was no love in there at all, but that’s what we did to unwind. Forget the love and f**k until I passed out. I was always the one to give in first, my body was always the one to weaken and tire out before he was even half way done with me. He’d pulled my hair, caressed my body from head to toe, and pushed into me long enough for my cheeks to redden from the connection of his skin with mine and my core to ache with him there. He’d laid me flat, held my legs together and spread them apart, bowed back my body for my shoulders to meet his chest. He’d held my waist, squeezed my breasts and tightened his left hand around my neck tightly enough that if I were human I would have been blue in the face. And when I was done, when my body shook and dripped of my pleasure that he’d brought me, when his own body had given me as much as he could and he filled me to the brim, his fourth and final spank met my behind.

  I woke alone on my side of the bed that my husband and I shared in our new room, in our new house. I took the time to shower, to clean myself up and to dress before making my way downstairs for my morning fill of blood. There had always been perks of having a doctor living in the coven, who worked in the hospital as often as she could; raiding the hospital for blood bags that we could all use was much more efficient than murdering a body.
  I perched myself on the same stool I’d sat on the evening before when Boe had visited, at the breakfast bar of the gourmet kitchen, my eyes averting to watch the scenery of green in the yard. The silence was more than welcomed, the peace and serenity. And then the door the closed, the door to the entrance of our plantation. Serenity broken.
“I come baring gifts!” I turned as soon as I heard his voice, as soon as his footsteps made way into the kitchen, his arms out in front of himself with a box pressed into his chest. He walked around the breakfast bar, sliding the box down by the sink as if it held a mountain of the world’s most fragile diamonds. “And they’re especially for you, my love.”
He beamed at me, sliding back from the counter, sliding his hand along the marble top work before rounding the bar again, sliding an arm around my waist before rounding into me to peck my lips. “Good morning.”
“Good morning.” I replied, lifting one of my own hands to press the tips of my index and middle finger to the skin underneath his chin, stealing a second peck. “Gifts, you said?”
He chuckled at me, less than an inch away from my mouth before he kissed me again, longer this time, harder. “I did. Especially from Geneva for a Mr Delarado and a Mrs Aveyard.”
Oh… “Oh!” My back straightened when he moved again, rounding again the box.
“Oh, indeed. Step one can be checked off the list our dear Marius has, I’m sure.”
I watched him without moving; opening the box as carefully as he’d carried it in, pulling back the top flaps of the lid before he reached a hand inside and pulled out the smallest, prettiest teardrop shaped bottle that I’d ever seen. If I hadn’t known what it was I would have bet my life it was some of the most expensive perfume the world had made, and that was without the perfume inside! The detail on the bottle was exquisite; the glass tinted an off white colour that shimmered like a rainbow when the sun hit it. My brows rose as I stared at the bottle in his hand in a completely different way then him. He looked full of concentration, eyeing the detail closely whereas I just stared in bewilderment that this was actually happening.
“The tonic?” I asked rhetorically, of course it was.
“Mmm.” He voiced to me, turning the bottle in his hand slowly before bringing it lower and bringing his eyes back to me. “The tonic to allow my wife’s body to be impregnated.”
I narrowed my eyes at him from the tone he’d used to say those words. And he grinned at me.
“The tonic that will allow my wife and I to extend our family. To bare the two of us many more little Aveyard’s, filling each room of this grand new home of ours with the sounding of little running feet and the squeals of fighting siblings.”
Now I grinned in return. “Now that sounds more like it.” I slid from my stool to stand, making my way to his side. He watched me as I moved, my eyes dropping before I met his side to the bottle in his hand. “Step one done. Its here.”
“Step two, you drink.” He spoke with his eyes still on my face, as I slid my own up to his.
The day I drank the tonic would be the day I was signing myself over to another man for the night. Marius had told us already the tonic was to be taken before the baby making would happen. His left hand lifted to the left side of my face, his fingers brushing back some of my damp hair behind my ear. “The sooner it is done Lenora, the sooner we get our own wish.” A pause. “You know I do not hold this against you. It is just another stepping stone of many we’ll face together in this marriage.”
I pushed out a slow sigh, long enough for my chest to dip as I dropped my eyes once more to the exquisite bottle in his hand. Dropping his hand from my face, he made light work of removing the glass lid from the bottle’s stem neck. The smell hit me immediately, a strong scent of sweet vanilla with an odd but soft mix of spice. I was blaming the rainbow shimmer on the spice.
“Does it taste as it smells?” I asked, bringing my eyes back to my husband, as his hand moved again to my face before his fingers led the way to the back of my neck.
“You tell me, my Lenora.”
He tilted my head back, bringing up the bottle to my lips. It was warmer than I’d expected it to be, but not exactly warm enough that it was fresh from a boiling pan. But it wasn’t freezing cold either, though the after affect down my throat felt like ice. It wasn’t quite as creamy as custard and moved faster, though it wasn’t runny either. And for the smell being so sweet and so very much alive enough to hit me after a single second, there was no flavour.

 

  As my husband brought in the extra two boxes of tonic from the car outside, I started placing each glass inside a glass cabinet by the side of the fridge at the far end of the kitchen. The door of the cabinet was made with glass panes, seeing inside each morning whenever one of us would grab a blood bag was inevitable. Each bottle was decorated differently, each hand painted so Amadeo told me after he eyed each one carefully from the boxes before handing them over for me to stack. The liquid in each were all the same colour, no doubt all smelling the same and hopefully tasting of nothing.
“There has to be proof somewhere for this to work if Marius has had someone take so much time in decorating the bottles.” I spoke as I moved down from stacking the tonics on the top shelf to the middle. One and a half boxes to go with two shelves left. I glanced aside with my left hand lingering in the air awaiting the bottle, to see my husband eyeing this one too. “There’s enough here to get through a pregnancy?”
He handed it over. “Marius seems to know what he’s doing, I’m sure he’s sent more than enough.”
“More than enough?” Next bottle. “How long does a pregnancy in vampires last, exactly?”
He shrugged at me, keeping quiet as he handed the next.
“There are forty bottles per box. And Marius has sent three.” I turned my eyes aside. “That’s one hundred and twenty bottles, one hundred and twenty days…”
“Four months.” Amadeo cut in, still handing them over one by one. “About average… Boe held Finnick around the same amount of time.”
I nodded. “And I held Boe around the same amount of time.”
I hadn’t noticed I was grinning until I watched his features brighten with his own grin.
“Difference being this time when you choose to give birth, I won’t have to fight to keep you with me.” I didn’t respond, just shrugged in return to him before giggling softly through my teeth. “Not that I minded, of course. I’d do it all over again.”
“You’d just hope not to have the resentment?”
He nodded, this time him chuckling at me. “Most definitely. I don’t think my heart has hurt so much since.”
   I was sorry for the resentment I held for him after he brought me into this world. I had never wanted to be among vampires as one of them, to have to learn a new life all over again and hope that I’d never have to kill just to keep myself alive. I knew what Amadeo was soon after dating him, in our earlier days when everything was so … Easy. Quickly after learning I was pregnant with our daughter, I knew the choice of living as a vampire and with my daughter, or letting myself move to a new life and leave the man I loved and the child who’d never know me. I’d chosen to be let go from this world, to join my mother elsewhere and leave our child in the capable hands of her father. And yet, my love had chosen completely different against my will. And here I am.

The journey over to Trinity Gate was long and rather quiet. I couldn’t blame my husband for not having anything to say. He was driving me to the home of his coven, our coven, where his maker would be waiting for me to take to bed. And come morning there were high hopes, oddly on all sides, that I’d be pregnant. Marius wanted a child of his own and had for God only knew how long. He’d chosen me to bare that child, to share a life with him and I’d accepted without my husband knowing. I wanted more children; I’d always wanted a large family. Having a child with Marius would be the start to extending my family, after handing over the child I’d birth for him I’d extend my own family with my husband. And I know as well as Marius knew that Amadeo wanted more children. He deserved a large family to call his own, to treat right and be adored by. And they would, they’d adore him the way I did, the way I know Boe did. And we’d be together to watch our children grow, to have their own children and to watch their children have their children. It was a forever that I couldn’t wait to begin, to watch play out as each day would pass. To spend at Amadeo’s side, as Mrs Aveyard until my time was over.

  “Amadeo?”
He turned to look at me briefly from behind the wheel, before averting his eyes back to the road. The conversation to come would be uncomfortable, but I had no one else to turn to. And there wouldn’t be anyone other than him I would want to turn to. “What if this doesn’t work?”
He scrunched his face. “There’s a very high chance this is going to work. You’ve taken the tonic, Marius is expecting you.”
I sighed. “That’s not what I mean.” I shifted in my seat, turning the best I could to face him as he drove. “What if this…” I moved both my hands to gesture down to my own body. “Doesn’t work?”
Amadeo laughed, fully laughed, at me. “Lenora, my love, believe me,” He turned to glance at me again. “You will have no problems in ‘working’ for Marius.” Though he’d been laughing with light features, they soon changed to fall to normal, with no real expression on his face at all. “Do you truly believe he wanted me there with the two of you?”
I frowned and remained silent for a passing minute. “He doesn’t know my body how you do.” I didn’t want to voice how much I wanted to back out of giving Marius a child. Not so much giving him a child, per say, but I didn’t want to go behind my husband’s back ad spend the night in bed with another man. “It might not work.”
His sigh was long and heavy, his eyes never once turning to look at me for a further minute. “The two of you will be fine…”
In that long minute my mind had gone off into my own thoughts. And I cut Amadeo off before he could finish. “Stay with us?”
“Excuse me?”
“We’ve done it before, Amadeo and we can do it again. Together, the three of us…”
“Lenora.”
“Please. My love, I will beg you should I have to, please…”
“Lenora!” I fell silent. He sighed once again. “My Lenora, my love.” His hand came to take mine, giving my fingers a squeeze. “Come morning you will be back in my arms and there shall be no hard feelings. I will not hold this against you in any form and I pray the guilt you’ll hold will leave you as quickly as I shall be coming to get you.”

  I felt like a prostitute in my old home, being handed over to another man from my husbands’ hands. Marius was dressed in his usual attire of his dark jeans with a white shirt with the top few buttons left open. There was no real surprise they were open, I wasn’t sure if they’d ever actually close together over his chest.
  Amadeo had left as quickly as we’d arrived, leaving me alone with Marius before the large man guided me back to his study. His room in the house had always been special and bigger than the others, his study first when you entered before winding back to his bedroom that was out of sight and hearing of the rest of the building. Id’ been here once before and oddly knew the room as if I’d never left. Amadeo had given me a small bag, in which I placed down by the side of the king size bed as I sat, sliding both my hands against the material of the sheets.
“Wine?” Marius asked me from back in his study, no doubt where he’d be pouring himself a glass of the same whiskey Amadeo enjoyed.
I hesitated before answering. “No, thank you. I’m okay.” I lay back against the sheets, running my hands up both my sides to sprawl out above my head, staring up at the ceiling. I lay on my own in silence for a couple of seconds, before my brows furrowed with my thoughts and I pulled myself back up. Amadeo had given me a bag and yet I’d never asked or checked to see what was inside.
  Black lace. Both panties and bra with a matching black lace choker necklace. The bra was beautiful, pushing up my breasts as I fastened it at the back, a lace trim underneath flattening down over my ribs an inch or two above my navel. The panties weren’t really panties at all, but more like shorts that sat centimetres below my navel and wrapped loosely around my upper thighs, leaving the lower half of my back cheeks on show, beneath more lace trimming. While fastening the lace choker around my neck I turned to catch myself in the large mirror by the back of Marius’ room, pausing to see my own reflection. I let my hands fall from my neck, allowing my hair to cascade down over my shoulders and back, running my hands down over my covered breasts before stopping at my waist. Holy lord above did my husband have good taste.
“Lenora?”
I turned on the spot as if hearing my name had me caught out doing something I shouldn’t have been. But it was only Marius coming into his own room with a glass in his hand, his eyes wide and mouth fallen open. I moved my hands as quickly as I could in the most pathetic attempt to hide my body from him, though it did little good considering he’d seen me naked before, he’d taken off my underwear before and he’d fucked me before.
“You … You look beautiful, amazing.”
I smiled awkwardly, nodding slowly. “Thank you. Amadeo has wonderful taste.”
He nodded himself. “He does.”
It fell awkwardly silent. Marius tipped his head back to finish his glass of whiskey in one mouth full. My brows tugged in.
“Do you really need that, to be with me for a night?”
His expression matched mine. “The whiskey?” He looked down at the empty glass. “No. No! Of course not. I’m sorry.”
I had to bite the bullet. Someone had to move and I had the strongest gut feeling it wasn’t going to Marius Delarado.
“Do you like lace?” I swallowed nervously.
He nodded again. “I do. Black lace, funnily enough.”
Hence the real reason Amadeo had packed me a bag and told me not to worry.
“Why do you like it so much?” Play the game, Lenora. In my mind I told myself over and over I could do this. “The look?” I turned in a circle slowly, bringing up both my hands to my hair to pull it away from my back, revealing the back of the bra and lace trimming. As I turned, I was clever enough to know to move closer to the man of muscles. “The feel?” I stopped turning and was less than three steps away from him. Bringing my hands back down from my hair to have it fall back over my shoulders, I ran my palms back over the cups of the bra, over my breasts.
I watched the muscles in the side of his jaw clench and unclench as his eyes wandered over the lace I wore, the pitiful attempt of clothing being used as underwear.
“No.” He spoke simply, though I heard well enough in his tone things were changing.
I pulled my brows back in, though my lips curled at the corners to show little of my teeth as I almost giggled. “Then what?” I held out my hands now, at both my sides with arms outstretched. “What is it about lace?”
Marius took a step to me, closing one of the three between us. “Black came to me when I saw you.” I almost always wore black. “Before you it was white.”
He took another step, leaving one between us. Reaching out both his hands was more than enough to have his hands at my sides, his fingers rolling against the trimming that sat around my rib cage, following it around to my stomach and down the top half of my stomach before stopping at my bare skin. And it was me who took the final step to close all space between us, by the softest of tugs of Marius’ hands at my back. I kept my eyes on his, blue to blue, my neck lolling back to always see his face, my chest against his, both my feet together between his at shoulder width apart.
“But what I like the most about lace,” He spoke in a lower voice, his tone rougher than it had been seconds before, his hands moving to the top of the shorts I wore at my waist to turn me against him; my back now at his chest, his right hand crawling up my stomach to run over the small hump of my breast, sliding sideward to stop at the small crystal on the material that sat between my breasts. “Is just how easy it is to remove…” With a single tug of his index finger the material between my breasts fell apart, falling away from each cup, leaving the cups to slide down my breasts to reveal both my n*****s. “With immortal hands.”
   Before I had a second to think of what I was doing my mouth was at his, the stubble from the hair on his face tickling at my skin as his tongue stroked into my mouth. My back was still to his chest; both my arms wound back to have my hands at his waist, fingers sliding against the band of his jeans that ridged in along his body with his muscles. Both his own large hands had fully covered both my breasts, squeezing gently, dropping enough to stroke my n*****s between his index and middle finger before he gave me another squeeze. Pressing himself against my back, his chest to my shoulder blades, his waist at the round of my a*s, he stepped us together to the edge of his large bed, only stopping when the material of the sheets met my knees. Stopping abruptly tightened Marius’ hands against my breasts, squeezing tighter than he had before causing my mouth to pull back from his enough to let my breath leave me in a low moan. Though he wasn’t my husband and wasn’t the man I wanted to share intimate moments with, the vampire holding me now knew where to touch and what to do to have me ready for him.
   I felt him smile before he brought his lips down to the side of my neck, kissing at my skin just below my jaw, dipping lower to soon find my collarbone, his mouth tracing down the line of the vein bumping up against my skin. Was it so bad that he’d always leave me so breathless? I lolled my head back slowly as his hands slid down from my breasts to rest against my rib cage, his fingers sliding around to my sides before back to the cage under my breasts … And in a flash I was on my stomach on the bed before me, arms bent to have my hands at either side of my face, my legs bending with guidance of Marius’ large hands to kneel. The weight of the man pressed down against my back, a hand moving from my right side to the back of my hair, scraping the strands away from my skin to lie against the bed to my left, his lips raking from the back of my neck to the back of my hair. “Don’t move a muscle, kitten.”
Kitten. The word alone sent a shiver up my spine, my eyes fluttering closed. Kitten was what he’d called me the last time we’d been together this way, the last time I’d gone behind my husband’s back which he was still oblivious of. A time that still I hated myself for, yet I couldn’t bring myself to hate the pleasure Mr Delarado brought me.
   The black lace shorts slid down over my lower stomach, popping down over the round of my a*s to the top of my thighs leaving me bare and exposed, falling without the help of those two large hands to rest against my bent knees. I was lost already in the sensation of the cool air of the room against my bare behind, against my damp folds between my tightly kept together thighs. I felt nothing more other than that sensation; no hands on my body, no hands moving any material. No Marius. Until I felt him there. At the most intimate part of my body, stubble prickling the skin at the back of my thighs, his lips closing around my folds right at my c**t. My core tightened, my thighs tensing and stomach clenching. I couldn’t stop the moan of delight leaving my parted lips. It was his tongue I felt next, the tip circling my c**t still tight between my folds, before he ran up my body to taste my wetness. “You’ve left little work for me.”
As a normal response with my husband I would have giggled and told him that when it came to pleasure for a business man, the less work to be done to a woman’s body should have been a good thing. But with Marius I rendered speechless. My lips were still parted, yet I couldn’t speak a single word, couldn’t think of anything that I’d manage to make into a single sentence. When had I gotten so wet?
   It felt as though it had been forever since Marius had touched me when I heard the zipper of his jeans dropping, when I listened the sound of his jeans bundling at the floor at his feet and both his hands finally came back to my body; his palms flattening against either side of my a*s, dropping down to the outer side of my thighs and then to either cheek. His hands tightened against my skin, pulling apart my a*s cheeks before I felt him there, once again. He was as hard as I remembered him, running up my wet slit from my c**t to my core where he added extra pressure with a push of his hips. He didn’t enter me, though his tip remained perfectly against my core, in turn making my body tense for a second time.
   The thumb from his left hand at my left cheek shifted to stroke my skin as his right hand dropped from my body. As his left thumb tightened against my skin, pulling me once again, I felt him fill me internally as a grunt left his lips; his c**k thick against my inner walls, stretching me internally, pushing deep and slow until I finally felt the front of his thighs against the back of mine. My eyes had closed tighter, my fingers curling into the sheets of the bed to cling on to. God, he was big. Unlike Amadeo, Marius had thickness on his side, though my husband was longer.
“F**k, Lenora…” He pulled back from me, allowing the breath held in my lungs to push out heavily. He didn’t fully leave me; his head was still perfectly inside my walls, still stretching me though at least it was a little more comfortable. I felt the corners of my lips curl into the smallest smile I’d ever had grace my lips. And as quickly as my smile was there, it was gone and replaced with my lips falling open into a wider ‘O’ as the man at my back pushed back into my body, filling me once more, stretching me out to a point that I was uncomfortable … But still wanting more.
   I’d learned from my time with Marius before that he didn’t waste time when there was something he wanted. I knew now he wanted a child, he’d asked me and I’d consented to give him that child as soon as we could. I knew in my heart it was the thought of a child in his arms, a child to focus on for the remainder of his life that was filling his mind as he filled me, over and over again, his thighs slapping against the back of my legs, his hips slapping noisily at my behind as his right hand stroked up the centre of spine to the back of my neck. His grunts were like music to my ears, my body clenching around him when I felt him push as deep as he could, milking his thickening c**k inside me each and every time he tried to pull back from me. “Sh-S**t, Kitten…” I felt it in his tone that he was smiling. “You have to stop doing that…”
My own lips tugged to smile as I slid my hands up from either side of my head, using both my elbows to prop myself up just as Marius’ right hand curled around the back of my neck. My body bounced best it could against the bed, my chest rocking against the sheet, my hips etching forward with every connection Marius’ waist made to my a*s. As I attempted to speak again, Mr Delarado picked up his pace, quickening the assault he was making to my body.
   The slapping noises were louder than I’d heard them before, his hand at the back of my neck was tight enough that I ached and as well as listening to Marius grunting as he buried himself inside me, I listened to our bodies sloshing into each other. My eyes rolled as the tight feeling in my stomach grew tighter, my moans finally making themselves known as I dropped my head forward again. Though muffled into the material of the bed I made sure my noises of pleasure were loud enough to be crystal clear to the man of muscle pounding into my body, flattening myself back down into the mattress to move my hands down at either of my sides, my fingers curling at the skin covered in fine hairs to press the tips of my nails into skin. “O-Oh …. My...” My right leg slipped against the bed, causing my hips to lower for a second or two before the hand at my a*s cheek brought me back into position. An audible huff of breath left my mouth, followed not even a second later by another grunt from behind me. “Marius…” My inner walls clenched. “Marius!”
I fell to listening to the slapping of our bodies again, each slap being followed by a hiccupped moan from my mouth, and then followed with a slosh of fluid as Marius retracted and grazed himself back into me; veins prominently pushing through my tight skin, rippling against my inner walls as his own pleasure grew. It was more than satisfying to feel.
   With two large hands back down at my a*s, two long thumbs hooked in the crease of the bottom of both my cheeks and my thighs pulling me apart at my core, it knocked the air from my lungs when the vampire’s thrusts behind me quickened. The clapping was closer together than it had been before, his thrusts faster than he’d pushed into me even in a previous encounter with this man. His c**k twitched inside my walls, remaining buried inside my body more so than pulling from me to pump out his own pleasure. And when his pleasure finally hit, I brought both my hands back to the sheets of the bed, curling the material into fists as my whole body, from head down to my toes tightened, a blast of warm, thick spurts spilling into my body, causing my legs to shake beneath me, my thighs to spasm with my pleasure of feeling Marius released his hot load into me. His groans grew longer as he held himself inside my body, hips to my a*s cheeks, his length pulsing inside me, twitching as he let himself go. “…….Jesus, Kitten.”