Pure Requiem - Aja James Page 0,20

she’s physically much stronger than me. She can easily take control.

But she doesn’t. She submits to me the way a lioness crouches beneath a lion as he holds her in place with his teeth at her throat. As he services her needs all day and night, never leaving her side.

At the final moment, no longer able to withstand the pleasurable agony, I cut off all of her air by sealing our mouths together, uniting our breaths.

She detonates in my arms, her sex milking mine voraciously, clenching and releasing around my flesh so hard, my agony transmutes into pleasure, blinding me all over again, as I release my life force into her.

Everything.

I give her all of me.

Chapter Five: In Restless Dreams I Walked Alone

*EREBU*

Dear brother,

I have a family. A mother and a father. A sister.

A son.

I’m not hideous like I always thought. At least, on the outside.

Would you think this makes me more lovable if you were here to see me now? If I showed you my true form? The real me? Would you forgive me for everything I’ve done if I promise to redeem myself?

She brushed my hair, my mother. With a comb she gave me from her shop when I ventured there in disguise. Now I know why I’ve always been drawn to Dark Dreams once I discovered it.

My mother was there. And now she’s here. She’s been here all this time, and I didn’t even know it.

She must have spent a whole half hour running that comb through my snarly mane. So gently did she untangle the knots that my eyes filled with unmanly tears. We didn’t talk much all the while; my son, Benjamin, filled the silence with sweet, idle chatter.

Have you met him? My Benjamin? You’d love him. There’s not a single person in the world who could possibly not love him.

But my mother did tell me (in one of the only sentences she uttered) that the comb was a gift from my father to her when they were helplessly, hopelessly in love. (They still are, it’s clear as daylight, though it’s no longer “hopelessly”). He carved it with his own hands. No wonder I wanted it the moment I saw it in her shop.

The comb was my link to both my parents.

Do you believe in Destiny, brother? Do you believe that everything we go through brings us to where we need to be?

I never wanted to believe it, because I assumed my destination would be a violent, torturous demise at the hands of either my Mistress or the innumerable enemies I’ve made doing her bidding. In restless dreams I walked alone. Always so alone. Talking to you in my mind has been my only consolation.

Now…

I still don’t dare believe in a different future. But I hope for it. I want to reach for it. I want to deserve it.

Will you give me a second chance, Dalair? Will you let me make amends?

This is me. Erebu. You can call me Ere. A pleasure to make your acquaintance for the first time. Even though I have always, and always will, love you.

I hope, one day, I will deserve your love in return.

E.

What to do with this damn hair?

I couldn’t sleep last night because I didn’t want to lie down and tangle the long, shiny, wavy tresses my m—Ishtar—painstakingly brushed (wrestled, more like) into a smooth, well-behaving waterfall that flows down my back and over my shoulders.

Lordy, I’ve never seen hair so pretty.

Well, maybe Cloud Drako’s straight-as-satin black mane nudges me out of first-place for the Mr-Universe-Best-Hair prize of the year award, but I hold no grudges. After all, the Valiant has Asian blood in him. Everyone knows Asian hair, especially those with Han heritage, is hard to beat. Bet he’s never had a bad hair day in his life. Nor does he have to deal with the knots and tangles that finer Caucasian hair with waves or curls are inherently cursed with.

Anyway, I didn’t want to scrunch and mess up the hair that Ishtar brushed out for me. Only after hours of agonizing over what to do did it finally occur to me that tangling my hair again would be the perfect excuse to have Ishtar come over to brush it out again.

I can even make this a daily ritual. What a brilliant idea!

Of course, it begs the question why an almost five millennia-old vampire doesn’t know how to comb his own hair, or why he wouldn’t be able to simply figure it out on his own.