A/N: Hey guys! Sorry this so late, I don't have WiFi at my place yet (I'm hot spotting my iPad to post this haha). I had actually written snippets of this a while back, but figured now was the best place to insert it. This chapter happens around when Tory is telling the legend, perhaps a bit afterwards. Recap being that Eliza had passed out from her panic attack and is now waking up. Also, sort of a smut scene here? It's my first real attempt at anything like it, so if its awful I'm sorry. Also the song Eliza plays is "Blue Daliah" by The Gaslight Anthem. 3
Eliza blinked awake, the soft bedding she resided upon confirming her suspicions, her panic attack had caused her to lose consciousness and she had been taken to Marcus's room to rest. The bedding soft, albeit mussed beneath her. Marcus perched himself on the edge of the bed, having been listening to her breathing change when she began to awake. He smiled at her, with a softness seemed only for her, though he still held himself with such a weight on his shoulders. "Have you ever mourned someone who was alive?" Eliza asked suddenly, the thought spilling from her lips like a fountain overflowing. "It's so...invalidating." She struggled to find the right word to describe how she felt, to give syntax to feelings.
But Marcus was unphased, if anything he looked at her with a new level of understanding. "Her name was Sulpicia, she was Aro's sister and for a time...my mate."
"What?" Eliza blurted, contorting her body to face him fully, sitting up in the bed. Eyebrows knitting together in confusion. Aro had never mentioned a sister and she was under the assumption that when vampires mated, there was no do overs.
"Perhaps mate is not the best word…" His stoic expression was filled with mirth, a strange juxtaposition. "She was my companion, we were lovers for the better part of two hundred years."
"What happened to her?" Eliza was afraid to ask, but she needed to know. They were talking of false mourning, after all. Marcus flitted to the other corner of the room, where his looming bookshelf stood, pulling out an ancient looking tome. He flipped through it, to a page yellowed with age, and held it up for her to see. In extensive detail was the portrait of a woman with Aro's smile and kind, cherry red eyes. She was a dark beauty, raven-black hair and a hooded gaze, Eliza felt plain next to the image. She frowned at the sight of a small signature in the corner of the drawing, 'MV,' Marcus Volturi.
"She found her true mate." Marcus replied, a statement of fact, devoid of emotion. For the first time since they met, he looked like how Eliza had been told he was before she had arrived: lifeless, dull, lost. "Vampires are meant to be in covens, to have a mate, companionship through the lonely years. We knew we were not meant to be together permanently, but what time we did have together eased the loneliness, the ache."
"Is she happy?" It was a stupid question to ask, but one Eliza thought she needed to know. Her mind and heart were still odds with how to feel about Sam, should she feel betrayed or relieved that she was alive, even if it meant with someone else? Would it have made a difference, she pondered, if Sam were a vampire without a mate, knowing that Eliza was not her's, yet still wanted to be with her? The thought of gaining and losing her again was heart wrenching, though they had been together but a few years, not two hundred.
"Very, though how a woman as lovely as Sulpicia would end up mated to a man named Fred, I will never understand." He crinkles his nose in disgust, shuddering at the thought. It made Eliza laugh, which warmed his cold gaze.
"Sulpicia is such a pretty name...but Fred? Not so much." She teased. Eliza almost asked how they met, if they seemed to love each other more than he had Sulpicia, but it seemed cruel. Lora had looked at Sam like the world spinning around the sun, willing to burn her pupils to gaze at such beauty. She couldn't think of a moment they had looked at one another like that, not even wrapped in poor thread count sheets in their first apartment together. She sighed, the silence stretching. She wanted to say something, but nothing seemed right. "Do you...do you mind if I play music or something?" He nodded, putting the picture back after one more hard, long glance. Eliza fished her phone out of her pocket, pressing shuffle over and over until she found something she liked.
The music hummed softly, "What a hot and sultry summer, steam just slides up off them streets. You gotta stay inside and wait for the night and then come on over and see me…" Eliza loved this song, it was from her favorite album, though looking at Marcus it seemed to have whole new context. "Cause there's a poetry about these streets and it slips from your skin and goes right underneath and Mama always knew I'd meet a girl like you, but me, I never believed…"
Eliza smiled, turning so the two were face to face, knees touching as she twisted her torso, her lips brushing against his cheek, cold as stone against her hot flesh. It was comforting in ways she did not expect, listening to the beat of the music and the sudden, sharp intake of breath, though Marcus had no need to breathe, she had learned. "Would you laugh if I said this song made me think of you?"
Cause I've been so lonely I can't imagine that kind of sympathy
Cause I've been so lonely I can't imagine that kind of sympathy
Where'd you get them scars? How blue is your heart?
Is sad enough break? She said it's sad enough to break
They were kissing before Eliza could think to do anything else, Marcus pressing his body against hers, her fingers tangling in his hair. Even though his eyes were closed, she could see them, black with hunger, craving her: her body, her aching heart, seeking to quench a loniless within them both.
How long was your life? Was it cold and strange like mine?
Are you man enough to lay here, she said I'm man enough my baby
Come see about me, come see about me, whenever you're lonely
The bed, already mussed from her previous slumber, welcomed both their forms, the pillows shielding her soft gasp when his lips trailed down her jawline, across her neck, nipping at her veins as if in playful warning of the predator she was lying with. Yet she did not shy away, rather she pressed her heaving chest closer to his, back arching to close any gaps between them. For a moment, she was content to feel him against her, his lips ravishing her. Yet with the rising tide of need, her fingers moved to remove his shirt, slipping in their eagerness and tearing a button loose. "Oops..." She whispered breathlessly, only for Marcus to rip the remaining buttons clean off and tear his shirt clean away, leaving the discarded garment crumpled on the floor. A necklace with the Volturi crest glinted in the light from his neck and Marcus gently rebuffed her attempt to remove it and she sensed he was not used to being without it. His smile was slightly feral as his fingers returned the favor, only gently, splaying across the exposed expanse of her flesh as her top was removed from her.
"Belissima…" The awe of his voice left her suddenly embarrassed. Vampires were made to be creatures of beauty, she was plain in comparison to any of them. Even Sam, who was a beauty as a human, seemed ethereal now. Shame rose within her, both for her lack of confidence and for thinking of a previous lover when tangled in bed with another man.
She almost said something, but Marcus tore her bra clean in half and buried his face between her breasts, kissing and nipping. Within the haze of lust, she could think of nothing but wanting his lips to explore other valleys of her body and for her to feel him, completely. She had had sex with both men and women before, once with one of each at the same time, though this time seemed different than every other. Part of her rationalized that it had been a few years since she had laid with a man, though she knew the real reason was that having sex with someone had never felt so right before. Eliza yearned to be touched, to feel love personified, not just lust. The ache in Marcus was one she shared, the longing to be complete again.
And as the clothing on their skin dwindled, the feeling was ebbed with his touch. "...do you want me to stop?" His words were pained, as if it would break him if she said he did. So Eliza hooked her leg around him and Marcus allowed her to be in control, to flip their forms so that she was on top of him, the throbbing need between her legs met his hardened cock and she slid in slowly, with one long, deep sigh. His eyes flickered open, staring at her agape, in awe of her presence, of the mate bond solidifying between them, one strand of braided rope shimming in exctasy with the two lovers joining for the first time.
His fingers twisted into her hair, pulling her down to meet his lips as she moved her hips slowly at first, adjusting to him inside of her before the need grew too strong and his hands moved to her hips to assist her in riding him, the haze of pleasure leaving fingersized bruises on her flesh, though Eliza herself would not notice until after. They didn't speak, simply gasped and groaned with every shift of one another's body until Eliza was panting, shaking on top of him and finally whimpered out his name. She needed something, anything to drop her off the edge of the cliff she stood upon, and he kissed her, a tangle of teeth and tongue until one sharpened fang caught her swollen bottom lip, drawing blood. His closed eyes opened, sex and blood lust clouding his thoughts as he drew her wound into his own mouth, tongue lapping at the stray drop, tugging on her entire being as she shattered in his arms, his name muffled from her lips into his own mouth until Marcus shifted them so that he was pounding into her, spilling his seed inside of her as she came above him and then half collapsed onto his chest, throughoughly and utterly spent.
She lay, half on top of him, panting for a few short moments before muttering, "Fuck, I didn't even think about a condom." The musing caused a choked laugher to erupt from Marcus, more genuine that she had ever heard him laugh. He kissed the crown of her head and then took the Volturi crest from his neck and draped it onto hers, claiming her more than he already had. She laughed as well at that, muttering, "Noli me tangerine, Caesaris sum."
"Touch me not, for Caesar's I am?" Marcus mused, "I didn't know you spoke Latin." The smile in his voice pleased her, though she was doomed to disappoint him.
"I wrote a paper once on 'Whoso List to Hunt' by Wyatt" She replied, surprised by the widening smile she saw out of the corner of her eye. "He was talking about Anne Boleyn."
"Well, I promise not to behead you under the excuse of having sex with your brother." He replied, after a moment adding, "Or mine, I suppose. Caius would be quite cross, though I suspect he already is." Realization, always a curse, dawned on her then. Just how heightened was vampiric senses? Marcus chuckled at her racing heart, deciding then to tease her, "Half the castle probably heard us, not to mention the guards in the hall."
She blushed scarlet, burying her face in the curve of his neck, "Please, just kill me now, because I will never be able to look anyone in the eye." Eliza prided herself on her open mindedness, that she did not balk at the sexuality of others, nor her own sexual appetite, but having to face everyone after they heard her having sex with someone was a critical wound to her pride, especially considering how she mewled and whimpered when under the regalia of pleasure.
Marcus chuckled once more, about to answer, yet instead quickly moved to pull the drawn back sheet over their bodies, protecting the naked forms from view just as the doors burst open. Caius curled his lips as Aro merely smiled without teeth, "Well, that was a turn of events I did not expect to see so soon, even after the little seer predicted it to pass." Aro said in a soft voice. Eliza wanted to die, not sure what was worse, that Alice had a vision of her and Marcus fucking, or that her other two mates had walked in afterwards.