I want to say a big 'Thank you' to everyone who read the first chapter. I hope you guys are liking it so far. Same as last time the part in italic is a flashback. Enjoy!
'Strigoi' the Romanian word for vampire. From the look in his eyes, he knew that I knew what the word meant. There was no way. Vampires didn't exist. I had runaway because…well, it was not that I believe he really was a vampire, but because he looked like he believed that he really was one. When I laughed at him, he didn't laugh with me. That was when I had shoved him away from me and ran. Okay, I'll be honest. He let me push him away and run.
I pulled my knees up to my chest. I wrapped my arms around them, hugging them. I knew he was too good to be true. There would be no way that a guy with his status would even second glance a girl like me that struggled everyday to make the ends meet. Now I knew why, he was crazy. Or maybe…no, no way. Nothing about him fit the legends. I had never seen fangs, he wasn't cold like they should be, I had even seen him eat a three course meal. Hell, the first time I had met him had been the middle of the day.
"Come on! Please start!" I turned the key in the ignition again. The engine made a moaning noise. "Damn it!" Of course my car would die on me. I was already running late for work. At least I was done with my story. All I had to do was proof it and turn it into the Chief for a re-read I opened the door, popping the hood along the way. I got out, walked around the hood and shoved it up. I stared down at the dead engine of my Cavalier. I had no clue what I was even looking for. I put both of my hands on the raised hood and leaned my forehead on my arms, closing my eyes. I tried to weight my options. Maggie didn't have a car, so no help there. She just walked the two block from our apartment to the diner that she worked at. I could call my friend John who worked with me. He knew everything there was to know about cars. But he was out of town on assignment. My only other was to call the Chief, let him know I was running late, hike the six blocks to the nearest bus stop and pray it was running sorta on time. I really hated the bus but it looked like my best option.
"Do you need some help, love?" The man's voice was right by my ear. I jumped, taking a couple of steps backwards and tripping over my own feet. I would have landed on my butt if the man hadn't grabbed me by my upper arms and pulled me against him. I was falling into the traffic. He had just saved my life. "Easy there, love. I didn't mean to scare you. Are you okay?" I shook my head.
"Yes, I'm okay. Thank y…" I looked up into his face. Oh my God! It was Jeffrey Hardy. This was the richest, most powerful man in the city. I had seen pictures of him in the paper and videos on the news. He owned half of the city. He owned office buildings, apartment complexes, clubs, restaurants and the diner that Maggie worked at. He even owned the newspaper where I worked. I had always joked with Maggie how gorgeous he was but now I saw that the pictures didn't do him justice. He was amazing up close.
"Are you sure you're okay, love?" He asked me, gently rubbing my arm. I nodded. He smiled, still rubbing my arm. What did it mean if his hand left my arm tingling every where he touched it?
"Yes, I…I…I'm fine." I stepped back. He was dressed in a button down black shirt and a nice pair of fitted jeans. I could pretty much guarantee that his jeans cost more than my entire wardrobe.
"Do you know what's wrong with your car?"
"No. I think it just finally died. I guess it's time to get a new one." I sighed. "Yeah, right. I'm just going to end up riding the bus." I smiled at him, knowing now ironic my statement would be to him. "Save money that way." He smiled.
"Makes sense. For today, can I give you a ride to where you're going?"
"Umm…" How do you tell Jeffrey Hardy 'no'?
"I know, your parents taught you never to except rides from strangers." He held out his hand. "I'm Jeff." I looked at his hand extended to me for a few seconds before I finally took it.
"I know who you are Mr. Hardy." He grinned.
"Call me Jeff. Please don't believe everything you read and hear. They tend to make up a lot of things."
"I don't believe most of it. I know half the people that write those stories. They're mostly going for headlines."
"Do you work for the paper?"
"Yes. I write a small piece that's normally hidden between the full page ads in the back." I realized that he was still holding my hand in both of his much larger hands.
"So, do you have a name, love?" God, he was so distracting.
"Oh, sorry. I'm Sophibella Laurell. But everyone just calls me Sophi." He smiled.
"Well, it is a pleasure to meet you Sophi." He lifted my hand and kissed it. He stopped for a second and kissed my hand again before he lowered it and finally let it go. "Now that we're no longer strangers, can I offer you that ride once more?"
"Yes. Thank you. I would love to ride you. Oh, ride with you. I would love to ride with you." I ducked my head trying to hide the fact that my face was the color of a ripe tomato. Leave it to me to let something like that come out of my mouth and in front of someone like him. I ventured a glance back at his face. He was smiling.
"I would like nothing more than to drive you to work." He offered me his arm and led me to his car.
I had gone in to the Chief's office later that afternoon. To my surprise, Jeff had been in there. I had no clue that Matt Hardy, my Editor and Chief, was the brother of Jeff. It had never occurred to me to connect the two. Chief had gotten a phone call and told me to sit. While he had been on the phone, Jeff had asked me out to dinner. Who was I to say 'no'? I told him I would love to and here we were 4 months later.
I laid my cheek on the top of my knees. What was I going to do? How do you tell your boyfriend that you're over when he's completely insane. I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard the knock on the door.
"Sophi, please open the door. I need to talk to you." Jeff said from the other side. Maybe if I stayed silent, he wouldn't know I was here. I stood up and took a step back away from the door. "Sophi? Please open up. I know you're standing right there staring at the door. Please, love." I snatched my hand back. I had actually been reaching for the knob.
"No, please just go away Jeff. Tomorrow I'll talk to Matt and we'll get you some help okay?" I heard him chuckled quietly.
"You think I'm crazy? I promise, I'm not crazy, love." I walked to open the door. What was wrong with me? I wanted to open the door. It's like I was drawn to him. You know the whole moth to the flame kinda thing. I leaned my cheek against the cool wood of the door.
"How can I believe you? Vampires don't exist Jeff. They are just the stuff of legends. They aren't real."
"Right now, you have your whole body pressed against the back of the door, trying to cool off cause you want to open the door. Badly. You don't know how much I wish I was that door, love." I stepped away from the door. "Please don't run away from me Sophi."
"How did you know?"
"I can feel you." He can feel me?
"Okay, let's say that I believe you. If I open the door, will you be able to come in?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Cause you're never invited me into your apartment before." So at least that much of the legends were true. I walked back to the door. I stood up on my toes, laying my hands against the door, I leaned in to look through the peephole. Jeff was standing close to the door. His hands were in the exact spot that mine were. I moved my hands higher and his followed.
"Jeff?"
"Yes, love?"
"If I open the door, will you answer my question? All my question?"
"As many as I can." I guess that was as good as I was going to get. I grabbed the door handle and pulled it open. Jeff was standing there with a hand on either side of the door. His dark hair was in his face as he looked down at me. I just stood there staring at him. My hands itched to touch him. I shoved them into the back pocket of my jeans.
"I'm still finding this very hard to believe."
"I know, love."
"All my life I've known that they weren't real." He smiled at me with just a hint of teeth.
"Are you sure about that Sophi? You must believe or want to believe deep down inside otherwise you never would have studied us as much as you did. Look in your heart Sophi." His eyes turned that Emerald green again. I took a step back.
"Why do your eyes change color like that?" He blinked and they changed back.
"They change with my emotions. They get dark almost black when I'm angry. They only turn the bright green when I'm with you. When I touch you, smell your skin, even sometimes when I think about you. I can't help it. It's involuntary."
"What did you mean when you said I was your 'kept'? How do you know that I'm that?"
"You're the one I'm fated to be with. When I was born it was set in the stars that I would have one true love, my soul mate. When I found her, she would become mine and I would keep her safe and care for her so she will never want for anything. I was told that the moment I saw her, I would know."
"But me? Jeff, I'm not the kind of people refer to as their soul mate. People don't think of me like that." He smiled at me. I felt that fluttery sensation in my stomach just like I always did.
"I do, love. You are my kept. The moment I saw you step out of your car that day, I knew. You can't imagine what you mean to me. If you send me away and never see me again, you will always be the only one for me. Forever, you are the only one." I took a step towards him. He was right, I wanted to believe him but he wasn't what was supposed to be typical for a vampire.
"Jeff…" I took another step towards him. "You don't have any of the signs that the legends said you would. You're warm, when they all said you would be cold." I took another step towards him. "I've felt your heartbeat and I've felt you breathe." I took another step. "The first time I met you was in the middle of the morning." I took one more step. "I've seen you eat food." I stopped less than a foot away from him. If he wanted to, he could reach out and grab me. From the way he was flexing his hands on the door frame, he wanted to. I must be losing my mind cause I wanted him to touch me too. Now I had to ask him the question I'm not sure I wanted the answer to. "Do you…drink…blood?" He sighed as if he didn't want to tell me.
"Yes, love, I do. But not everyday. Only when I have to."
"Do you have to drink from random people or is it always someone you know?"
"I don't drink from anyone. I never have. It's always from a donor but I've never bitten anyone if that's what you're what you're asking. That's what one does with their kept. From what I've heard, it's a pretty…umm…personal experience." I felt my cheeks get warm. I knew what he meant.
"What exactly happens when you 'true' someone?" I asked.
"I would have to turn you first and once you were a vampire then we would perform a small ritual between the two of us and then we would be bound together, forever."
"Does it hurt?" I whispered.
"What, love? Does what hurt?" He whispered back.
"If you turned me, would it hurt?"
"I don't know, love. I don't know what happens when you're turned. I wished I could tell you it won't hurt, but I don't know."
"How could you not know? You were turned once right? Was it so long ago that you don't remember?" He smiled.
"I was born this way, love. I do know people that were turned but no one has been turned in decades. Most of us find our kept with in our kind so there is no need to turn them." A thought hit me.
"How old are you Jeff?"
"I was born about twenty years before the Civil War started." Oh my. I did the math in my head.
"That would make you almost 170 years old." He smiled.
"I guess that's about right."
"So, do you have superpowers or anything like that?" I asked jokingly.
"I wouldn't call them superpowers but we're really fast and strong and we heal very quickly. We have very acute hearing and eyesight. Although some of us can vanish from place to place."
"Vanish? What does that mean?"
"It's easier to show you. Hold on. Stay right here." He grinned and disappeared. Oh my holy hell! I stuck my head out in the hallway and looked both ways down the hall but he was gone. I stepped back in the doorway just as Jeff reappeared in front of me.
"Oh…" I stumbled backwards and fell to the foor.
"Are you okay, love?" he went to help me but was stopped short, like he had run into an invisible wall. "Damn it! Sophi?" He wasn't lying about not being able to come in.
"I'm okay Jeff. You just startled me." I stood up. I walked back up to him.
"I'm sorry." He handed me a newspaper.
"What's this?" I looked down at the paper that seemed to be written in french. It had tomorrow's date on it.
"That's today's paper from Paris." What?
"Paris? As in France?" He nodded. "Jeff, how did you get this?"
"I went there to show you the vanishing. I can do it at anytime. But only to a place that I've seen before. I don't have to have been there but at least seen a recent picture of the place. I could take you anywhere in the world you want to go, love."
"Anywhere?"
"Yes, love, anywhere. If you want to spend the day in Rome or have dinner with me in Paris, I can do that for you." Wow, that could have it's benefits. There was still one question weighing on my mind.
"Can I ask you one more thing Jeff?" He nodded.
"Yes, love. Ask me whatever you want." It was all I could do not to reach out and touch him. I wrapped my arms around my waist to keep my hands to myself.
"Did you tell me that you were King of the city?" He looked a bit grim.
"Yes, Sophi, I am the King and you, my love are destined to be the Queen. Everyone of men knows who you are and they have sworn to protect you with their life if need be, just like they have me. I want you safe, even if you deny me, you will always be safe." He took a step forward and came up against the invisible wall again.
"How did you become King? Did you have to fight for it?" I watched his face shut down like he was trying to hide his emotions from me. His eyes went black.
"No, I inherited the position from my father. He was killed by The Ministry. They killed my mother 50 years ago. I don't know how my father held on so long with out her. They meant so much to each other. They meant the world to me and Matt too." I didn't even think as I stepped up to Jeff and put my hand on his cheek.
"Jeff, I'm so sorry." He rubbed his cheek against my palm. "I know how l felt when I lost my parents. I felt like something inside of me died. I know how bad it hurts." He turned his cheek to kiss my palm.
"Sophi…" He cupped my hand in his, holding it to him. He kissed my palm again and slowly kissed down to the pulse in my wrist. My breath caught as he kissed my wrist. I never knew that was such a sensitive spot. "I need you Sophi." He whispered against my wrist. I laid my hand against his chest. I could feel his heart beating under my hand. I unconsciously leaned into him.
"Jeff…" He abruptly pulled me out of the doorway and against his body. His lips burned a path down the side of my throat. My hands instantly found their way into his hair.
"Sophi…love…" I felt my back come up against the wall on the other side of my doorway. His hands were caressing my back under my shirt. "I want you so badly, Sophi." He kissed me. He pulled away to kiss down my neck again
"Jeff…" This time I couldn't stop the quiet moan that flowed out. I could feel him pushing my shirt up. When the cool air of the hallway hit my bare stomach, my brain came back on-line. "Jeff…wait." I knew how much Jeff wanted to turn me and I wasn't quiet ready. He stopped his hands where they were. He paused his kissing but left his lips lying against my throat. "I can't do this, not yet." He slowly pressed a kiss against my pulse. "I need more time to think Jeff. I'm not ready yet. Please, just a little more time." He lifted his head to look in my eyes. They were Emerald again.
"I can give you time, love. But we don't have much of it." He leaned in and kissed me softly. "Can I come back tomorrow night? I have more I need to tell you." He kissed me again.
"Yes, you can." He reluctantly let me go. I stepped back into the relative safety of my apartment.
"Till tomorrow, love?" Jeff asked. His eyes were still bright. I smiled back.
"Yes, till tomorrow." He nodded and vanished. I closed the door and leaned back against it. Jeff was a vampire. Somehow, I was his Queen. What the HELL was I going to do?
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