Love Bites (Book one)

Chapter thirty

*Sven*

It felt wrong doing the training session without Yasmin by my side, even though we had only been doing them for two nights. I could tell by the performance of the guards that they were not as into it as usual either and neither was I. Martyn was nowhere near as good at pushing the guards, letting them slack off and not do exactly as we were instructing them to. Is this how he had been running his group? Let them do whatever they want without consequences.

“Good job.” Martyn smiled as the guard lined back up.

“No, not a good job.” I gritted out. I walked up the line, pointing at four of the guards. “You four, why did you not touch the line?” I asked, sending them a deathly glare.

The four looked to each other, none of them wanting to be the one to answer. “We were tired, Master.” One of them finally panted out, still trying to catch his breath.

I went back in front of him, trying and failing to contain my rage. “You were tired because for the last god knows how many years you have been slacking off and not pushing yourself. How do you expect to be able to protect s**t if you cannot complete a simple exercise?” Luckily for the guard, he decided not to try and answer that question. “Run the last sprint again, now!” I barked out.

I shook my head in disbelief as they turned and ran the lap that they hadn’t completed before. “Sire, do you not think that they have done enough?” Martyn asked.

I placed my hands on my hips, looking up to the heavens for answers as to why Martyn was being so laid back about this. “Look Martyn, these guards, all the guards need training. Proper training. You holding their hands and giving them a pat on the back when they don’t deserve it is not helping them and it certainly isn’t helping you.”

“But sire…”

“No Martyn. If you cannot do this, then you shouldn’t be out here. Yasmin pushes them, motivates them without treating them like children. You are not here to make friends, you are here to make these people be able to defend themselves, defend us. If you cannot do this, you shouldn’t be here.” I repeated, hoping that he would understand.

He looked over the line of guards and Frankie who had all listened to what I said, none of them arguing against my words. They knew what they were here for, and even if they thought they didn’t need the training, they were quickly realising how much they did need it. Martyn looked back at me, shaking his head, knowing that he was not up to the task. I had saved him from a life of hard labour and beatings. It was not that he was a pacifist, but he could not push people to their limits, could not find it in him to motivate them the way that they needed it.

He shook his head, giving me a look of understanding before he turned and headed back into the castle. He did the right thing, he had no right to be out here when he wasn’t up to the task. I knew I would have to find something else for him to do, something else to help to give him a purpose, but right now my mind was on other things.

The rest of the training went smoothly, small bouts in the training ring before I called it a night. The guards filed out of the ring as Frankie approached me, crossing her arms over her chest. “Have you spoken to Yasmin yet?” She asked, her mouth set in a harsh line.

“Not yet.” I replied, even though I had been desperate to do so all night.

“Well, see that you do. Do not put your s**t on her. She gave you an answer to your question, she has more than earned the right to be here.” Before I could respond that I agreed with everything she was saying, she turned on her heels and almost ran away from me.

I took a deep breath, trying to steel myself for what was to come. I knew I f****d up, I knew I was asking something I should not have asked, or at least, I knew that now. The women in my harem were easy, wanting an easy life and the occasional roll in the sack with me. Yasmin wanted more from her life, she wanted so many things that I could easily give to her, but didn’t. Maybe that is how I could prove myself to her, prove that I was not the womanising self obsessed bastard that she saw me as, even though I was deep down inside. But I didn’t want to be anymore. I don’t know what I want anymore.

I walked out of the training ring towards the castle, hoping that I would be able to find Yasmin in there when I froze. In the distance, I could hear the soft laughter in the air. I followed the sound down into the gardens, hearing it mixed together with a deep baritone voice. I stopped on the other side of a hedge, listening intently.

“What does your tattoo mean?” The voice of Angel reached me, making my whole body stiff slightly.

“Which one?” Yasmin asked, her voice light, calm, making me even more worried. She never sounded like that around me, never sounded like she wanted to be with me.

“The one on your arm. Hell, I can’t even read it.” Angel laughed. I bent down slightly, looking through a few of the branches to see Angel running his finger down Yasmin’s arm, making me wish I could break that figure off just for touching her.

“It says ‘Men are the same with the promise of still waters’.” Yasmin told him, removing her arm from him. “There is a saying ‘Men do not mirror themselves in running water; they mirror themselves in still water.’ I like to think of it as saying that you cannot judge someone by what they do day by day, only by how they are at their best. But, I don’t agree with it. I think that men show who they are everyday. They can promise all they want to change, to be better.” She shook her head, tilting it up to look at the stars in the sky. “That was what my father did. He would drink, beat on me and my mum and then cry about it, promising that he would never do it again. But that was a lie.” She looked back to Angel, her face away from me. “If someone is bad, day in and day out and has one good moment, when the water is still, it still makes them a bastard the other nighty night percent of the time.”

I sagged down on to the floor, just listening to the two of them talk. The more I found out about her, the more I wished I had not done what I had. She was strong, stronger than anyone I had ever met. Smart, curious about the world around her. The world that she would never get to experience now that she was a vampire. Well, not while she was stuck here. I wanted to show her the whole f*****g world, show her that there were good things out there, bautiful things.

I had spent centuries walking the earth with my master, I had seen things, done things that most people would never dream of. It was the best time of my life, and I knew that I could share it with her, if I could only get my s**t together. The days of me thinking only of myself were over. Whatever I did from now on, had to be for me and for her. But, I knew what the first thing needed to be, the thing that I should have done before I ever asked her to be with me, in any way.

I got up from behind the bush I was sitting behind, moving silently back to the castle and up to my spire. As soon as I opened the door to my harem, the women stopped what they were doing, mainly brushing out their hair or applying coat after coat of makeup. “Master.” A few of them purred, Michelle leading the charge as always as she got up from her place on the plush sofa by the door and wrapped around me.

“Do you want to go to your room, or your office?” She asked, sliding her hand down my body towards my crotch. “Or just stay here, take us one at a time?” Her hand reached my pants, starting to undo them with deft hands. “How many you think that you can have, I bet you have built up quite a store with how long it has been since you called on us.”

I grabbed her hands, needing the feeling of snakes sliding along my skin to stop. How had I ever found her touch arousing? How had I ever thought that she could satisfy me at all? I looked around the room, hardly recognizing some of the women. Why did I need them?

“I am not here for that.” I told Michelle, pushing her away from me. She looked at me, confused. “I need all of you to pack up your stuff. I will arrange to have you all taken wherever you want to go, but you need to leave tonight.”

The women looked at me like they were going to cry, looking at Michelle like she was the one calling the shots and not me. “You don’t mean me though Master, right?” She asked, not caring about the others and only thinking of herself.

“I mean all of you. I want you gone.” I gritted out, pissed off that I had let her get this way, think this way. I could tell by the pain in her eyes that she thought that we were something more than what we were. I never wanted that, I was always clear what we were, what any of us were.

I turned and walked away, not wanting to answer any more questions than what I already had. I heard footsteps behind me, hoping that whoever it was would tell I was not in the mood for more questions. “Master, you need us.”

I sighed heavily. “No, I don’t Michelle.”

She grabbed her arm and pulled me to face her. “Yes, you do.” She hissed. “I have been here for you, for almost my entire existence as a vampire. I have been loyal, I have pleased you in ways no one else ever could. You cannot just throw me out like I am nothing, like we are nothing.”

“But we are Michelle.” I bellowed, my voice echoing up the stairs. “I told you the day you came here, why you were here. I wanted to f**k you. Nothing more, nothing less. Was that wrong of me? Yeah, and I see that now. But I don’t want you, and I don’t want any of them either.” I added calmly, making sure she understood what I was saying.

Her eyes welled up and she let go of me, taking a step back. I turned again, heading down the stairs, hoping to never see her again when I heard her whisper. “It’s the Sedvey, isn’t it?” I stopped for a moment, shaking my head that even Michelle had picked up on what I wanted more than I had myself. “She will never be able to satisfy you, you will never be able to be with her the way you are with me.” She was probably right, but not for the reasons she thought. After what I had said last night, I would not be surprised if Yasmin never spoke to me again. “You will know where to find me when you are ready.”

Her last words made me cringe. I hoped that she would choose to go far, far away from here. But something told me that she would stick around, keep tabs on me and Yasmin to try and find a way back in. But there was no way back in. I had set my mind on what I wanted, and I would not give up until she was mine, once and for all.