The Vampire King’s Captive

MARIA

“Maria!” Bran called and she heard the light sounds of his steps as he came towards her.

She didn’t turn to look at him. She didn’t want to take her eyes off the cat, not even for one second, for fear that it would run away.

It was a small scruffy thing with its hair going every-which-way. It had to have had an owner before because it didn’t run away as she approached, even though it looked quite cautious, and it had obviously been out here for a while now-from how dirty it’s once probably rich white fur looked-but it was letting her get close which meant it wouldn’t try to harm her, right?

Kneeling on the bare sand, Maria extended her hand to it hesitantly, expecting it to cower and run away even though she didn’t want it to.

She exhaled in relief when it didn’t, in fact, run away. It’s slanted eyes dropped to her outstretched hand-her open palm to be exact-and it blinked. It’s eyes lifted to hers, then it let out a little ‘meow’ before taking a small step towards her.

Trust.

Her heart swelled as she carried it in both palms, frowning at how light it was. Shouldn’t it weigh more for its size?

It wasn’t very big, but it was not small either and she’d expected it to weigh more, not to be as light as feather in her hand. But it had been displaced from its owner so maybe that was why it wasn’t eating well.

Bran caught up to her just when she was rising to her feet and she felt a bit guilty that she was the reason he was here and yet she was running away from him at the first sight of a cat.

The aforementioned man braced his hands on his hips, frown lines marring his forehead and in that moment, he looked very much like the king that he was. “Why would you just run away like that?”

Maria went for an innocent blink, lifting the cat in front of her face sheepishly.

His eyes moved from her face to the cat several times, his frown deepening as though something wasn’t adding up. She suspected she knew what.

“You took off like that because of a cat?”

Her shoulders rose defensively even though she found the situation amusing. “Not just a cat,” she stressed, a guilty smile finding its way to her face. “A pretty cat.”

As if it knew that it was what they were talking about, the cat rubbed his head against her bicep once. She smiled down at it and shifted it’s weight onto one hand, brushing her fingers slowly through its fur with the second.

She was trying to be careful because the cat didn’t know her and might just decide to attack her at any moment. Since it had not attacked her this far, then she would keep doing what she’d been doing since she picked it up-treating it with care.

“Even worse, it’s a stray.” Bran’s hands shot out and he made to take the cat out of her arms, but Maria stepped back quickly, cradling it against her stomach. He sighed exasperatedly and Maria had the sinking feeling that had he been the type, he would have rolled his eyes. “You’re going to let it go eventually. Do it now so that we can continue on our walk. It was your idea anyway, wasn’t it?”

The last part was true-yes, it was her idea to go for a walk-but the other part wasnt. She wasn’t going to let the cat go. It had no-one.

The land was huge with lots of trees and some areas that were obviously not ventured into. What if it went in there and got harmed by a snake, or worse, got killed?

“Can’t the cat go on our walk with us?” She asked, hoping that Bran would by some form of miracle, agree. That hope was dashed when she saw the incredulous look he gave her. “Please?”

“You can’t be serious.” When she still didn’t move, hugging the cat tighter, he looked up at the sky as though trying to get his anger under control and when he looked back down at her, his eyes were not as hard. In fact, they were pleading. “It could hurt you, princess.”

The words were soft, tired. And they tugged on Maria’s heart.

Oh, so it was just her safety he was worried about after all. She’d thought that maybe he just didn’t like the cat-from the disdainful look he threw at it, that was still very true-but now he was talking about her safety, so maybe he didn’t like the cat because it was a stray and he thought that it would harm her.

That was sweet. Very. But she was okay.

Still feeling emotional that he cared for her, she went to him and stretched up on her toes, pressing a quick kiss to his lips. His eyes were dark when she pulled away from him. “I know you’re worried but the cat won’t hurt me. If… If it does, then we can let it go.” She leaned up and kissed him again but when she broke the kiss, she didn’t put much space between them. “Please?” she whispered against his lips.

Several beats passed between them. Then suddenly, Bran threw his head back on a groan.

“Fuck. Fine.” The look on his face was a defeated one, although his eyes shone with lust.

Maria’s heart leapt in excitement. “Thank you!”

“Just keep it away from me.”

Maria grinned, happy that she’d gotten her way and turned to resume walking when Brian’s fingers encircled her free wrist and pulled her into his body. Before she could ask him what was happening, he swooped down and stole her mouth in a deep kiss.

She didn’t even try to fight for the upper hand when his tongue slipped into her mouth, hot and wet, because he was obviously dominating the kiss. The kiss was a ship and he was the captian, steering it whichever way he deemed fit.

He tipped her backward like they were on a dance floor-the cat crushed between them-and pressed his hands into her back, causing it to arch and her breasts to push into his chest, her hardened nipples, grazing the hard muscles.

She would very very much like to rub up against him but he held her immobile, a slave to his desire, and she could do nothing but kiss him back as he fucked her mouth so thoroughly with his tongue.

He gave her lip one last nip before letting her go, his hands still around her waist as if he knew that if he let her go, her weak legs would fail her.

Forcing her eyes open-they failed on two tries and only opened on the third one-she looked up at him, her lust-addled brain trying and failing to come up with what she had done to earn that kind of kiss.

But apparently, she’d done nothing because he only slid his hand around her waist and motioned for them to keep walking.

Of course it took Maria a while to get her legs to move.

“Back to the conversation, before you got distracted by that cat,” he threw said cat a cutting look. “You were talking about a boy.”

How could he so easily go back to their conversation after that scorching kiss? Had the kiss not affected him the way it did her? She was still reeling from the aftermaths of it and here he was talking about ‘a boy’.

After the first time they’d had sex-the night he took her virginity-they had not engaged in the act again. Sure, he’d gone down on her countless times and he’d given her the basics of doing the same to him-she was positive she’d done well because he came quite a lot faster than she’d thought he would-but it wasn’t enough.

She wanted the real thing. And when she’d asked him why he was avoiding it, he’d said that he didn’t want to hurt her.

It was ridiculous. She was okay.

But he insisted that she needed a while to ‘heal’ else he would ‘hurt her’ and honestly, she was starting to get frustrated.

Maybe it was time for her to grab the bull by the horns. Not literally.

“Maria?”

She blinked back into focus. Bran’s eyes were twinkling with knowing laughter as he watched her and she smacked him on his arm. He grinned wide.

“The boy?”

“A long time ago,” she finally told him. “I stopped seeing him when I turned thirteen. Although I never informed him about it so he probably still went to our spot for a while, waiting for me.” She shrugged. “I guess he finally gave up.”

Maria was so busy talking that she didn’t notice sooner how stiff Bran’s hand had gotten on her waist or how he was now staring down at her with an odd look.

She stopped walking immediately, turning to him, shocked by his sudden change in mood.

“What’s wrong? Why do you look like that?”

He opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “What do you mean when you say you see him?”

Oh. That.

Of course out of everything, that was what he’d chosen to listen to.

She bit back a laugh. “Oh, you know, just seeing-”

“Maria,” he warned, voice dark.

Oh, for fucks sake.

“We used to kiss, that’s all!”

Still, the tension didn’t leave his shoulders. In fact, it seemed like it got even worse. “Was he your first kiss?”

He was staring at her with those piercing green eyes, his feelings written clearly on them. Anger, hurt maybe, and… jealousy. He was jealous.

Bran was jealous of a boy she didn’t even know whether he was still alive or not. A boy she hadn’t seen in over a decade.

Was he serious?

“He was.” She confirmed, partly because she didn’t see the point in lying to him and partly because she wanted it to annoy him since it apparently was.

“I hate that he was your first kiss.”

“Don’t. It’s not as important as being my first…” she left the word hanging. It wasn’t that she was shy to say the word ‘fuck’ to him, she just wasn’t sure if what they’d done could be called that.

Was it love making?

Or was it just plain sex?

Maria watched as heat filled Bran’s eyes. They dipped to her nipples, which were still straining against her top, then back to her face.

He stared at her lips. “I really really like that I was your first.”

She took a step towards him. “Yeah?”

“Very much.”

Another step that brought her closer to him. “I like it too.”

He took the last step, bringing their bodies flush together. “Maybe I could remind you why you like it so much.”

And it was in that moment that she realized that her cat wasn’t in her arms anymore. In fact, her hands were by her sides and the cat was nowhere in sight.

“Where did my cat go?” She cried, her eyes flying everywhere, but she couldn’t find the cat.

Bran’s eyes swept the area then came to rest on her face. “I didn’t want to tell you before because I didn’t want to make you feel bad, Maria, but cats hate vampires.” Bran shrugged, looking very honest. So honest that she couldn’t blame the cat’s disappearance on him. “It was going to leave sooner or later, anyway. Better it left sooner.”

Maria sighed and crossed her arms, about to open her mouth and say something when she heard a sharp noise. She frowned, turning to search for the source of the noise when she saw Bran shoving his hand into the pocket of his trousers.

He felt in his back pocket and produced a phone. The easy expression on his face disappeared when he saw what was on the screen, the once soft lines of his face becoming hard, his jaw clenching.

Her heart started a quick race. “What’s wrong?”

“We have to go,” was all he said before tracing her into their room, then tracing himself out of it to gods knows where, leaving her standing there, dumbstruck and alone.