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I t’s been two weeks since I nearly died and Millie’s blood saved me—something that shouldn’t have worked but did. Millie had told me vampire blood doesn’t cure injuries or illnesses. So why was I the exception? She says it’s because I’m different. Special.

Her blood mate.

After growing up feeling as if I was insignificant, with parents who gave me more rules than love and affection, I found it hard to believe that I’m someone special.

I’ve never felt wanted before meeting Millie.

And now she’s worried about Henry still being out there, killing humans and leaving new bodies every day. She said he could come for me, so she asked me to move in and quit my job. I’ve never had anyone be so… territorial over me. That night in the club, hearing her call me ‘mine’ was… erotic. Addictive.

I have no doubt she can keep protecting me from the vampire who sired her.

I didn’t hesitate to accept her offer. Leaving behind my life was easier than I thought. I emailed my resignation to work, telling them I had to move back to Kansas for a family emergency. They didn’t question me, and to be honest, I wasn’t close enough with any of my coworkers for them to pry. They were too busy with their own lives to get wrapped up in mine, and my friends outside of work were more like drinking buddies who I only met up with every once in a while.

I didn’t realize how lonely that sounded. How lonely of a life I’ve lived.

I rarely talk to my parents anymore. They disapprove of the life I’ve made for myself. They’ve grown further and further apart from me ever since college when they made it clear how much they disapproved of me drinking and partying. Now I see them maybe once a year, either for Thanksgiving or Christmas—never both. We’ll call each other on birthdays. They even send me a card with a twenty-five-dollar gift card to a coffee shop .

When I learned I had an inoperable brain tumor, it was my chance to escape. With no one to tell, no one to console me, I accepted that my life was over. Then I met this woman who’s made me question my entire existence. She’s opened my eyes to what my life could really be like.

She can save me.

She hasn’t agreed to turn me, but after two weeks of sex and cuddling and getting to know each other, how could she not?

My attraction to her should scare me. I never thought I could commit myself to one person, but the idea of forever with Millie is invigorating.

The blood mate bond is intensifying our connection. It’s consuming. As much as my body is trying to convince me I’m in love with her, I know it’s not true. But I can see myself falling in love with her over time.

We’re enjoying exploring our desires together. She lets me take control, but some nights I’m begging her to dominate me.

Like right now. I’m splayed out like a starfish, my arms and legs tied to the four corners of her bed frame. A blindfold covers my eyes and Millie has a flogger in her hands.

“Such an obedient puppy,” she says and slaps the flogger’s falls over my chest. The leather strikes my nipples hard enough that I arch off the bed and moan. “You look so appetizing right now spread out like this for me.”

My cock jumps at the menace in her voice. My body recognizes the threat and anticipates the punishment.

“Puppy likes that, doesn’t he?”

The nickname has grown on me.

I’ve always had too much energy; a byproduct of my parents limiting the things I could do. No video games, no television or movies. No technology whatsoever. I had my records, my music—the one thing they didn’t control. I at least expected them to ban so-called ‘risqué’ bands. But they didn’t. My mom loved music. She’s the one who bought me all my albums. Of course, my father destroyed them the first time I got wasted and was found naked in a stranger’s front lawn and arrested for public indecency. I had to call them for bail money.

When I was a kid, and I’d go grocery shopping with my mom, I’d make friends with any stranger who walked by. I’m surprised I was never kidnapped with how trusting I was with strangers. I suppose our small town in Kansas was safe enough, but that was before I learned about the existence of supernatural beings.

My parents let me play by myself outside, but only if it was within our fenced-in backyard. My father at least built me a treehouse when I was five. I’d climb it and pretend I was a knight defending my castle.

The flogger slaps across my thighs .

“Focus! You should only be thinking of me.”

The bed dips and Millie straddles my hips. She rubs her wet cunt over the length of my shaft. I suck in a sharp breath when she grabs my cock and lines it up to her opening.

“I’m going to ride you hard and bring you to the brink of orgasm,” she says and sinks down. “Then I’ll stop, refusing to move until you beg me to let you come.”

I tug on the binds and groan.

“So vocal for me.”

She starts bouncing and digs her nails into my chest. My skin breaks and the sting adds to my pleasure.

“I’m getting close!” I grunt.

Millie pauses, my dick inside her to the hilt. I try to buck my hips, but she tsks and wraps her fingers around my throat.

“Bad puppy,” she whispers.

Seconds later, her tongue laps up the blood from her claw marks on my chest while her grip on my neck tightens, cutting off my air supply.

“Please,” I wheeze.

When I’m moments from passing out, she lets go and lifts off me. The flogger slaps across my stomach, and I tense at the sudden pain.

“I’m going to bite you now, and it’s not going to be on your neck or your wrist.”

She moves between my spread-out legs and the flogger comes down on my left thigh, then the right, hard enough that I’m sure there will be welts tomorrow. I jerk at the burning sensation of the slap; the binds digging into my wrists.

“Fuck, Millie!”

Two more slaps of the flogger.

“Sorry, Your Majesty .”

“Much better, pup.”

She grabs my dick and squeezes before fisting it up and down. Precum leaks out of the tip, and I start shaking from the edging.

“Would you like to come?”

“Please, Your Majesty.”

She licks the bead of cum off the top, then continues to fist me.

Her hair brushes against my inner thigh, tickling my sensitive skin before her fangs scrape over the area.

Holy shit.

Is she going to bite me on the thigh? I suppose the femoral artery is there.

Pressure builds in my spine and my balls tighten closer to my body. Then she stops, and I let out a sob/whine combination.

Her fingers tighten around my shaft at the same time her tongue swipes over my aching balls. She sucks on them and drags her teeth over the delicate skin. It’s too much. Too good .

She must know I’m about to burst. Her mouth returns to my thigh, and she bites down, causing my eyes to roll into the back of my head as I erupt into an orgasm. Ropes of cum shoot out my cock, all over Millie’s hand and my stomach.

I scream out my pleasure, my body shaking.

And I pass out.

I wake up to the smell of bacon and toast. My stomach growls and I force myself to roll out of bed.

Muscles all over my body ache as I hobble into the bathroom to relieve myself. Millie’s bite on my thigh has already nearly healed .

I can’t believe I passed out. The sex was that good. The orgasm too intense.

When I make it to the kitchen, she’s setting a plate on the table.

“I heard you stirring,” she says with a smile.

Seeing her face light up… seeing her happy… is my favorite thing. She hasn’t told me a whole lot about her life. I can’t imagine all the experiences she’s had over the five hundred years she’s lived. I think she’s keeping the stories to herself because she’s ashamed of some of those experiences.

Telling her about myself was humbling. Aside from my parents’ strict upbringing and my sexual awakening in college, I didn’t do much else. I didn’t travel because I had no money. Unless you count trips to the lake during the summer with my college friends. We’d swim for hours, get drunk, grill, and sleep before doing it all again the next day.

After college, I got a job in finance and moved to New York City. I lost touch with all my college friends and struggled to make new ones. I worked too many hours, and my only entertainment was going to bars with coworkers and bringing home random hookups.

I haven’t lived, and I’m hoping Millie will be the one to show me what living can really be like.

“You know how to cook? ”

She walks over and wraps her arms around me. I lean in to kiss her. She sighs against my mouth, and I try to deepen the kiss, but she pulls away.

“Did you forget I was human once? I had a family to take care of. I’d make them breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Desserts were my specialty, though. Puddings, trifles, pies…” She drags me over to a chair and sits me down. “Plus, after I was turned, I got a job as a baker for a lord in London.”

She hands me a fork and pushes the plate toward me. It has scrambled eggs slathered in cheese with a side of maple sugar bacon and toast with jam.

“You worked? I wouldn’t think vampires need to work.”

“Not necessarily but for me, charming people for the things I wanted was the easy way out. And to avoid losing my mind of boredom, I worked. Of course, being nocturnal meant I had to use compulsion to assure working between sundown and sunrise wouldn’t be an issue.

“I held every job imaginable. At least ones women were allowed to do. My first job was the baking position I mentioned. The lord employed a cook, so my sole focus was on pastries and other desserts, all which I baked overnight. I once cleaned a castle for royals in Denmark, my vampire speed allowing eight hours’ worth of cleaning to be done in a fraction of the time while everyone was sleeping through the night. I was also a seamstress for a high society woman in Spain. She didn’t care what hours I sewed, as long as I had her dresses done before the ball or the dinner or the play. And I was an au pair for a vampire family in Paris with two undead toddlers.”

I choke on my sip of coffee. “There are child vampires?”

“Turning children is now illegal, but back then, vampires had few rules. Most humans under the age of sixteen who were turned had to be killed. They’re harder to teach control. They left too many bodies to be discovered.”

I shiver at the disturbing picture Millie paints and distract my thoughts with the food she made. I stab at the cheese covered eggs and groan at the first bite.

“Good?”

“Fantastic!”

She chuckles, and not that I’m counting, but I’ve now made her laugh at least two dozen times since meeting her. I’m counting her smiles too. I’ve managed to catch more of those.

“Tell me about your family,” I say, taking advantage of this rare moment where she’s sharing her life with me.

She sighs as her memories resurface.

“I was never meant to be an obedient housewife,” she says and sits down across from me with a glass of wine. “But that was the life women were dealt back then. I always loved the arts. My dream was to learn an instrument and play on stage at a concert hall in London. Then my father arranged me to marry the son of a farmer in the town over in exchange for farmland. I was very lucky that my husband, George, was kind. I was sixteen, and he was twenty-one when we were forced to marry.”

She pauses and frowns. I don’t say a word, waiting until she’s comfortable. I know how difficult it must be for her to return to this part of her life.

“I struggled to bear a child. I feared my impotence would anger George, but he was surprisingly supportive. Finally, at age twenty, I gave birth. Our son, George Junior. Then five years later, Mary. We had planned for more. I had many failed pregnancies after Mary. But George never pressured me. He never lashed out at me. Over time, I do believe he loved me as I did him. I became the dutiful wife and mother, forgetting all about my artistic dreams. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my family with all my heart. I…”

Her voice catches and she looks away. I reach out for her hand, taking it in mine.

“Then Henry found us. He would have tortured them. He would have prolonged their deaths with agonizing pain. He gave me the choice. A quick death by my hands or a long one by his.”

I squeeze her hand .

“I’m sorry, Millie.”

“Yes, well, it was a long time ago, so…”

“Grief doesn’t care about time. You are allowed to mourn them however long you need.”

She releases my hand and points at my plate. I abide her silent order and continue eating.

“Four hundred and seventy years later, and I don’t know if losing them has ever gotten easier. I never got to properly grieve them. Not right away, at least. When Henry turned me, he compelled me to forget them. I got my memories back after the sire bond was broken, but I wish I hadn’t. I didn’t want to remember that night and how I murdered my own family.”

She pauses and looks down at her hands as she wrings them anxiously. I set my fork down, no longer hungry. My stomach aches for Millie’s tortured past.

“Did Henry ever force you to...”

“Have sex with him?” She purses her lips. “Yes, but it wasn’t often. He liked to fuck his victims before taking their lives. Sometimes after their heart stopped beating too. He manipulated me, using his sire bond to force me to do horrible things alongside him. I grew to love it. Not every death by my hand was his doing.”

“You were— ”

“Don’t make excuses for me, Teddy. I deserve no sympathy or reprieve.”

Her hands ball into fists on the tabletop.

“I was a monster, and I never paid for my sins. I convinced myself I no longer deserved to live because of the things I did.”

I pause and curl my fingers around the edge of the table.

“What?”

She finally shakes herself out of the daze and locks eyes with me.

“The night we met was going to be my last. I was going to face the sun at dawn.”