Eternal Betrayal [NOOK Book]

A Strange Kind Of Sustenance

For the past five days, Constantine had survived on little more than fantasies, sexual fantasies, of her, of a mortal woman, of Avna Marie Soulsmith. And he was at it again, seated, more accurately handcuffed, at ankles and wrists to a metal chair which, in turn, was bolted to the floor; naked, his sculpted body covered with nothing save a few smears of his own days-old-dried blood and semen, welts from garlic which had been smeared over his stomach, thighs, and shins, and a horrible mass of cross-shaped burns on his chest, legs, arms ... and even his cock; and, finally, starved, having refused the cold dead rodents he had twice been offered. Thus, over the course of his agonizing captivity, Constantine had instead voraciously indulged his sexual appetite, doing so for a strange kind of sustenance, for a counterfeit solace, for a false connection to Avna when the real one seemed to have been cut. Owing to his shackled imprisonment, there was no way he could slake his real hunger, the one for blood.

Not that Avna would give him the time of day much less supply him with a meal. Theirs had been an embattled truce ever since she had awakened from a four-month-long semi-comatose-sleep imposed by him while he had recovered from an enemy's fiery Molotov Cocktail. He, Constantine, The Great, an ancient, powerful vampire progenitor, had been lured into a mindless, unguarded moment and set ablaze as fire was anathema to most of his kind. His own individual preternatural power, augmented by his magic talisman, his gold burnished signet ring, had shielded him, spared him, had saved him, while hers, Avna's, a contrary, irresistible mortal female,had regenerated him. With blood, special blood, rich and sweet and healing, full of life and vigor and 'goodness', that of a Soulsmith. She was the last of her family line, totally bereft of her mystical lineage, totally in denial of her unique gifts. And, four centuries ago in the gloomy Balkans, she had been foretold to him by the gypsy Zemaralda Draconetti. Avna had been fated to be his, to be his love, to forge him a new soul.

Unfortunately, Avna hadn't cooperated with fate. Truth be told, she was a bit of a Vampyraphobe, made so because of a failed attack by a nasty little Snitch--the exact same vampire flunky who had set Constantine ablaze at the behest of his master, the now deceased progenitor, maniacal Rasputin.

Fortunately, Avna had cooperated with her hormones, eventually succumbing to his innate sexual magnetism. At least, she had all but succumbed. They had engaged in a night of heavy foreplay and oral sex. Once ... with her consent, but many, many more times with only her implied consent because those four recent months in his thrall had been extremely active, if somewhat limited since he had had to abide by her demand that they 'technically' not engage in sex. He had gained entrance into her home, and, also, into her body, on that binding agreement. There had been no true penetration. Ever.

But it was only a matter of time. And Constantine, for all his discomforts and hungers and powerlessness, smiled at that particular inevitability. He did so dazzlingly, teeth fully elongated, up into the remote camera trained upon him. And he prepared to give his captors another peep show, knowing that sooner-than-later one of his several tormenters would enter and interrupt him as they now always did. With a cattle prod. They had long since scraped up and collected enough samples of his semen and siphoned enough of his blood and cut enough tissue to satisfy any mad scientist. However, since they were not only testing his body's regenerative powers but also administering some kind of drug, they cruelly, methodically persisted. Frankenstein-like. They, the lab-coated technicians, thought him driven insane. But five days of privation had not unhinged him ... yet, and there was a method to his seeming madness. Once again he immersed himself in that sexual insanity.

He conjured up his thousandth vivid image of Avna, and, as always, nothing, save for the sting of that electrified prod, could impinge upon his erotic waking dream. Here, in this moment, inside this makeshift prison of a large, cool, echoing, aluminum box, the cargo trailer of a big rig truck underneath the watchful camera eye, Constantine could control Avna, his proud Soulsmith, as he could not, in actual fact, do at all ... not to his total satisfaction. In sexual matters, she was naïve, inexperienced, virginal. But, as he knew all too well, when given the right stimulus, Avna was, also, sensual, abandoned, wanton. So exactly how, he licentiously mulled, should he make her impiously worship him, with dainty quick fingers, or agile velvety mouth, or tight slick pussy? Or with all three?

As he considered between these lewd choices for his stubborn, beautiful Avna, Constantine began to grow rigid. He slumped as far as his metal bonds would allow, and he rounded his spine so that he could look down over the sharp cut ridges of his abdomen to admire the passionate surge of his cock draped on his inner thigh, from pre-sex soft to cunt-ramming hard. Fully aroused from simple anticipation, his thickened, hefty shaft bobbed nearly to his belly, pulsed with want, demanded attention. And, mercifully, his overpowering excitement for Avna, so total, so consuming, had lengthened and filled his raw, silver-cross-burned shaft until he felt nothing of pain, only mindless joy.

In his cinematic mind's eye, she slowly crawled towards him, equally naked--a small inhibition of hers that now, in fantasy, he could remove, just as easily as he had slipped off her panties from underneath an oversized nightshirt on their first night together. This Avna, in keeping with the real one, took her sweet time in coming to him, so that he watched with intense glittery-eyed fascination. To hurry her, to entice her, he slanted his groin forward to display his rampantness, his twitching blood-infused rod. It would be almost too much a fistful for Avna but, he harshly grinned his approval, she'd give it, as always, her best effort! For him, unaccountably, unbelievably, she was perfection, even when compared to the countless women he had encountered over the centuries. But how could one woman, pretty but not incomparable, antagonistic and insolent, be his ideal?

He didn't waste more than an instant pondering such inconsequentials, particularly such as whether or not, as Avna had argued, he craved her simply because of the gypsy's prophecy. All he was willing to admit was that he desired her. Wasn't his erection, swelled hot and hard, jutted up from its nest of coarse black hair, moistened with pre-cum at the head, proof enough?

He willed her closer. In the dim interior, every inch of her fair, unclothed skin glowed. She had ordinary green eyes that she kept downcast, except for the occasional, willful glance up at him. That defiant look made him want to reach out and grab at her thick mass of short-cropped unruly blonde hair, to pull her onto his lap and jam forcefully into her, but all he managed was to fight ineffectually against his cuffed wrists, further chafing the deep rawness there upon his hands and arms.

"Come to me, Avna." His husky voice mingled with the metal jangles of his manacles. Perversely, her advance on all fours remained slow and provocative, as if he, within his own fantasy as well as in real fact, had no control over her. He calmed himself somewhat. With fangs gritted and fists clenched, he enjoyed the supple advance of her athletic but shapely body, especially the perfect-although-not-overly-generous-handful of breasts, hourglass waist, and very nicely rounded hips. Constantine glimpsed the brown curls nestled at her beautiful crotch, and his eager cock jerked. Suddenly, his eyelids grew very heavy with the weight of his desire, hooding his bright blue irises. He almost imagined a pounding in his chest, more ardent than ever when he lived, yet he, in truth, had no heart beat, no pulse, no breath. Avna made him react as if he had all these, and they were frenzied and horny. He savored the sensation, fully giving over to the throbbing of his massive hard-on. The need to masturbate made him crazy.

He yanked like a madman on his cuffs. If only he could free his hands! He wanted to fondle and stroke himself for the self-pleasure but, also, to tease her, to tantalize her with the erotic sight of his expert grip beating up and down in varying speeds. Slowly to pull and expose and extend himself for her prurient view. Speedily to mimic and offer and prepare her for sex.

"Shit," he cursed at the lava-like urge, fiery and forceful, that further engorged his big lusty dick. This time, this hallucination, should be prolonged, languid, healing. Not a fast, furious fuck! He was in control, not Avna. He was the fever in her blood, not the other way around! The skin of his prick tightened and burned with sexual craving. His balls, drawn up close to his body, were like concrete, desperate, explosive, ready to burst with release.

He groaned, clenching every muscle, trying not to ejaculate. "Avna, oh, my Avna.... "Constantine couldn't disguise the pleading edge to his voice. He wanted to feel her hot, moist mouth close around him, to suck him gently at first, then with enough pressure to make him come. He wanted her so keenly that the thought of her tongue touching his head made him explode. His semen spewed in an oddly iridescent arc. His entire frame strained mightily against his metal restraints. His rutting pelvis pumped harder and harder, strove to empty every drop of his seed into Avna ... and he realized at the last that she was nowhere near him.

He tried impotently, as with every instance since his capture, to psychically reach out and feel her presence. He was still within the verge of Charleston, his home these past four years ever since he had grudgingly, at first, followed the path of Zemaralda Draconetti's prophecy and had made Avna's state, West Virginia, his own. So, where was she? He could not find her out in that dark almost wintry night. He could not sense her, this loss due no doubt to the drugs he had been given.

"It was the injections," he gritted hoarsely. He refused to contemplate their last encounter. "The drugs are to blame.... "The blasted drugs and nothing else!

Futilely, he also tried to contact his 'closest' family, but, even under the best of circumstances, he had no true, long-distance telepathic bond with them ... with Marc and Max, the twins, Gerard Lamphere, his legal advisor and right-hand-vampire, or Haley Davis, his own private Florence Nightengale. Nor could Constantine feel Thomas, who was not of his making but had been recently, reluctantly adopted into Constantine's clan, being a curiously strong vampire born of malevolent Donata, a bitch from hell. Constantine only partially trusted Thomas, although the other had saved Avna from Rasputin. But Thomas' motives and loyalty had everything to do with Avna and nothing to do with Constantine. Jealously, deep and consuming, colored his view of Thomas.

For days, Constantine's loss of his link to Avna had hurt him. Terribly. Even more than anything he had so far had to endure as a medical guinea pig. Again, he pushed away all thoughts of the convoluted betrayal that had led him here.

Because he feared for her. After all, without him, Avna was at the mercy of Hetti Chambogo, the Voodoo Princess whom Avna had helped to send to prison on a life sentence for murder. But Hetti had escaped and she was looking for revenge. She had, in fact, already begun to exact it in several terrible, perverse ways.

"Avna!" Her name was a shout torn from his rusty, dry throat. The sound reverberated cruelly, as did the clanging of the big doors to his metallic prison. A slight, cross-eyed man in a lab coat rushed forward and shocked Constantine with the requisite voltage. A stunning bolt to his testicles. The pain mixed with his rage and vulnerability. He collapsed back against the cold metal chair, his limbs slack in their bonds. The lack of food, combined with the terrible double shocks of emotion and electricity, dazed him.

But, for one instant, he roused long enough to look at the cross-eyed gaunt-faced man, revealing a flash of white fangs and a pair of glazed, maddened, icy blue eyes. "When I get free, Bates, my vile little friend, I am going to rip your head off." The idleness of this threat received a nasal laugh. After all, the manacles binding the ages-old progenitor had held up more than adequately to his superior physical strength for nearly a week. Constantine ignored the mocking laughter and mentally drifted back into the recent past in search of Avna, the warm, living presence that he craved as deeply as any nourishment he had ever taken even when she refused to obey him. And that was just about always.

But there were dangers for him in the past, because his contrary Avna had seemed to rule much of it....