I think I am scared that children/teenagers below 18 wander around in blog world and see so much erotica on display. But that aside, the blog is supposed to be an outlet for the creative process behind the writing; how I got my muse, inspiration and general feedback. BUT I will post longer teasers to satisfy [partially] the palate and leave the cravings still intake. Yum.
Okay enough rambling. Here is Chapter 2's teaser; still in it's raw form and unedited. I've only put segments here, omitting others but I think it will suffice for now =)
***
When Alaron entered the bookshop that morning, he wasn’t exactly sure what he was looking for. He knew that Fiona would not arrive until half an hour later so he had to come up with any reason to enter before he chickened out and walked away.
A while later, he let himself into the store, pacing the carpeted floors. Erika was nowhere to be found. He leaned lazily against her cashier counter and surveyed the place. It was really a dump. How in the world could Fiona put up with it?
He waited for a few more minutes and heard the slight thud of footsteps.
“Excuse me? We’re not opened yet.” Alaron looked up to the sound of the voice and found her staring at him from the stairway. So… she lived upstairs.
“I’m uh… I want to get Fiona a book before she comes,” he regurgitated the script from memory. It had taken him five whole minutes to come up with the suitable line.
Erika looked at him doubtfully but took the bait. “What book?”
“Uh… some baby book. She’s trying to conceive you know? I thought maybe I should get her something to uh… help her along.”
Erika’s face suddenly lit up with amusement and she pulled her head back in laughter.
“She doesn’t need help in that department. Did you get a load of the guy she married? Now, Fiona can be a little soft around the edges but her husband is not…. Definitely not,” she replied, as she moved towards the coffee maker.
Alaron didn’t know why her sentence irked him. It was bad enough that Fiona compared him to that mutt… but this stranger? What does she even know about them anyway? Fiona’s not going to have an easy pregnancy like any other human. Sure he said he wasn’t going to help her with the baby thing but since when did he ever mean anything he said?
“Just help me find the damn book,” he growled in an irritated voice.
“Find it yourself. I’m not on duty right now so we are two perfect strangers in a public space,” she said, ignoring him.
Alaron couldn’t believe this woman. Why couldn’t all women be as gentle and sweet as his mother or Fiona? Okay… maybe they were scary when they got angry but generally sweet-natured. But this human was just unyielding!
Alaron let out a snarl but didn’t reply her. Obviously she was playing hard to get… which makes hunting the prey all the more thrilling, he thought. Just as well. He turned his focus to the bookshelf in front of him and began perusing the baby book collection that they had.
“Baby names, Pregnancy Journal… Belly laughs…” he muttered, obviously amused at the titles. “No wait… this one sums it about right: What’s going on in there?”
Alaron was actually amazed that people actually write stuff about babies and what to do about them. That was just as weird as him standing in front of the baby section looking for the right book.
“Al? What are you doing here so early?”
Alaron quickly hid the book he was holding behind his back as Fiona approached him. Her eyes flicked to the titles on the shelf.
“Baby books?” She looked puzzled then frowned. “Did you make someone pregnant?”
“No I didn’t silly!” he replied, giving her a playful push. “It’s kinda like for you…”
Fiona was about to reply when Erika shouted across the room at them.
“Get your hands off her! Fiona! How can you just stand there when he just manhandled you like that?”
Fiona looked up at Alaron. She knew he had pushed her, albeit playfully, but she hadn’t moved an inch; a normal human being might have flown across the room. It wasn’t a big deal… but apparently Erika thought it was for she was fuming as she marched towards them.
She was jabbing a finger against his chest and delivering various threats and curses. For a moment, the two Vampires just stood rooted in shock.
When she managed to snap out of it, Fiona eased away from them before she laughed out loud and ruin the moment. She had caught Alaron’s eye and saw the plea in them but all she could do was cover her mouth to stop the giggles.
When he left a while later, Erika went over to Fiona.
“Sweetie, you really shouldn’t let him push you around like that. I know he’s your brother and all but he sure is rough. If you get pregnant, it’s going to be unsafe for him to behave that way around you,” she warned.
“Oh? Why is that?”
“Honey… don’t you know anything about pregnancies? Bugger… that bloke was right about you needing help now aye? Well, if you fall, it might increase the chances of a miscarriage… and we don’t want that now do we?” she said kindly.
“Oh…” Fiona wished she was already at that state of worrying about a miscarriage… but she hadn’t even conceived anything yet. With a sad sigh, she looked at Erika and tried to change the topic.
“You know Erika… Alaron can be quite… aggressive at times but I’ve thrown him against a wall myself so you can say shoving each other is our favourite pastime.”
“Surely not!” she exclaimed in exasperation.
“Well… okay maybe I exaggerated. But my point is that he’s a very misunderstood person… sometimes I think he behaves that way because it’s his self-conscious defense mechanism.”
“Against what?!”
“Women… He wants intimacy but he’s afraid of getting too close. Losing his mother was really a turning point for him.”
“Oh…I’m sorry,” said Erika. “You don’t share the same mother?”
Fiona smiled and shook her head. The Culzean family tree was a bit too complicated for her to explain to the human at the moment.
“Well, I guess I shouldn’t be too hard on him then…” said Erika, moving to the door to turn the ‘closed’ sign to ‘open’. “But he’s still an asshole.”
Laughter bubbled in Fiona’s throat. “Ah… yes he is…”
***
[To know what happened here, wait for the chapter. *evil laughs*]
***
Meanwhile, Amber was sitting in her office, printing out the data from Fiona’s first visit. The blood results will be back in a day or two. Plus she still had to wait for Draven to take a look at Fiona’s blood sample.
Amber frowned. Just where the hell is he? He had missed the whole consultation! If he had been around, maybe Fiona wouldn’t have been that devastated.
“He’s freaking Ancient for god sake… surely he’d know more than me?” she muttered to herself.
Somehow that seemed to be the magic phrase, for a knock later; he entered, looking solemn as always.
“You’re late,” she said accusingly.
“Yes, I was caught up with something. My apologies.”
Amber leaned back in her swivel chair and crossed her arm. He didn’t even look at her when he said sorry!
“Right, so where’s her blood sample? I’ll just take it and be on my way.”
“You were supposed to be here for the consultation!”
“I told you I was engaged,” he replied tonelessly.
Arrogant bastard!
Draven turned to look lazily at Amber before moving towards the storage box to help himself to the sample. He wasn’t really interested in interacting with this Werewolf, even though she smelled divine. He gave a small shudder to dispel the thought and picked up one of the two test tubes containing Fiona’s blood.
“How soon can you give me the results?” she asked, clearly annoyed.
“I’ll fax it to you when I’m done,” he replied, moving towards the door.
Amber gave an irked huff, finding herself staring at the man’s back. Initially she had pegged him as self-absorbed, haughty, and annoying but on hindsight decided there was only one word to describe him: frigid.
What was it about cold, emotionally-unavailable men that just attracts her? In other words, Draven exuded the same calm yet icy demeanor as Eian did before he met Fiona. The only difference was that the man beside her was of the Vampire variety. Still, she wouldn’t deny that she was attracted to him; superficially or not.
“Have dinner with me.” The words blurted out of her before she could stop herself.
Draven who was about to leave, stopped in his tracks even though his hand was already on the door handle.
“Pardon me?” he said, turning around slowly.
“Have dinner with me. You know… eating and drinking… being civilized.”
He gave her a considering look and leaned his back against the door.
“I do not have mortal needs of eating, unless you’re offering yourself as my meal. Now that would be uncivilized. I don’t do wild animals.”
Amber was taken aback. Part of her was insulted yet the other part was curious. He was looking at her without an ounce of emotion and yet his sentence seemed loaded with innuendos… or was she just imagining it?
“I can’t figure you out, Draven… seriously. We’re supposed to work on this together and you act as though you’re superior to me; walking in whenever you want, taking whatever you want. I am as equally qualified as you are, if not more.”
Draven tilted his head back and laughed.
“Wolf, you may have a MD but I have been around much longer than you have and so I am superior to you.”
Her eyes widened slightly to express the shock she was feeling. It took her awhile to get over it but when she did, she looked up without an expression on her face.
“I see. Well then, I’ll wait for the fax,” she said, watching as he opened the door. “Oh, just for your information, Fiona was heartbroken when she left.”
He heard her but didn’t stop this time. Walking himself out of the medical centre, he felt slightly guilty. He knew she wasn’t lying when she said Fiona was heartbroken. He had read it in her mind. Maybe she was right… he should have been there for the consultation. Looking at his watch, he decided it was too late to call Fiona. He’ll probably do it tomorrow.
Draven massaged his temples slightly to quell the headache he was getting. Clutching the test tube, he decided that the best thing to do right now was to get to work.
That should give him time to mull things over.
***
[To be revealed... ]
***
Draven was seriously annoyed. He had been staring at his computer screen for the past eighteen hours, analyzing the blood sample he had taken from the medical centre hours ago. He had no idea why he was so agitated or why he was pushing himself without rest for the past 36hours.
He told himself it was for Fiona’s sake; that he wanted to deliver the results to her as soon as possible but he knew that was just the icing on the cake. The truth was, he couldn’t quite wipe the image of that she-wolf’s disappointed face out of his mind. She had been really hurt when he told her that her MD was meaningless to him.
But he was just stating the obvious. He was at least a few hundred years older than her and his years of research had resulted in various advancement in the medical and biochemical field. Hell, she probably studied the science that he had pioneered along with other scientists over time. What did she know?
When the light of dawn began to illuminate the sky, Draven’s head shot up to look at the time. It was almost seven o’clock.
Resting his head on the desk, Draven gave a loud sigh. His father had raised him up to be too much of a gentleman that it was inexcusable for him to behave like that in front of a woman. Sure, he was a noble and she a commoner but that didn’t give him the license to treat her like dirt. Now that was Alaron’s territory or so he thought. Somehow his brother seemed to have mellowed down a lot since Fiona’s marriage.
Whatever it was, he had to apologize to her. Otherwise it would reflect badly on the Culzean family name and as the eldest son, it was his duty to preserve their reputation. With a resigned sigh, he calculated how much time he had, considering that the centre opened in an hour’s time. If he wanted to reach there on time, he mustn’t take more than ten minutes to get ready.
“The lengths I go to for this family,” he muttered to himself as he whizzed his way through a shower and got dressed, taking just a minute more to make sure his hair was combed back and that he had slapped on some aftershave.
Rushing over to the computer, he saved whatever data he had analyzed, gathered the rest of his reports and sprinted to his car.
His watch showed it was 7.20am. He had roughly forty minutes to cover 180miles...
“Okay, so I took two times longer than planned… I can get there on time…” he assured himself, hoping that he wouldn’t have to break the speed limit. He really wanted to catch her before she started work, and then at least they’ll have some time to talk before the whole rush hour starts.
By 7.52am, his car was parked neatly in a lot outside the medical centre. It had him speeding on the highway close to 200 mph, if not faster. For all the hassle and possible fines, he didn’t want to waste anymore time but headed straight to her consultation room, not even knowing if she would be there. Without knocking, he barged in.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, spilling coffee all over the front of her blouse. Annoyance, more than anything flashed across her face as her daily ritual of savouring her first cup of coffee was ruined.
Apparently that didn’t put him off for he was currently looking at her with sharp, intense eyes. Amber was sure that one could actually melt in the heat of that gaze. Not in the sexual sense… but in the volcanic destructive sense.
“Yes?” she asked irritably and watched him take a deep breath before slapping the files he was holding on her desk.
“Alright, here it goes… I’m sorry Dr. Amber MacFarlane at my lack of civility and human compassion with regards to yesterday’s incident. I acknowledge you as a highly trained medical professional and I take back whatever insults I said yesterday.” He paused, gauging her face for a response. When she remained silent, he shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t… usually apologize to women, regardless of species.”
“And I don’t usually ask obnoxious cold-blooded Vampires out for dinner either. That’s a mistake on my part and I apologize for my lack of foresight.” Taking her gaze away, she looked down at the files on her table and opened them. “Are these the results?”
He nodded, watching the arrogance disappear from her face, replaced by a look of pure concentration.
“I’m impressed… you did all this in less than 48 hours? Damn… my own lab hasn’t even started working on my sample yet.”
Again he nodded and watched the arrogance returned to her face.
“Thank you. You can go now. My shift’s starting at eight.”
Draven heard her order and yet he was still standing rooted to the ground. It was the lack of sleep, he reasoned, that was propelling his feet forward, grabbing her by the back of her head and yanking her out of her seat.
His actions were so fast that Amber almost didn’t register the sensations of his lips pressed against hers. However, when she did, her eyes widened in shock and she valiantly tried to push him away.
He didn’t budge an inch and she was slowly losing the strength to resist. His kiss was firm and strong, yet tantalizing enough to make her insides go mushy. Very soon, she found herself surrendering to the onslaught of his kiss, her tongue willingly wrestling with his.
I want you… but I can’t. This is a public place and the nurses might barge in at any time.
He must have heard her for he pulled away reluctantly and looked straight at her, seeing the disappointment and lust pooling in her eyes. Just for a second, he felt the need to respond to her lust as though it was calling out to him. A shiver ran down his spine at the thought of him being subject to this Were’s mating pull. That can’t be.
Draven gently let her go, distancing himself from her.
“I’ve got to go now.” He had to leave before something unavoidable happened. “If you need any clarifications, just email me.”
Then he was gone before she could protest.
***
Still in the process of editing... so it should be up by midweek or Thursday at least. I have been rather consistent with my posting, except for that long hiatus after TLAW chapter 8.
So Chapter 3 is in progress and I will be talking about the history of Vampires. It's complete fiction of course but I had to rely on various materials. I read some of Anne Rice and Lynsey Sands works but I'm avoiding Stephanie Meyer for now.
I also found some info here: http://www.answers.com/topic/origins-of-the-vampire but I'll mix and match as always. Readers must understand that no writer writes in a vacuum; we are all influenced by others.
tease! that's all i say ;-) hope we can expect the full chapter soon.
ReplyDeletebut i was right in the couplings, yay me.