It might have been years, or minutes, later but I resist when Jarvis tries to move me away.

“Enough, Solaine,” his forceful tone would have been command enough—once. Yet I do not let go. “Too much too soon and you’ll be sick,” Jarvis’s voice is louder this time, but I pay no more heed to it than before.

You wanted me like this, I think at him and his hissing inhalation is answer enough. I drink even more deeply and chant, you MADE me like this. Don’t you want me, I grind myself against him mercilessly, to make you feel like this? There’s a deep moan in his chest but I feel his muscles bunching—gathering his immense strength—and I know I’m not going to win against him. Yet. But nothing short of brute force will pull me away from this intoxicating drink.

“You will again,” Jarvis says, his voice a dark promise before he heaves his chest forward, spilling me—panting—back against the bed. Gasping for air, I can’t see it but I know that my eyes have bled out into a torrential swirl of color—birthright of every vampire—as he leans over me. The way that the firm muscle of his chest brushes over my nipples as they peak through the thin fabric of my camisole assures me that it’s no accident as he rubs my temple with his chin. That monstrous headache I had when I first woke has vanished; replaced with the gentle swirling of a pleasant drunk.

I bide my time as he enjoys rubbing himself all over me like a cat marking territory. Once again I can’t move, but this time it’s the languid pleasure of crawling into bed after a long day. Speech is the only thing left to me and some previously unremembered dream pops into my head, telling me exactly what to say in order to get under his skin. Once Jarvis has had his fill of stroking me he gets up and as I see a (more than) solid door open, silhouetting his form in the faint light I call,

“You’re not the one, you know,” he pauses and growls,

“Really? Have you met him?” Jarvis turns and the wispy glow from the hallway is enough to see his infuriatingly superior smile. I smile myself as he stalks back to the bed—anger radiating from every pore—and grabs me by the shoulders, effortlessly lifting me vertical. “Why? Why would you say such a thing? Just to spite me?”

“No,” I answer, biting the inside of my own lip to keep from laughing in his face. As he relaxes just that fraction, I twist the knife again, “Not just to spite you.” Wrath boiling beneath the surface of his beautiful mask, I spy the beast beneath trying to force itself past his flesh. “But I have met him…in my dreams.” Jarvis snarls and tosses me away; the only thing that saves me from spilling to the stone floor is the immense size of the bed.

“Dreams are nothing more than fantasy. Lies you tell yourself to make your life seem less pathetic!” he stomps back to the doorway and starts pulling it shut before I manage to draw enough breath to yell,

“Your dreams are lies! I’ll never be your fantasy! Your life is pathetic and I WILL END IT FOR YOU!” the door slams shut and I laugh wildly until,

SLEEP resounds through my mind, and there is no choice but to obey.