The Vampire King’s Captive

BRAN

Bran was pretty sure that a few minutes ago when he’d asked the man standing in front of him to deliver a message to Maria, he’d been speaking, so except by some form of magic, his tongue had disappeared from his mouth and he didn’t have the ability to speak anymore, then he should still be able to speak.

“Well?” Bran pressed. “Are you just going to keep standing there staring at me?”

The only reason Bran wasn’t flipping the hell out on the man right now, was because he was curious as to why it was him standing in front of Bran and not Maria.

He’d asked for her to come to him and he’d been expecting her. Yet, here a guard stood instead of Maria.

“I-I want nothing more than to tell you, Your Majesty. Of c-course, I would l-love to tell you.” The smallish man stuttered and Bran found his ire growing by the second. “It’s just that eh… her words were a tad… inappropriate-”

“Out with it!”

The man jumped a mile-high in the air. “Very well.” He swallowed, adams apple bobbing. “Your Majesty, she said… she said to tell you to go f-fuck yourself.”

One of Bran’s eyebrow lifted in surprise and the man must have taken Bran’s silence as an okay for him to go on because he kept talking.

“She said she doesn’t answer to you and that you can shove your words up your… up your-”

“Get out.”

The man’s head flew up, surprise etched in his features. “Your Majesty?”

“I said get out.”

The man wasted no time in scurrying out of Corey’s living room, closing the door softly behind him.

Bran’s temper flared at the thought of being disobeyed by Maria yet he felt a stir in his jeans as he grew hard. He always reacted that way to her fire-loving it even as he hated it. Craving it even as he never wanted her to disobey him anymore.

Wanting to burn in her flames even as the king in him roiled at being disobeyed.

She’d said those words to him. Not just to him-she’d said them to the guard and the guard had relayed them to him. Now, the guard knew that a woman spoke to the vampire king in such manner.

Bran wondered if there had been other people there who had heard what she’d said.

How dare her speak to him in such manner?

How dare her disobey him in front of people?

He traced directly where he’d seen her-at the backyard-and he was thankful that the sun had gone down, if not he would have been burned.

His heart gave a sudden jerk of excitement when he saw her leaning against the picket fence, exactly like he did when he was out here.

She was conversing with her maid, who was leaning on the fence next to her. Her words were hushed and even with Bran’s peculiar hearing, he couldn’t hear them. Or maybe that was because he was standing considerably far from them.

Her long hair cascaded down her back but it wasn’t free, Bran realized, because they weren’t spilling over to the front of her shoulders the way he liked. They were held in place by a band of some sorts and Bran found himself fighting the urge to walk over to her and rip it off, free her hair and watch it drape over her like an angel.

His angel.

No, not his.

He traced closer to them and caught the tail end of their conversation-along with Maria’s exquisite scent, made even more pronounced by the mating.

“… I only know a few…” The maid trailed off when she took note of him standing there, her eyes widening a fraction. She lowered her head and curtsied. “Your Majesty.”

At the mention of his name-well, his title-Maria turned to look at him and Bran could swear that he was hit in the knees with a sledgehammer with the way they suddenly wobbled and threatened to give out under him.

It was nothing but sheer will that had him standing and not giving in to the urge. Or even worse, go to her, take her hands and place them on his face. He missed her touch, but he would probably cut his sword arm off rather than admit such a thing to her.

The maid’s eyes jumped between Maria and Bran, waiting for one of them to make a move or say something, and when it became abundantly clear that they were not going to, she picked up her skirts and turned to Maria, although Bran felt like she was talking to the both of them. “I’ll let you speak in private.”

“Don’t bother.” Maria stopped her with a hand on her shoulder, turning back to what she’d been doing-people watching.

Bran’s back teeth grinded to dust.

She was dismissing him. Publicly. As if he was a mere messenger or a guard or some other man of equally low status and he would not accept it.

“Yes, you will let us speak in private,” Bran gritted out through clenched teeth, his lips barely opening to let out the words.

He was so angry, he could burn the whole place to the ground.Text property © Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org.

And then storm over to Maria, throw her over his shoulder and smack her ass as he carried her back to his castle.

Wait, what?

Where had that last bit come from?

“Ignore him.” Maria shook her head, still staring at the people at the children in the training ground and she still had her fucking back to him.

The maid’s eyes were jumping frantically between them now, looking like she was torn between who to listen to. She had loyalties to Maria because she was her maid and therefore had to put her first, but she also had to respect Bran because he was a king-even though not her king.

Still, he could make her life miserable or even possibly kill her for trying to disobey her.

Maria clearly thought the girl to be a friend-he noticed that they went around together-and that was the only reason Bran chose not to punish her for disobeying him for even a second. “Leave,” he gave her one last opportunity to obey him and wisely, she took the hint.

She curtsied again before hurrying away, and Bran was finally alone with his mate.

His fucking mate.

Fuck, it sounded so strange. He would just stop thinking it completely, but his mating instincts lit up like a fucking bulb every single fucking time he saw her.

“What do you want, vampire?”

He was back to being vampire, was he?

Flashes of their past erupted in Bran’s mind, awakened by that word, and Bran was reminded anew why she hated him so much.

Why he couldn’t accept that she was his mate.

He forced the disturbing thoughts out of his mind, but let his anger towards her remain. “Do you care to explain why I sent for you and you refused to come?”

She shrugged. “I don’t, actually.”

Bran ground on his teeth harder, his fist clenching and unclenching at his sides. He wanted to hold her, to shake her until she returned into the person she’d once been.

He wanted to shake her feelings back into her. Her laughter, her unending words, her eyes, her kisses, her attention, her fucking touch. He wanted them back.

When he had them, he hadn’t valued them and now that he couldn’t have them, he wanted them even more. He was starved for them. Like a man in the desert without a droplet of water in sight, he hungered for her, thirsted for her.

His skin grew sweaty with want, his balls drawing tight with his arousal and cock extending in his trousers.

Hell, he was hard as rock and she wasn’t even looking at him.

As discreetly as he could with people all around them, he adjusted himself in his jeans and shoved his hands into his pockets, then remembered that a king didn’t stand that way and clasped his hands behind his back.

A stance of dominance, authority.

Good. She had to respect him.