Page 15 of Love & Monsters
“You seemed pretty interested in eating me a couple of nights ago,” I whispered. I’m sure my cheeks were red as a tomato.
His tail stopped moving, and the grin fell from his lips. “That’s different.”
“How is it different?” I was genuinely curious. “If you want my blood, or if all the monsters here want it, what’s stopping them from eating me if it happens again? You—you said it smelled delicious.”
This was the strangest conversation in my entire life. Even more than getting the birds and the bees chat from my dad because my mom was out of town at the time that I needed to hear it.
“I’m not really sure how to explain it in a way a human would understand. In a way, I wanted to devour you, yes, and I couldn’t really control it once I smelled your blood. Bloodlust completely took hold of me, more powerful than I’d ever felt before. However, when I sit here with you now, I’m not eager to bite into you.”
He smirked, and I heard a light chuckle on his exhale. “Well, I suppose in a way I am eager to bite into you, but not to eat you, Mina.” My heart skipped a beat at the salacious suggestion.
At first, I thought that the bloodlust was the only thing driving him to tongue-fuck me as he had. But what he just said made me wonder if it was possible for him to have some attraction for me.
I’d already admitted to myself that he wasn’t terrible to look at. There was a deadly beauty about him, and I was dangerously curious to know more.
“Okay, so I won’t get eaten. That’s all I want to know.” I couldn’t look him in the eyes as I tried to bring the conversation back on track.
“Not at the moment,” he shrugged out. Though the glimmer dancing in the back of his eyes was searing the side of my face. Something fluttered low in my belly.
“Tell me about the structure of your world. The creatures here. What is life like for everyone? Everything you can.” I needed to know what to expect if I ever left this dungeon.
“Alright, and you’ll tell me about your world as we go?”
“Of course. That’s what we agreed on.” I swallowed. “An exchange.”
“Yes.” My body reacted to his growling purr by shivering and I had to shake it off. “Then, let’s begin.”
Vadric began telling me about his world, Nadirn. There was a lord over the realm who ruled over the other creatures in their territory. We were in the dungeon of the current lord, and I didn’t miss Vadric’s sneer of disdain while talking about it.
They traveled by creatures or wagons, unless the monster in question had wings and could fly. In turn, I told him about cars, trains and airplanes.
He told me that much of his people were farmers or tradesmen and we talked for hours about the different jobs and types of work they did in this world.
I told him about my job as an accountant for a small firm in the city I grew up in. I’d always been good at math growing up, and that led into me telling him about the human schooling system on earth where everyone could get an education.
It wasn’t the same here, and most of what he told me gave me the impression that life in this world wasn’t as advanced. Just what I remembered seeing in the city could have told me that.
Eventually night came, though I couldn’t tell from the light as we were so far underground and Vadric told me the sky was always dark and red. It was the cold that came at night that let me know we’d been talking for hours.
Vadric urged us to move back to the bed once I started yawning, but I still wanted to know more. As I became more comfortable with him, it didn’t bother me we were laying in that massive bed side by side. And we kept talking, even as our words became quieter and slower from exhaustion.
He didn’t need the blanket. Vadric reminded me that the temperature didn’t bother him. So, I kept the furs wrapped around me as a barrier against the cold, feeling like a fuzzy burrito. But I was still shivering, and he noticed.
“Are you still cold?” He whispered in the dark. Our conversation had stopped by this point as sleep tugged at us. However, I was too cold to let sleep take me.
“Yes,” I answered, teeth chattering.
Vadric’s arms snaked over me, and I squeaked in surprise when he pulled me against his massive frame. Then my body instantly warmed as he surrounded me like a heated cage, and his weight pressed against me.
Within seconds, my bones stopped shivering, and the ache of shaking from the cold dissipated. My mind was swirling with hours and hours of new information, but it genuinely comforted me for the first time since I’d fallen through that portal.
How peculiar to find solace in the arms of a monster, I thought. Yet as I fell asleep, cocooned in his warmth, I didn’t really care.
Ten
When I woke up the next day, I was alone in the bed. However, the space behind me still held a trace of warmth. It surprised me that there was a trace of disappointment at waking up alone.
A loud clang in the dungeon’s darkness rattled my ears, and I bolted upright. I heard the shuffling of several pairs of feet before the slamming and locking of the door. At first, fear slithered over my neck and down my spine, which caused me to sink back into the cover of the fur blanket to hide.
