Page 58 of Marcello
Nicolo cleared his throat. “I wasn’t expecting anyone to be up. Sorry.”
I stared at Nicolo while the bottles heated. “I have two-day-old twins with my beloved. Expect the two of us to be up at all hours of the night for the foreseeable future.” I glanced at the donor, who suddenly found her lap very interesting. “We eat on this island. If I find out that you’re having actual sex on it?—”
“No,” Nicolo said. “We got carried away. I will escort Giulia to her room.”
The bottle warmer clicked, and I turned my attention back to it. I quickly checked the bottles and left the kitchen without another thought for Nicolo and Giulia. I’d not seen her before, but I also knew that the donors were changed frequently to keep any of them from becoming too attached.
When I entered our suite, I rushed to Abel and handed him a bottle for our fussy son. “Sorry it took so long,” I told him.
“It didn’t,” Abel told me. “You were gone maybe five minutes? That’s how long it takes.”
I set the other bottle down on the bedside table and went to get our daughter. She was still sleeping and would continue to doso if we didn’t wake her to eat. We’d asked Rio about it, and there was nothing wrong with her; she just liked her sleep.
“If there is ever anything or a situation around the villa that makes you uncomfortable, don’t be uncertain about bringing it up to me, all right?”
“Why would you say that? Now, at three forty in the morning.”
I sighed as I quickly finished changing Luci’s diaper.
“Because when I went downstairs, I happened to run into Nicolo and Giulia in a not necessarily compromising position. Their clothing was still on. But Nicolo’s fangs were somewhere that we tend to put them, and she was…”
Abel snorted. “You mean he was feeding?”
I cleared my throat. “Yes. They were on the kitchen island.”
“Eww. We eat there.”
“Exactly. And although she was dressed, well, obviously, the same thing was happening to her that happens to you when I feed.”
“Yeah, that’s just…I mean, I understand you need to feed. But doesn’t he have a room?” Abel looked down at Frankie but just as quickly looked back up at me with confusion on his face. “Wait. I thought Nicolo was gay. I’ve seen him getting extra flirty with others around the villa, and it was never a female.”
I sighed. “I don’t know for certain, but I’m pretty sure when it comes to actual sex, he is. But when it’s just a donor situation and nothing further, he’s not that picky.”
Abel nodded, then looked back down at our son, who had almost finished his bottle. “I understand he needs to feed and can’t fault him for that.”
“I sent them on their way because yes, we do. But there are also rules, and feeding is supposed to be kept out of shared spaces. He knows this. I’ve not seen her before, so I have to assume she’s a newer donor.”
Abel nodded. “Can I ask what they do? Like, do they have jobs outside of them being donors for you guys?”
“Some do have regular jobs. Vincent pays them well to be donors, but they all sign a contract and know that it isn’t a permanent thing. They are only here for a few months to keep them from becoming too attached. It is easy for a donor to become addicted to the effects of what it does to them.”
“Oh, I can understand that. But why doesn’t it do that to us? I mean, I’m not going to be cut off from you in three months, but I also wouldn’t say I’ve become addicted to having you feed from me either.”
I smiled at my beloved with what I hoped was all of the love I felt for him. “You are my beloved,” I told him. “Our connection is deeper than that, and we will always have more than what a vampire shares with a blood donor. That is the difference. You and I are fated to be together, and what we share is so much more.”
Abel smiled, but it was a sleepy smile. Still adorable, but sleepy nonetheless. He placed Frankie on his shoulder and started rubbing and gently patting his back. It didn’t take long for there to be a quiet little burp. Abel leaned his head back against the headboard and closed his eyes. “I love them so much, but they are a lot of work, and I already know we’re super lucky so far because Luci is such an easy baby.”
“It will get better,” I told him. “We’re still very new parents, and yes, there are two, but I know it’s going to get better.” At least, I really hoped it would. Eventually, we would adjust to surviving on broken sleep and doing not much more than sleeping when our babies did and waking long enough to feed and change them and then do it all over again. When we remembered, we fed ourselves, but neither of us had made it to the shower in two days. That was probably something we needed to make a priority. Later.
“I know we can’t because we always have to live here in the villa,” Abel said suddenly, “but it would be wonderful to have our own house. Or even a little apartment that was just ours. We could have our own kitchen and living room, and it wouldn’t matter if we ran to the fridge to grab a bottle in just our underwear. You didn’t put on a shirt, but you’re in sleep pants. What if we were so tired and we needed something and we just forgot and we went out there naked?” Abel sighed. “Or we were like Nicolo, and we decided that the kitchen island was the place that the mood struck, and yes, we were getting it on right then and there. Sure, it’s eww when it’s someone else, but if it were our island, it would be different.”
I wanted to give that to Abel. It hadn’t ever been an issue for me to live in the villa before now. But he wasn’t wrong. We had a bedroom. Now two, because we had the smaller room next door for the twins. But that was it. We had a bedroom and bathroom, and that was the extent of our private space. Everything else was shared spaces, and we had to keep everything to this room. If we wanted private time, it had to be done here, in our bed. Not that that was a hardship. But I did understand what he meant.
“What if we didn’t have to live here in the villa?” I asked. Luci turned her head away, spitting out the nipple, and I quickly righted the bottle so it wouldn’t drip. I saw that she’d drunk just over two and a half ounces and was going to call it good. She didn’t have nearly the appetite that her brother did, and she was the smaller of the two twins. Not that Frankie was a large baby. They were both under six pounds when they were born two days ago, and I doubted they had gained a whole lot of weight since.
“What do you mean?” Abel asked. “We live here. You said before that we couldn’t leave because you couldn’t protect me and the children alone the way you could here, since we have the support of the coven.”
I sighed. “I have been thinking about leaving. I…” I closed my eyes and snuggled our daughter. She was so precious and innocent. I opened my eyes and looked at my beloved. He was even more so. He was my everything and always would be. Yes, I loved our children already, but they would one day grow up and leave us. But Abel wouldn’t. He was my world. “I don’t regret what happened with your father,” I told him. “But it made me stop and think about how everything impacts all of us. You and I as a couple, as well as our children. I don’t want my world to touch any of you.”
