I Know You're Still Just A Dream - Chapter 7 (Early Access) (Patreon)

Elijah POV

26 Weeks

“Close the door, Elijah.”

The taller man started to speak. “Lucia-”

Elijah closed the door. He did not know the trio standing on his doorstep, but clearly his wife did. It’s not as though he couldn’t take an educated guess as to who they were. He could hardly deny the familial resemblance between them.

The silence that often filled The Bonnet Mansion suddenly seemed to be pressing down on them. Lucia was usually the only noise-maker in the building. That generally came with the human territory. No vampire would allow their movements to be heard unless it were a deliberate act to gather attention. The Bonnet noise-maker was silent in his arms. She stared at the closed door with wide eyes and tight lips.

With focus, Elijah could hear the trio on the other side of the door breathing softly. None of them spoke or moved, however.

“Lucia,” he whispered. “Wh-”

The doorbell rang again.

Neither of them moved or said a word.

Once again, the bell rang.

The sound of his mother’s huffing carried down the upstairs hallway and Elijah grit his teeth. The last thing they needed was his parents getting involved.

This time when the bell rang, his mother’s voice bellowed through the house. “Must I do everything myself in this home? Where are our staff?”

A young vampire in staff uniform skidded into the entranceway. Elijah gave him a curt head shake and he ran back out. His mother appeared at the bannister of the upper floor.

“Elijah, my dear, would you please open the door?” she called down the stairs. “We do not want to keep our guests waiting.” She sped down them in a graceful swirl of silk.

“They are not our guests, mother,” he replied.

“Who is it?” His mother brushed past them, batting Elijah’s hand away when he attempted to block the door. She pulled it open swiftly. “Hello? May I help you?”

Elijah attempted to stalk away, Lucia tucked against his chest, before they became entangled in his mother’s faux niceties. His father blocked them at the base of the stairs, summoned to the scene as though his mother’s raving were a mating call.

“There’s someone at the door, Elijah,” he announced helpfully.

“Yes, father, we know. We do not want to see th-”

“Please, do come in,” his mother offered behind him.

Elijah groaned under his breath.

“Come now, don’t be rude,” his father grumbled, pressing him backwards.

“This is Lucia’s family, Arthur.”

Elijah turned back to the door, and the three people invading their home through it. His mother was watching them shuffle inside with thinly veiled disgust, although for different reasons than Elijah, he was sure. He lowered Lucia until her feet met the ground and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. A feeling of fierce protectiveness cloaked him. He couldn’t think clearly of anything but his wife.

His father greeted the trio. Invited them further into the house. Beckoned for Elijah and Lucia to follow. Lucia did. Elijah allowed her to lead them like a four-legged beast.

The Martinez ‘guests’ were welcomed into one of the reception rooms. They eyed up every artifact in the room, insatiable was their appetite to peruse the Bonnets’ belongings. Once the room was seated, the group were quick to explain their reason for trespassing.

Lucia gave zero response to their presence, verbally or physically. She was a doll at Elijah’s side. It did nothing to soothe his irritation.

“You never completed the payment?” Elijah’s mother repeated, turning on his father in an instant with a scandalised expression. “That is not like my husband at all,” she assured the trio with her most gracious fake smile. “The Bonnets indebt themselves to no one.”

His father glanced at him awkwardly. Apologetically. Elijah knew without a doubt he was about to be revealed. Not even Lucia knew what he had done.

“It was Elijah’s order, my dear,” his father said as soothingly as he could. “Not a penny more to them, he said.”

All eyes fell upon him.

“You got plenty with the deposit,” Elijah snapped. “You didn’t deserve to be rewarded for what you did.”

“You bought her!” one of the men argued.

“And impregnated her!” the other man added, his accent was far heavier than the others. He was also the one who held the closest resemblance to Lucia.

“And you feel you deserve a prize for that?” Elijah yelled. His mother’s restrained gasp caught his ears but he ignored it. He never raised his voice. It did not feel good, but he couldn’t stop. He had lost control. “How dare you come into our home- her home and remind us all of what happened.” His chest hurt. He couldn’t bear to look over at Lucia, too afraid to see any pain upon her features.

“We want what we are owed!” the woman cried.

“You are owed a referral to child protective services,” he growled. “Your children are not resources-”

“And yet you purchased her as one,” one of the men reminded him. The one he believed to be his father-in-law. It caught Elijah’s chest, leaving him almost winded. “We are one and the same, but you think you have some moral high ground because you are rich.” He said the word rich as though it meant inbred.

“Enough of this, you are all being quite poorly behaved,” his mother announced. She had a way with atmosphere, she could control a room purely with her aura. It was not a skill Elijah had inherited. They all stilled to hear her speak. “My husband will fetch you your money.”

“Yes, dear,” his father replied. He loped away with an uncertain frown. Elijah watched him go, frustrated, but fully aware it would do nothing but lengthen the trio’s visit to fight out the principle with his parents.

“Lucia,” the slightly taller man cooed. It turned Elijah’s stomach. The smarmy old git clasped his hands to his chest as though receiving a blessing. “We only wanted the best for you. For our bright young lady. You have a fine life now, no? Better than we could ever have given you.” He shook his head as though he had heard something he could not believe, squeezing his dark eyes shut momentarily. “You know how a father’s pride burns when he cannot provide for his own, but here you are surrounded by money.” He pressed his lips together tightly and squeezed his hands extra hard against his chest. “It soothes me.”

Lucia said nothing.

“Are you unhappy here?” The woman asked. “You look so well, it makes me happy to see.”

Elijah’s blood was boiling. Bubbling under his skin. He knew it was impossible for his body’s temperature to fluctuate, but he felt as though he were burning inside his own skin. Lucia’s silence stoked the flames.

“We have not been doing as well as you, Lucia,” the shorter man threw in. “Times have been tough for the family. Your family.”

“She has other things to think about than her family, Luis,” the woman scolded. “Her life is busy now, it is not her fault.” She sighed. “I just hope she understands how difficult it was for us to lose her. My precious daughter, if we had the money to take care of you like this family, we would have given you everything.”

Lucia was laser-straight with her eye contact with an armoire on the other side of the room. A beautiful statue, frozen in place. He had never known his wife to act like this. He wasn’t entirely sure it was intentional. The thought of his love paralysed with distress ripped at his chest. He had reached the absolute end of his patience.

Just in time, his father reappeared with a crisp white envelope, it bulged in the middle.

“I only had denominations of fifty, I hope that is-”

Elijah snatched the fat envelope from his hands as soon as he reached them and threw it at the trio. It bounced off Lucia’s father’s chest and into her mother’s scrabbling hands. Desperate. Pathetic. Wretched. All three of them.

“Take your money and get the hell out,” he snarled. “Don’t ever come back here. Next time you won’t make it up the driveway alive.”

Content with their funds, they dropped their empathetic act and bolted for the front entrance. Elijah followed them, almost shaking with rage. They flew through the door without a word of goodbye to the daughter they had abandoned once before. Elijah slammed the door after them. The frame splintered around it, but held.

“Elijah,” Lucia breathed behind him.

He turned on his heel, feeling suddenly sheepish in front of her. His wife and father held matching expressions of shock. They had followed him to the entrance hall. His mother was gone.

He began to babble. “I’m so sorry, darling, I-”

“Stop talking,” she said hurriedly. “I have never been so turned on in my life, and if you don’t take me upstairs and do disgusting things to me, you will find my third trimester attitude to be far worse than my second.”

Elijah didn’t hesitate to work out how that was possible. He grabbed her by the waist and hoisted her into his arms again, they were halfway up the stairs when he heard his father mumble an awkward farewell.

In their suite, he dropped her onto their bed gently. With hands resting either side of her hips, he leant his face in close to hers.

“Did you want to talk about what just-”

Lucia slammed her lips to his. Elijah moaned into her mouth, overrun with arousal so suddenly it almost bowled him over. He kissed her back hungrily at first, then remembered what he had been about to ask. He somehow managed to pull away, just an inch or two.

“Lucia, my love, please wait just a moment-”

She pulled him closer again, attempting to seal her mouth over his but he twisted away. Lucia was not to be deterred, seeking his lips with her own without any sense of restraint. It had him leaking in his trousers to see her like this. With his last and final ounce of self-control, he pressed her wrists down either side of her face, trapping her to the sheets. She squirmed for only a moment, and gave up with a huff. Guilt flooded him instantly at the use of his vampiric power on his own wife.

“I am sorry,” he said slowly, attempting to catch his breath. Not that he needed air, but he felt overwhelmed all the same. “I don’t want to manhandle you. But I am worried.”

“I’m fine. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t even want to think about it.”

Elijah frowned down at her. She pouted, but he did not release her.

“You were perfect, babe,” she continued. “It was like you could read my mind and you did exactly what I wanted to, but couldn’t.”

He gave her a look of exasperation. “I’m not the mind-reading kind of vampire,” he said. “I was just frustrated, and I behaved badly.”

“Perfectly,” she corrected him. “I appreciated it all.” She paused before adding, “Tell me you meant it when you threatened them.” Her voice had become husky.

He nodded gravely. “Absolutely I did. I will kill them if they put a toe on our land.”

“This is my home. You are my family. Fuck them.”

Elijah grinned.

“And fuck me, as well. Hurry!” she laughed.

“Yes, dear,” he groaned. As though the task were a chore. As though he didn’t have the sexiest wife of any man in any clan in the world. As though he didn’t hunger for her permanently.

Every piece of clothing was thrown off. Elijah stripped them both like a madman while Lucia giggled.

The giggles stopped when he pressed her thighs open curled his tongue into her slit. Lucia moaned and dropped her knees to the bed, inviting him in further. He appreciated the invitation, but he was always going to lick every drop of his appetiser up.

“The hardest part of pregnancy is your bump getting so big you can’t watch your husband eat you out,” she called from the other side of the mound.

Elijah couldn’t hold his laughter in, but it didn’t stop him from continuing his very important work.

Opened and dripping, her hole was begging for him. Her mouth, too.

“Hurry, Elijah, please!” she begged, writhing against the sheets.

He withdrew his tongue and fingers slowly, teasing her before he lost all of his control.

With both hands he pulled her hips to the very edge of the bed. She smiled up at him with lust-filled eyes and he sunk into her.