Cake: A Blood Nation Novel (Volume 1) Read online

  Cake

  By Derekica Snake

  SL Publishing Group

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  SL PUBLISHING GROUP

  P.O. Box 863312

  Plano, TX 75086-3312

  Cake: A Blood Nation Novel

  Copyright © 2010 by Derekica Snake

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Published 2010 by SL Publishing Group

  IBSN: 0984422900

  www.slpublishinggroup.com

  First SL Publishing Group paperback printing: April 2010

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  Text © 2010 by Derekica Snake

  Cover art © 2010 by Feimo

  For my Mother.

  I have told you that you couldn’t read my stories until they were published. Here’s another one.

  To the Loyal and True

  My Internet fan base that has supported and encouraged me when I was low; raked me over the coals of rabid fandomness when I was overly mean to an icon in my Vampire universe; and who has coined me “Dark Goddess” because I can twang on your heart strings and I kill minor and major characters if it advances the storyline.

  It’s been a long journey for all of us. I believe things happened the way they were supposed to and the book is better for it. So as always, read, review and enjoy.

  One

  Sex and the Single Vampire

  I was a slut.

  Not a realization I really wanted to face, especially while running on a treadmill. Pounding my feet on an endless path gave me too much time to think of my current situation, and just simply thinking about my situation was enough of a distraction to make me lose my concentration.

  And once that was gone, so was I.

  One foot hit the hard side of machine, while the other foot stayed planted on the tread as it was still rotating backward. I ended up flipping off the back in an act of involuntary acrobatics, which resulted in a painful attempt at the splits. My ankle twisted, but that sharp jolt of pain was nothing compared to the agony I received when my kneecap rammed down hard onto the concrete floor, followed by my elbow, then the back of my head as I rolled in an attempt to fall with some semblance of safety.

  Damn it!

  A history of sexual contortions seemed to be my salvation. Maybe it was a good thing I was a slut after all, as I was limber enough to move my body in any way required to avoid really serious injury to muscles and tendons, though when my head had collided with the concrete floor, I’d seen stars,

  I thought, as I lay on my back stunned but not out, that it was better to get a concussion than end up pulling a groin muscle because current activities that I was required to do would have made that incredibly painful. All a concussion did was to give me a temporary headache, which was easily taken care of with pain meds and a nice nap.

  So I lay there and just breathed to the sound of the still-whirling treadmill…it was kind of soothing, until the intercom crackled into life.

  “Sex?”

  Having to answer to the moniker of “Sex” wasn’t conducive to shaking off my slut status.

  “Sex? Can you hear me?” The proper British accent at the other end of the intercom was obviously concerned about my latest injury. I lifted my uninjured arm and gave the multitude of security cameras the universal symbol for “everything’s okay”—a thumbs-up.

  “Do you require medical assistance?”

  Slowly, I pushed myself up into a sitting position. The back of my head was tender, but it didn’t feel like a concussion had set in. I’d had enough of those, courtesy of my captor these past months, to know when I had one. I quickly checked the rest of my body. My fingers moved. My toes wiggled. I was alright.

  I used the bars on the treadmill to pull myself to my feet. Oh crap…my injured knee was aching. It took my weight though, which was good, and I was able to hobble around the machine and hit the emergency stop button on the control panel. I sighed as blessed silence filled the room.

  “Sex?”

  “I’m going to take a shower, then a bath. But I could use an icepack afterwards,” I answered.

  “Understood.”

  The intercom crackled once more as the Brit signed off, and I limped my way over to the bathroom.

  While the rest of my prison was pretty basic, the bathroom was a spa worthy of a hedonist. Not that I was used to hanging out in spa settings, but it was a damned nice place to retreat to for some soothing alone time, when the jerk that had captured me wasn’t around. The shower itself was large enough to hold a small party in. Enclosed with thick clear glass on three sides, the final wall was decorated with a brown tile, though it was more than just a boring brown, for it had gold flecks embedded in it that glistened in the light through the water that hit it. I’d had my cheek pressed up hard against it enough times to really see it up close.

  One would think that I would hate that place, since he liked making out in the shower, but there was a perk that I loved…the shower head had different settings.

  I preferred the long, wide head that mimicked a water fall. I would stand there with the water cascading over my body and imagine that I was in a tropical paradise, rather than being a prisoner in a series of connected, sparse, concrete bunkers. A cement room is a cement room, no matter how large it was.

  Stepping gingerly over to the tub, I started running the water. It would take a while to fill, so I knew I might as well get that started first. Then I stepped into the shower and let the warm water wash over me.

  There was going to be a lovely bruise on my elbow. My hip was starting to turn black and blue as well. I lifted my good arm and perched it on the back tile wall, resting my forehead on my forearm and allowing the water to ease my aches and to sooth me enough to think some more. I did a lot of that…thinking, that is.

  I didn’t start out as a slut. My captor had turned me into one by honing my body and my mind into that of a sex machine.

  My free arm swept up across my muscular body, my fingers gently touching responsive skin as my hand glided and slowly lowered itself all the way down past my navel in silent acknowledgement of what I was. He was also responsible for getting me to the point where I could see my feet when I looked down. And looking downwards now, I could also see something stirring when it shouldn’t be…just because I was thinking of him touching me down there.

  I pulled my wandering hand away from my lower abdomen and studiously began washing the sweat and grime from my body, ignoring the standing witness to my fitness and sexuality. I worked out every day to attain and keep the fitness of my body. At first, it was because of his orders, but then it was because I liked what I saw and intended to maintain it. Keeping trim and muscular was now a part of my daily routine; after all, it wasn’t as if I had anything else to do in my free time. Being a creature of sex was his idea, and I hated it…most of the time, anyway.

  Routine. There is nothing wrong with routine. It provides a semblance of order to an otherwise either chaotic or tediously boring day. What am I saying…day? It’s been nothing but a series of unending chaotic events since I met that man.

  Man? I have known that he isn’t a man since the day I stabbed him. I just couldn’t process it right away, I mean, that he was a vampire. These were creatures that my family believed in, while me, I was a man of reason and science.
Really, bloodsuckers walking among us? But I can’t deny it now, not when one of these mythical creatures has been sexing me and drinking from me.

  I wasn’t a virgin when he kidnapped me. Well, yes, technically, I was. I hadn’t done anything with a man before him, and my one experience with a girl had ended quite disastrously in my sophomore year of college. I mean, I had no idea what to do that time, so long ago. Just like so many other things in my life that I had been looking forward to when I was younger, I had put sex on the shelf called “Not-going-to-happen” once I’d started going blind.

  So yeah, we’d done it once, me and that girl, and then I never saw her again. My first sexual experience, other than going solo, had been a one-night stand. Even I knew that my performance had been bad. It couldn’t be classified as premature ejaculation, but it sure as hell wasn’t anything she could have enjoyed.

  So I wasn’t a virgin, with a woman. But with a man, yes. If I had been given a choice, I still wouldn’t be doing anything with a man…which, technically, I wasn’t, because he wasn’t a man, he was…a vampire.

  My brain ached. I had to stop thinking about this, because it was an almost daily routine also, this thinking of him, and my body reacted even harder. Damn it.

  I shut off the shower and limped over to the bath, which was the size of a six-person hot tub. Sinking into the warm water, I dunked my growing erection, thinking that maybe I should have made sure the water was cold, to discourage this involuntary, unwanted reaction to my thoughts of him.

  I wasn’t a slut. I was a victim of Stockholm Syndrome. Yeah, that’s it. My body was identifying with my kidnapper. The faint scent of apples I could smell was his personal scent. Apple-scented body wash, apple-scented shampoo, and even apple-scented air freshener. It was a conspiracy by the Brit and his staff to make sure that I never had a moment in my captivity to ignore his existence.

  I sank down until my shoulders were submerged, then leaned my head back against the edge of the tub, closing my eyes, wondering how long I’d been under his thumb…Marcus, the Vampire.

  It had to be months, because he’d had the time to not only re-shape my body but to also fix my eyes as well. Marcus was beginning to take me over, by changing my name to my initials, S.E.X., and by resetting my sexual preference. Well, what I thought was my sexual preference, before I ended up in that bar on my birthday.

  Nobody had ever looked at me twice before then, or even once, so I really didn’t have a chance to find out if I preferred women, or if I only thought I liked women, or whether I was simply refusing to admit that though I could get it up looking at a woman, I only really got hard when I looked at a sexy, beautiful man.

  Anyway, at the time of my forced conversion to being intimate with men whether I wanted it or not, I had weighed two hundred and eighty-nine pounds, was about as round as I was tall, and was legally blind. I could see, but I had to be up really close with my stereotypical Coke-bottle lenses to peer at whatever it was I was looking at.

  I sighed, and stretching an arm out of the bath, I reached for and rolled up a plush hand towel into a tube, setting it behind my neck. When I’d been heavy, even the back of my neck had been cushioned with fat. Now that I was thin, I needed the extra cushioning that a nice, expensive, thick towel would give when I wanted to lie back in the tub.

  Growing up, I was a skinny kid. It wasn’t until I started going blind in high school that I’d started to put on the weight and grow a nasty personality. I didn’t want anyone to look at me, to see the real me. I was lost in my darkening world, and I hated everyone because I was the only one affected. At least, that was what I thought then, not realizing that my family was affected by my blindness too. I felt so alone and resented that everyone else could go along with their daily tasks when I couldn’t. It was as if the world were picking on me, and my family was leaving me behind in darkness.

  The doctors never did come up with an explanation for my failing eyesight or for the fact that at a certain point, it stopped. With thick lenses and very bright light, I could actually get around and function but not enough to avoid the label “seeing impaired” though. But I was able to live on my own, to get around on my own, and to hold down a boring job, because I could see a computer screen if I used a very large font and the room was dark in contrast to the bright computer screen.

  “Ocular Degeneration” and “We have no real explanation as to why it seems to have stopped just this side of your son being completely blind” weren’t good enough explanations for me, but that was the best the specialists could do. I wasn’t comforted to hear their prognosis.

  “Sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Xavier, your son’s blindness is beyond medical explanation.” Shrug of white lab coat shoulders. “Sorry for your luck, kid.”

  Sorry, for my sorry excuse for a life? Well, sorry just didn’t cut it, and I was royally pissed about that.

  Now that the tub was full, I used my feet to shut the taps off and tried unsuccessfully not to think about that day—that last day that he had allowed me to live in the world of sunlight. Hindsight is twenty-twenty. If only I’d done this; if only I’d done that.

  If only I’d called in sick the way I’d wanted to that morning, I’d still be a fat, blind punk…with a very bad attitude.

  Two

  Sex Memories

  It was my birthday, and the entire day was completely screwed up. There I was, stuck bar hopping for another hour, with three co-workers that I had nothing in common with, barely knew, and all of whom I really didn’t want to get to know any better. To top it off, sometime during the night, I’d gotten the headache back that’d been hovering in my head for the past few weeks, and it was slowly getting worse.

  All night we’d been hitting the bars, and when it was finally two in the morning, we’d sunk to the lowest-of-the-low bar in this town. I lost those bastards somewhere in the crowd soon after paying my ten-dollar cover fee. I’d paid theirs too, because they’d claimed that they didn’t have enough money and would pay me back come payday. But just moments later, I noticed they had enough for a round of drinks for themselves. I would have just left them there, if I hadn’t already paid the money to get in.

  I guess, technically, it wasn’t my birthday anymore, it being after midnight and all. Screw it. It was supposed to be my day, all about me, me, me, and yet, I hadn’t got to do a damned thing I wanted to do. I didn’t even get a piece of the cake Allison had baked for me, because of that damned last-minute meeting I got called into. By the time I got back to the break room, there was only a smidge of icing left on the tray. I’d swiped it onto my finger and sucked it clean, pissed that they hadn’t left me even one lousy piece to eat. But maybe they figured, at two hundred and eighty-nine pounds, I didn’t need any cake. Screw them.

  I threw a mental finger at them now as they downed their beers, and my headache increased to a rhythmic, dull throb. All I could think was, “Great, my headache is intensifying, and I have to try and find an ATM to get some cash so I can call a cab and get my tired ass home.”

  The swirling lights and the pounding music didn’t help my aching head. I was reduced to squinting even more than usual to see blurry blobs in that dark and dreary little place.

  The fact that it was a gay bar we were in was not lost on me. The combination of my short red hair, which I kept to something a smidge longer than a buzz cut, and my general unattractiveness to the female sex, only endeared me more to the hot male cruisers out looking for a hook-up.

  Not. I was blind, not deaf. I heard every disparaging remark and cutting jibe about “that fatso over there”…me. These sorts of barbed comments were the very reason why I stayed the hell home with my delivery menu and my case of beer. Enough was enough. I got up to leave and turned, only to run into someone.

  I was about to rip a strip off him for being in my way, but my nose was planted into a firm chest. Holy moly. I blinked and looked up, and looked up some more, until I could make out a strong jaw line. The man’s head dipped forward and his feature
s came into focus a bit more. Hottie to the extreme. One of his hands curved around my shoulder, holding onto the folds of my neck, while the other was placed on the bar behind me. The headache that had been plaguing me blew away like so much smoke as I stared up into his pretty brown eyes.

  My own hands were hanging loosely at my sides, but we were plastered together from my paunchy stomach to his rock-hard abs and groin. He had to be at least six feet five, or maybe six feet six inches tall. His dark brown hair was wavy; he had it pulled loosely back into a ponytail with soft, dark strands hanging down on each side of his face to caress each cheek. God, it was a sexy look. I was surprised when the urge to reach up and touch one of the dangling strands grew in me, but I was afraid that I would get a broken wrist if tubby, disgusting me dared try such a thing.

  The plain beige shirt he wore pulled taut across his chest as he moved his arms. Wait…he was hugging me closer to him?

  “What do you think you’re doing?” I squeaked, rather than demanded as I intended to.

  He leaned over, and for a moment I was startled, thinking he was going to kiss me. I went rigid in his grasp, and he hesitated, which told me he had been going to kiss me. I felt fury rip right through me. It was bad enough to hear the taunting and spiteful comments from those bastards around me, but for this beautiful man to actually come up to me to…

  “Beautiful.”

  “Huh? What was that?”

  “I think you’re beautiful.” His thumb started stroking the back of my neck.

  “What? Are you trying to win a bet or something? Bring the fattest, ugliest man to the party? Been there, done that, not gonna happen ever again, pal.” The memory of that humiliation years ago still stung, and if I were depressed enough, it actually brought tears to my eyes, like now. I blinked rapidly to erase the evidence of my momentary weakness.